Urdu, English, Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi

Do you know what those languages are? Those are the most commonly spoken languages in Pakistan. The official languages are Urdu and English. Pashto, Punjabi, Sindhi and Baluchi are the four most commonly spoken regional languages. Note that Arabic is not a language spoken in Pakistan.

I made the mistake last night of turning on ABC's "Not a Documentary" about the lead-up to 9/11. After 10 minutes, I was so angry I turned off the television, called ABC, and tried to complain (the complaint voice-mail box was full. Hah.). Why am I so upset? It's simple.

9/11 was a horrible event. It changed the way our country views the rest of the world, the way we interact diplomatically (or not), and the way we view each other as Americans. I went to school for history. I appreciate history, and I appreciate the thrill of discovering the truth. To understand history is to understand who you are, to claim your identity, and use it to move forward. To change history is to change identity.

There is another twist to my anger. Not only does changing the truth insidiously weave falsehood into identity, it cheapens the very event it seeks to memorialize. 9/11 was bad enough. There is no need to make it "worse" for TV. To do so implies that it wasn't as bad as we thought, that it just isn't sensational enough. What a dangerous thing to say.

And finally, I'm angry at the level of art. Making a film is a painstaking process. When I turned on the TV, there was a scene set in Islamabad, Pakistan. Three figures were standing on a rooftop, talking about a plot to bomb airplanes. In Arabic. Explain, please, who overlooked this detail.

There are two options here - one, that the filmmaker is stupid, and didn't do his homework, doesn't understand his subject, and can't tell the difference between Urdu and Arabic. The languages use the same script, but they are not the same.

The other possibility is even more disheartening. What better way to show your enemy as a bloc, a faceless mass, than to take away its identity as surely as you dismember your own? By turning Pakistani terrorists into Arabs, by changing the actions of our own government - by hiding behind fictionalization - this movie weaves a myth about the world in a way that is both dangerous and devastating.