Banking on Trouble: What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name? A lot more than I bargained for. Born in Syria, I immigrated with my family to New York City as a ten-year-old. Back then, it used to bug me a lot when people mispronounced my name, Bachar (buh-shar).
‘Batch-are?’
– No.
‘Bitch-are?’
– Nope.
‘Back-are?’
– Sigh.
My name has been butchered so many times I think in some small way, it has given me character and patience with other people. I have learned having your name mispronounced is a common experience among immigrants, and often the least of their worries.
Things turned up a notch, however, following a fateful morning in my ninth-grade biology class. I was in room 707 at Stuyvesant High School on 345 Chambers St., four blocks north of World Trade Center One. I will never forget the deafening roar of American Airlines Flight 11′s engines as it flew over our building and plunged so horrifically into the North Tower. It was the sound of the world turning a very dark corner.
The school closed down to be used as a triage center for a month, and later reopened. But people didn’t stop mispronouncing my name. In short, my life and the world continued with some sense of normalcy.
On Thursday, August 14, 2003, a band of friends and I set out for that kitschy oceanside town in New Jersey known as Wildwood. Jay, the oldest among us, had just gotten his license, and we were free at last to explore the world beyond the four corners of ‘the Block,’ the self-styled name for our posse and the street most of us lived on in Brooklyn.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-12-05.