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New York's Afghan Shopkeepers Fear for Business
NEW YORK, Sept 30 (News Agencies) - As the consequences of September 11th's devastating attacks ripple out around the United States and the world, one group - New York's community of Afghan business owners - says it feels the backlash could send them broke.
Ismael Momeni, who runs an Afghan rug shop near the Empire State building, has seen trade virtually snuffed out. His premises look closed. The sign bearing his shop's name, Pamir Afghan Import Co., has been taken down as a precaution.
"I hardly haven't seen anybody during the last two weeks, just one or two friends," Momeni says.
"During the first days, I was scared. An Afghan came to my shop and told me that some people had attacked an Afghan shop in Flushing, Queens, and that they had broken the windows," says the immigrant, who moved to the United States as a refugee 18 years ago.
Motioning to the place where the shop sign used to be, before he and the owner of the shop next door removed it, he says: "I don't know yet, but maybe I'll change the company name."
Since September 11th, U.S. Muslims of Arab background - and Southwest Asian Afghans in particular - have felt increasingly isolated and insecure.
Some have been victims of violence, linked simply by their ethnicity, or perhaps to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident based in Afghanistan Washington says organized the attacks. That despite repeated pleas by U.S. President George W. Bush and other officials for the U.S. public to not paint all Muslims with the same brush.
For Mohammed Popal, the owner of the Khyber Pass restaurant in New York's trendy East Village, discrimination has swelled.
"People don't like to go to Afghan restaurants these days. We've lost customers. Fifty percent of our regular clients, we haven't seen them for the last two weeks," he says.
It's the same story in the Afghan Kebab House II in the Upper East Side, where Ismar Yalai worries about staying open. "If I can't pay the bills, I'll have no choice. I'll have to close my restaurant," he says.
Customers have dropped 80% since the attacks, he says. "Some people stop in front of the restaurant, and when they see that it's Afghan, they just walk away.
"Others have been coming and threatening us."
There have been some small signs of understanding and solidarity, though.
Yalai says a few regulars have been e-mailing their friends and acquaintances to come to the restaurant, so as not to add to the list of business casualties from the attacks.
"We haven't given up hope," says Yalai. "It's a question of time."
Popal says "during the last two weeks, we had new customers that we had never seen before who came to support us."
Despite it all, Yalai, Popal and other Afghans who fled first the Soviet invasion of their country, then the Taliban, cling to the hope that the tolerance and openness the United States used to be known for - the qualities symbolized by the Statue of Liberty - will resurface.
"Thank God here in New York people are tolerant because they come from all over the world. It's a mix of cultures," says Alexander Noor, the manager of Chuk Palu, another rug store.
"Educated people, they understand that it's not a fight against Afghan people." Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network the United States is hunting "are … terrorists. They just happened to be in Afghanistan," he said.
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