BEg2 ch30 paragraph 5

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon's whole novel of wonderful social observation should dispel
disbelief, albeit with his comic exaggeration.

I lived in Jersey City, a town with a much larger proportion of Muslims
than NYC. Arabs everywhere,
my friend the local grocer among others. Sammy, from Jordan, who made the
only bagels comparable
to NY bagels in the town. Who gave away books, which I helped him do---it's
in the NYTimes; look it up.
The mosque of the blind sheik who organized the first truck bombing of the
WTC buildings, was in the business distinct, where the PATH train was,  a
mile or so walk from my house---JC has two business districts, this was the
smaller.
The rented UHaul that was used for the bombing was from where I rented them
a walk away AND the UHAUL, sagging almost to its wheels, as
it carried the bomb into Manhattan drove down the street one above where my
apartment was around 5 AM. They worried about cops cruising about and
eating donuts in the major gas station before you hit the Holland Tunnel, I
read later. The number of cop cars at that large gas station and
convenience store and light eatery was a thing to behold. Like a daily
mini-meeting.
 They thought they would notice the acute sag.

And right up from the sheik's modest mosque---a second floor above a
business establishment---was a large famous diner, which I loved, where
many Middle Eastern immigrants ate.....one saw them all the time UNTIL
9/11. Gone. And not just my eyes on a one day visit but a newspaper
reporter who wrote it up like that. They disappeared from public places.
Too dangerous or they thought it would be, etc.


On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 1:20 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> “That terrible morning, so it was later alleged, for a radius of many
> blocks surrounding the towers, every pushcart disappeared, as if the
> population of pushcart owners, at that time believed to be most of them
> Muslim, had been warned to keep away. Through some network. Some evil
> secret rugrider network possibly in place for years. The pushcarts stayed
> away, and so the morning began that much less comfortably, obliging folks
> to go in to work without their customary coffees, danishes, donuts, bottles
> of water, so many bleak appoggiaturas for what was about to happen.”
>
>
>          Is there any basis in fact for this?
>
> Re: taxicabs - Snopes has
> https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fare-whether-friend/
>
> Also mentions similar rumors about other businesses & pretty effectively
> debunks them.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>