The hours following the terrorist attacks in Boston last week were nerve-racking for the thousands of Saudis currently living in the United States.

Like everyone else, we were horrified to see the images of innocent Americans running for their lives in the wake of those cowardly acts, which targeted them when they least expected it. However, as news spread that a Saudi youth had been “detained” for questioning and was considered a “person of interest,” many of us were suddenly filled with a sense of dread and impending doom. We quickly began to wonder whether our worst nightmare had become a reality; again. Did Saudi terrorists attack the United States a second time and shatter the sense of normalcy that Americans had been desperately trying to regain since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001?

As a terrorism analyst, I am accustomed to trying to make sense of unspeakable acts of violence and seemingly incomprehensible levels of hatred. But highlighting the different strategies used  by Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen and al-Nusra Front in Syria — both affiliates of al-Qaeda — is one thing. Explaining why 15 of my countrymen flew thousands of miles to kill thousands of civilians about whom they knew nothing — committing suicide in the process — was something different altogether.

Within hours of the Boston attacks, I began preparing myself for an all-too-familiar scenario ever since that fateful Tuesday morning in 2001: Although no one had ever phrased it in those exact words, countless Americans’ eyes have told me what they really wanted to ask me as soon as they learned that I was a Saudi who studied terrorism for a living: