"The world changed after 9/11...."

But not *right* after.

*Right* after, for a period of a couple weeks, people were gentle and courteous to each other to an extent I had never witnessed in my life. Close to how they behaved during the Midwest floods of 1993, but generous less with their physical activity and more with their compassion on each other's behalf. The outpouring of money for the victims was probably as great as during the flood; the outpouring of blood as people lined up to donate had to have been greater.

At work on 9/11, there was something unspoken that I sensed strongly: you didn't know who around you might have been affected--which clients, which coworkers' relatives--so you treated everyone with kindess and consideration. Going home from work that day, as a relatively new driver, I noticed the complete absence of road rage and road rudeness. People drove slowly, used signals, waved you in. We all knew how the other guy felt--certainly no better than we did ourselves, and possibly--god forbid that he should have a relative that felt those buildings shake--possibly much worse.

A friend somehow was on the list to get tickets to the Oprah show just at that time, and just happened to get them for her first show of that season, which suddenly became a show about 9/11. The friend couldn't go, and I didn't want to try driving my inexperienced self to Chicago, so I took the Greyhound.

Coming through Iowa City from the West Coast, the bus stopped at Walcott so the passengers could get something to eat. I'd just boarded the bus an hour before, so I remained on board, watching other buses come and go and watching people who were watching still others--those others being half a dozen Muslim men just outside my window, dressed in traditional clothing, carrying prayer rugs, and conferring, it seemed, about the direction they needed to face. Iowans watched, Midwesterners watched, their fellow Americans watched, white people watched, warily, from the sidewalk.

I watched with growing concern. What if the men were harassed? Attacked, even? It was September 16, 2001, and not a week had passed, and we were at a truck stop in Iowa. If those onlookers made a move toward the Muslims--if I saw one of them even speak with an unkind expression on his face--I would have to get off the bus and defend the praying men.

The last lingering effect of my halfhearted Catholic upbringing is a guilty conscience over sins of omission. It's not just what you do that you shouldn't have done that can get you in trouble. It's also what you don't do that you should have. In my life up to that point I'd not done some of those things, and they were and are some of my most regular 3 a.m. visitors.

So if anything happened, if anyone threatened, I would have to respond, defend, take a stand. I watched the men lay out their prayer rugs in an empty space in the parking lot, and I watched them kneel and bow, and most of all I watched the watchers. And I saw...nothing. Nothing harmful, nothing even unkind. Curiosity on a few faces of middle-aged white men in John Deere caps. Sadness, or merely solemnity on other faces. Even respect, I think, on a few. And tears on mine, as I thanked a god I didn't believe in for the country whose government I routinely criticized.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/traveloutdoors/2003442495_imams22.html
"The imams were removed from the flight to Phoenix on Monday night after three of them said their normal evening prayers in the terminal in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport before boarding."

The world changed after 9/11. But not right after.