So many people survived on the kindness of strangers the morning jetliners demolished the World Trade Center. Not one Sikh man, however, although the cries of "terrorist" from the four men who chased him may have driven him faster away from the collapsing buildings. In the nervous days that followed, people were grateful to return home unscathed from the most ordinary of errandsunlike the elderly South Asian couple in Flushing who were pelted from the back with stones when they ventured out to buy groceries. Houses of worship were havens of peacebut not always for the country's 7 million Muslims, when mosques became targets for vandals. The sight of a uniform meant security and hopenot so for the two Bangladeshi commuters forced to open pockets and bags for police inspection on a subway platform...
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By Photograph by Keith Bedford
Checkpoints surrounded the lower Manhattan INS detention center last week.