by James Reston
“He wanted the fancier car.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say in that last call?”
“He confirmed that he had received the extra money he had asked for.”
“Extra money?”
“Yes, I was sending him $2,000 a month to support his studies. He had asked for another $3,000.”
“Wait a minute, he wanted $3,000 more, only a few days before 9/11?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
The old gentleman paused. “He said it was for fun.”
“For fun.” Karima whispered the words. For fun? Was it possible? Was it just remotely possible that in the sickness of his last days, he was actually enjoying his deception, his duplicity, betraying even his own father and mother? For fun. And then she caught herself. Of course! Money for his escape. Why had she been so stupid? Oh Sami, why am I always doubting you! You were planning to bail out! And you needed money!
The camera moved in for a close-up, and she looked again at the wreckage of his father’s face. “We were not able to talk to Karima for many days after the event.”
“Nobody is able to talk to her,” the reporter groused.
“When we finally did speak, I asked her a very direct question. Did Sami know Mohamed Atta and this other portly fellow who is suspected?”
“What did she say?”
“Absolutely not. Sami did not know those men.”
“She was absolutely sure.”
“Yes.”
She had told them that just to reassure them, that’s all. They were all in shock and denial and pain in the first few weeks. It was an act of kindness. No one can be held responsible for anything they say at a time like that, can they?
“We are quite sure that Sami had nothing to do with the terrorist plot,” his father was saying. “He’s not that kind of person. Besides, he was not that brave.”
“Not that brave.” Again, Karima whispered the words. What did bravery have to do with it? The words of Bush from the television rang her in ears, condemning the “cowardly act” of the hijackers. Not that brave? Whatever else his act may have been, there was bravery there, she thought.
“How can you be so sure?” the reporter was saying.
“We know him well. He was raised well, with good values, in a good family.”
“You mean, by nature, he was not a risk-taker?”
“No, never. He was a cautious boy. He must have been just one of the passengers, off on some pleasure trip. Perhaps he was kidnapped.”
“He did not fit the profile of the terrorist?”
“No way. We have heard the voice from the cockpit on Flight 93, the voice that told the passengers that they had a bomb on board. It is not Sami’s voice! He had a very distinctive voice. He was French-educated, after all.”
“By Christian teachers.”
“Yes. And besides, he was not qualified to fly a 767. Only a Cessna Piper Cub. I have talked with his Florida instructor.”
“The $3,000? How do you explain that?”
“Why would Sami ask for money just days before, just days before …” His voice trailed off.
The reporter let these rationalizations roll out unchallenged.
“Do you think he is in Paradise?” he asked.
The old man’s gaze drifted to the horizon as he struggled to control himself.
“Like us all, he must face the Apostle of Allah. We have prayed for forgiveness of sin, as we do for all who die.”
“But do you consider him a martyr?”
“I think he was a victim. He was merely a passenger in a doomed plane. We’re sure of it. The Prophet did not offer forgiveness to the martyrs of the Battle of Uhud.”
“The Battle of Uhud was a setback for Muslims.”
“Yes.”
“What if he was a suicide? … and he was a terrorist?”
The old man’s eyes dropped to his hands, folded in his lap. His next words came slowly, his sentences modulated. “Whatever he was or whatever he did, we honor his rest. If he is really dead, we hope for his entrance into heaven. We pray that he may be protected from hellfire. We pray that he be cleansed with water and snow and hail, and that he be cleansed of sin, like the prayer says, as a white garment is cleansed of dirt.”
The reporter paused and glanced at his notes. After a moment, he dropped his sympathetic look.
“I have just one final question,” he said. “According to FBI records that Eyes Only has obtained, between February 28 and September 8, 2001, you, Mr. Haddad, talked by phone to your son, Sami, seventy-eight times. How do you explain this?”
The accusation hung in the air, stark and unanswerable. Surprise froze the stricken patriarch’s face as he stammered to repeat the question, but the audience never heard the answer as the program cut to a commercial.
When the show resumed, the reporter was blathering on with his wrap-up, now the mantra of the entire press corps: Sami Haddad was a puzzle, an enigma, a mystery. He was a young man with many opportunities. His mind was beyond knowing. Karima had heard it all before. She reached to turn the set off, and then she saw herself on the screen.
“Next week, the girlfriend,” and another picture of her flashed up on the screen. “What is this woman hiding?” the reporter said dramatically. “And why are the police hiding her?”
June 30, 2001
“My meeting with Mohammad Atef was a milestone. Everything that had happened before reeked of fantasy. I never believed until recently that ‘this thing,’ whatever it is, could really happen. In Hamburg we were a bunch of puffed-up graduate students. When the four of us strode down the streets of Hamburg, bluffing other students, daring them to challenge our rants, I felt like a genuine mujahin, bent on the destruction of the depraved West, and it made me feel important. Then the trip to see the Mauritanian was like a spy movie, replete with codes and whispers and fictitious names. Even the first weeks in camp in Afghanistan, despite the deprivations, I was becoming fit, climbing over walls, fording streams, shooting a rifle, and crawling through barbed wire. I felt good.
