The Accidental American Discovers Discrimination

AT 8 A.M. ON SEPTEMBER 11, 40-year-old Fekkak Mamdouh was asleep, having worked the previous night's late shift from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. His wife, Fatima, lay beside him; she had dropped off their daughter at kindergarten four blocks away and then climbed back into bed. For six years, Mamdouh, whom everyone knew by his surname, had been a waiter at Windows on the World, the luxury restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower. He had started working there in 1996 when Windows reopened after the 1993 terrorist bombing in the World Trade Center basement. Mamdouh's wide brown eyes and the round apples of his cheeks gave him a disarming look of innocence. These mellow features hid the scrappiness that had made him a beloved, though sometimes controversial, union leader.

The first call came from Mamdouh's sister Saida, who lived in Italy. She told him to turn on the TV. The second call was from his brother Hassan, who lived down the street. "Listen, brother, there was a plane that just crashed through the Twin Towers," Hassan said. "Guess what? You're not going to have a job for a couple of months while they fix the place."

Mamdouh and Fatima turned on the TV thinking of terrible accidents when the third call came -- their neighbor telling Fatima to get their girl out of school. Fatima hurried to retrieve her daughter Iman. When she got back, Mamdouh was still transfixed by what was flashing across the television screen. He said, "You watch. They're going to say it's Muslims."

Fatima asked him why he thought so.

"Because they did it in '93," he said, referring to the earlier attack.

Without eating, Mamdouh left their house in Astoria, Queens. He went to 8th Avenue and 44th Street, the offices of his union, Local 100 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees. He and other union members made two lists: one of all the workers who would have been catering breakfast for Risk Management employees that morning, and another of all the places they might be found. Then teams of shop stewards and union organizers set off to search for the workers and track their families. Mamdouh paired up with a colleague, an Egyptian immigrant and now former captain at Windows. The two started out at hospitals, asking who had been brought in. They met many families of people who had worked at the World Trade Center, but they found no actual casualties of the attacks. They worked their way down Manhattan's west side, where all its hospitals are located. After the fourth one, Mamdouh's companion, who had been crying steadily, said he couldn't take any more. He went home, while Mamdouh headed to the morgue on First Avenue and 30th Street, staying there until 3 a.m.

The next night, Mamdouh gave an interview to a cable news channel. One of his friends, another Moroccan, saw the interview and called him the next day to ask why he hadn't said that Muslims -- meaning regular, real Muslims like them -- hadn't done this thing. Mamdouh said that people already knew.

For the next five days Mamdouh ate and slept very little. He spent hour after hour circling the morgue's lobby carrying a sign: "If you know anyone who worked at Windows or if you worked at Windows, please call the union." Mamdouh was able to cross barback Mario Peña's name off the missing list on September 12, and he found cashier Faheema Nasar a full week later, but in the end, 73 of his co-workers weren't coming back.

A couple of days after the attack, Mamdouh and Fatima went to their neighborhood Pathmark store. She had covered her head in hijab, as she had since her mother died three years before. It was evening and the store was not at all crowded. They were the only people wanting to buy fish, and Mamdouh stood at the counter with her while she tried for several minutes to get the fishmonger's attention. Eventually, Mamdouh's patience gave out.