Word: sana
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...October, as the U.S. began its Afghan-bombing campaign, public opinion in Pakistan turned against America. Sana did too. At stoplights near the Lahore bazaar, she saw vendors hawking bin Laden shirts and posters. She watched protesters spill into the streets, and though she didn't buy the bin Laden paraphernalia or attend the bin Laden demonstrations, she found herself agreeing with him. "This was hypocrisy. Why is an Afghan's life worth any less than an American's?" she asks. She felt revulsion at the U.S. air strikes, which left hundreds of Afghans dead and thousands more wounded...
...November, Sana was invited back to New York by Seeds of Peace, and, reluctantly, she decided to go. "On CNN and Fox News I kept hearing how Islam was a violent religion, but it's not, and I felt I had to explain that," she says. She felt apprehensive landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. At Customs, which she had always sailed through before, she was herded into a line with people who, she says, were "a little darker. They made the men stand with their hands in the air, and they checked every little thing in the bags...
...Sana's group visited the attack site in lower Manhattan. "The remains looked like withered old flowers," she remembers. "It was scary. I kept looking at these giant cranes lifting away the rubble and thinking that there were bodies inside, all mangled up. I couldn't take it any longer. I ran away, crying." Sana wept again, and couldn't stop her tears, at a religious service where she met Connie Taylor, whose son, an equity trader, had died in the attack. Later, in a long, soulful e-mail, Sana tried to describe her experiences to other Seeds of Peace...
...After Sana saw ground zero with her own eyes, her romantic view of bin Laden began to harden. "At first I couldn't believe that he was behind these gruesome attacks," she says. But the video released in December, which shows him gloating over the destruction, turned Sana against him. "He thought he was a savior of Muslims, but he was warped and wrong," she says...
...Sana still feels trapped between worlds. Her green SEEDS OF PEACE T shirt has faded, but she still wears it stubbornly. During those days in Maine before the fall, when she laughed and swam with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Christian kids, peace seemed to shimmer just above the lake. She can't see it so easily anymore. She is still a moderate citizen of the world, and she still believes in peace, but as Islamic militancy spreads in Pakistan, she feels she is being forced to take a side. And she doesn't think she can choose America...