by James Reston
From afar, she’d seen him through the glass corridor of the Tampa Airport, tanned and fit. He had frosted his hair, and his aviator glasses hung low around his neck by a pastel Croakie, a Tommy Bahama shirt hanging loose over his athletic frame. When he spotted her, he’d flashed his wonderful grin. She’d looked forward to being with him immensely. They were good at reunions.
That was the good dream. It was her fantasy that this was the total person—that this was the real Sami when he was free to be himself.
And then there was the nightmare.
She had not been at her best in late July. Her persistent summer cold with a hacking cough had interfered with the romantic moments, and she was feeling real pain in her throat—a sign that she would soon need that tonsillectomy. She had greeted him warmly, and they made love that night with all the excitement and enthusiasm of the past. But for the next three days she was under the weather, and when she got better, she announced that she could not take off the full two weeks from work. Her vacation days were depleted. They’d had their first quarrel.
While she rested, he receded into a corner and “worked” on her computer and took long walks. It was then, she found out later, he’d visited the website about “joining the caravan.” Once she had risen from her bed, groggy and dizzy from her medication, and crept up on him for a surprise hug, only to see over his shoulder an image of an airplane crashing into a skyscraper in a Hollywood movie.
“Hey, Sami, nice going!” she had said with a laugh.
He’d turned on her with a crazed look she did not recognize, as if some terrible secret had been exposed. More than startled—she had terrified him. When she put her arms around him affectionately, he recoiled.
“You know, Karima,” Recht was saying to her now, “he wanted you to save him.”
“To save him?”
“Yes, to rescue him from the trap he was in. He knew he couldn’t do it by himself. In his mind, he was putting the entire burden on you.”
“But how was I to know?’
“There was no way for you to know.”
“If only he had said something …”
“Yes, if only he had said something.” Recht muttered. He didn’t dwell on what might have flowed from that. “If he had only said something actionable.”
From the moment of her witnessing him transfixed by the freeze frame of a burning skyscraper on his computer, Sami had withdrawn. He’d viewed her with suspicion, casting sidelong glances at her, acting as if he were a cornered animal. The tiniest tiff had turned into a raging argument. They’d quarreled and pouted and apologized and made love joylessly. The glow of Florida faded, and there they were again, almost an old married couple, up and down, hot and cold, guarded even in their happiest moments.
A few days before she was to return to Germany, Sami was again pacing his apartment, and Karima attempted to confront him.
“Sami,” she had said, “sit down. I want to talk.”
Warily, he’d obeyed.
“What’s going on, Sami?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re so jumpy. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. We’re not connecting.”
He’d looked at her with a blank expression. “Well, you haven’t exactly been at your best either.”
“I’m sorry I’ve got this cold. I know I haven’t been much fun to be around.”
“No.”
She could feel her heart pounding as she took his hand and kneeled in front of him.
“Sami, I want you to come back with me to Germany.”
His eyes wandered to the window. “I haven’t finished my training,” he’d said.
“You could finish it there. These long absences are killing us. It’s taking longer and longer to get back on the same page. You feel so far away from me.”
“I’m almost done. Just a few more weeks.”
“Are we still going to your sister’s engagement party in Beirut?”
“When is that, again?” he asked.
How could he not remember? Her family was planning a big celebration. They had talked about it often. “Late September,” she said. “September 26.”
“Late September. Yes, of course, I should be finished by then.”
Again, she’d fixed her eyes on his. “Sami, look at me. If you want to finish your training here, I want to stay in Florida. I’ve already talked to my supervisor about a leave of absence. We could be together in the next month until you get your certificate.”
“You would abandon everything for my sake?”
“Not forever. We could fly on to Beirut for the wedding, and then afterwards, figure out what to do next.”
She’d thought she’d seen panic in his eyes. “It would be wonderful to have you with me, yahabibti,” he’d said. “But it’s just too complicated. Really, I have to focus.”
Recht listened to her story impassively. “There are things you don’t know, Karima,” he said.
She did not hear him, still possessed by might-have-dones and should-have-dones. As she worked herself into hysteria, it was as if she had taken this entire history of the attack on her shoulders. “Aren’t they saying that the dissension in Florida between Sami and Atta had posed the greatest threat of all to the plot?” she shrieked. “Aren’t they saying that if only Karima Ilgun had turned him from his course … If only I had gone to the authorities … If only I had exposed it all? If only—if only—if only ….”
“Calm down, Karima. STOP. Get ahold of yourself.” Recht grabbed her by the shoulders. “None of that is true! You are not a clairvoyant!”
And then she grew quiet, turning away from him with a terrifying calmness.
“If only I had not had that abortion,” she said in a soft voice. “If only I had had his child.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Recht said.
“He drifted away from me after that.”
“He was drifting away anyway!” he protested.
“No, a child would have bound him to me. He would never have abandoned me … and his child. Our child would have made the difference.”
She burst into tears and fell into his arms.
“There are things you don’t know,” he said again, holding her tightly. “There are things you just don’t know.”
When Recht came to her door the next night, Karima ferociously blocked his way.
“What things?” she demanded.
“Excuse me?” he replied, startled.
“What things don’t I know?”
Recht looked at her quizzically.
“Günther!”
He raised his hands in supplication. “Give me a chance to catch my breath, will you?”
She stepped aside, put her hands on her hips, and watched him shuffle to the couch. As he sat down, he exhaled loudly.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” he said.
“What’s not fair?”
“That you won’t let me smoke while we talk about such profound things.”
“Okay, talk. If your talk is good, I’ll let you smoke afterwards.”
They eyed one another warily. “Okay,” he said gruffly. “Let’s get on with this.”
She switched the machine on. No words came at first, only far in the background the throbbing, repetitive chant of an Arabic singer. Karima recognized the Hamas anthem, and the phrases the wolf has entered your house, the law of the jungle decides the fate of man, and the only solution lies in the tenets of the Koran.
Sami’s first words were flat and cold. Before he was through his first sentence, Karima heard a tone that she had heard only once before, that night in Greifswald, when he’d said to her Gretchen, “Tonight we eat together. Tomorrow I will take you out of the picture.” Recht, too, recognized that tone. He had heard it before too, through the static of airborne communications, cockpit to passengers, recorded on the ground by the Cleve
land air traffic control center. For more than a year that voice was burned in his brain.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Here is your captain speaking …”
August 8, 2001
“I’ve been back for three days. I’m putting my doubts aside once and for all, preparing myself for my own personal Battle of Badr. I am purifying my soul.
“Do not be sad. By your love, you tried to turn me away from this course. I absolve you of any responsibility in my historic act, yahayati. I proclaim your innocence, and I love and admire and honor your strength and your virtue. I do this entirely on my own. This is my choice. I alone am responsible.
“My oath binds me to Osama bin Laden. I’m guided by the trust that has been placed in me. I am the instrument of my people. At last, I connect myself with the history of my clan and my region. I have not been a good Muslim. I have failed in my duty to my faith all my life. Including my duty to jihad. By this act, I end my inner struggle.
“Omar says that doubt and inner guilt and anxiety are vanities of the unbeliever. These feelings are un-Islamic and must be laid aside. If the fatwa of Osama bin Laden is wrong, if I kill Americans wrongly, thinking, just because Osama bin Laden said so, that it was my duty as a good Muslim to do this, then the blame lies not with me but with Osama bin Laden. I will be absolved of all crime, as merely a courageous warrior in a misguided cause. And my victims will go immediately to heaven and live in joy through eternity.
“I am ready for my Day of Judgment. Whatever will happen is inevitable. Whatever happens is God’s will, for His hand is everywhere.
“Farewell, Karima, my love, my life, my heart.
“Atta has returned from Spain and his meeting with Omar. Our targets are finalized. My target is confirmed. The Faculty of Fine Arts.
“The date is set as well: a lollipop, a slash, and two toothpicks.”
Karima slumped back on the couch, drained and dizzy.
“That’s all? That’s the end?” she whispered.
“On your tapes, perhaps, but no, that is not the end,” Recht answered.
“What else could there be? He was lost. He was lost after his visit with me.”
“No, my dear, he was lost long before that.”
“You can have your smoke now,” she said ruefully.
“Let’s take a walk, Karima. There’s a full moon.”
They walked along narrow winding, cobblestone byways toward the heart of the city. At a cross street, she stopped and looked at him. “See, you hounded me, Günther. You put me on trial. I told you I knew nothing.”
“That is not the end,” he repeated.
The air was moist with the promise of spring, bringing new life and new possibilities. Strollers were out in force. Well-dressed, elderly gentlemen with their well-coiffed ladies meandered along arm in arm, taking the night air. As she noticed them, Karima took Recht’s arm as well.
