Growing up in the early 2000s in California, surrounded by piles of history books about the Kennedy family and her Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, Rozina Ali’s childhood felt idyllic. She and her family had moved from Pakistan to the US when Ali was five years old and ever since she had immersed herself in her new world.
“I really, really also believed in American exceptionalism,” said Ali, now a journalist working for New York Times Magazine, in a recent interview with Stateside with Kai and Carter, a Guardian podcast. So when her parents sat Ali and her siblings down in the hours after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, almost every word coming out of their mouths felt wrong.
