Remembering a Neglected First Responder

“He actually isn’t a family member of mine,” Iman Hussain said as she placed three red roses on the name Mohammad Salman Hamdani etched in the bronze surround on one of the 9/11 Memorial waterfall pools. 

Hussain explained that she came to honor his memory and recognize a fellow Muslim because of her concern about prejudice against Muslims and the Islamophobia that followed 9/11. She also felt a connection because she shared Pakistani heritage with Hamdani.

Hussain learned about Hamdani, an EMT and police cadet, after news reports in 2002 recounted his family’s anguish when he was accused of being connected with the terrorists, or in hiding, despite being a first responder. It is believed that when he saw smoke coming from the World Trade Center Towers, he rushed to the scene to help. He was one many who vanished when the towers collapsed. Despite his mother Talat Hamdani’s pleas to help her find her son, stories were published with unsupported theories that he disappeared because he was part of the terrorist group. Anonymous flyers went up with his photo and the words “hold and detain.” 

But in October 2001, a body, medical bag and ID  were found in the collapsed rubble of the North Tower. In Washington that October, President George W. Bush cited Hamdani during the passage of the Patriot Act as an example of why it was wrong to look at all Muslims as terrorists. “Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing,” Section 102 of the legislation read.

Then in March 2002, a DNA match positively identified the remains as Mohammad Salman Hamdani. That April Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly remembered him as hero.

But there is still the question of the placement of his name at the Memorial. Hamdani’s mother Talat continues to struggle to get his name in the section of the memorial with the first responders. The NYPD allegedly told her that Hamdani did not qualify as a first responder because he completed his three year run as a cadet three weeks before 9/11.

Discussions  apparently continue about whether Hamdani can be included as a first responder with an asterisk to indicate that he was in school. Many learned about Hamdani in the  documentary about his life, “American Jedi: the Salman Hamdani story.”  The documentary described Hamdani as talented, never complaining, and always smiling.

In 2002, Rockefeller University, where he’d been a student, created a memorial scholarship fund in Hamdani’s name for outstanding Pakistani-American students. And in 2011, Hamdani’s Alma mater, Queens college established the Hamdani scholarship. In 2013, on 204st street in Bayside, Queens, a street was named “Salman Hamdani Way,” in his honor. 

But at the Memorial, his mother and others would like to see Hamdani honored with the first responders.