“We are an odd couple,” she said.
When they reached the river, they stopped to gaze out at the silhouettes of the sailboats, secure in their overnight moorings. After a long silence, he finally spoke up.
“I have said many harsh things to you along the way,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I was just being a policeman, challenging you, hoping to discover your secret.”
“You accused me of being responsible for the entire catastrophe of 9/11.”
“Yes. That was unfair. There are others far more responsible.”
She did not seem to hear his last remark. “What else don’t I know? You must tell me.”
He paused. “Well for one … after your visit to Florida, Sami did go back to Germany briefly.”
“He went back to Germany … after me?”
“Yes, Atta drove him to the Tampa Airport. For them to be seen together broke all their operational rules, but they knew that Sami’s possible defection was a major crisis. And on the other end, Omar met him in Dusseldorf and spent hours with him. They threatened him. They let him know in the most graphic detail what they would do to him and to you and to his family and yours if he pulled out. From that point forward, through his whole visit with you, and all the way into the cockpit for Flight 93, he was driven by fear.”
“Not by commitment or his oath or any sort of ideology?”
“That is so.”
“How do you know this, Günther?”
“What was your answer to the judge? ‘I know it in my heart.’ They were gangsters, and I’ve had a lot of experience with gangsters.”
“But what about his oath, and the trust placed in him, and setting aside his doubts?”
“I don’t believe a word.”
“Not even his reprieve of me?”
“Oh yes, I believe that. But the rest? He was trying to put a noble face on it. It was more comfortable to present himself to you as a hero to the Arab peoples rather than the frightened, cornered, tormented wretch he was.”
“He spoke of martyrdom.”
Recht stopped to extract another cigarette from his crumpled pack.
“You can’t stop martyrs. All you can do is reduce their number. I read that line once in a novel,” he said.
“He seemed to have come to terms—”
“Oh, please,” Recht responded in annoyance. “He was not ready for his Day of Judgment.”
“But they had a backup,” she insisted. “You said so yourself. They had this Algerian.”
“Al-Sahrawi is a loathsome little maggot, totally unreliable. They had only contempt for him and were trying to figure out how to terminate him with the most extreme prejudice. Zacarias Al-Sahrawi was no Sami Haddad. They were right to worry.”
In the distance they heard a tugboat’s horn and then the clang of a buoy, bouncing in the sharp waves of the North Sea.
“Listen. On August 29, Sami was in Washington. He had come to scout his target, and for some reason to apply for a Virginia driving license. He had never seen the US Capitol before, except in the movies. He and Ahmad strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, and they fell in with a group of tourists.”
“Tourists?”
“Yes. From Kansas. They listened to a guide speak of the Capitol as America’s “Temple of Liberty” and how George Washington laid the cornerstone, and the guide quoted Lincoln saying that ‘if the people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend this Union shall go on.’”
“Abraham Lincoln? During the American Civil War?”
“Yes, that’s when they were finishing the Capitol. The Kansas couple were in the group, and we have their statements. The husband remembered the two Arab men on their tour—one handsome, the other small and ugly. The handsome one kept fiddling with a device. At first, the husband thought it was a cell phone, but then he saw it was a GPS. As the group meandered up a walkway, the husband remembered remarking to the Arab visitors about how beautiful the Capitol is, and his wife leaned over to them and said, ‘it’s beautiful because of its idea.’”
Recht stole a glance at Karima. She trudged on, staring straight ahead. Finally, she said, “Poor Sami.”
“He was thinking about only one thing,” Recht said.
“One thing?”
“About what it was going to be like to see the ribs of that dome right in front him through the cockpit window.”
“Do you think he was insane?”
“Not entirely. He made one last attempt to get someone else to stop his ‘caravan.’ He rented a car in Washington.”
“I read about that. They found a copy of Penthouse magazine in the trunk.”
“I would not take that personally, Karima. Listen to what Atta did on his last night. He left his Koran in the strip joint where he was throwing down one scotch after another.”
“I don’t care about Atta,” she said.
Recht nodded his understanding. “And on Sami’s drive toward Newark,” he continued. “he hiked his speed
up over 140 kilometers an hour north of Baltimore. Of course, he was stopped by the police. Even on an interstate in America, that’s going to get noticed.”