I woke up one morning and turned on the television and watched this 'boring movie' of a building on fire because apparantely a plane just hit it. I was a sophomore in high-school and just getting ready to go to class. As I sat there eating my oatmeal, barely paying attention, my father woke up and looked at the television.

Another airplane just hit the second tower. He said 'oh my God what's going on?!' and I responded 'oh, I dunno what the movie's called' I clicked the VIEW button on the Satellite remote so I could see the title, it said 'Pokemon' although it obviously wasn't. I flipped the channels... almost every channel was showing the same footage. I coughed and spit out oatmeal.

My father looked horror-stricken. He told me to go to school today, not to change anything about what I usually do. I asked him why... he just responded 'They're going to blame us.'

And they did. Every day of my life I heard something new about the arab world. The generalization that all arabs were Muslim and that all Muslims were terrorists. I'm not even a Muslim, I'm Greek Orthodox Christian, but because I was arabic I'm 'supposed to be' a Muslim and a terrorist.

I decided to rant. I asked for an essay to be published in the school newspaper. I bitched and ranted and cleared a lot of stuff up. The next day when the paper came out I was surprised that people read it. Everybody shut up and if anybody got out of line the other kids would shut him or her up. I finally got them back on my side.

Going to Loyola University was another leap of faith. It seems that everyone smart enough to go to college after they graduated from high-school was a well-educated liberal or conservative who was not racist and knew well enough. The news on television about the September llth attacks finally settled down. When I say finally, I mean FINALLY. Because of all the repeated drama it felt like the attacks were a little less than a year before... but they were really 4 or 5 years ago. Amazing what the news can do.

Fadel Haowat