What are your feelings about 9/11?

First I was horrified. As was everyone. I was in the classroom with my middle school students and we didn't have many facts. I tried to keep the class calm--though I felt anything but--and we discussed what this meant. Later we prayed. (It was an Islamic school.)

Parents came to pick up their children. An older son drove my others home. I stayed and talked with administration. We'd had a bomb threat with a fairly graphic message. The decision was made to close the school for the rest of the week.

I spent that week in terror of an attack--not from those accused of the 9/11 brutality but from my own fellow citizens who were understandably angry. I stayed in the house and watched the news non-stop. My oldest had flown to France two weeks earlier to study there. I didn't know when I would see him again.

On that Saturday I ventured out to buy groceries, flanked by my two teenage sons in case someone decided to take revenge on a woman with a scarf. Nothing happened. The following week, Christian schools reached out to our little Islamic school with kindness and concern.

When I quit teaching in 2002 I wrote a book, semi-autobiographical, about my experiences and the experiences of others. Innocent People is still being read, especially by middle school children who barely remember that day.

What we need to do is to continue to reach out, as people did to me and other Muslims in the days and weeks after 9/11. We have more to unite us than divide us. A few days after the attack, I read in the paper that casualties from that day included people from all over the world. I think about 800 were non-Americans. Remember those days when everyone was saying, "I am an American"?

If we let this day leave a legacy of hate, we will be no better than the murderers who commited these atrocities. 9/11 must be a reminder of the need for peace.