The Terrorist’s Son Read online

  • • •

  I’ve spent my life trying to understand what drew my father to terrorism, and struggled with the knowledge that I have his blood in my veins. By telling my story, my intention is to do something hopeful and instructive: to offer a portrait of a young man who was raised in the fires of fanaticism and embraced nonviolence instead. I can’t make any grand claims for myself, but all our lives have themes, and the theme of mine so far is this: Everyone has a choice. Even if you’re trained to hate, you can choose tolerance. You can choose empathy.

  The fact that my father went to prison for an unfathomable crime when I was seven just about ruined my life. But it also made my life possible. He could not fill me with hate from jail. And, more than that, he could not stop me from coming in contact with the sorts of people he demonized and discovering that they were human beings—people I could care about and who could care about me. Bigotry cannot survive experience. My body rejected it.

  My mother’s faith in Islam never wavered during our trials as a family, but she, like the vast majority of Muslims, is anything but a zealot. When I was eighteen and had finally seen a sliver of the world, I told my mom I could no longer judge people based on what they were—Muslim, Jewish, Christian, gay, straight—and that starting right then and there I was only going to judge them based on who they were. She listened, she nodded, and she had the wisdom to speak the six most empowering words I have ever heard: “I’m so tired of hating people.”

  She had good reason to be tired. Our journey had been harder on her than anyone else. For a time, she took to wearing not only the hijab that hid her hair, but also the veil called the niqab that cloaked everything but her eyes: She was a devout Muslim and she was afraid she’d be recognized.

  Recently, I asked my mother if she knew what was in store for our family when she walked out of Bellevue with Ammu Ibrahim on the morning of November 6, 1990. “No,” she told me, without hesitation. “I went from being a mother with a normal life to insanity, to public life, avoiding the media, dealing with the government, dealing with the FBI, dealing with the police, dealing with lawyers, dealing with Muslim activists. It was like a line was crossed. I stepped over it and went from one life to another. I had no idea how difficult it would be.”

  My father is now in the United States penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, having been sentenced to life plus fifteen years with no chance of parole for, among other things, seditious conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, attempted murder of a postal officer, use of a firearm in the commission of a murder, use of a firearm during an attempted murder, and possession of a firearm. To be honest, I still feel something for him, something that I haven’t been able to eradicate—some strand of pity and guilt, I guess, though it’s thin as spider’s silk. It’s hard to think of the man I once called Baba living in a cell, knowing that we have all changed our names out of terror and shame.

  I have not visited my father in twenty years. This is the story of why.

  3

  1981

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Years before she meets my father, my mother falls in love with an atheist.

  She has been raised by my grandmother, a devoted Christian and an even more devoted smoker, who sends her to Catholic school and supports her family by working for Bell Atlantic for decades. My mother has never known her father because he abandoned his family when she was a kid.

  My mother’s a serious Catholic, but there’s so much that she loves and admires about the atheist that she marries him anyway. The union lasts long enough to yield a child, my sister. Eventually, though, she realizes that she can’t raise a child with a man who mocks religion.

  The marriage collapses. Then, unexpectedly, her faith in Catholicism does, too. She’s gone to a priest for advice about some passing matter—she’s known him since grade school—and the discussion has drifted to theology. My mother believes in the Holy Trinity, but admits to the priest that she’s never actually understood it. The priest begins to explain. However, the more questions my mother asks—the hungrier she gets for clarity—the more knotted and unsatisfying his answers become. The priest gets flustered, then angry. My mother hadn’t meant to be combative. She tries to defuse the situation. It’s too late. “If you have to ask all these questions,” the priest scolds her, “then you have no faith at all!”

  My mother is dumbstruck. “I felt as if he’d stabbed me in the heart,” she’ll tell me decades later. Her faith in God is not shaken, but she knows, even as she leaves the rectory, that she is no longer a Catholic. My mother is still in her twenties—divorced now, and studying to be a teacher. She takes her two-year-old daughter and ventures off in search of a new religion to pour her faith into, as well as a new husband.

