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ORCHARD LAKE, Mich. -- At lunchtime at the Sheik, a big Middle Eastern
restaurant, American flags hang in the windows and around the dining room.
"I love America," says the owner, Dean Hachem, who arrived here
from Lebanon 24 years ago and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. "Until
you've been to the other side of the world, you don't know to appreciate
the United States, to kiss the ground here."
Half a year ago, the Sheik would have been humming at this time of day,
with customers waiting for tables or picking up takeout orders of lamb,
tabbouli and baba ghannooj. But on a recent Wednesday, the place was silent.
Just three of the 40 tables were occupied. "That e-mail destroyed
my life," says Mr. Hachem.
The e-mail in question was written on Sept. 11. It told the story of
a nurse at Henry Ford Hospital who came for lunch at the Sheik that day
and saw Arabs who worked in the restaurant "cheering as they watched
TV footage of our American tragedy." The e-mail's author wrote that
her son-in-law is a doctor who heard the story from the nurse. It ended:
"Do not patronize this restaurant, and please pass the word to everyone
you know!"
The e-mail quickly spread to thousands of homes in Detroit suburbs. A
stunned Mr. Hachem denied that the incident happened and invited people
to see his security tapes, which showed some employees watching TV coverage
of the attack. No one could be seen celebrating.
Local Jewish leaders in this largely Jewish community agreed that he
and his employees had been slandered. They went on TV -- live from the
restaurant -- to encourage customers to come back. But in the six months
since, many residents are still boycotting the Sheik because of the possibility
the rumor is true.
Business at the seven-year-old Sheik is down by 50%, Mr. Hachem says,
and he has laid off 18 of his 30 workers. His wife had long planned to
open a satellite restaurant at Detroit's new airport terminal. It, too,
was to be called the Sheik, but airport authorities agreed with Mr. Hachem,
who felt that the name was tainted. The restaurant opened last month,
as the Mediterranean Grill.
The e-mail attacking the Sheik was similar to e-mails that hit other
communities after Sept. 11. There was one about a Budweiser deliveryman
who entered a convenience store in McFarland, Calif., and saw Arabs who
worked there cheering the attacks. The angry deliveryman removed all of
his company's products, then told "those horrible people" he
would never service the store again. Or so said the e-mail. The area's
Budweiser distributor says nothing of the sort ever happened.
Another e-mail claimed employees of a Dunkin' Donuts in Cedar Grove,
N.J., celebrated the attacks. A company investigation found no proof of
that. Through an outside crisis manager, and using e-mail-tracking software,
Dunkin' Donuts was able to find the original e-mail's author, who admitted
she hadn't actually witnessed the alleged incident and was passing on
hearsay. The company was also able to get e-mail addresses for many people
who had received the note. It then sent out thousands of its own e-mails
to set things right. Sales at the store fell but quickly rebounded.
Mr. Hachem had no crisis manager and no media adviser. He says he was
home at the time of the terrorist attacks but called and told his workers
not to discuss it -- and to refrain from speaking Arabic in the dining
room. He worried that customers would be suspicious of conversations they
couldn't understand.
The Sheik is a well-appointed family restaurant decorated with Middle
Eastern artifacts and scenes of the Sahara. It serves a suburban Detroit
community with many homes that sell for $500,000 or more. "These
are educated people," says Mr. Hachem, adding that he never thought
they would "punish and judge" him without proof.
On the morning of Sept. 12, Mr. Hachem, 47, went out to buy American
flags, he says. By the time he arrived at the restaurant, it was in turmoil.
Hundreds of calls were coming in about the e-mail. He decided to call
customers who had ordered food to take out on Sept. 11 -- he still had
their phone numbers on their orders -- and ask them to tell him what they
remember seeing. "They all told me, 'I saw only sad faces in your
restaurant,' " he says.
The e-mail kept spreading. Someone taped copies of it to shopping carts
at a nearby supermarket. The restaurateur contacted the physician named
in the e-mail. "He tried to say he was a victim of this, too,"
says Mr. Hachem. The physician and his mother-in-law, the alleged author
of the e-mail, declined to comment for this story, speaking through the
physician's lawyer. The mother-in-law is now seriously ill.
