"Unminded people", his colleague Peter Bajit called them accurately, though more in sorrow than anger. And because of them, we had the bizarre and shocking sight on Friday night of riot police on standby opposite Sainsbury's car park, where the normal top crime is not bothering to take your trolley back to the proper pen.

But now let me tell you something good. When I scrunched over the broken glass and drink-stained floor at the Kebabeesh on Tuesday, I made an immediate resolution: to come back as soon as the place re-opened, with as many of my relatives and friends as possible, and have a really expensive meal.

So we did, last Friday. And the great thing was, that dozens of other local people had obviously had the same idea. The bar was still out of action - none of the famous draught lager which English (or German/Danish) culture has married so well to Asian cuisine. But the place was heaving.

From eight 'til late, household after household from Greengates - almost all white, because the area is - made their way past Durrani's half-built extension, still with its dents from the thugs' baseball bats, and under the banner saying "Kebabeesh - We're back!"

Durrani, Peter and their colleagues - young waiters who had clambered over a 7ft fence at the back to escape last week's late-night attack - moved from table to table receiving apologies, sympathy and expressions of disgust from their fellow Bradfordians.

When Peter saw my younger sister, who teaches English as a foreign language in Bradford and until recently lived in nearby Manningham, he had a particularly significant reaction. Although it was at least ten years earlier, he recognised her as a former regular at the original Kebabeesh.

They clicked immediately. It was like one of JB Priestley's cameos of a Bradford woolman returning from a decade in the Argentine and taking up again with his pub pals, as though he'd never been further than Baildon Green. Bradfordians together.

There are two morals to be drawn from this experience, apart from the obvious one that the good in Bradford - as elsewhere - outweighs the bad (although this is never as likely to get headlines).

The first is the encouraging reminder, amid the current talk of ghettos, that Durrani and his colleagues have done well enough to move out from Manningham to a prosperous Bradford suburb. And the second is that point about being Bradfordians.

Fellow-feeling - a society where a British Asian says to a white woman: "Now then, love, I remember you" - is exactly what Lord Ouseley recommends in his report on the city's race relations.

Get that, and BNP or NF attempts at provocation become what they should be: a sick joke. Not the trigger for more "unminded" violence, like the trouble in Stoke this weekend, where mere rumours of BNP activity were enough to make different, seldom-meeting communities fear the worst about each other.