On Tuesday, last week, he cried as he watched the devastation of lower Manhattan on TV. The next day a shocked Mustafa Nazary (33), from Falls Church, Virginia who was proud to become an American citizen in 1990, heard a radio "shock-jock" call for nuclear strikes against the Middle East.
On Friday, the American-Afghani stuck two American flags on his bakery delivery van and set out on his rounds like any other day. He ended the day in hospital, beaten black and blue by one Michael Wayne Johnson (49), a man twice his size, in a car-park in nearby Alexandria.
What provoked the confrontation is in dispute. Nazary says Johnson pulled up alongside him, asked if he was Afghan and then said, "I'm gonna kill you," following him to the car parking lot. Johnson insists that it was Nazary who uttered an incendiary threat. Johnson has been charged under hate crimes legisaltion.
For most of America, the retreat into militant patriotism has been an expression of a deep and genuine community solidarity, but for many of the country's Arab-Americans these are nervous days as a bigoted minority take out their anger on them. There are about 6.5 million Muslims in the United States, fewer than a million of whom are Arabs.
On Monday, President Bush, concerned at the wave of hate attacks, took time out from his schedule to visit the mosque at Washington's Islamic centre, to warn the nation not to take its anger out on loyal Americans.
Describing Muslims as doctors, lawyers, soldiers and parents, Mr Bush demanded they be treated respectfully. "Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behaviour," he said.
His appearance follows a vigorous effort by his administration over the last week to discourage anti-Arab sentiment. Bush aides arranged for an Islamic imam, Muzammil H. Siddiqi, to speak at last Friday's memorial at the National Cathedral. And the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, has met Arab-American leaders. The Attorney-General, Mr John Ashcroft, is to do so today.
White House officials have gone out of their way to say that the US must not make the mistake of demonising their own citizens as they did to Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it has received reports of more than 350 attacks against Arab-Americans around the country, ranging from verbal harassment to physical assaults, many of them against school children. It also received reports of dozens of mosques in six states - four in Texas - firebombed or vandalised.
In Arizona a man has been charged with murder following the shooting dead of the Sikh owner of a garage in Mesa. Later the accused is said to have fired at a Lebanese attendant at another garage and into the home of an Afghani family.
In Dallas, a Pakistani shopowner was found dead on Saturday in what is believed to have been another hate crime - there was no evidence of robbery.
In Palos Hills, Illinois, two Muslim girls were beaten at Moraine Valley College. In Evansville, Indiana, a man driving 80 mph rammed his car into a mosque. In both cases, police arrested suspects. In Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday a man crashed a Ford Mustang through the doors of a mosque doing over $70,000 in damages. A spokeswoman for the Muslim Women's League, Ms Leila Marayati, said that the harassment was such that some Muslim leaders were discussing ways for women to change the way they dress.
Others, though, insist that antagonism comes from a small minority. "Americans have shown great maturity," Mr Sayyid Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, told the Washington Post. "The number of support calls and visits to Islamic centers to show solidarity by far outnumber the nasty phone calls and attacks."