“What was I thinking?! Did I really think that, when my training was over, I would say, thank you very much, Mohammad Atef … Good luck to you, Sheikh … Give Atta the what-for and just walk away? You don’t know these men, Karima. If I walk away now, so late in the game, I know what they would do to my family … and maybe to you.
“Atta has nothing to live for. His path is easy compared to mine. I am blessed with you, my life, my love. I am so honored by your love. And so ashamed for how I have mistreated you. I want to make it up to you. How many men would cry out for joy for such good fortune? They want me to think I’ll be a hero for this act. I’m supposed to think I’ll go to paradise as a martyr. I worry instead that I’ll burn forever in hellfire, taunted by snakes and scorpions.
“I don’t know if I have any decency left. I am Sami Haddad, the one who could not kill a lamb … I have to go now. I hear Atta and Ahmad coming.
Later that evening, June 30, 2001
“My love, my beloved lady, my heart. You are my life and my hope. It’s safe to talk to you some more now.
“It became clear to me that Atta was in Afghanistan before. From the beginning they saw me as an asset that the organization lacked. For two years they have imagined some sort of operation with airplanes, but they didn’t have the people to pull it off. Atta was an urban planner; Fatfat a ship builder; Omar a banker and philosopher. And then suddenly, I meandered into Atta’s circle, a budding airplane engineer. Westernized, an innocent, pining for my girlfriend. Omar was probably in on it from the beginning … and the Mauritanian. Chechnya was a ruse, and the trip to Duisburgwas a charade, staged for my benefit. I realize that now.
“And so, they ignored my sarcasm, my disinterest in jihad, my ignorance of the Koran, my indifference toward America. They brought me along slowly, deliberately. N
ow, Mohammad Atef has taken it to the next step. I can no longer hide on the fringe of the group.
“‘You have finished your basic training,’ Atef said in our next meeting. ‘We can send you right away to the front lines. Or we can put you into elite training. It’s up to you.’
“‘What’s involved in elite training?’ I asked.
“‘The usual,’ the general replied. ‘Motorcycles, machine guns, shoulder-borne missiles, bow guns, techniques of guerrilla warfare. It’s training, Abu Tariq, like in the best military colleges in the world. But we must be sure of your commitment.’
“‘Of course.’
“‘We are investing a great deal in you.’
“‘I understand, yasayyidi.’
“‘We mean to give you a new identity as a true mujahid. And you could be selected for command.’
“I must have bobbed my head up and down like some African bird, because Atef looked at me with disapproval, as if he thought my acquiescence was coming a little too easily.
“‘Let me ask you something, Abu Tariq. Do you know what the word Islam means?’
“‘Not exactly. “Faith,” I guess.’
“‘It means “surrender to the will of God.” God has a plan for you, Abu Tariq. You should never question God’s plan. And that’s what we’re talking about here. Surrender to the will of God, and surrender to the goals of this organization.’
“‘Surrender,’ I repeated.
“‘Yes. You will need to swear a solemn oath.’
“‘What kind of oath?’
“‘An oath of loyalty and obedience to the Sheikh himself.’
“‘Would I get to meet the Sheikh?’
“‘Yes, and swear a personal oath to him.’
“I had sworn oaths before, Karima, to my parents, as a schoolboy to my country, and to you, my darling, as my Muslim wife. But this was different.
“‘The Sheikh,’ Atef went on, ‘has a grand vision for the Islamic world.’
“‘What is that vision, yasayyidi?’ I asked.
“‘To draw the United States into a life-and-death confrontation with all Muslims.’
“That night, as I waited for the other three to return from their forced march, I read the Sheikh’s 1998 fatwa carefully. I had only glanced at it before, as much for show as anything. Now seemed the time to read and consider it more deeply. Then I heard the old bus sputter up to our hut. I put the fatwa down and eagerly awaited the return of my comrades from their all-day hike. When the door opened, Fatfat entered with Atta’s arm draped over his shoulder. Wincing in pain, Atta hopped painfully and gingerly on his good leg, as his bad leg dragged behind him. He was in bad shape.
“‘Ah,’ I said with a big grin. ‘Behold the mujahidin!’
“In the succeeding weeks, I threw myself into my elite training. We learned how to use bigger and more lethal weapons, SAM and Stinger missiles, recoilless and antiaircraft guns, and were given training in explosives and poisons, even sabotage and kidnapping. Our instructor stood behind us, proclaiming verses from the Koran: ‘“When the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. Seize them! Beleaguer them! Lie in wait for them with every stratagem of war!”’
