Story of a Sikh restaurateur & US ignorance

baltimore: narinder pal suri escorts a visitor through the restaurant dining room, through the kitchen and out the back door, where he steps around some rollerblades and a bicycle and a toddler toy called the happy tune walker. this is where suri, owner of jai-hind, baltimore's oldest indian restaurant, sits with his grandchildren most evenings. he is not sitting with his grandchildren this evening.he is giving a crime scene tour. suri points to the concrete steps he has just descended. "one bottle was thrown here," he says. he walks several feet to a purple chrysler and bends over. underneath, he instructs, is a black spot on the pavement. that's where another bottle crashed. he walks a few feet more and stops at a singed wooden door leaning against a rusty chain-link fence through which you can see a lutheran church. that's where another bottle struck, he says. four pint liquor bottles in all, filled with flammable liquid, stuffed with cloth, ignited, hurled. on sept. 13, a little past 8.30 pm, two days after terrorists rammed their planes into buildings and changed the way americans look at one another, something alarming happened at suri's restaurant that he just can't shake. because he is sikh and has a beard and wears a turban - as if this were the defining look of terrorism - the misguided among us have mentally herded him into a category of "outsider." americans to be watched or harassed or hurt or killed or ignored. this is something suri firmly believes. since the terrorist attacks, there have been two well-chronicled story lines: american compassion and american ignorance. in olean, n.y., false rumors that a hindu doctor had been snared in the fbi's investigation of terrorism were so rampant that the physician took out an ad in the local paper to combat the gossip. all of a sudden - because of their dress, their beards, their religion, their names, their cultural backgrounds - some of our neighbors and co-workers have become branded as "outsiders." americans with palestinian mothers; americans who grew up in pakistan; americans from sri lanka; americans who are muslims; americans like narinder suri, who was born in kenya to indian parents but has lived in baltimore since 1976. he is 60 years old. an american citizen. "we used to have free peace of mind," suri says. but now? "sometimes on the streets, i am afraid to walk alone." luckily, on sept. 13, suri's dishwasher was quick on his feet, got some water and put out the small fires. suri saw six young guys fleeing down the alley. he called 911. the fire department came. the cops came. they brought their dogs. they stayed for more than three hours. they collected the broken glass. so far, they've caught no one. their investigation continues. a hate crime for sure, suri is convinced. the police are not so sure. "i honestly don't believe it's a deliberate attack on him or his business" because suri wears a beard and turban, says a police source. then what? a cruel, ill-timed teenage prank? it doesn't matter; the psychological damage was done. suri has been unable to move on. "since this thing happened, you never know who might come and hit me or shoot me." he regularly takes i-95 south to a langley park, md., grocery to buy wholesale rice, indian flour, lentils, spices. he now finds himself looking in the rearview mirror a lot and out his windows, wondering who's coming up from behind, who's on his right, who's on his left. "i have to keep my eye open nowadays." business is down, 30 to 40 per cent, and he wonders whether people are still jittery about going out in public or still in mourning or whether it's him. on this weekday evening, there are but three tables of diners at jai-hind - two couples and a family. could it be that some people are so ignorant that they no longer want to patronize a restaurant owned by a sikh? suri has decided to run ads in the local papers, with coupons: buy one dinner, get one free. "people always want to get some bargains," he surmises. suri takes a visitor upstairs. he talks about turban styles. his, he explains, is five yards of cloth tightly wound. his is always a colored turban -sometimes brown, sometimes green, sometimes maroon. his is not a white turban, not round, not with a tail, not like osama bin laden's. his, he explains, is a turban that points to the sky. that suri feels compelled to distance his turban from that of the world's most notorious terrorist tells you something about his state of mind. "i am an american citizen," he says. "i want to serve this country ... some people think we are different, but we're not." sikhism, which originated five centuries ago in northern india, is the world's fifth largest religion, with more than 25 million adherents. followers say their faith stresses selfless service to humanity, giving to those who have nothing, embracing the values of justice and freedom. sikhs do not cut their hair, but suri knows sikhs who have abandoned that religious custom, discarding their turbans and speeding to the barbershops out of fear. fear is an emotion suri wishes to discard, but it's difficult. he feels uneasy in his restaurant. "i don't know why. it's written on the outside that it's an indian restaurant." jai-hind indian restaurant, in bright neon yellow at night. suri taped a paper american flag inside the front window. and still he feels nervous. he wonders how long americans like him will be viewed with suspicion. he wonders how long the war against terrorism will last. he wonders if the molotov cocktail tossers will return. suri telephoned a police officer the other day to check on the investigation, he says. "nobody returned my call." ---- pti report 200 attacks on sikhs in us london: at least 200 attacks on sikhs and 540 on arab-americans have been reported in the us in the week following the september 11 terror attacks in new york and washington, the amnesty international has said. "mosques, hindu temples and community centres have been attacked and vandalised in countries as diverse as india, the uk, poland and denmark," it said in a report.