The broom was taller than I am. At five foot one I wasn't that tall but to have been towered over by a cleaning appliance was still a bit annoying. I struggled to hold both my jacket closed and the broom upright as a chilling gust of wind whipped my hijab around. I wasn’t alone; my fellow volunteers struggled with their various cleaning supplies also. Some of us carried black garbage bags, mops, masks, and still others, thinking ahead, brought along hand sanitizer and Lysol.

Coming from a conservative Bengali family it was quite unusual for my parents to allow me to wander around unsupervised offering help to strangers while I was among strangers. But that’s the beauty of tragedies and misfortune; it brings people together. And not only people but different organizations.

Like many other major religions before us, Muslims have their own subdivisions within the religion itself. You have the Sunnis, the Shi’ites, the Wahhabis, the Sufis, and many, many more. These sects have their differences but it isn’t always expressed with violence, as it is in the Middle East. Within the Muslim community in North America many of us are wary of each other. But if there is anything good about Hurricane Sandy, and there is almost nothing, it’s that this Hurricane has brought out the humanity in many people.

On Sunday, November 3, three different Muslim organizations that span North America came together to provide help for Hurricane victims on Staten Island. MAS (Muslim American Society), MUNA (Muslim Ummah of North America) and ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America) provided volunteers not only from Staten Island but also from the surrounding boroughs. Families who had problems and crises of their own made the effort to help others in their hours of need.

My family was one of many who dug through their closets and pantries to bring what they could to the relief drive. Donning jackets and mittens, we drove our car to Midland, once a beautiful neighborhood by the water; it is now one of the hardest hit areas on Staten Island. The damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in Midland is tragic.

Staten Island often feels like the forgotten borough; the estranged family member who isn't as seemingly successful as the rest of the family. I have noticed over the years that people on Staten Island refer to Manhattan as the City. One of my friends even called it New York City a few times, as though we weren’t one of the five boroughs. Physically separated by three miles of ocean on one side and five miles on the other, Staten Island was even more isolated before the Verrazano, Goethals, and Outer bridges were built. Perhaps that is where our sense of divisiveness from the rest of New York City has stemmed from. This feeling of detachment was heightened during Hurricane Sandy. In the days immediately after the storm, there was almost no news reported about the damage done on Staten Island by distinguished news stations like ABC, NBC, Fox, or CNN. Here on the island the small percentage of people who had power began throwing around words like conspiracy. Those who still had battery on their cellphones expressed outrage on Facebook, not only at the news networks but also at FEMA for lack of help. Even the Red Cross provided a measly amount of relief. After taking four days to arrive, the Red Cross was unable to help the vast number of victims.

Many people don’t understand that Staten Island may have been the borough that suffered the most. Though only 492,000 of New York’s 8.2 million people live in Staten Island, more than half of the deaths caused by Hurricane Sandy happened here. Out of the 37 New Yorkers found dead 20 of them were Staten Islanders. As though to mock us after our suffering Mayor Bloomberg was planning to divert generators, police officers and other resources from relief efforts for the New York City Marathon going. Where is the fairness in all this?

Staten Island is small to the point where I can almost always bump into at least one person I know at the supermarket. Yet on clean-up day in Midland, I realized these were people I had never seen before. Complete strangers. I had no knowledge of what they did for a living, where they went to school, or what life was like for them pre-Sandy. This observation made my fellow volunteers and me nervous - not because we didn't know them, but because we didn’t expect them to accept our help. We understand the recent associations of Islam with terrorism and anti-Muslim views and why there may be some aversion to our help during Sandy. When I pointed this out to my father he replied that this was a great opportunity to disprove those viewpoints. Politics aside I couldn’t imagine why they would be afraid of a few teenage girls, dressed nicely in skinny jeans, with pink and blue bows in their hijabs. Freezing in our thin jackets we were hardly the epitome of innocuity. Still, who were we to just go around offering our help randomly on the street. I was pretty sure all our cleaning supplies would remain intact at the end of the day.

Picking up my share of garbage bags, I tried to balance the towering broom. We volunteers had been divided into 15-20 groups, each with two males and three females. After my group began to trudge through the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy we realized the true extent of the destruction. In two areas, a part of the street had broken off and sunk as though an earth quake had hit. All along the streets garbage trucks took away the rubble. The neighborhood streets were lined with a mishmash of the remnants of various objects including refrigerators, couches, clothes, and family pictures. Everything those people built their lives around was destroyed. Gone were the old birthday pictures, the flat screen you stood in line for on Black Friday, the anniversary presents, the beloved stuffed animals, the wardrobe that had been accumulated over a lifetime; all destroyed by Mother Nature. The outrage and despair I felt upon seeing the destruction caused by Sandy was surprising. No matter how many times I try I just can’t understand how water and wind can cause so much damage. No one who wasn’t there can truly understand.

Finally, after walking through a few blocks we found a large family resting on the remnants of their front yard. We asked if they needed help. The patriarch of the family-- or at least that’s who he seemed to be-- jumped up and began thanking us. He took us through a narrow pathway created in-between the furniture and knick knacks that belonged inside, and showed us into his lopsided house. Or at least what remained of the inside of his house. We found men who had begun to take apart the floor boards. The foundation of the house had tilted and according to one of the men there was no use in keeping the house as it was. So donning gloves and masks my fellow volunteers and I got down and began to help them with the floorboards. My other group members went to clean up the staircase and kitchen.

When we took a break I went outside to look around. Along with a table, and an old fashioned refrigerator, some picture albums sat on top of a weathered piano. This was no baby grand, but seeing this piano so beat up and damaged made me sad. I can’t name the emotion that went through me looking down at the broken piano. But I felt as though all the misfortune brought on by Hurricane Sandy could be summed up in that crippled piano. The once pearly white keys were coated with grime and the wood looked aged. As I began to converse with a few members of the family I learned that almost three generations of them had lived in this tiny house by the beach. And now they may have to move to New Jersey or somewhere else.

Leaving that family behind we walked around various streets feeling exhausted. It was late in the day and despite being offered food many times by various passersby we had not stopped to eat lunch. Imagine our happiness when we spotted an unassuming ocean blue car. It was my father’s Rav4. Like thirsty people running towards an oasis we ran towards it. Alas our work was not yet completed. Upon reaching the car we discovered that my father and another man had been going through the streets offering food to anyone who needed it. Our three organizations not only provided volunteer labor but also food provided by Sumac, a local Halal Restaurant. The older men and women who could not do manual labor delivered food door to door--dry foods as well as warm soup, rice, chicken, beef, and noodles. Volunteers who had cars—like my father-- loaded them with the remaining food and drove to neighborhoods farther off. Instead of offering us a ride home, as we had hoped, my father handed us a few containers of soup and two bags of ice. With our new possessions we walked back covering the streets that the cars could not pass through. People gave us strange looks as we asked them if they wanted hot soup or dry ice.

On one of the streets, however, we encountered the Red Cross volunteers who had created an area for first aid. After another few blocks we ran into the Marines who were trying to help a family with their car which had titled over. Both appreciated the dry ice we were able to provide.

I ended up feeling worn out and smelling like sewage. I was emotionally drained and my good pair of jeans was covered in mud and who knows what. But I don’t regret a moment of that day.