LONDON – I gave our waiter Mohammed a really good tip when I first met him. Five pounds for a 30-pound bill. I was with some friends at Palms Palace, a Middle Eastern restaurant across the street from my flat on Edgware Road, which is a mile-long sanctuary for Arabic culture in central London. It’s one of the several cafes here where you can leisurely munch on hummus and pita while passing around a hookah.

As my friends and I sat down, we quickly noticed we were the only non-Middle Easterners in the entire place, something Mohammed also picked up on.

‘Are you British?’ he asked, handing us our menus.

‘American,’ I said.

Next came the most common question I’m asked around here when someone finds out I’m American.

‘So do you like Bush?’

All four of us responded with a collective ‘No!’

Mohammed liked that.

It turns out Mohammed had more of a reason to ask the ‘Bush question’ than most people I’ve met here. He came to London about six months ago from Baghdad. The windows of his home had been shattered by a nearby bomb blast. His cousin was killed in another. His father, a doctor, was killed in a third. Mohammed’s stories put a face to the anonymous Iraqi casualties I’ve read about in the four years since the war began. It was jarring to say the least.

Despite his troubles, Mohammed doesn’t seem to hold any grudges against Americans, and neither do most of the other residents in my neighborhood. I don’t get awkward death stares as I walk down the street, even after I make eye contact and say ‘hello’ in my American accent. The people who work at the take out shawarma restaurant already recognize me as the white boy who comes in every other day for a late night snack. They hand me my spicy, greasy lamb sandwich with a friendly ‘cheers,’ delighted for my regular business.

My point is, people around here are happy just to be treated with anything but fear and disdain from Western people, especially Americans, and especially after the 7/7 tube bombings that took place more than a year ago. It’s a culture we should embrace without letting a few extremists tarnish the reputation of an entire people.

It’s easy to feel uncomfortable when you see more women wearing burqas than blue jeans and mini skirts, and it’s even easier when you hear more Arabic spoken in the streets than English. The fact that Middle Eastern culture has such a large and distinct presence in a major European city, such as London, is proof that the world is becoming smaller and smaller. Without opening up to accept it, we set ourselves up for even more failures in the future.

Steven Kovach is a guest columnist for The Daily Orange. E-mail him at sjkovach@gmail.com.

Published on March 7, 2007 at 12:00 pm