Article July 8, 2002 Issue

Fear defused

By Marta Greenwood

We Londoners were used to terrorist threats. We may have thought we had become immune to the threats and could just carry on our lives without giving them another thought. But the September 11 attacks made us all nervous. They caused absolute mayhem in London and brought the city to a standstill.

As a spiritual healer working toward solutions through prayer, I didn't even think about staying away from my office. But if I needed any reminder that this was no normal day, the police and emergency sirens saw to it that I didn't forget. We all needed healing and answers and comfort, and I was no exception. London was said to have been next on the hit list. We kept looking at everybody with suspicion, which was so unlike us, toughened as we thought we were to terrorists threats.

I had just gotten on the tube the next day, after a meeting on the other side of town. Four Arab youths were speaking Arabic in a loud voice. I glared at them, thinking to myself that I wouldn't be speaking Arabic so loudly if I were an Arab! My hatred toward them shocked me. Here I was, professing to be a healer praying for solutions—and yet I did not have a scrap of compassion or love toward four young Arabs, who surely had nothing to do with terrorism any more than I did. The attack against them that I noted in my own thinking shocked me. I sat up and examined this terrorism in my mind. Where on earth had it crept in from?

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