I LOOKED back. There it was, the hollow that once rose into the sky, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Nobody else in the van seemed to notice: the Guyanese driver talked into his cellphone and another New Yorker dozed off.

It was past midnight and we were returning to Queens after a late dinner in Manhattan.

The man next to me asked his friend if it was OK to smoke in the van. Two others were already chalking out plans for the next day.

Several months have already passed since the city shuddered under its worst-ever disaster. Unaffected by the madness of those who tried to derail this mother of all cities, New York is surging ahead to new horizons.

It had no time for the likes of me. I was still reluctant to plunge into the mainstream, as I always did when I visited New York before 9/11. I felt ashamed of the tragedy brought about by a group of people who looked like me and believed in the same God.

But New York had no time for my guilt or shame.

Earlier in the day, coming into Manhattan from Queens on the A train, I avoided eye contact with other passengers and hid behind a newspaper. I soon realized my mistake — it was an Urdu-language newspaper. Although few in

New York would know what Urdu was, many could distinctly see its Arabic script and identify me as one of “them.” So I hastily folded back the newspaper and looked around me.

I saw a copy of the New York Post and picked it up. I felt safe behind its Latin script.

A girl walked in, wearing a hijab. She looked around and sat next to me. I said, “Salaam.” She smiled but did not respond. Was she nervous or was it me who was being hypersensitive? I don’t know.

The train slid under the streets of Manhattan. A large group of Americans — mostly white men — entered, somehow increasing my guilt. Some of them stood right in front of me. I looked for the Muslim girl. She had already gone. I was nervous.

The train passed through the stations where it once disgorged workers into the World Trade Center. I felt dizzy, as if something inside me had broken. I was deformed. Incomplete.

I had this feeling again later at a bar. A girl was dancing like a cobra, a golden cobra. She moved her body to an invisible flute. Snake charmers waited on her, with their baskets wide open. But she slipped away, sinuously, and kept dancing with her eyes fixed on the invisible flute.

A man rose and held her in both his hands. She smiled and slipped out of his grip. I looked outside at a pale winter moon dwarfed by the neon lights.

Somebody came over and introduced himself. We talked about the weather, about why the winter was so mild this year. He changed the subject, but before he moves to the inevitable — Sept 11 and its aftermath — I excused myself.

I went to the window and gazed at the moon, it was still pale and weak. A dog looked at it but did not howl. I wish he had. I would have felt better. But he suppressed his howl, looked at the moon again and walked away. I sighed but did not scream. I had wanted to scream for a long time, but I have held my silence.

Tension twisted me. I wanted to hold something. But all faces, all images were lost in the haze as I stretched my arms.

Shadows danced on the wall. Broad, bold shadows leapt in rhythmic chaos. They whispered to each other and laughed; a full-throated laughter filled the room, prickling my skin with fear.

I tried to flee, to the comfort of past images. I sought refuge in narrow, warm streets. Familiar smells of closed rooms, sweat and herbs meander in the streets, getting stronger as the heat increases. I saw people pushing, shouting, laughing and jostling.

The muezzin called evening prayers. A soothing shadow slipped down the minarets. The sun slid from the sky as the night dropped from the clouds.

The streets were not deserted, but filled with the faithful smell of summer evenings.

People moved around, laughing and shouting. I reached for them, trying to coax them into my existence. But they flowed through my hands and fingers like water.

The mist licked my fingers and the wall-dancing shadows scared me. I reached again, only to embrace the cold, slithering mist.

The longing never ends. I walk like a lost soul through images wandering in my mind. Sometimes they seem familiar. Sometimes they drift through my mind like strangers.

Time passes and the strangers wander from my mind to my soul, becoming a part of me, of my identity. And the confusion continues.

Sometimes I see myself in a valley full of both familiar and strange images. I see people, buildings and trees slowly emerging out of the mist. I see cars, buses and trains. An aeroplane flies over my head.

The familiar sight sends a shudder through my spine. I look out the window again. The pale, blue moon is still there, hanging helplessly in the sky. The dog has gone. The golden cobra dances no more.

I am afraid to go out and face the hollow that once was the twin towers of the World Trade Center.