After a late evening of
working a banquet at Windows on the World, where he had been a waiter for
several years, Norwood resident Mohammed Shamim was headed back to work
early the next morning to serve at another event. 

He got as far as the elevator banks in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center -
and then came the loud crash that sent everyone in the lobby racing out of
the building. 

Shamim, a native of Bangladesh who arrived in the Bronx in 1978, was one
of the lucky ones.  Seventy-three Windows on the World workers died that
morning, including two very close friends, and Shamim would have been among
them had he arrived only minutes earlier. 

Still, Shamim doesn't feel so lucky these days.  Six months after the
horrific attack, he is still out of a job, and his hopes of saving for a
house and buying new furniture for the apartment on Hull Avenue he shares
with his wife, Laila, and two children, Ibtehaj and Tahsin, are all gone. 

"I thought I was going to buy a house," said Shamim, who often earned
$1,500 a week as a waiter. " I was happy." 

Shamim has been collecting unemployment.  Restaurant jobs are difficult,
if not impossible, to find.  Even those of his neighbors who worked in
restaurants that weren't obliterated by the attack are working only part
time, maybe two or three days a week.  Things are made even more difficult by
his glaucoma, which requires that he work in a low-light environment. 

Shamim is grateful to his union, Local 100 of the Restaurant Workers, for
setting up a fund that extends his family's health insurance through at
least June.  But he is sharply critical of the way the large charitable
funds, set up in the wake of Sept. 11, are being administered.  There is help
now only for the relatives of those who perished, not for the families of
those who survived but are struggling without work. 

"I should die so my family would be taken care of," Shamim says. " I'm
alive so they can't do anything.  That's what I feel like right now." 

Meanwhile, Shamim tries to get his family back on track financially,
taking computer classes one day a week in Manhattan - he would go more often
if it was offered - and trying to find English classes for his wife so that
she could perhaps find a job herself. 

"If I have to change my career I'm going to do it, but I need training
right now," said Shamim, who once worked at Merrill Lynch on mainframe
computers. 

Before Sept. 11, Shamim had great hopes for his family.  Now he lives day
to day. 

"It's very hard to survive," Shamim said. " The work we do is very hard to
find in New York right now.  I'm very unsure about the future."