  Early on in her quest, my mother finds a book about Islam on the shelf of a Pittsburgh library. She visits a local mosque, or masjid, to ask questions, and meets Muslim college students from Afghanistan and Egypt, from Libya and Saudi Arabia—from everywhere. She had no idea how warm and family-centric the community was. The men, in particular, are nothing like the standoffish, coldly masculine Muslim stereotype. They wave happily to my sister as she toddles around.

  In 1982, toward the end of May, my mother sits in a study room upstairs at the mosque. She is about to convert to Islam and has been practicing the Shahada: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his messenger. The creed must be spoken in earnest. It must be cleansed of all doubt and radiate only love and submissiveness. In the back of my mother’s mind, like static on a radio station, she hears the disapproving voice of her own mother, who’s appalled that she has been lured into Islam and has told her that she’ll never be welcome in her house wearing some goddamn scarf around her head. She has literally used the words “What will the neighbors think?”

  My mother pushes the negativity away. Her faith in Islam, her need for it, is already deep and strong. She repeats the Shahada under her breath, over and over, until it reflects what she feels in her heart: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his messenger. There is no god but God . . .

  She is interrupted by Hani, a new friend from the masjid. Hani has been helping my mother on her journey to Islam. He tells her that there’s a men’s prayer circle in the mosque at the moment and they would be honored if my mother would recite the Shahada in front of them—and become a Muslim in their presence.

  My mother’s nerves are already in a knot, and her cheeks bloom red at the thought.

  Hani rushes to explain: “It won’t be scary, or I wouldn’t ask. But they love to watch people convert.” He does not add that watching her convert might be of particular interest.

  “Sarah said she’d sit next to you,” Hani says. “If it makes you more comfortable?”

  My mother consents against her better judgment. Hani tells her she’ll be a huge hit, and she responds by testing out one of her new Arabic phrases: “Inshallah.” God willing. Hani loves it. He beams as he closes the door.

  Downstairs, my mother squeezes her friend Sarah’s hand in solidarity, and then—drawing a deep breath as if she’s diving into the ocean—walks into the mosque. Fittingly, the carpet is the blue-green of waves in sunlight. The walls are decorated with a dense, starry pattern of deep red and gold. The men in the prayer circle are seated on the rug. Some of them wear conventional Western clothing: slacks, even jeans, and button-down shirts. Others wear long, billowy shirts that hang below their knees and round, white skullcaps with needlework in blue and gold. My mother realizes that she knows the word for that sort of cap—taqiyah—and she repeats it in her head to calm down. The prayer circle falls silent. They turn to watch the women approach. For a few agonizing moments, the only sound is my mother’s whispering and Sarah’s socks on the rug. Taqiyah, my mother thinks. Taqiyah, taqiyah, taqiyah.

  She recites the Shahada flawlessly, if in a quavering tone. Only then does her body finally start to relax. Her breathing grows slow and steady again. And, without thinking about whether it’s proper, sh
e steals a look at the men in the room. Her first act as a Muslim! She’s a little ashamed, yes. And yet. One of the men is quite handsome: he looks like an ancient Egyptian in a painting, she thinks. She lingers half an instant too long over his bright green eyes.

  Two days later, Hani tells my mother that a man from the prayer circle is interested in her and would like to meet her. There is no dating in Islam—When a man and a woman are alone together, the Prophet has warned, the third person among them is Satan—so this can only mean he wants to marry her. Marry her! Having heard her utter no more than a dozen words! Hani assures her that the man is a friend. His name is Sayyid Nosair. He is Egyptian. Could he be the Man with the Eyes? She tries to force the thought from her mind.

  Within the week, my mother meets Sayyid for the first time at the home of a Libyan couple named Omar and Rihan. Omar has been acting as her guardian because she has no real relationship with either of her parents. He has already initiated the marriage machinery: He’s met with Sayyid, made inquiries about him within the community, and satisfied himself that he is a good Muslim, that he’s active at the masjid and attends as many prayer services as he can. Now Rihan is placing a tray on the coffee table in the living room—hibiscus juice, baklava, shortbread biscuits dusted with sugar and stuffed with dates—and Sayyid is knocking on the door.

