By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 27, 2001; Page A01

PATERSON, N.J. -- Mohammad Al-Qudah fires up his Weber grill and throws on a few lamb steaks. It's a glorious October evening. He has prayed three times already and will pray twice more before he goes to sleep.

His wife, Nadia Kahf, third-year law student and mother of two, mixes hummus in the blender. She's not wearing the hijab she usually wears in public.

They recently left an apartment for this sprawling split-level in the suburbs, proof that Al-Qudah has come a long way since arriving from Jordan in 1989 and cramming into a Paterson boarding house with several other Middle Eastern immigrants.

Yet, on the big-screen TV in the den, he and his wife toggle between CNN and al-Jazeera, wary of the American news filter.

"It's news when one Jewish person dies," Kahf says. "When they massacre 24 Palestinians, nothing. What really bothers me is when they bring on Islamic experts who are not Muslim."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and with the United States dropping bombs on a Muslim country, Kahf and Al-Qudah wrestle with their place in their adopted nation, a land suddenly rippling with American flags and a taste for revenge. The crosscurrents are especially strong in this part of New Jersey, where the FBI believes six hijacking suspects flowed through this year while plotting their suicide missions.

"Terrible, criminal," says Kahf of the murder of more than 5,000 people.

Yet the seeds of the hijackers' motivations are not mysterious to her.

"People in a lot of places hate America," she says. "It's not hard to understand that."

Born in Syria, Kahf arrived here 17 years ago, when she was 12. America seems to have been good to her. But her embrace is tentative. In a study this year titled "The Mosque in America: A National Portrait," 82 percent of American Muslims strongly agreed that high-tech America offered opportunity; 28 percent said the nation was immoral and corrupt.

For Kahf and her husband -- taxpayers, registered voters, law-abiding citizens -- assimilation is not a goal. After she graduates from Seton Hall University law school, she hopes to specialize in defending Muslims in civil liberties cases. "There are so few Muslim lawyers, even fewer female Muslim lawyers, and even fewer female lawyers who cover," she says, referring to the hijab.

"Throughout history," she says, Muslims "will always be separate."

But after Sept. 11, separateness became a liability.

"Do you know who your neighbors are?" a local news segment asked ominously after the Paterson terrorist cell was discovered.

Al-Qudah quickly attached an American flag to his wife's car.

When Rep. William J. Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) met Yasser Arafat in 1998 in Ramallah, the Palestinian leader asked, "How are my people in Paterson?" The city has one of the largest concentrations of Arab Americans in the country; 20,000 of its 160,000 residents are Muslim. Paterson prints its recycling rules in English, Spanish and Arabic.

The heart of the Arab American community is along Main Avenue in South Paterson, a mini-Ramallah, with halal butchers and men drinking tea and scarved women surveying bins of olives. Turkish techno music pumps from the hot-waxed cars of the Jordanian boys smoking Marlboro Reds.

This is where Mohammad Al-Qudah came when he arrived from Jordan. There was the food he knew, and the language he knew and the faith he knew.

Main Avenue is also where Hani Hanjour came looking for an apartment in February, choosing a $650-a-month one-bedroom unit over a mini-mart. It's where alleged ringleader Mohamed Atta visited a travel office in July and bought a one-way ticket to Madrid.

When Kahf learned that a hijacked plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, 20 miles to the east, her first reaction was horror, followed by something equally desperate:

"Please don't let it be a Muslim."

The collateral damage from the attacks takes shape in a third-floor apartment over Main Avenue, where a woman named Ruby Santos pulls back her lace curtains and watches the sky for low-flying airplanes.

"I have nothing against Arabics," says Santos, a Puerto Rican mother of three who grew up happily in the melting pot of Passaic County. "But I don't trust them after what happened."

When a bearded Middle Eastern man wearing an Army jacket boarded her bus, "all the way to Passaic I had a stomachache," she says.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Melissa, rolls her eyes.

Santos folds her arms. "Melissa, you don't get scared when you see an Arabic with a little scarf?"

"Ma, I see them every day, the lunch ladies in the cafeteria."

Santos's younger daughter, Deidre, pipes in. "Mommy, I thought some Arabics were nice."

"Not all of them are bad, baby." Her eyes go back to the window, the darkness beyond it, the place where she used to feel so comfortable. "Those hijackers, they just messed up everything."

With a day off from law school, Kahf joins a group of Muslim "sisters" to visit a friend with a new baby. All are covered from head to toe in hijab and jilbab, the smock worn for modesty. One woman pulls up in a black Lexus SUV, her hand wrapped in a bandage.

"How did you burn your hand?" someone asks.

"Not cooking," says Dalia Fahmy, who is finishing her master's in politics at New York University.

"Her stove is so clean, and she's been married two years!" her sister, Dena, chimes in.

They settle around a table spread with baklava, tea, cashews and dried fruit. Talk inevitably turns to the tenor of life as a Muslim after Sept. 11. Immediately afterward, the imam at their mosque suggested that women stay inside, particularly if they wore hijab. Fahmy lasted two days in seclusion and then went to Gymboree. "I'm in line and I feel like everyone is feeling weird for me," she says. "At the same time, I feel guilty for the situation."

Sally Amer also stayed home. "Okay, I'll let you lock me down for one day," the pharmacist and mother of two told her husband. On the third day, she went to the mall. A Muslim friend of hers was not so lucky; someone shot an arrow through her child's bedroom window.

Kahf couldn't miss law classes. So her husband taped the flag to her car antenna, and off she drove into the anxieties beyond her driveway.

Not wearing their hijab would have made life easier.

