This past Sunday, CBS aired 9/11, a documentary that follows the actions of one firehouse during the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Recorded by two young French filmakers, Jules and Gideon Naudet, it was originally going to be a sort of practice film. Due to the close vicinity of the firehouse to the World Trade Center, they often answered calls from the buildings. Which explains why during the filming of the documentary, the filmmakers caught the first plane hitting the building and have the only footage of events taking place within Tower 1. After the initial shock of the plane hitting the tower, they made a quick decision to keep filming, becoming journalists on the spot.

In Detroit, someone else thought that they would become a journalist as well. After seeing the planes hit and hearing that bin Laden may have been responsible, someone got on their computer and sent out an email saying that on September 11th they had lunch at a Middle Eastern Restaurant called The Sheikh, in a suburb of Detroit, and saw Arab workers cheering and applauding the attacks as they watched footage of the news reports on TV.

You may have received that email. No? How about the same story.. but this time the setting is Dunkin Donuts? Or how about the one about the Budweiser delivery man who entered a store and witnessed the same scene? Some people immediately identified them as fakes.. urban legends run rampant.. but for the owner of The Sheikh it’s been all too real, his business has dropped 50% since the email campaign.

Dean Hachem, the owner of The Sheikh, arrived in the United States from Lebanon 24 years ago and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. On the morning of September 12th he arrived at his restaurant carrying American flags that he picked up on the way and the phone was ringing off the hook. The email had filtered through the community and hundreds of callers from the area were tossing threats and insults his way, saying that they would never eat in the restaurant again.. blah blah blah.

The reality is that the incident reported in the email never happened. As proof he called customers who ordered and picked up food from him on the 11th. They were documented as saying they didn’t see anything like that.. “I saw only sad faces in your restaurant.” In addition, Dean invited people to view the security tapes which were running the entire day, showing that no one was doing the Harlem Shake, The Twist, or The Dame Dash… He and his workers had the same reaction as the rest of the country, a combination of shock and fear.

Since the email campaign, Dean Hachem has had to let go of 18 people from his 30 person staff, business is down 50%, and despite the evidence, his attempts to reconcile with the community have fallen on deaf ears. This in a community of homes that start at $500,000.00 or more, “these are educated people,” Dean said, adding that he would have never thought that they would “punish and judge” him without proof.

The moral of the story is.. just because a house is pretty on the outside, a real dip shit can open the door.. *Hah. that’s my version of an ancient chinese secret. Wisdom, no?