If you want to make peace, you must be peaceful.
- Peace Pilgrim
Five nights after September 11, 2001, business is particularly slow for all the Middle Eastern restaurants and shops on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. At three o’clock in the morning, Labib Salama, the owner of an Egyptian coffee shop, his friend Nasser and several other men are sitting around the café, playing chess, smoking shisha and talking about the recent attack on the Twin Towers. Suddenly, four young men (two white, two Hispanic) barge into the café. They’re turning over tables, throwing chairs around, smashing dishes and a mirrored wall. Labib calls the police. Two cops arrive almost immediately. They snag the four guys, pin them down on the floor and handcuff them. But Labib refuses to press charges. He says he understands. He feels the same rage. “Let them go.” The cops are baffled. They tell Labib, “If you don’t press charges, you can’t collect insurance.” Labib shakes his head. “There’s enough hatred already. We don’t want to make more. Let them go.” The cops have no choice but to let the guys go. The cops leave, too, and Labib and his friends start cleaning up the café. There’s broken glass all over. Everything’s broken. “I’m thinking now we are between the two sides. I’m afraid from the terrorist number one, and now I’m afraid from the American too.”
An hour later, at four o’clock in the morning, the same four guys come back to the café. The first thing out of their mouths - they thanked Labib for not pressing charges. Then they helped clean up the café. They buy everyone coffee, and these two groups of men talk until 8 o’clock in the morning about their fears, differences and perceptions of each other. As the guys are leaving, Labib tells them, “Next time you want to come and be friendly with us, you don’t have to hit us and then say you’re sorry. Just come and be friendly in the first place.”
We hear this story from Labib and his friend Nasser a week after the incident. Nasser leaves us with this thought. “It’s time right now to bring the anger down. You have to inhale everything bad, and forgive the people for the people to forgive you.”
- Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan