A camp for young people touched by terror
Philadelphia (CNN) Inside the group’s sacred circle, a young Muslim visitor adjusts her salmon pink hijab, clears her throat and asks the question that could shatter trust:
“Do you think all Muslims are terrorists?”
It is a prevailing belief in her native Indonesia, she says, that Americans despise Islam.
The question is directed at 19-year-old Robbie Hayes, whose father was killed in the September 11 attacks on America.
“Not at all,” Hayes answers. “I have many friends who are Muslims. The people who were involved in killing my father were extreme radicals. Any group can have radicals who believe they are the only ones who are right. That’s when it becomes dangerous.”
Hayes tells the group he was too young to process everything that happened when he lost his father. He and his younger brother, Ryan, grew up in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and were the only two children in their community who were directly affected by the 2001 attacks.
“I was sort of like the oddity,” he says. “But when I came here, I felt like this was a place I belong.”
This is a camp for young people touched by terror, their lives interrupted and altered by a sudden and brutal force. Participants are the now-grown children of men and women who perished on September 11 and the loved ones of people across the globe whose lives were cut short by acts of violence.
There are 55 of them this year. They’ve come to the campus of Bryn Mawr College from more than a dozen countries separated by oceans and continents.
They come here because, like Robbie Hayes, they belong.
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