"I was terribly depressed on Sept. 11," he told me. "I was horrified just like everyone else, but it was terrible the way some people looked at us. Not in this neighborhood family and I had incidents where people were angry just seeing us. I was scared. Big time."

Sam was born in East Jerusalem in 1958, a Muslim and a Palestinian, and he knows about fear. It was a long way from there to here. "I grew up in Camp al- Amary, a seven-minute walk from Ramallah, where there's so much trouble now. Were you ever in Ramallah?" I acknowledged being at a lovely Arab-owned outdoor restaurant about 15 years ago, before the Intifada but when there was great trouble in Ramallah and Israeli troops sat in jeeps around the town square. There's always been trouble in Ramallah.

"Oh," Sam was excited. "I know that restaurant. It's called 'Naauom.' It's right on the square." Or it was. Ramallah has all but disappeared as Israeli troops seek to destroy the Palestinian terrorist organizations that are bombing school buses, nightclubs and shopping malls.

"Well, my grandfather lived near Tel Aviv, and in 1948, when war broke out, he took his family and left, settling in a camp called Al-Amary." Hoping for a short, victorious war, Palestinians filled up the temporary camps. But Israel won, and no one wanted to go back. "My whole family lived in that camp until 1979, when we got permission to emigrate, thanks to my uncle and his wife. My uncle had come to New York earlier, and he and his wife Jewish, by the way Life in the camps had been difficult. They were very, very poor; there were only outside toilets. There was no electricity at times, and there were many hardships. Sam said, "I have a lot of good memories of that camp. Good, and bad." He managed to get an education there and obtained the equivalent of a high school diploma.

"And when we first arrived in New York, that was horrible, too. We couldn't talk to anyone, we didn't know any English. I couldn't communicate, I couldn't find my way around, none of us could." Sam's five brothers and sisters and his mother and father moved to Brooklyn's Bensonhurst (where the family still lives in the same house), and Sam went to school to learn English and worked in a coffee shop. "I got a scholarship to Buffalo University andSwell, I became a mechanical engineer. So what am I doing in a pet store? Well, I was so cold in Buffalo that I finished college in three years, and then I got a job in Rochester after three months I knew it wasn't for me. I hated being away from the family, and I hated wearing ties and suits, and I came back to New York to work for myself."

Sam borrowed money from his uncle, opening first one store selling nuts and chocolates, then another. Then he sold both shops and decided, he said, to return to Jordan and the West Bank to find a wife. There he remained for more than a year, got married and brought his young bride, Randa, back to the United States (where they have raised four children and are expecting a fifth).

How does Sam think the crisis between the Palestinians and the Israelis will be resolved? He agrees that the terrorists have to stop killing Israeli school children, but says that the Palestinians have reason to fight against an Israeli occupation.

"You can't go from one town to another without being stopped and checked. That's horrible and humiliating. I think that if Israel pulled out to the 1967 borders and the Palestinians have their own state, everyone can live in peace."

Sam does all right in his Brooklyn "Pet Emporium," which he started in 1993 at the suggestion of a brother in the wholesale pet food business. His charm wafts out the door into Montague Street, and customers come in and chat spend money. "I have a new Persian kitten," said one woman. "Lovely," said Sam enthusiastically. "He's beautiful," said the woman, checking out the shelves lined with cans of cat food.

"And finicky," added Sam. "Persians are finicky, frisky and beautiful."