"Would Oprah take off her skin color growing up in the '50s or '60s?" Fahmy asks.

The women oppose Afghanistan's Taliban regime, but they are frustrated, too, by stereotypes of Islam. "Americans confuse culture and religion," Kahf says. "With the Taliban, women are not being educated. That's political, not religious, and it's wrong."

Yet Kahf objects to what she sees as American feminist arrogance toward the practice of covering, even among the Afghan women forced to wear burqas by the Taliban.

"Oh, they must be so hot in those tents," Kahf says, mockingly. "Maybe they want to cover."

Several years ago, Kahf applied for a teaching position in the history department at a community college. With a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in Middle Eastern studies, she thought she had the job. "The director was very happy until he met me and saw my cover," Kahf says. She was rerouted to the ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) department.

From the baby shower, the women disperse into the afternoon to put children down for naps, to pick up children from school. Wearing their hijab, they move like silken ghosts down the sidewalk. The flag on Kahf's Jeep whips in the autumn breeze.

A few days earlier, her son asked her why so many people were flying flags.

"Because everyone is happy to be in America," she told him.

But not necessarilyhappy with the country's policies. Kahf opposes the war efforts in Afghanistan. "America really does decide whose life is more important," she says. "Think of it from the point of view of an Iraqi child, or a Palestinian child."

Not far from the heart of Paterson's Middle Eastern community, there is a house where retribution is more easily understood. A sign on the front door reads: "Thanks to you for your concerns and prayers. Kenny still missing. I will be waiting for my son now and forever."

Paterson lost one resident in the World Trade Center attack. Kenny Lira was a 28-year-old computer technician who worked on the 110th floor of the North Tower. A Peruvian American, he grew up easily among the Latinos and Arabic kids in this neighborhood.

Now his mother, Marina Lira, sleeps on the couch at night to be near the TV, as if it will deliver the antidote she needs. On CNN, the FBI announces its 22 Most Wanted Terrorists list. The colorful graphic "America Strikes Back" is stripped beneath the 22 photos of dark faces.

"I know that the Muslim religion is not what these people are practicing," Lira says.

Yet she no longer walks to Main Avenue to buy dried cherries and pita bread. "I don't even drive that way," she says. "We drive the other way. A friend said to me, 'I saw them and my anger grew inside.' "

While Lira was in Manhattan putting up fliers for her missing son, a stranger came to her house and spoke with a relative. I'm Muslim, the woman said. My family is Muslim. We apologize for what happened.

"My niece told me this happened, but I did not see it," Lira says. She looks out the front window. The neighbors who used to walk by covered in hijab and burqa no longer pass her house.

"Why?" she asks. "Why?"

The next night, while Lira holds a candlelight service at her house in honor of her son, Kahf is starting dinner.

"Finish your math," she tells her daughter.

"Oh, Mom, I hate math," says Mariam, 9, slumping over her backpack on the kitchen counter. "Fifth-grade math is a killer. Can I just get a zero?"

Kahf calls into the living room to her 5-year-old son. "Abdallah, you said you were just going to play one game of Nintendo."

She hears the garage door open. "Daddy's home."

Mohammad Al-Qudah embraces his children. His wife takes the spinach pastries from the oven and kisses him. "How was your day?" she asks. His gas station business is down 15 percent since Sept. 11.

After dinner, a friend calls. President Bush is on TV. Al-Qudah grabs the remote. Bush is saying that Muslim women who cover their heads should not have to be afraid. Al-Qudah leans forward on the couch and points to the president. "This is very important," he says. "You know, he's been very good on this."

More than his wife, he looks for the positive. He keeps several voice-mail messages he received in the days after the hijackings.

Hey, Mo, this is Jimmy. Want to make sure everything is okay. We're thinking about you.

I know that with what happened, certain Americans will look on Muslim groups unfavorably. We're thinking of you. Thanks, Mo.

"This makes me feel good," he says.

They are part of America, but apart. Kahf does not see this as a contradiction. "This is part of living in a democracy," she says. "This saying, 'America, love it or leave it.' I don't buy it. True democracy is being able to question things, even to criticize things, but always wanting to make the situation better."

The next day, Kahf irons her hijab and grabs her keys. A decade ago, local Muslims prayed in a rented room above a restaurant near Main Avenue. Now, the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a former synagogue, welcomes 800 Muslims on Fridays for 1 o'clock prayer. Kahf settles in the back of the mosque with the other women. Kneeling, facing toward Mecca, she bows, her forehead to the carpet.

The imam, Mohammad Qatanani, repeats that Muslims are against terrorists, against what happened at the World Trade Center, but also against "crimes committed against innocent lives in Afghanistan."

From the mosque, Kahf picks up her daughter at the Islamic school. Mariam is standing on the blacktop with three of her friends, all of whom wear hijab. "She looks so grown up in it," Kahf says, beaming.

At home, Mariam goes outside to ride her Razor scooter with a neighbor boy, who by now understands when Mariam is called inside for prayer time. "Come back in five minutes," she will say.

Her father's car pulls into the garage. In a few hours, he will go to the mosque for prayer. He has a business trip to Las Vegas coming up. An airline passenger named Mohammad Al-Qudah! A friend joked that he should show up at airport security wearing a bikini and handcuffs.

"I can't believe you are going," his wife says.

He smiles. "I'm going to do what the president says. I am going to live my life."

Diamonds sparkle in his wife's ears. His son prays beside him on the rug and goes to sleep in zebra pajamas. His daughter began wearing hijab to school this year. His business is expanding.

"I was born in Jordan," Al-Qudah says. "But America makes me feel alive."