A spokeswoman for Henry Ford Health System, which owns several hospitals
in the area, says it investigated the incident quickly after it happened.
She said the hospital concluded the incident was unrelated to the hospital
but declined to discuss the investigation further.
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Such careful comments lead many in the community to assume that something
must have happened at the Sheik on Sept. 11. People also point out that
a flier was posted there on Sept. 10, advertising a rally celebrating
the first anniversary of the Palestinian uprising against Israel. Mr.
Hachem says that as soon as he saw the flier, he tore it down. "Do
you really think I'd allow such a sign, telling my Jewish customers to
go to this rally?" he asks. "I'd be out of my mind." As
for Mr. Hachem's politics, he says he is a restaurant man and doesn't
like discussing religion or politics.
The Detroit area is home to about 300,000 Arabs and 95,000 Jews, and
great efforts have been made by both sides to forge understanding. The
Jewish Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee have issued
a joint statement calling the rumors about the Sheik "just as evil
as murder." Rabbis have spoken from the pulpit, encouraging congregants
to return to the restaurant. Cantor Stephen Dubov of Temple Beth El in
Bloomfield Hills appeared on a newscast, while having a meal at the Sheik.
"We're taught as Jews that when we see someone who's hurt, we need
to help," the cantor says. "This man is hurting."
Adds Rabbi Marla Feldman of the Jewish Community Council: "One of
the Ten Commandments is, 'Don't bear false witness.' "
In the lobby of his restaurant, Mr. Hachem now posts supportive letters.
One came from Elaine Newman, a West Bloomfield resident who says she ate
at the Sheik on Sept. 11. "The waiters were just as solemn as we
were," she says. "I saw no joy, no celebration." In fact,
one waiter saw she was wearing an American Red Cross sticker because she
had given blood and asked where he could donate, too. Ms. Newman tells
people her story, she says, but "some don't believe me."
Before Sept. 11, Mr. Hachem says 80% of his customers were Jewish. Few
of them have returned. Two miles away, La Shish, a competing Middle Eastern
restaurant, says business is down only slightly.
For years, Mr. Hachem says he spent as much as $800 a week to advertise
in the local Jewish News. Last month, he stopped advertising. "It
wasn't helping," he says. Danny Raskin, the paper's restaurant reviewer,
continues to encourage his readers to patronize the Sheik. He has been
at the paper 60 years, and he has seen rumors hurt restaurants before.
Thirty years ago, an untrue story spread that a server at a Detroit-area
restaurant dressed up as Adolf Hitler for Halloween, then waited on a
table of Holocaust survivors.
The restaurant suffered but recovered, and it is still in business. "That
was in the days of word of mouth," says Mr. Raskin. "E-mail
spreads rumors so much further."
At Detroit's Wayne State University, Janet Langlois teaches a course
in folklore studies and has followed the Sheik incident. "Rumors
are wedge drivers," she says. "If there's already tension, racially
or ethnically, rumors are the sparks that light fires. This rumor may
be a condensation of all the tensions between Arabs and Jews."
Mr. Hachem, meanwhile, has a request: If a nurse did see something in
his restaurant, he wishes she would come to him. "I'll ask her, 'Who
did it?' If someone really cheered, he should be in jail, because down
the road, he could hurt our country more."
Some Arabs here feel the e-mail incident should be prosecuted as a hate
crime. Dan Nelson, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Civil Rights
Division, says the government did look into it but decided it wasn't "prosecutable
based on evidence presented."
A few Arab leaders disagree. They point to the case of a California man
who, after Sept. 11, sent a threatening e-mail to the Arab Community Center
for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn, Mich. He was charged with
a hate crime, and as part of a plea agreement, he flew to Detroit a few
weeks ago to apologize and to do a week of community service at the center.
"After that, he sent flowers, candy and e-mails indicating what a
great experience it was," says Noel Saleh, an attorney for the organization.
Mr. Hachem doesn't expect such a happy ending for the Sheik. "The
damage is done," he says, surveying his near-empty dining room. "It's
like a glass. When you crack it, it cannot go back to what it was."
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