The face of terror?

I'm terrible with names, but I never forget a face. Imagine my shock the week before last when John Ashcroft went on the air (apparently for no good reason) and put out an APB for seven individuals, including Aafia Siddiqui, above. A fellow MIT student, she came in with the Class of 1995 - a year after I arrived at the Institute - but I distinctly remember seeing her quiet smile around campus, and recognized the picture on television before learning from the talking head newsanchor that she was in fact from MIT.

To be fair, neither Ms. Siddiqui nor any of the other six whose faces appeared during the Bush campaign photo-op ("Message: Be Afraid") are merely wanted for questioning and have not at this time been linked to al-Qaeda or any other known terrorist organization. But since this whole War on Terror has been nothing more than a giant game of "Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden", I guess it was inevitable that my path would cross - however tangentially - with someone that our government was interested in.

It's a weird feeling nonetheless, and I guess I'm not the only one who got it the other week. Although the one-act play "Terrorist at the Yoga Studio" is fictitious, it successfully evokes the experience of finding yourself one step removed from the long arm of the Department of Homeland Security by virtue of chance alone. Only in the case of the author of the play it's a notch more chilling, as she is a Muslim woman telling the tale of fellow (fictitious) Muslims who came to know Ms. Siddiqui through accident as well. You can read it over at Muslim Wake Up!, a blog for progressive Muslims - yes, they do exist, despite what the fear and hatemongers want us to believe.