Missing the NY bomb

On Saturday afternoon, in-between events at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I had gone with a handful of TT writers to see some of the splendours of Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Central Park.

Fortunately, that was the right side of town as a few blocks downtown 29 people were having another kind of unforgettable experience.

A few everyday items, together with some shrapnel and a common explosive had been packed into a pressure cooker, fashioned into a home-made bomb and placed in a dumpster in the middle of the street. It was bad luck for those nearby when the bomb went off, blowing out windows in nearby buildings and rocking the surrounding area. Happily, no one died.

Earlier in the day the German residents of New York celebrated their presence in their newfound home and the streets had been cleared of traffic to welcome floats of pretty young Teutonic girls and burly musicians who revelled in the well-known tunes of their other fatherland. New Yorkers in German native costumes packed the sidewalks, along with happy sightseers.

I audibly recalled how panicked I had suddenly become a few years earlier in London when the main shopping street had been cordoned off for the thousands of Christmas shoppers and I wondered how the hardly-visible police could keep all those people safe when it was almost impossible to tell who was carrying arms or suspicious items in their bags.

But on Saturday I knew dozens of cameras were trained on us and plainclothes surveillance staff were probably in our midst. Perhaps some of those sweet-looking, wet-nosed doggies could sniff out explosives. I felt safe.

On Monday morning I, and I guess millions of NY users of the biggest US cell phone network, got an emergency alert on my mobile phone. WANTED: Ahmad Khan, male aged 28. If seen call 911. It did not say why but it clearly was related to the news that had gone viral that NYC was prey once again to terrorism.

His image was in the media but how reliable was that? What should I do? Should I go out at once and report a sighting of any “suspicious” 28-ish looking Arab type? I pitied any poor young man with that common name who innocently answered to it and was not the bomber.

FBI reports state that hate crimes against US Muslims are the highest since the 9/11 terrorist act that killed 2,996 people.

Hundreds of arson attacks on mosques, assaults, shootings and threats have occurred since early 2015.

Researchers credit a 78 percent growth in violence against people looking like Arabs over the same period to increased terrorist attacks in the US and abroad (although none of the mass killings here have been directly ISIS related) and to the hate rhetoric of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

That percentage will now soar even higher.

While a student in a militarised Cairo I was the victim of looking like a misbehaving native Muslim – I was in the wrong place for a Muslim girl but I was not one; and I was once also corralled away from all the other (white) passengers and interrogated when landing in the UK from Ireland during “the troubles”. It was scary for I knew that one wrong word and right would never come.

Those were official interceptions.

Pity the random victim of the hate that stalks the US, legitimised by the new telephone alert s y s t e m , i n c i t e d by New York’s Mr T r u m p whose awful legacy will reign, president or not.