by James Reston
“He paused, again picking up his ornate curved tea pot and refilling our cups with an elegant sweep of his hand. This time he offered lumps of sugar with it.
“‘You asked about training. That is a subject I know something about. For this battle, training is taking place in a city called Urus-Marten. Have you heard of it?’
“‘Is it in Mongolia?’ Fatfat asked.
“Abu Musab smiled. ‘It’s a town of about one hundred thousand, the third-largest city in Chechnya,’ he said. ‘But how would you get there? And how would you pay for that privilege?’
“‘Couldn’t we just fly there?’ Fatfat piped up.
“‘The airplanes landing there are mostly Russian military jets. You could fly there—and then you could spend the rest of your life in a dungeon. And how would you pay for that?’
“‘Sami’s daddy could send us a check,’ Fatfat said, and they all laughed, except me.
“After this lighthearted moment at my expense, Abu Musab made clear that most Arab fighters trying to make their way to Chechnya were being detained in Georgia. Only a few were getting through; most never had the chance to train.
“The professor pondered our crestfallen faces, as if we were school-children who had just watched their ball bounce away down a hill. ‘That’s the way it is,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry.’
“Atta rose to leave, and we followed suit. Omar expressed thanks on behalf of the group.
“‘Thank you for coming,’ Abu Musab responded.
“‘Let us know if anything else occurs to you,’ Atta said.
“The Mauritanian nodded. ‘Go in peace,’ he said, ‘and may God’s mercy and blessing be with you.’
“Our letdown was evident. As Atta started through the door, the Mauritanian put his hand warmly on Atta’s head.
“‘Of course, there may be another way,’ he said.”
6
THE FRONT PAGE of the tabloid carried pictures of Karima Ilgun and Samir Haddad side by side against a black background with huge block letters for the headline: “THE DEATH PILOT AND HIS LADY.” His grinning image came from his martyrdom video. The headshot of Karima seemed to have been taken by a security camera as she passed by the hospital guards. Inside, there were more side-by-side photos, of her entering the hospital while he entered the plane in Newark airport, and a picture of them together, smiling, in a flight simulator in Florida. Teaser headlines were embedded in the text: “IN BED WITH A TERRORIST,” and “IS THIS WOMAN ONE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN’S VIRGINS?” Most wounding of all: “SHE WANTED CHILDREN FROM THE TERROR-PILOT.”
In the article itself, they reported lurid details. She and Sami had been together for four years. She was Turkish and sharp-tongued, a non-practicing Muslim who had handled financial transactions and travel arrangements for him. They had been married in a religious ceremony unrecognized by the state. And most incriminating of all, they had spoken by phone nearly every day during the nine months before 9/11 when he was training in Florida, and she was “training” in Germany. Indeed, he had called her from the Newark airport on September 11 as he waited to board the plane.
And in a sidebar, there was this item: from a postal package that Sami Haddad sent to his female friend, investigators have secured a farewell love letter, which they regard as incriminating. So Recht had leaked her letter to the press!
At nine o’clock on the morning the article appeared, Karima’s frantic landlady called from Hamburg to say that there were four television trucks outside her apartment, their antennae spooled to the sky, waiting for her to return. A newspaper reporter had barged into her landlady’s house, was sitting on her living room couch, and refused to leave until she told him about the “9/11 babe” who lived downstairs. An uncle called her mother to say that reporters approached, trying to arrange a meeting with Karima and had been offered serious money for the favor. “How much?” she heard her mother ask, and then whistle. “Two thousand marks!” When she hung up the phone, Mutti pointed out how much pay Karima was going to lose over this mess. A little later Karima checked her answering machine remotely, and the flat digital voice announced thirty messages.
When she got home, late at night two days later, a copy of the newspaper lay at her front door. Scrawled across the headline in bold, felt-tipped, red letters were the words:
YOU ARE A CELEBRITY!—OMAR.
GOD WILLING, YOU WILL NOT BE IN THE NEWSPAPERS AGAIN.
Karima’s second day of interrogation loomed, and she was dreading it. She dressed with the radio blaring. The news reported that al-Qaeda’s military chief, Mohammad Atef, had been killed in an airstrike, along with seven other terrorists, but Osama bin Laden was not among them. The killings had been accomplished with a new weapon called a drone, the announcer said, fired from a pilotless aircraft. Karima shrugged. Good riddance, she thought.
