When we visited the family, I asked the young man’s mother the same question I’d put to Amer’s father: Had she known her son’s friends?
“No. How should I know them?” she asked. “Our home is not large enough for his friends to come here. We are not rich.”
She said her son had attended the same mosque that Amer’s father had mentioned, and he listened to the same imam.
“The imam is living just here in the neighborhood, not far from us,” the young man’s father said.
I asked if he could show us the way, but he said he had a better idea. “Let me get him for you.” He stood up and left the house, returning five minutes later with a man in a sparkling white tunic and wide-legged pajama pants.
“As’salam alaikum,” the imam said. “I heard you were looking for me.”
He had glasses and a beard, and his skin was very dark, almost black. He didn’t seem the slightest bit aggressive. In fact, he was very friendly. His name was Ahmad Salah, but he went by Abu Anas. We learned that Zarqawi had prayed at his mosque before leaving to fight in Iraq. Michael and I couldn’t believe our luck.
Our host invited the imam to sit and offered him coffee. Abu Anas said the young engineering student had prayed at his mosque and tutored youngsters in the Koran. He said that if he had known his plans, he would have tried to talk him out of going to Iraq.
“It’s very difficult at the moment,” Abu Anas said. “If you do a suicide operation, the Muslims are mixed up with non-Muslims, and maybe you [will] kill Muslims.”
But he didn’t consider the Shia to be Muslims. Like Abssi, he called them Rafidah, an insulting term. In his view, the Shia were killing Sunnis, which made them legitimate targets for retribution. “They hate Sunnis and will do everything to destroy us. That’s their mission,” he said.
As I translated, I noticed the lanyard around Michael’s neck. I knew that he liked to carry important documents and flash drives on a lanyard, and the one he wore today was yellow with green Arabic lettering.
I knew this lanyard. We had bought it together in the Dahia neighborhood in Beirut a month earlier. Lots of fighters and their families from the Shia militia Hezbollah lived in that area, and the neighborhood had its own security service provided by the group.
On one of our visits to the neighborhood, our driver, Hussein, took us to a shop that sold Hezbollah flags, books, and DVDs featuring the speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. There were lighters, wallets, and computer cases, all with the yellow flag and green Arabic letters of “Hezbollah”; some even had pictures of Nasrallah’s face. The store also sold lanyards that people used to carry keys. “That is very practical for flash drives,” Michael said. We bought some, along with a few other souvenirs, as tongue-in-cheek gifts for colleagues back in New York.
Now Michael was speaking to a preacher who had clearly inspired young men to fight in Iraq and who couldn’t help showing his hatred against the Shia. I needed to warn Michael before anyone else noticed.
“Sheikh, what do you think about Hezbollah?” I asked the preacher. They had been heroes to many Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, during their war with Israel, so it seemed fair to ask.
“Hezbollah? They are the devil’s soldiers. They hate us. They are very bad, and anyone who supports them is an enemy of Islam.”
I turned to Michael to translate. I spoke much more slowly and in a louder voice than usual.
“He says, Hezbollah”—I pronounced the word very slowly—“are the devil’s soldiers, they hate us, they are very bad and anyone who supports them”—now my eyes opened wider and I put my hands up at my neck while looking at Michael—“is an enemy of Islam.”
Michael looked at me questioningly. “Okay,” he said and then made small circles next to his head, as if to say, “Are you nuts, or what?”
“He said Hezbollah is very bad, you got that right? Enemies of Islam.”
He still didn’t get it, so I turned toward him and whispered, “Dude, you are wearing the Hezbollah band around your neck. Go to the bathroom and take it off.”
Michael nodded and excused himself.
“So you are working on a story about Zarqa?” the sheikh asked me when Michael was gone.
“In fact, Sheikh, it’s about the boys who have left and their families and all who knew them.”
“You must come for tea today to my house. I can show you more of what these Shia are doing to us, these Rafidah,” he said.
“Thank you, Sheikh. We are happy to visit you at home.”
“You don’t need to call me ‘Sheikh,’” he said. “Just call me Abu Anas.”
When Michael came back from the bathroom, I saw that the lanyard was gone.
*
DURING THE TIME we’d worked together, Michael and I had grown close. When I visited the United States, he invited me to his home in Brooklyn, where I met his wife, Eve, and their two sons. I had promised Eve that Michael’s security and safety would be the priority wherever we went.
But the more time we spent in Zarqa, the more unsettled I felt. I watched the faces of residents in Abu Anas’s neighborhood when they saw an American man walking with an Arab woman in an abaya. I saw anger and hatred in their eyes: What are those two doing here?
In his home, Abu Anas showed us a newly released video titled “The True History and Aims of the Shia.” It showed Shia clerics in Iraq and Iran apparently insulting Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as some of the Prophet’s companions. It was impossible to tell whether the video had been manipulated, but according to the voice-over the men were calling Aisha a prostitute. Their anger at Aisha had its roots in the old schism between Sunni and Shia Islam.
The video showed scenes of Sunnis tortured and killed by a Shia militia in Iraq. Sunnis from Iraq spoke about the alleged abuses and asked their “Sunni brothers” to come and help. The video clearly enraged Abu Anas. The Shia “have traditions that are un-Islamic and they hate the Sunnis,” he told us. “We didn’t see the Shia like that before, but now in Iraq, they showed their real face.”
When the Shia in the video insulted Sunni caliphs, calling them sons of whores, Abu Anas turned to me. “Did you hear what they said about Abu Bakr and Omar?” he asked.
“Yes, I did, but Sheikh, not every Shia thinks like that, and then there are even Shia from the Ahl al-Bayt, descendants of the Prophet, and you said you honor the Prophet, no?” I was thinking of my mother and her family.
“Well, the Ahl al-Bayt, that is something different,” he said. “They are not like the other Shia.”
He turned back to the screen. “See, see how they torture Sunnis in Iraq?” he said. “They hate us and the Americans are helping them. They didn’t stop them.”
He offered more tea. “Are you not married?” he asked me.