Annah Abetti remembers the “gauntlet of eyes” she faced in the narrow Moroccan bazaar on Sept. 12, 2001.

“I had to force myself to walk with confidence,” Abetti, Weinberg ’03 recalled. “I couldn’t escape being conspicuous.”

But instead of greeting the petite, red-haired American student with contempt, the people in the market showed compassion. Several Moroccans approached Abetti and apologized for the horrific attacks.

“It wasn’t Arabs,” Abetti remembers them saying. “It wasn’t us.”

Ten days earlier, Abetti had arrived in the North African country to study for Fall Quarter. She learned of the terrorist attacks from a classmate the afternoon of Sept. 11 as she returned to class after lunch.

“It was kind of cartoonish the way she said it, the absurdity of evil,” Abetti said. “I wanted to call my parents right away. They were in shock and I was in shock.”

Abetti and five of her classmates stayed overnight at the school, glued to CNN, watching the World Trade Center buildings collapse again and again from thousands of miles away.

The return home to her host family was “surreal.” Many people stared openly as she walked down the street. But their eyes showed sympathy, she said.

“The sentiment slowly grew less sympathetic after a month of so. Over time tragedy stays with you but slowly evaporates. People sort of forget it and have to move on with their lives.” By the time Abetti would return to the Muslim world in 2004, people would become more hostile.

When “Where I was on Sept. 11” stories are traded, many people don’t know what to say when they hear Abetti was not only abroad, but in a country that is more than 98 percent Muslim.

“It’s a mixed bag,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even know where Morocco is. Those who know it’s an Arab country are usually surprised.”

What was it like to be away from family and friends, the comforts and safety of home on that bewildering and terrible day? Abetti has a hard time describing it.

“There’s no control group to compare it to,” she said. “It definitely completely altered what would have been my time there.”

The overall experience in Morocco was very positive, Abetti said. She forged several enduring friendships with fellow study abroad students.

“We were incredibly close,” she said. “I’m sure we had some great personalities, but Sept. 11 just united us for better or for worse.”

Abetti returned to the United States on Dec. 23, 2001. She returned to Northwestern with a galvanized interest in the Middle East. She began to attend “a lot of random seven o’clock lectures on Wednesday nights in Kresge” on the Middle East and Israel.

“I hate to admit it, but I think Sept. 11 was an on/off switch,” Abetti said. “It suddenly made everything more relevant. I hate to say that because the Middle East or Morocco or Jordan are just as relevant as they were Sept. 10, 2001.”

Abetti wanted to continue her Middle Eastern studies and became involved with the Middle East Institute the following summer.

“I was looking for things where I could learn more and utilize my existing knowledge,” she said. “No doubt in my mind that that date played a huge role.”

Abetti visited the Middle East in 2004, seven months after her graduation from NU. She and her boyfriend, a photojournalist, spent two months exploring Egypt, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Syria and Turkey.

Again she was singled out as an American, but this time reactions were less sympathetic and more contentious.

“If anything, things were a lot worse when I was back the second time because of the Iraq war and President Bush,” she said.

Everyone from “random moms to cab drivers to little boys” challenged her with questions about American foreign policy, she said.

“People would bring up Bush a lot and become almost aggressive talking about him,”Abetti said. “I had no desire to defend him, but at the same time it put you on the defensive.

“I can imagine there’s a more fundamental psyche or slant working its way in because people are trying to oppose the Western ideals that they hate, so all they can do is find the opposite, which often is a worse extreme.”

Abetti will travel to Jordan in September to study for a year on a Rotary Scholarship. Some people tell her she’s crazy for doing so, she said. But Abetti says she feels safer there than in Washington, D.C., or New York because of the possibility of terrorist attacks.

Arabs may argue over foreign policy but are accepting overall, she said.

“When you’re over there, people are so friendly and take care of you,” she said. “I know they would fight for you if something happened.”

What has become a passion for Abetti had an innocuous beginning — she studied Arabic her sophomore year at NU and liked that the new language “opened doors to a whole new world.”

“I left thinking I wanted to get away from America,” she said. “I wanted to immerse myself in another culture. Then when (Sept.11) happened, I just couldn’t separate myself from the fact that I am an American.”

Reach Beth Murtagh at [email protected].