When she was called to the witness chair, the younger judge, Dr. Schneider, nodded to her as she took the stand.
“Is Judge Leicht ill today?” she asked.
“Judge Leicht has been removed from this case,” he said tartly. “I am taking over. Would you like to swear to tell the truth with your hand on a Koran, Fräulein Ilgun?”
“Do I have to?”
“You merely have to say, ‘I swear.’”
After she swore to tell the truth, he began by showing her a number of photographs of various Arab men. She knew none of them, she responded. And then he mentioned more than a dozen Arabic names. One by one, she denied any knowledge.
“But of course,” he said with a smirk, “each of those names shows up in your computer’s sent mail file.” He paused to let her respond. She said nothing.
“You have no response?”
“No, Your Honor.”
He turned to Sami’s sixteen months in Florida. He showed her a map of Miami with various markings in the margins and a circle around the Four Seasons Hotel.
“Can you explain these markings?” Schneider asked.
“I don’t remember,” Karima said.
“Are you aware that the Four Seasons Hotel is seventy stories high and the tallest building in Miami?”
“No, I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Are the marginal notes in your handwriting?”
“No … I mean, I don’t remember writing them.”
The judge put the map away. Was it true that Samir Haddad wanted his residence in the United States kept secret from his friends in Germany? he asked.
“He told me never to share his address with anyone. That’s all.”
“But you testified that you didn’t know his friends in Germany.” Again he paused to allow her to answer.
“I didn’t know his friends.”
“Now then, Dr. Ilgun, did you ever visit a mosque with Mr. Haddad in Hamburg?”
“Yes, once. It was not his regular mosque. We went somewhere different, so he wouldn’t encounter his friends. He was ashamed to be seen with me because I refused to wear the veil. I thought, better he be religious than someone who constantly picked up girls.”
A court reporter snickered, and the judge shot her a disapproving glance.
“Dr. Ilgun, we have information that you married Samir Haddad under Islamic law.”
“I don’t wish to comment on this.”
“From correspondence between yourself and Mr. Haddad, which we have in our files, one can ascertain that you were pregnant once.”
She remained silent for a minute. Finally, she whispered, “I do not believe that is the business of the court. I refuse to respond.”
“Have you ever undergone psychiatric treatment?” he persisted. “Yes.”
“For what condition?”
“For suicidal tendencies.”
“Go on.”
“I was eighteen, and I tried to commit suicide in Turkey. I took thirty antidepressants.”
“What led you to this a
ct?”
“I was in conflict between my Turkish roots and my German upbringing. That is all I wish to say. I only went to a psychiatrist twice.”
“Have you sought psychiatric help since the events of September 11?”
“I do not wish to answer.”
He asked her about Haddad’s summer work in a VW factory. He focused on her many bank transactions on his behalf and about being his unofficial travel agent. He held up a copy of Boulevard Zeitung and asked if the picture of her and Sami in the flight simulator in Florida was authentic.
“Yes,” she answered. “He was very happy during that time, constantly joking around.”
The judge was not laughing. “You provided quite a little support system for him, didn’t you?” he said without looking at her.
He shuffled some papers for a minute to let his accusation sink in. Then he turned to the story about Haddad’s losing his passport after he returned from Afghanistan. “Did you know that Mr. Haddad reported to the authorities that he lost his passport?”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Did he lose his passport?”
“I’m not sure he really lost it.”
“Actually, you are sure. You know that he didn’t lose his passport, isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t object to his false statements to the authorities.”
“No.”
And then he got to the contents of her computer.
“The browser on your computer shows that someone visited the US Pentagon website, ‘pentagon.afis.osd.mil.’ Did you visit this website?”
“No.”
“You have never, ever been on a Pentagon website?”
“No, never. I never searched such a site.”
“You never searched it?”
“I mean, it’s true that after Sami visited one time … maybe a few weeks after … I was looking for one of my research files in my computer’s history file, and I saw something like that. But I didn’t look at it.”
“You assumed Haddad had searched it?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you curious to know what he was looking at?”
“No. I assume he was just surfing. If it had been called periodontics.com, I would have looked at it. The Pentagon did not interest me.”
“But Haddad’s metamorphosis interested you.” He did not let her respond. “Now, in July 2001, your computer visited a site called Products Caravan. It links to a website called ‘Az Publications for jihad and mujahideen.’ And a book called Join the Caravan.”
“I did not visit such a website.”
“Did you notice that one as well in your history file?”
