Tension comes with coincidental first name

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Until Tuesday's terror attacks, Osama Yanis was living his American Dream -- naturalized U.S. citizen, owner of two college-town coffee shops, husband of a Missouri native, father of three.

The dream has turned into a "nightmare" of rumors, tension and harassment, the Jordan-born Yanis says, because he shares a first name with the prime suspect in organizing Tuesday's deadly attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden.

"I'm not THAT Osama!" Yanis, 32, who moved to the United States in 1992, said. "Because a guy named Mike does something wrong, it doesn't mean all Mikes are bad."

But on Friday, an employee who opened Osama's Coffee Zone across the street from the University of Missouri-Columbia found a glass front door "covered with spit," Yanis said. Anti-Arabic slurs have been shouted from passing vehicles. A caller to the Columbia Daily Tribune newsroom said she wanted to buy an ad urging a boycott of the coffee shops. "An ad request like that would be rejected," Tribune Associate Publisher Vicki Russell said Saturday.

"One of my employees heard in town that Osama bin Laden is my uncle," Yanis said. "Untrue. I've heard the rumor he owns my business. Untrue. Now I'm hearing rumors that we danced and cheered. Untrue. Untrue. Untrue!"

Vouched for patriotism

On Saturday, President Bush said the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden was the prime suspect behind the suicide crashes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. And bin Laden's own relatives in the Middle East renewed their denunciations of his activities.

Yanis said he has felt forced to vouch for his patriotism. After seeing initial news coverage of the attacks, he hung Old Glory in the windows of his shops, located four blocks apart in the heart of Columbia.

His brother, Taysir Yanis, 28, rushed to donate blood. The shop welcomed college students who set up a table to collect donations for New York firefighters. Columbia police and sheriff's deputies, many of them regular customers, are stopping in to reassure Yanis of their friendship.

Student Michael Tedder, 22, lives next to one of the shops and is a regular patron.

"I was sitting outside about 12:30 a.m. Friday and saw three drunks walk by and they yelled, 'we should firebomb this place,'" Tedder said. "It was sick and it made me sick."

Yanis met his wife, a native of Sedalia, when she visited the college he attended in India. He is Muslim and she is Christian. They moved to Sedalia, where he worked as a Wal-Mart clerk and for the city parks department, and where their first child was born. Then they moved to San Francisco, where Yanis was employed in a coffee shop.

"I learned the business and wanted to open my own shop, but rent was too high in San Francisco. So we came to Columbia. I have been paying taxes here, long before I became a citizen," he said. "So this has been a nightmare."

His wife's cousin, Dr. Larry Mosby, called Yanis "a hero to our family because of the way he cares for his wife and children."

Customers show support

Yanis said he is grateful that "90 percent of my regular customers" have dropped in to wish him well and that his business has not significantly declined.

In fact, he said, some regulars are bringing in their friends as a show of support.

Ed Durham, 39, a university employee, walked in during the interview, shouted warm greetings to Yanis and shook his hand.

"I love you man," Durham told Yanis. "You're my friend and you always will be."

Then Durham unpinned a cluster of red, white and blue ribbons from his shirt and presented them to Yanis.

"Thank you so much," said Yanis, who pinned the ribbons onto his shirt. "I love you, too. And I love America."