The New York Times Agency May 2010

(NYT12) NEW YORK -- Feb. 15, 2003 -- MECCA-PILGRIMS-RETURN-3 -- For many American Muslims on their homecoming from this year's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia -- the birthplace of Islam -- the event would normally stand as an unalloyed religious high point. But many of the returning pilgrims to the United States, disconnected from daily news while living in vast tent cities in Mecca, learned only on their way home that the national threat level had been raised because of fears that terror attacks would be timed to coincide with the end of the hajj. They came back transformed, often physically and certainly spiritually. They also arrived, with a jolt, back in a country on heightened alert for terrorists. Dr. Aziz Ahmad, foreground, arriving at JFK International airport in New York, Friday, Feb. 14, 2003, learned about the heightened alarm in the U.S. on the plane coming home to New York City. (Justin Lane/The New York Times)