“I may have. I can’t remember. He wasted a lot of time on the computer when he was with me.”
“Is it not true, Dr. Ilgun, that you had left Florida in late July?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible that Mr. Haddad wanted you to see the websites he was visiting?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do, Dr. Ilgun. You have told Kommissar Recht of his family worry that he was becoming a fanatic. You saw these sites, and now you say you were not curious enough to look at them?”
“Perhaps I should have. I see your point now, judge. Yes, I should have paid more attention.”
“I agree. Maybe you should have paid a lot more attention. Or maybe you did pay a lot more attention that you are telling us.”Again he shuffled papers. Then he looked up at her sternly. “It’s hard to believe that Samir Haddad was so sloppy—he was a terrorist in training, after all—that he was so sloppy as to leave such incriminating files on your computer … unless he wanted you to stumble on them.”
“Perhaps he did. I don’t know. There is so much about all of this I don’t understand.”
“A trained terrorist, especially one who is sophisticated with computers, would know to clear his history of compromising material, unless suspect files were left there deliberately, don’t you agree?
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Wouldn’t Haddad know that you could check the browser history?”
“I guess so. I never thought about it before.”
“Is this something that you ever did together?”
“Sometimes he showed me things online. I don’t remember ever looking at the browser history with him.” She paused. “Judge Schneider, I am a junior dentist. My fascination is with molars and bicuspids, and I’m very busy. I don’t spend much time on random websites.”
“In that case you are quite an unusual member of your generation,” he said sardonically. “Now, in mid-July, only five weeks before the attacks on September 11, you visited Mr. Haddad in Florida, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You stayed with him for nearly two weeks. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes. I was quite ill with a throat infection.”
“On July 22, your computer visited a music site, Napster. You accessed a musical group called I Am the World Trade Center.”
“No!” she exploded. “No. No. No. That is not true!” she shouted. “I don’t listen to that kind of music! In fact, I hate it. I like only Turkish music.”
The judge peered up at her, his bald head glistening with perspiration in the overhead light, his lenses slipping down on his nose. He waited as Karima glowered at him and then averted her eyes, rummaging for a tissue, sitting down in embarrassment.
His next words dripped with sarcasm.
“Dr. Ilgun, if you don’t listen to that kind of music, how do you know what kind of music I Am the World Trade Center is?”
The question hung in the air like bad odor. She sat whimpering in the chair.
The judge began to gather the papers in front of him.
“Let me tell you something, Dr. Ilgun,” he said finally, glancing at Recht. “Our investigators believe the hijacker, Samir Haddad, offered them their best chance to thwart the 9/11 attack. And that you offered them the best chance to thwart Sami Haddad. I am inclined to agree with them.”
When she finally got home that night, drained and exhausted, she still seethed with anger. The nerve of that devil to trample on her personal life so viciously! What right did he have to question her about her most closely guarded secrets, when they had nothing to do with any of this! A bald-headed, stone-hearted, squirrelly-eyed infidel like him could never understand a secret Islamic marriage that was never really a marriage anyway. And her pregnancy and her psychological problems! Her schoolgirl religious studies flashed through her mind. Let not Satan hinder you. Verily he is to you a plain enemy.
Lying awake that night, Karima wondered if she had ever really been in love with Sami Haddad. How can anyone be in love with half a man? Yes, it was true that she knew about his other life. Not the full dimensions of it. She was just learning those from his tapes. She had tried to ferret it out. She had confronted him. She remembered the exchanges vividly.
“Sami, I want to meet your friends.”
“Sami, why on earth are you growing that ugly beard?”
“Come off it, Sami. You’re not really the religious type.”
“Tell me something, Sami. What do you mean by this word jihad?”
What more could she have done? What more should she have done? She rolled her memories back through her mind, as if they too were on tape, and she could stop the tape at random and insert something she should have said. But she had only sniped at him. Potshots—that’s all she had taken. When he grew angry or deflective, she had always pulled back, afraid that pursuing the issue would cause another breakup. She had never confronted him full bore with her suspicions. Now she imagined what she should have said.
“Sami, sit down and stop your posturing! We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, even if it takes all night.”
Perhaps that was her crime. All too willingly,
she had been swayed by her feelings for him. He had corrupted her and made her an accomplice in his crime. If he was a master criminal, she was the supreme victim. How could she reconcile the side of Sami she had loved with Sami Haddad the mass murderer?