Back in his hotel room, he remembered that Mohammed Atta, the famous World Trade Center hijacker, had been a student of urban planning in Hamburg, in Germany. Was there a connection between the two things—terror and planning? It was possible. Atta, in his religious way, had wanted to design the perfect Islamic city—his thesis was on Aleppo, in Syria. In the end, though, his urge to design took a different form—he brought down the twin monstrosities of the towers over Manhattan, and there, in a single day, he accomplished what no other planner could have, erasing the cold shadows of those vile boastful buildings from the sun-filled streets of the city. Did Atta think of his task this way? Did he realize he was doing in death what he could never do in life—putting his degree into practice?
As Ayub sat on the hotel bed, his hands became damp. He felt he was intimately connected, in that moment, to Atta—felt that he might even be him, the dead man’s spirit somehow invading his. And what is the difference between him and me? he thought. Atta too had a gaunt, Tauqeer-like, Skeletor look about him. A young student abroad, alienated from German society, he had strong convictions and beliefs about his home, Cairo, but no way to implement them. So, growing from within, leaping angrily across the Atlantic, he smashed the high locks on the gates of the West—but for what, exactly? Ayub had thought about this often since joining the group. Earlier he’d felt the attack was just revenge against American imperialism, but now he’d come to see that the reasons for such aggression would have to be idiosyncratic, personal. Did Atta wish to make a name for himself in history? Did he think this was the only way to enter al-Qaeda’s name into American consciousness? Or did he feel—as Tauqeer suggested about India—that America, in beginning two retaliatory wars, would end up ruining its economy and self-immolating? Was it really economic? As Ayub thought these things through in the hotel, with its softly thudding rats and the throttled, overused soap visible in the bathroom on its steel holder, he was convinced this could not be the case. There was too much blood involved—blood tossed against the mile-high windows of the WTC like a libation—for the reasons to not be emotional and hotheaded, even if it took the hijackers a year of training to accomplish their goals. Killing others and then yourself is the most visceral experience possible. Atta must have felt himself full of sexual hate for the people piled high in the towers, bodies in a vertical morgue. He saw the opening between the two towers as a vagina into which to shove the hard-nosed dick of the plane. Sitting at the controls, his curly hair tight on his skull, eyes rubbery, underslept, blackly circled, he must have seen someone appear at the window and look at him—a woman, maybe, a blond American woman. At that moment he got an erection. At that moment he slammed into her alarmed face.
On the day of the blast, Ayub went to the local mosque and prayed, worrying the entire time that he was being noticed. He wanted to phone his parents, but he’d been expressly forbidden from making contact. He was to play it safe, treat it like any other day, and for this reason, after he’d prayed and the sun was up and the day had begun in its thousand polluted particularities, he called Mansoor and told him that he had thought about it some more and he would like to talk to his father about the job after all.
“OK, boss,” Mansoor said, his heart leaping at how far his friend had sunk. If Ayub worked for his father, then he was truly not competition anymore; he had been removed from the nervy world of activism. “Just remember, he’s a little brusque sometimes. He shouts at people who work for him but he’s well meaning. And because of the court case, I’m not sure how much he’ll be able to pay you.” Actually the case was beginning to go well. After a year of threatening and frothing and refusing to show up for hearings, the Sahnis had phoned Sharif the other day and asked if he would consider settling out of court. At first, Sharif, injured and doubly cautious, refused to engage with them. “How do we know it’s not a trick?” he asked Afsheen. “Last time we trusted them you know what happened. And this must mean we’re winning—that they’re coming to us with their tails between their legs. No. I don’t want to talk to them. Let them spend their money on the case.”
“You’re spending your money too,” Afsheen said. “We should at least talk to them.”
“What, so you can accuse me of being pushy? I don’t want to. I want to follow the law of the land this time.”
But he was only being petulant, both Afsheen and Mansoor knew. He would come around eventually. He was famous for always saying no and then coming around. So the family was in a good mood when Ayub called.