The view from the 82nd floor of the South Tower in the World Trade Centre was dazzling as always.  As Salam Ahmed, a transport analyst in the Department of Transportation entered his office, he noticed how the early morning sunlight bathed Manhattan, spread out in an even, faultless grid, in a pale golden hue.  “I was the first one in that day.  By 8: 45 a.m. the morning coffee was brewed as people turned on their PCs and got to work,” he recalls.

            His voice shakes as he begins to describe the indescribable. “At 8:46 there was a tremendous boom.  It sounded like a bomb going off. The entire building swayed and shuddered.”

            When hit by very strong winds or a storm, the Towers would sway a couple of degrees.  Salam estimates that after the blast the swing must have been between 20 to 30 degrees.  “I instinctively knew that something was very wrong.”

            His boss got down on the floor as Salam looked out of the window. “In that fraction of a second I saw in free fall what looked like human body parts, pieces of an aeroplane, paper, debris.” He knew it was time to get out of the building.

            He was not alone in thinking so.  Most of the staff made their way to the 78th floor where they hoped the 10 express elevators would take them down to the street level.       

            When they got there, however, around 300 people were already in line for the elevator.   Salam and the others would have to wait.  Incredibly there was no pushing, no shoving, no panic at all.  “We did not know what was happening” says Salam.  “We knew a plane had crashed into the tower, but no one knew the details.”  Security personnel at the scene assured the crowd that it was safe to go back to their seats.   Many, who did not welcome the wait for the elevator or the prospect of a strenuous climb down 78 floors, turned back.  After all, the architects had designed the Twin Towers to withstand even the impact of a crash by a 707 plane.

            Salam and his co-workers decided to walk.  It was a decision that would ultimately save their lives.  A couple of floors down, the smell of burning and smoke filled the stairway.  “Our eyes began to water.  As we descended further, we saw injured people in blood-splattered clothes thronging the staircases.  There were some whose limbs were on fire.”  At every level, more people joined the descending queue.  There was still no jostling.  The crowd split into two, the slow-moving staying to the right.  Salam says admiringly, “People were very caring throughout. Volunteers helped the disabled, the old and the infirm. There were two blind men who got down safely.”

            Meanwhile, at home, Salam’s wife  was watching the report of an office complex on fire on TV.  It was only when she noticed the word ‘live’ flash on screen that she realised it was the WTC.  She immediately called her husband’s office.  One of Salam’s co workers received the phone.  He told her it was very dark and smoky; he could not see, could not get out.  Then the phone went dead.

            Says Salam, “On the 50th floor we met firefighters going up.”  He hesitates, his speech faltering, then composing himself he continues.  “We were overjoyed to see them.  They were trying so hard.”  Over 200 firemen lost their lives in the rescue effort.  As he walked out of the WTC he says, “I remember the policemen at the door telling me, “Don’t look back, don’t look up.  Just walk away.  There were pieces of flesh all over.”  Fifteen minutes later the earth shook and the tower came tumbling down.

            Salam’s story has a happy ending. But there are many Pakistani families still trying to find  their loved ones.  Reports say anywhere from 200 to 650 Pakistanis went missing in the attack.  The list on the government website carries 33 names.  Said an official at the Pakistani embassy in NYC, “The list is vague.  We have some names that sound Pakistani, but they could be Indian Muslim or Bangladeshi. We simply don’t know. “

            Sadly, those who are missing include some of Pakistan’s brightest and best, some biding time before they went home, others in search of the American dream.

            Twenty-nine-year-old Taimour Khan had a  trading desk in  the Carrfuture company on the 92nd floor of Tower One.  He ranks among the missing.  His sister Zara says, “In my heart I truly believe he is still alive.  We still have tremendous hope of finding him. My mother prays for him every day.  Of the thousands missing, only a couple of hundred bodies have been found.  For us no news is good news.”

            Taimour’s family moved  from Lahore to New York in 1964.  Captain of the college football team, he graduated from Albany university with a degree in economics.  Says Zara, “My brother is a wonderful person, generous, intelligent and very straightforward. Colour or religion do not figure in his relationships.”

            She continues, “In this crisis his friends, our family, neighbours have been very supportive, very caring.”  But Zara is furious at some organisations. “The Pakistani embassy was the last to call, and they have not maintained contact with us.  My mother is very disappointed. Carrfuture has also done nothing for us.”  And even as precious days go by, the family clings to the tenuous hope that Taimour will come home.