  Omar goes to the door, and Rihan scurries off to get a look at the visitor. My mother sits nervously on the couch. She hears Omar and Sayyid offer each other peace: her guardian saying, “Asalaam alaykum,” her suitor responding more generously than is necessary, “Wa alaykum assalam wa rahmatu Allah.” He is trying to make a good impression, my mother thinks. She smiles to herself, a passage from the Qur’an fresh in her memory: When a greeting is offered, you answer it with an even better greeting, or (at least) with its like. Allah keeps account of all things.

  Rihan scurries back into the living room ahead of the men—she’s more nervous than my mother—and adjusts the cookies. “So handsome,” she whispers. “And such green-green eyes!”

  Within two minutes of sitting down with my mother, my father says shyly, “I guess you know I’m here to talk about marriage.”

  In Egypt, my father studied engineering and industrial design, specializing in metals. He is creative. He can design a ship as easily as a necklace. Though he has been in the States less than a year, he’s found a job at a jeweler’s, where—a few days after meeting my mother—he draws and casts an engagement ring. He spares no expense. The ring is beautiful and heavy. When my mother sees it, her eyes go wide.

  • • •

  My parents marry on June 5, 1982, ten days after meeting for the first time. Such a short courtship sounds ominous, I know—like the prelude to what could only be a tragedy. But the Western world’s routine of sex, love, and marriage—which generally arrive in that order—has yielded its share of misery and divorce. Isn’t it possible that some other set of rituals and expectations, any other set, might work? My mother and father are happy for a time. Truly. My mother has found a man who can teach her Arabic and deepen her understanding of Islam. A devout man. A loving and spontaneous man. A man who loved my sister at first sight—who got down on the floor to play with her the moment they met. My father is striking and painfully thin because he’s been living in a boardinghouse where he’s not allowed to cook. His English is already near perfect, if a bit stately. He has a touch of an Arabic accent. Occasionally, he misspeaks, but the effect is usually comical. He loves spaghetti and meatballs, but refers to it as “spaghetti and balls meat.” My mother can’t help but laugh at this. He isn’t offended. “You are my heart,” he tells her. “It is right that you should correct me.”

  By July, my father has found his new family an apartment in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. My mother feels buoyant for the first time in years. The neighborhood is bustling with culture and full of students like her. Rihan and Omar live close by. The masjid is just a couple of blocks away. My mother and father go shopping arm in arm for food and decorations for the apartment. She asks him what kinds of things he likes. “I like everything you like,” he tells her. “You are the queen of our home, and I want you to arrange everything as you like. If you are happy with everything you pick, I will love it, too.”

  I am born in March 1983, and my brother a year later. When I’m three, Baba takes me to the Kennywood Amusement Park. On the Dizzy Dynamo, we spin around in giant cups. And on the Grand Carousel, we ride the painted horses: my father chooses a gold stallion that glides up and down, while I cling to the neck of a stationary brown pony. Later in the day, on a miniature roller coaster called Lil’ Phantom, my father pretends to be terrified—“O Allah, protect me and deliver me to my destination!”—to distract me from the fact that I actually am terrified. I will always remember this day. It is my earliest memory. Not even the coming nightmares will blot it out.

  • • •

  My father does not harden against America overnight. His bitterness builds slowly, coaxed along by random encounters with ugliness and misfortune. At the mosque, my mother starts helping Rihan with da‘wa—the campaign to bring new converts to the faith. They don’t go door to door or proselytize on the street; they meet with visitors at the masjid, educate them about Islam, and answer the sort of questions that my mother herself once had. Many of the visitors are young American women. Girls, really. Some come to the mosque not because they’re on a spiritual journey but because they’ve fallen in love with a Muslim man. Still, enough genuinely curious seekers come through the doors of the mosque—and ultimately convert—to make my mother’s work with Rihan fulfilling. Sometimes, if the women have nowhere to stay, my family offers them a bed.

