DAMMAM, 18 January 2006 — Muhammad M. said he feels “suspicion” and fear each time he looks at the empty house across the street, especially when his young child asks him who lived there and why nobody lives there now.
The bullet-riddled house sits empty today, but in September it was the center of a fierce three-day gunbattle that resulted in the death of at least five suspected terrorists and three policemen.
Before that, neighbors thought the house in the Al-Mubarakeya neighborhood was vacant, according to a report in Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.
When it was revealed that the house had been used as a terrorist cell, with evidence of attacks in the planning stages, many residents considered moving away or into residential compounds
Incidences like the Dammam siege have caused residents nationwide to look with suspicion at vacant houses and apartments.
Abeer H., a Dammam resident, said that she gets nervous when she sees strangers in her building because an apartment sits empty across the hall. News of the Dammam shootout has made her jumpy and worried for her children.
The fear of abandoned and empty houses could turn into a national paranoia if people did not trust each other. Dr. Mahmoud Rashad, psychiatrist at Al-Amal Hospital, said that fear is normal under the current situation. He said that anything that is not clear to people will increase their fear. A house obscured by walls or otherwise shut away from the community raises the level of suspicion and suspicion increases the level of fear. Because of the recent terrorist activities people always expect the worst.
“Under the current situation, people look at strangers with fear,” said Dr. Rashad. “He could be a normal, law-abiding citizen but because of the previous experience and what happened in Dammam, people think that they might be bad. People look at things differently because of the suffering.”
