Two Americas

Mona Eltahawy talks here about the question people ask her about America when she visits her home country of Egypt.. “What’s it like for Muslims over there after 9/11?”

“It’s complicated,” I’d say.

And I’d tell this story.

On Sept. 11, 2001, my brother and his wife were visiting me in Seattle, where I lived at the time. They are both physicians who work in the U.S. We did not leave my apartment for two days after the attacks because we worried that my sister-in-law, who wears a headscarf, would be harassed or attacked as we had heard happened to Muslims and those who appeared to be Muslim.

As it happened, she was treated very kindly. Other Muslim women were not so lucky. One Muslim woman was almost run over by a car and another woman I knew – a Pakistani American Muslim – told me while out with her husband one evening, a group of young men asked him “What’s it like to (sleep with) a terrorist?”

click here for full article