A tinge OF panic washed over the weathered face of Salahuddin Khan when he was asked two questions. He answered yes to both and immediately wondered aloud how the news would affect his business. ‘‘I’m afraid American customers won’t come here,’’ he explained. Khan is the owner of Good Looks Fabrics and Tailors, an Islamabad institution. For the past 25 years, Pakistani government officials, titans of industry and other luminaries have streamed here to purchase some of South Asia’s finest hand-tailored suits. American diplomats and journalists have been customers too. On Tuesday afternoon, rows of rich fabrics lined the store’s brightly lit walls. A salesman dressed in a sharply cut gray suit waited eagerly for customers. Khan handed out business cards that declared the store’s proud motto: ‘‘First in fashion’’. But the store owner found himself trying to explain away an unwanted distinction. Yes, he had answered, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who recently confessed to sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya, was a regular customer. And yes, he had heard that American investigators had recently found a plastic bag from his Islamabad store in a nuclear weapons facility in Libya. Inside the shopping bag were detailed plans for a nuclear bomb. ‘‘We’ve done nothing wrong here,’’ the tailor nervously insisted. ‘‘Dr Khan did nothing wrong here.’’ Khan, who is no relation to Dr Khan, said he had no idea how one of his shopping bags ended up in Libya. He said that several days ago a man he believes was a Pakistani investigator stopped by his store and asked the same questions. The store owner said that Dr Khan bought suits from his store ‘‘once or twice a year’’ throughout the 1990s. The scientist was ‘‘nice to us’’, Khan added, but had not been back for the past three years. As if to prove the store’s innocence, a clerk unveiled a large black plastic shopping bag, pointed to where the store’s name and address was printed, and shrugged.One employee suggested that a foreign client might have taken the bag to Libya. ‘‘There are many Libyans and Syrians who come here and get their stitching done also,’’ said the clerk, who would not give his name. A friend visiting the store owner said Pakistan’s powerful army was framing Dr Khan in order to hide its own role in nuclear proliferation. ‘‘Why do you just hold Qadeer Khan responsible,’’ he asked a reporter, and not the ‘‘top brass?’’ The shop owner ignored both the clerk and his friend, refused to have his picture taken and voiced his own fear. Journalists and television news crews, he said gloomily, might soon outnumber customers.— The New York Times