  Which turns out to be a mistake. In the fall of 1985, my family welcomes a young woman named Barbara into our home. (I’ve changed her name, since she’s not here to offer her own version of what follows.) Barbara is sullen and erratic, and looks no one in the eyes. She stays with us for months. Barbara doesn’t seem to be truly interested in Islam. Her sister is checking out the religion to make her boyfriend happy, and Barbara is just tagging along. She radiates such an uncomfortable energy that it’s hard even to sit in the same room with her.

  Soon, she is hanging around with what my parents warn her is “a really bad crowd of Muslims” from another neighborhood. My mother tries to marry Barbara off twice, and twice Barbara is rejected after a single meeting. Her self-esteem plummets. She starts sitting in the tub, fully clothed, and crying in the middle of the night. She accuses us, all of us, of stealing her clothes from her room—clothes no Muslim could wear, let alone a child. My father insists that she move out. She does. Less than a week later—apparently acting on advice from her new Muslim friends, who think she might be able to make some money off my family—she accuses my father of raping her.

  There is a rapist loose in Pittsburgh at the moment. Some of his victims have described him as “either Hispanic or Middle Eastern.” The police take Barbara’s allegation with the utmost seriousness. By the time a lawyer friend of my family convinces them that the woman has invented the story, my father has been flattened by fear and humiliation. He has stopped getting into bed with my mother at night. He’s parked his prayer rug by the radiator in the living room, and curled into a ball on top of it. He has stopped eating. All he does is sleep and pray for his safety. Even the members of the mosque don’t know who to believe—they seem to be split down the middle, as far as my mother can tell—which intensifies my father’s pain until it’s like a tumor growing in his stomach. A hearing is held at the masjid. The mosque’s board members are alarmed by the dissent in their midst, and want to settle the matter themselves. They do not trust the American justice system anyway.

  My mother will describe the scene at the mosque for me many years later: Barbara arrives with her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, and a volatile crowd of Muslim friends. The tension is prickly enough that a fight breaks out. My father sits silently, his head lowered, his hands clutching h
is knees. Barbara repeats her accusations—my father raped her and my family stole her clothes—and demands restitution. My mother’s heart breaks for her husband. To have his devotion to Allah questioned in his own mosque!

  A board member asks Barbara to describe my father’s body.

  “Hairy,” she says. “Hairy chest. Hairy back. Hairy.”

  My mother barks out a laugh.

  My father springs to his feet. He addresses the board: “Would you like me to take my shirt off right now so you can see what a liar this woman is?” As fate would have it, his body does not conform to the Middle Eastern stereotype.

  My father is told it will not be necessary for him to disrobe. The board members are convinced of his innocence. To settle the matter, they give Barbara $150 for the clothes she insists were taken. She seems pleased. She and her retinue sweep out of the mosque. As if her lack of respect for Islam wasn’t clear enough, she has worn her shoes inside the mosque the entire time.

  • • •

  My parents try to rebuild their lives in Pittsburgh, but the pieces won’t go back together. For my father, the mortification has been too great. Sadness and exhaustion hang in the air. My mother is too frightened to do outreach anymore. My father cannot face his friends from the masjid. Or anyone else, really. He works. He grows thinner. My only memory of him from this time is of him kneeling on his prayer rug in the living room, doubled over in prayer or pain or both.

  4

  1986

  Jersey City, New Jersey

  In July, we move away from Pittsburgh, and—for a while—our lives are filled with light again. My mother teaches first grade at an Islamic school in Jersey City. My father can no longer find work as a jeweler, but he gets a job at a company that installs stage lighting, and becomes pleasantly pudgy from my mother’s cooking. They grow closer and closer. The Egyptian community in the city is a marvel: there are Arabic stores everywhere, and men in tunics and women in hijab flow through the streets en masse. Our new mosque, Masjid Al-Shams, doesn’t have all the activities for women and families that my mother is used to, but we go regularly for prayers. (I’ve changed the name of the mosque out of respect for its current congregation.) After work, my father picnics with us in the park. He plays baseball and soccer with me in the yard—or a preschool version of it, anyway. A true calm descends on the family. And then one day the principal of the school where my mom teaches calls her into his office, and tells her that everything’s okay, not to worry, it’s going to be fine, but he’s just received a call: My father has been in an accident at work. He’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York.