            The last to hear from Lahore-based Ehtesham Raja was his girlfriend. The 28-year-old financial analyst phoned her from the Windows on the World restaurant and said there had been “a bomb blast and that he had been thrown 10 feet.”  He said he was trying to get out.  He has not been heard from since.  Raja, a graduate of Columbia University did his A levels from Aitchison College, Lahore, before moving to the USA.  He  lived in New Jersey and had gone to the WTC  for a meeting that fateful day.  Raja’s family members have flown in from around the world in an effort to find him.  His parents  and younger brother  flew in from Lahore, his uncle from Canada.

            They have trekked wearily across Manhattan looking for clues, any scrap of hope. His uncle Javed Rai says, “We have been to all the hospitals, the Red Cross and every New York City agency.  We have given in his  DNA sample. Hope is fading; it has been more than 12 days.”

            Raja’s family says the Pakistani embassy has helped them a great deal but they have not been contacted by any Islamic organisation to date.  Raja’s grandmother who raised him is shattered.  The family prays for a miracle.

            They are not the only ones.  But with each passing day thousands of families have to attempt to come to terms with the fact that their husbands, wives, children and siblings may not be coming home.  Some bereaved family members maintain they would be grateful merely to know how their loved ones spent their final moments.  Most will also have to come to terms with the fact that this will probably not happen.

            In addition to losing loved ones, American Muslims also  have to contend with another crisis –  an anti Muslim backlash raging across America.  Hate crimes against members of this community and anyone appearing remotely similar have proliferated, and these range from verbal abuse to vandalism to murder.  Mosques in at least six states – four of them in Texas – have been attacked.  The FBI is investigating at least 40 ethnically motivated attacks, but CAIR(Council on American Islamic Relations) reports  650 hate crimes from all over the United States to date.  The Pakistani embassy in New York says it has received numerous calls from people who have been harassed or beaten up in public areas. 

            Waqar Hassan, a 46-year-old Pakistani living in Dallas who had moved to the USA 10 years ago, was shot dead in the store he co-owned.  There was no evidence of a robbery.  Hassan’s body was flown to New Jersey  for the final rites.  A local Pakistani weekly ran the story, stating that local congressmen and the mayor attended Hassan’s funeral, but there was no one from the Pakistani Consulate.  In Plymouth, a pizza shop owned by an immigrant from Iraq was set ablaze. A Brooklyn mosque had a bottle of burning kerosene tossed into its compound.

            In Cleveland, Ohio one man crashed his car into the doors of the Parma mosque Cleveland while drunk.  The mosque also houses a Muslim school and community centre.  Damage to the property is estimated at around 100,000 USD.

            Sheikh Fadhel Al Sahlani of the prominent Al-Khoei center of New York, was walking to a medical centre in Queens with his family in Arab attire when a man came up to them and said, “Shoot them, shoot them.”  Following them into the clinic he continued screaming, ‘Shoot the Arabs.  Sahlani says the Al-Khoei centre like other Islamic centres across America continues to receive offensive calls. 

            The New York Times quotes  Salam Al Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Council in Los Angeles: “It (the reaction)  was expected.  There’s been a backlash after every international crisis  involving the Middle East.”  It is true that the community is not surprised by the events.  A Pakistani women in Queens says that even before any anti-Muslim attacks were reported, many Pakistanis exchanged their kurta shalwars for western apparel, lest they be harassed on the streets. Another Pakistani woman says after watching the plane crashes on TV she rushed out to the halal store to stock up on meat, grocery and vegetables so that her family members would not have to venture out later.  Although she says her neighbourhood has been calm, she has put up the American flag outside her house just in case.

            The number of crimes may be substantially higher than what has been reported, as many do not report crimes in fear of further attacks.  This is especially when the victims are women.

            Najma, a resident of southern Virgina, was driving to work early morning when a man tailgated her car.  She says, “When I turned to look at him  he was shouting (obscenities) at me and cursing.”  Terrified lest he run her down she switched lanes, but he followed her.  He finally drove away after brushing his car against hers. The encounter frightened her so much that now she does not drive alone. Najma says, “I took down his license number but we did not report the incident.”  Najma, who has lived in the United States for over 25 years, says, “I regretted  not reporting the incident when an Iraqi Muslim’s house was being burnt in our town. Maybe if I had intervened in time, it could have been prevented.”

            She says she knows two other women in the local Pakistani community who encountered harassment at the work place. One says her supervisor’s attitude changed dramatically after the attack. A colleague of the other Pakistani woman told her to “leave  and go back to your own country.”   This woman migrated to the States as a  teenager and knows no other country as home.  Both women did not press charges nor want their names mentioned.

