Five years ago, in his Washington home, Adam David Foley watched the twin towers collapse as terror hit America. Last Friday, on the streets of Malegaon, the 16-year-old Rotary exchange student watched another city under siege.

“I saw people with blood pouring down their faces being rushed to hospitals,” says Foley, who has been rechristened Anand by his host family. “My host had come to take me home and on the way I saw so many injured. I couldn’t understand what was going on since I don’t speak much Hindi. Later I figured out that there had been bomb blasts in the city.”

Since then, between trying to reassure his panic-stricken mother that “this was not America” and getting used to the idea that he would have to move to Nashik till Rotary US was convinced it was safe for him to return to Malegaon, Foley has been keenly watching events unfold in the textile town.

“After 9/11, everyone in America was terrified for a long, long time,” he recalls. “Even today, they believe that they are not safe. But here in Malegaon, within a day things were back to normal. And everywhere I heard people saying “no tension”. I can’t get over the fact that people are able to pick up their lives so quickly. It’s almost like nothing happened.”

The Class IX student of Malegaon’s Progressive English Medium School admits that 9/11 scared him and Friday’s blasts made him nervous. But the hustle-bustle at the Tamba Kata, the hub of Malegaon’s loom industry, reassures him. So does his jovial host Bharat Tapadia, a yarn trader.

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