London, Going Forward

"Hey," he said, cornering me on the sidewalk. "Are you Christian? If so, you should be aware that Christianity may not be the right way."

"Why would you say something like that?" I asked. "It's aggressive."

"I'm just trying to help people be better informed about Islam," Said countered, handing me a primer.

Then, suddenly warming, he offered to lead me on an excursion through the neighborhood. In easier times, he said, Edgware Road was more of a mixed scene of Middle Easterners and Anglos. Locals from both cultures live in the nearby low-rise apartments and often mingle. Several of the Lebanese restaurants draw diners from all over the city. But since the bombings and the pinpointing of locally based Muslims as the perpetrators, Said explained, the Anglos have lowered their profile.

Said pointed out the venues lining the street. At the Andalos Cafe, young Arab men huddled at tables as the robust aromas of black coffee and tobacco smoke from hookahs trickled from inside. Farther along, IKB Travel & Tours offered deals to Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad. A couple of blocks away, a newsstand sold Arabic-language newspapers.

We took a sidewalk table at Fatoush, a Lebanese restaurant that offered a front-row seat on a scene that could have been plucked out of Beirut or Cairo: men in small groups laughing and chatting in Arabic, women in burqas.

Soon dishes of hummus, kibbe and minced lamb appeared and the conversation turned to the attacks. "We don't really know what's going on," Said began. "But I will say this: We don't condone violence. But we cannot condemn acts that are truly committed in the name of Islam.

"What bothers me is that we are all being blamed for what happened," he added. "People look at me oddly now and cross the street when they see me coming. Is that fair?"

"Of course not," I responded. "But what should happen?"

"What should not happen is all sides being isolated from each other," Said said. "When that happens, things only get worse."

Bird and People Watching

The only sound was a chorus of blackbirds and song thrush. The scent of flowers wafted all around. Julia and Helmut Kraus stood on Hampstead Heath, watching the first light of a Sunday morning edge its way across the London skyline. "Awesome," Julia Kraus said.

The couple, both in their mid-forties, were in London for a few days from Dortmund, Germany. They'd wanted an escape from the sirens and security warnings that have become a staple of London life, so from the West End, they had hopped on the Tube, made two transfers and in 45 minutes ended up in the stately Georgian village of Hampstead.