            The most vulnerable of the backlash victims are Muslim children. Most of the 400 Islamic schools throughout the USA closed down during the entire week following the attack. When the schools finally reopened there were additional police patrols in the vicinity.  So great is the fear that the school authorities’ do not want the institutions names mentioned in the press. “It is for the security of the children,” said a member of the faculty of one Islamic school.  “We want to give them a sense of normalcy and do not talk about the incident much.”

            The Islamic Centre at Westbury cancelled prayers and evacuated the building after receiving a bomb scare on the phone on the Friday after the attack.  Police now monitor Friday prayers and provide security and transportation upon request.  The centre meanwhile, has hired extra security guards.

            The Boston Globe ran a story about how Muslim students in Boston colleges are keeping out of sight until tensions dissipate. Some Muslim students were considering dropping out of the current  semester, others cut classes or avoided campus activities.

            Another horror for Muslim families, discouraging them from travelling, is ethnic or religious profiling. This term is used to describe the collection or rounding up of a group of people simply because they happen to have a certain ethnic or racial background.   A Delta Airline pilot forced a first class passenger of Muslim descent to leave the aircraft as he said his crew did not feel comfortable with him on board.  Two Arabs were made to disembark from a Northwestern Airlines plane because the American passengers on board forced the pilot to pressurise them to leave.  There have been numerous other similar incidents.

            Eye on Asia, an Indian TV programme, reported a similar  incident on a train. On the train from Boston to New York City a day after  the attack policemen gathered 12 people of South Asian descent, three of whom – two Sikhs and a Pathan – were handcuffed.  The 12  were detained for two-and-a-half hours and questioned.  Eleven of them were eventually allowed back on the train, but the Sikh, still in handcuffs, was taken away for further interrogation.

            Particularly ironic and tragic are the attacks on Sikhs whose beards and  turbans often get them mistaken for Arabs.  One gas station owner was  shot and killed in Arizona simply because he was “dark- skinned and wore a turban,” according to the county lawyer. Sikh temples have been vandalised and a few Sikhs have been detained by the police for carrying their traditional daggers – kirpans.   A Sikh website reports 196 hate crimes  with a photo showing members of the community holding placards that read: “Sikhs are not Muslims.”

            The attendant at  Gurdwara Mata Sahib  Kaur at Glen Cove Long Island says, “We are being harassed.  Our kids don’t want to attend school any longer; other kids are calling them names, they are having problems.  We are peace makers, we are Americans.”     

            The Sikh community held a candlelight vigil in Central Park, New York to express support for the victims of the WTC attack.

            Against this backdrop of an outpouring of anti-Muslim sentiment, various Islamic organisations have been holding joint discussions on strategies to secure Muslims.

            The suggested precautions include not wearing Islamic attire publicly  for some time.  Said a volunteer, Rameen, at the Islamic Center of Westbury that “If  women feel uncomfortable about shedding their hijabs they can change the way they cover their heads; they can wear hats or scarves tied at the back instead.  And women are advised to go out in groups or with a family member.  Sheikh Sahlani advises, “Complaints of verbal or physical abuse should be reported to the police. I advice brothers  to be patient and not to get into an argument with others. Women should try not to go out unnecessarily – The shariah does not allow us to take off the scarf.”  The  CAIR website lists further measures such as asking for additional police patrols near mosques and posting members of the congregation at their entrances and parking areas during prayer times.

            Ghazi Khakan of CAIR says, “This is a challenge and a opportunity.  Muslims should talk to their neighbours, their  Congressmen and local community leaders about their faith.”  He is furious at the way the media uses labels like ‘Muslim terrorists.’  “Terrorism has no religion. Why must they take for granted that all terrorists are Muslims? It is a stupid assumption.”   

           What further aggrieves the Muslim community is that while assorted Muslim organisations and communities have rallied to support relief efforts, this has gone largely unnoticed in the mainstream media.  The Edhi Foundation donated  50,000 USD to the city, and the Long Island Centre says it has raised a couple of thousand dollars.  All Islamic centres have, via their webites, urged members to participate in blood drives and help raise money. 

            President Bush’s visit to a Washington mosque was aimed at demonstrating solidarity with the Muslim communuity.  He said: “Those who intimidate our fellow citizens… represent the worst of humankind and  they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.”  Given the statistics of the ongoing hate crimes against people of the faith, and those targeted for the colour of their skin or appearance, shame, however, seems to be an emotion conspicuously lacking.