Palestinian/Kuwait refugee on-site professional hit unconscious - head against the wall - in the restroom at the client site in NYC on 9.11.2011 around lunch time. His badge stated his name "Mohammed Ata..." and though the name was different from the name of the infamous hijacker who crushed AA plane into WTC North tower, it was close enough to arouse ultimate hate on that day.
A Pakistani-American banker: "For a month and a half afterward , I shaved every day. I hate shaving and I do have a pretty thick beard, but I took no chances. I'm even ashamed to admit this -- no, actually, I'm not ashamed. I dressed as a 'Yankee'. I didn't wear my black leather jacket or black jeans or black shoes. I wore shorts, my vest, my baseball cap, because I just didn't want to stand out".
New Yorker, September 12, 2011. Oral history by Ian Parker.
Try to imagine paranoia of middle-eastern people or people who looked remotely Arab or middle-eastern in weeks after 9.11. And paranoia of people who looked at them back then.
And paranoia of people who board post-9.11 planes and sense, see or smell something suspicious. And middle-eastern people - are they completely relaxed and dressing in black leather the way they did before 9.11?
The primary purpose of terror act is to induce fear in individuals and society. In this sense the 9.11 was a success way beyond what happened on that day with a long-lasting effect even the masterminds of this event wouldn't have dared to foresee. 10 years later the acute sorrow has passed but we are still high on fear. Fear eats the soul.
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