Two weeks ago, when Mariam Bazeed flew from Cairo to New York for a short visit, she was thinking about beginning studies at Manhattanville College in January and speaking Sept. 9 at a benefit for Seeds of Peace, the summer camp that is helping finance her education.
On Sept. 11, the 17-year-old Egyptian could only think of going home.
"I called my mother. She knew I would be flying back, and she was very sick and crying on the phone," she said.
The Sunday before the terrorist hijackings and attacks, Bazeed and two other teenagers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, were in Detroit to raise money for the Seeds of Peace camp in Oxford, Maine, which promotes peace among children whose homelands are war zones. Among the 600 at the dinner benefit at the Ritz Carlton Hotel were leaders from Detroit's Arab and Jewish communities.
"We raised a half-million dollars. That's the good news. And 12 hours later, planes crashed into buildings," said Barbara Gottschalk, executive vice president of Seeds of Peace.
"I had the other two [Seeds of Peace members] up in the air at a quarter to nine," Gottschalk said. "I went back to my car, turned on the radio, and realized I had just totally lost control."
The two other "Seeds," as they call themselves, made it to their destinations, and Bazeed was scheduled to leave for Cairo on Sept. 19.
"Normally I would be thrilled to stay here longer, but just because it's not by choice ... I want to be in control of things," said Bazeed, who intends to return in January for college.
Bazeed, who was brought up in Kuwait and lived there during the Gulf War, said she is afraid of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment building here. She recounted something that happened several days ago in Virginia, where she was staying with relatives before leaving for Cairo. She was shopping with a cousin, and a girl, about 8 years old, heard them speaking in Arabic and came over to talk to them.
"She told her mom, 'Look, Mom, they're speaking in Arabic,' and the mother told the child not to talk to Arabs. And she mentioned the plane attacks," Bazeed said.
For once, she said, she knew what it is to be stereotyped. "And that's never happened to me before, where I could see it or hear it. We were really sad after that. And we didn't speak Arabic for the rest of the day."
Jawad Issa, an 18-year-old Palestinian from Gaza City who is studying political science and taking premed courses at Georgetown University, said an Arab girl on campus was jeered because she wore a veil. But Issa said he feels secure; other students living on his dormitory floor stuck by him when they saw graffiti reading "Kill All Palestinians" scrawled on another floor.
He also received help from an unexpected source: an Israeli girl he had met at camp. She sent him an e-mail from Israel, then offered to call his parents in Gaza City after learning Issa could not reach them.
"She called later and told me that my parents say hello. That was a great release to me. I owe her a lot," he said.
He said the anger and the destruction he has seen the past two weeks, in an odd way, reminds him of Palestine.
"It was just like home, when something happens and somebody close to you dies. Any retaliation seems fair," he said. "I've seen in the past few days the Middle East in the United States."
"I was walking on the street [in Washington, D.C.] and saw the humvees, and I was remembering how it was just like home. There were soldiers everywhere. And everybody was talking about death and misery and sadness. This was just like home."
Seeds of Peace opened to summer campers in 1993 and now has a year-round program, a "coexistence center" in Jerusalem, and is providing 60 full or partial scholarships for college study in the United States. Originally, it focused on children from the Middle East but now has campers from the Balkans, Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Greece and Turkey. Last summer, however, many Palestinians couldn't attend because of security concerns.
In February, a former camper, Asel Asleh, a 17-year-old Palestinian from an Arab village in the Galilee region of Israel, was killed by Israeli soldiers during a demonstration. Asleh was wearing a Seeds of Peace T-shirt when he was shot at close range.
Since the attacks on America, the camp's Internet message board, which is open only to members, has been busier than usual. A 19-year-old Jordanian woman and former camper said she deplored the attacks, but criticized American media for replaying a scene showing Palestinians celebrating.
"Replays of such a scene placed Arabs in the U.S. under constant danger," said the woman, who lives in the United States but didn't want her name used. "Just because a few fanatics are celebrating the American nightmare doesn't mean that the entire Arab population is doing the same."
Fadi Elsalameen, a freshman at Earlham College in Indiana who also spoke at the fund-raiser in Detroit, said he thought the Palestinians who were celebrating were probably kids seeing their first TV crews in months. Other than Arab reporters, there are few journalists reporting from the West Bank, he said.
But it is true that many Palestinians are angry at the United States for financing Israeli military operations. He said a friend's house was bombed by Israelis in American jets. Afterwards, she looked through the ruins and picked up part of a missile that had blown up her home.
"It said, 'Made in the U.S.' It made her sick," said Elsalameen, who lives in Hebron in the West Bank.
The suicide bombings of Israeli targets, he said, have been committed by people who are without hope. Food is in short supply in Palestine, people are humiliated at checkpoints and people are angry about Israel's policies.
"Keeping killing people and humiliating them is just generating terrorists," Elsalameen said. "They aren't born terrorists; they realize their life has no meaning, that it's inevitable they have to do something about it."
Osama bin Laden, the Saudi refugee blamed by President Bush for terrorism worldwide, should be condemned, Elsalameen said, but bin Laden is smart in presenting himself as an agent of justice in the Middle East. "People in Afghanistan do not have anything to lose. Anybody who shows them some hope, they follow."
Bazeem, a Sunni Muslim, said that in Egypt, Osama bin Laden is "not a hot political issue. A lot of people feel that he's a terrorist, that he's a maniac. I am surrounded by people who are generally not very open-minded, and like normally who would support this kind of thing. Even they don't support him."
John Wallach, president and founder of Seeds of Peace, said the reaction from Seeds members has "run the whole gamut. I think most the kids strongly condemn what happened, but I think there's a tinge of feeling of now Americans understand what we're going through."
In prior years, the camp in Maine would hold a moment of silence after people from host countries were killed in conflicts overseas. This summer, at the height of suicide bombings in Israel, "we told kids at the beginning of camp we couldn't do it because there were so many people being killed."
He said the camp is doing important work by encouraging young people to resolve conflicts in their homelands. "If you care enough as a civilization to prevent violence and terrorism, this is the way to do it. But you have to care, and the answer isn't a military response. You can kill all the bin Ladens you want, and it wouldn't solve the root problem."
Elsalameen said the role of Americans in future camp sessions may change. In the past, they have served as mediators and group leaders in sessions that often became heated.
"And now they're involved, they're part of it, and they will have a lot of things to say, I'm sure."