“The hikes through the desert became more frequent and longer, and we had the bad luck to endure these physical tests during Ramadan. At night we were ravenous after a strenuous day without food. Others in our cadre of twenty had greater strength and stamina. I suppose I was the most athletic. Atta struggled, and although I taunted him, I secretly admired his grit. I longed to love the cause just as totally, without reservation.
“In the training, America was an obsession. Not only were all the targets American, but they were given American names. As we took aim on the firing range, the instructor stood behind us and screamed about hitting the American soldier or the American tank. There was more to it than merely target practice; symbolism was important. What would be the point of killing an American soldier in the darkest jungle of Africa? And then he answered his own question: ‘It would have no impact whatever.’ Targets were chosen for their publicity value.
“In the classroom, we three were quicker than the rest. The reading load was heavy. Of course, it began with the life of the Prophet and the early caliphs. The triumphs of Saladin over the crusaders in the twelfth century followed, probably because the Sheikh had a son named Saladin. The defense of the Arab world against the Mongols was mentioned, as was the push of the Ottoman sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, into the heart of Europe. We heard lectures about the Iraqi holy sites of Karbala and Najaf, coveted by the Americans just as they occupied the land of the holiest sites of Mecca and Medina. The glories of ancient Al-Andalus were highlighted.
“One day, an instructor told us, Islam will again be the flower of European culture as it was once in Grenada and Cordoba in the ninth century. We were exposed to Arab poetry, connecting a poetic sensibility to bravery on the battlefield. One instructor told us about the story in Arabian Nights called ‘Ali with the Great Member’ and quoted the line from an Arab African poet named Al Jahiz: ‘If the length of the penis were a sign of strength and honor, then the mule would belong to the honorable clan of the Quraish.’ We all howled at this.
“We were also assigned excerpts from books by American generals on military tactics and by Western diplomats on strategic bottle necks. One excerpt dealt with a report by an American official named Henry Kissinger on his saber-rattling with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia after the 1973 war. When Faisal threatened to reclaim Jerusalem in a holy war, this Kissinger counter-threatened to bomb the oil fields. Go ahead, Faisal told him. ‘We will blow them up ourselves, and we will lose nothing. Because our camels are still here, and our milk, and our dates. We will survive. You will be the big loser.’ This heroic response elicited cheers when the instructor read it out in class.
“But of all the instruction in the elite course, I remembered best the warning about personal relationships. If we were truly committed to jihad, if we were truly ready to surrender ourselves to God and to the Sheikh, if we were truly brothers in the pure Islamic state, we were to sever all ties with family and loved ones. Our past identity was past. Sami Haddad had ceased to exist. Abu Tariq al Libnani was married to al-Qaeda now. Henceforth, our comrades were our brothers, and our father was the Sheikh. Our devotion was to our one true God, to our glorious culture and civilization, and to the painful history of Islam and the Arab peoples.
“I listened, but knew in my heart that I could never, would never, discard my past, because of my love for you.
“As the end of Ramadan approached, we counted the days until we could break our fast. As a reward for our sacrifice and hard work, it was announced that the Sheikh would be coming to mark Eid al Fitr. He would lead our prayers, beseeching Allah to accept our fasting. Having no money, we would pay our Zakat-al-Fitr as a charity in the form of dates and barley, to make Eid more joyful for the poor and alleviate their suffering.
“It was hinted that the Sheikh would also tell us about the ‘big operation’ that was coming.”
For her listening she decided it was time for her to make a ritual out of the séance. She gathered a few aromatic candles in glass cups, put them on her coffee table next to her recording machine, and lit a stick of incense. As she went about her arrangements, she switched on the television to Al Jazeera, absent-mindedly.
The channel interrupted its normal programming for a news flash. Osama bin Laden’s top aide, Abdel Muaz the doctor, had been killed, and bin Laden himself was thought to be trapped in a mountain cave at a place called Tora Bora. And then the station was promoting an end-of-the-year exclusive: a secret interview with the two masterminds of 9/11, Omar and Muktar.
Omar interviewed with Muktar! Could that mean Omar was not in Germany but somewhere in the Middle East! Or could it be the other way around, with both of these dangerous characters in Germany? Of course,
Omar didn’t have to be in Germany to pull these strings. The program said nothing about the venue of the interview or when it had been conducted. She made a note to ask Recht. She hoped the television would carry pictures. What do these two really look like? she wondered. By now, she almost felt she knew them. But there was only audio with a translation of their disjointed comments scrolling down the screen, as if it were all scripted.
“We began to plan for the conquest of New York and Washington two and one half years earlier,” the voice of this Muktar was saying. “We had plenty of brothers filled with the desire to be martyrs.”
“With our brother Abu Tariq, there was a passport problem with his picture. Before he had a beard,” Omar said. “But when he came out of Afghanistan, he was clean shaven. It caused him a problem in Dubai on his way home to Germany. Thankfully, policemen are stupid. With God’s help, our brother accomplished his mission. May God accept and honor his martyrdom.” His voice sounded different, Karima thought, different from his phone messages to her.