Call it a delayed reaction or what-have-you, but I have something to say about the September eleventh attack on the World Trade Centre. More specifically, I want to address the following few days. I've been meaning to say this for quite some time, but until now haven't quite found the words to do so.

To begin. I worked, at the time of the attack, at the local Staples. A few days afterwards, a group of Arabic people came into our store, asking around for where we keep the boxcutters. Yes, that joke (for such I am sure it was) was in terribly poor taste, but that's not the point. What I want to talk about is the reaction this got from the people I work with.

I was sitting in the break room at the time (or, at any rate, shortly thereafter), and a discussion wound its way back to join me. Our operations manager, our receiver, and one of our front-end people were talking about it, and were... distressed. Our receiver was shouting tirades about how those people don't belong in this country anyway, and we never should have let them in in the first place, and they're all out to kill us. The ops manager, meanwhile, was explaining to us that if any one of them asks *him* for a box cutter, he would personally kill the offender (not that I think he'd actually *do* it, but that's not the point). He also described in detail what he would do to any Arabs he saw on a plane at any point.

I sat there, mostly just surprised. I hadn't realized that such hatred and ignorance could exist in people I thought I knew. I sat there and listened to them rant about those "damn Arabs" and talk about all the gruesome ways in which they should all die, and I wanted to tell them... I wanted to tell them... what? I didn't know. I still don't know. I wanted to say something to them, something to make them realize that they were now only one step removed from being terrorists themselves. Something to make them realize that the mentality that says "some Arabs did something that upset/offended me; Arabs are therefore less than human and must be eliminated" is cleanly identical to the mentality that "the United States is the Great Satan; Americans are therefore less than human and must be eliminated." Something - anything - to make them realize that ethnic cleansing is not the answer. That action is necessary, but action against the people responsible - not action against Arabs simply because, well, they're Arabs. And not action against people who are making jokes, no matter how senseless and bereft of taste those jokes may be.

But what can one say to such people? What can one put up against the hatred, the fear, the bloodlust?

All I can think of is three iron nails and a crown of thorns.