column mostly about the failure of the Iraqi mission to lower its flag to

half-staff in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the New

York Post's Steve Dunleavy cautioned against retaliating upon the "millions of

law-abiding decent Arab-Americans who came here for a better life."

"But," Mr. Dunleavy continued,

citing a police source, "at Atlantic Avenue

and Clinton Street, and at Atlantic

and Henry, in Brooklyn, cops have been chasing away

young men having their pictures taken while hugging each other and smiling with

the smoking ruins of the World Trade

Center in the background."

That geographic detail was

pretty curious, considering that anyone who lives in that area of Brooklyn-indeed

home to many Arab-American residents and businesspeople-knows that if you walk

out to the intersection of Atlantic and Clinton,

or Atlantic and Henry, stand at any corner and turn 360

degrees, the one thing you can't see is Manhattan.

Any part of Manhattan, no matter

what time of day or the weather. You couldn't see it before Sept. 11-and you

can't see it now, either.

What you can see: restaurants,

a few bars, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a Key Food supermarket, a Shell

Station, the Jere J. Cronin Funeral Home, a couple of newsstands, an antique

shop, Long Island College Hospital.

You can also see, on the

northwest corner of Atlantic and Henry, a shiny new

store called Rainbow Fruits & Vegetable. It opened on Saturday, Sept. 8,

three days before the attacks. 

The Rainbow is owned by a man

named Ahmed Zeid Aloshishi. Mr. Aloshishi is approximately 41 years old-he's

not sure of his exact age, to tell the truth-and he is Muslim. He emigrated to

the United States

in 1993 from Yemen,

where almost all of his family still lives.

Mr. Aloshishi's story isn't

particularly unique among the businesspeople on Atlantic

Avenue. He came to America

to make more money for his family. In Yemen,

he was a farmer, and he occasionally worked as an automobile salesman. But when

an uncle with a bodega in Brooklyn asked him if he

wanted to come to the United States,

he leapt at the opportunity.

"What I made in my country was

not enough," Mr. Aloshishi said on a recent evening, standing behind the

counter in the small, fluorescent-lit store. He is a man of average height,

with a curly head of black hair and a thick mustache. "My uncle, he said, 'How

about coming to America?'

And I said, 'No problem,' and so I came. And God is good-I make it."

Mr. Aloshishi settled in

downtown Brooklyn, near Flatbush

Avenue. He worked in his uncle's store before

eventually saving up enough to start his own. The Rainbow, which he started

with a partner, is not Mr. Aloshishi's first store; he also owned a market on Ninth

Avenue and 38th Street.

Every month, Mr. Aloshishi

sends money back to his family in Yemen,

usually through a friend traveling back to his country. Mr. Aloshishi is

married, and he and his wife have three sons and four daughters. Naturally, he

misses them all very much. He is hopeful that he can eventually save enough

money to bring them all to the U.S.

"I just opened this store with

my partner, and so all the money I save," Mr. Aloshishi said, "Take time, like

three, four, five years."

On the morning of Sept. 11, a

friend of Mr. Aloshishi's raced into the Rainbow and told him what had

happened.

"I had just opened the

business, but I wanted to close because I felt so mad," he said. "I felt like I

wanted to cry. Everybody was mad, angry that this had happened. I didn't want

to do business."

Mr. Aloshishi closed the

Rainbow that day at 5 p.m. Normally,

the store is open until 11 at night. The next morning, he said, he was so sad

he didn't want to come to work. Usually he works 12-hour days, seven days a

week.

"I was in my house crying," he

said. "All people are the same …. I'm Arabic, yes, but I'm a citizen of America

now."

Mr. Aloshishi said he wasn't

sure if his business was down because of the attacks. He said he hadn't been

threatened by people, as some Arab-American people had been. Some customers had

come in and asked him if he was O.K. "A lot of people ask me, 'Anyone bother

you?'" he said.

Mr. Aloshishi said that his

family in Yemen

had been frightened for him. At first, they worried that he, too, had been

hurt. But he still wanted to bring them here.

"I am staying here," he said.

"This is my country now, and my wife and children know that the life is better

here."

Reached by The Observer, Mr.

Dunleavy stood by his Sept. 19 column, though he now said that the young men

who were chased away from Atlantic, Clinton and Henry streets were not actually

posing on those particular corners, but were heading down the street, closer to

the waterfront-where others, he said, had been seen posing.

"The next day, we sent

photographers to shoot these guys, but they'd pretty much been shooed away,"

Mr. Dunleavy said. "Not arrested, but shooed away."

-Sridhar Pappu and Jason Gay

On the Horn

Shortly after Sept. 11, a

producer from a syndicated television show called Alan Ross, the director of

Samaritans of New York, a suicide-prevention hot line based in Manhattan.

"I wanted to get your opinion," Mr. Ross recalled the producer as saying, "and

what that has to do with suicide."

Mr. Ross has been getting this

kind of inquiry a lot. In the days since the World

Trade Center

attack, numerous journalists have asked him to characterize the city's psyche.

They have also asked whether the volume of suicide calls in the city has been

going up or down since the attack.

These inquiries present some

difficulties, however. The Samaritans are not exactly set up to field calls

from reporters. There is an office number, but it's hard to find, so most

reporters wind up calling the main hot-line number-673-3000-to try and get hold

of Mr. Ross. This, in particular, is a problem. When we called, the person on

the other end answered, "Samaritans. Can I help you?", and though we explained

that we were a reporter and asked for Mr. Ross, we didn't get him right away.

Instead, the counselor said something like, "Okay, but let's talk about you.

How are you doing?" And there's no getting around this question. If you say,

"Oh, fine, just give him my message," as this reporter did, the counselor may

prod you with something like, "It's been a really hard time for everyone in the

city, hasn't it?" And if you answer monosyllabically to that question, you may

be asked, in a warm and attentive voice, whether you plan on committing

suicide. And if you say no again, the counselor may coax you to talk about the

other people you know-say, in the newsroom. "Are they thinking about suicide?"

And when Mr. Ross finally gets

back to reporters, he doesn't always say what they want to hear. He used to

teach journalism at New York University,

and he isn't going to be a prop for anyone's thesis. He said that the Samaritans

haven't been getting more calls since Sept. 11. "Now that may be because of

phone lines being down," he said. "I don't know." But to Mr. Ross, this really

isn't the point. "The concept of change on a suicide hot line is really

anathema to how we see what we do," he said. "There is no normal. On any given

day, 50,000 people have something specific that's bothering them."

-Ian Blecher

Working Out

Every day for the past two

weeks, Ron Schapp, a taut middle-aged man with a graying ponytail and a silver

hoop earring in his left ear, has worked out for a few hours at the Equinox

Fitness Club on 19th Street

and Broadway. After five years at Equinox, Mr. Schapp knows all the regulars,

and he's noticed changes in some of them. "You can tell by the look on people's

faces whether it was a close call or whether they knew someone," he said.

The first few days after the

attack, Mr. Schapp said, Equinox was quiet-no music and few customers. A week

later, though, the dance music was back, and so were most of the gym-goers.

"I think it was reassuring to

have this place here," Mr. Schapp said. "At the same time, I've already seen

people start back with their weirdness. I think some people, even if there were

no tragedy, their lives are in a state of perpetual crisis anyway, and they

come here to make order and make things right. They have what I would consider

an unhealthy relationship to working out-and probably many other things.

"But in general, I would say

that for most other people, including myself, there's an appeal to being

somewhere familiar. Historically, gyms have been places of social gathering. I

think that's true today-beyond the bodybuilders and the anorexics." -William Berlind