Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists by Scott Atran Read Free Book Online Page B

The twelve-year-old leads the ten-year-old around, who takes the eight-year-old, who takes my son. Our women work when they can, but if they wear a headscarf, then they’re out, no matter what education or experience they have.”
In fact, I’d found several young women who’d shown me their professional diplomas and said this is what happened to them.
Malik continued, “We all want a better life, a home, a safe place for our children. But some people want to be on top of others, to be rich, and so there are drugs. People are understanding this now. They are starting to become multazim, engaged in religion. That’s when ambitions become humble, and then no one wants to exploit another, and then you can’t help but feel the suffering of your people, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan.”
Suddenly he closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and sputtered: “I swear, if George Bush were here in front of my son, I would shoot him and gladly die. And if I had the means, I would strap a bomb on myself and blow up American soldiers in Iraq even if my son, whom I love more than life, were to grow up without a father. But I have no means to get there. How can we just sit and watch the children at gunpoint with their hands in the air, terrified? Have the Americans no pity on children? I know, not all Americans support George Bush’s war, but he’s the worst criminal in history, he wants the whole world to obey him. It’s a matter of economics—the high-up Jews are behind the war against Muslims. Palestine is the Mother of All Problems. There the people are pure, fighting evil. Some Iraqis allowed the Americans to come in; now look what they have. Sometimes we say that the Iraqis who let in the Americans are hufiyum, they deserve what they got. We never say hufiyum about the Palestinians.”
The others in the park nodded their heads in agreement.
The muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer, and all excused themselves. All across the Muslim world, from Morocco to the Celebes, this haunting call stirs even the spirits of infidels, especially toward evening and in the cities. The clang of daily conflicts quiets into calm, and pointless worries fade. This surface comfort facilitates a deeper and sometimes more disquieting searching of the soul, which the messengers of jihad have learned to piggyback.
“Don’t go away,” said Malik. “I’ll be right back after prayer.”
But first he took me into the Barça Café, sat me down, and ordered tea for me. Al Jazeera was reporting on Iraq. The camera fixed on a man, his eyes wild, his distorted mouth silently screaming, his legs running frantically with no direction, a little girl in his arms, blood and brains streaming from her head. It was not the Fox or CNN video game of the Iraq war, where, in Orwellian fashion, body bags had become even more sanitized “transfer boxes” that no one was ever allowed to see except for the family just before the burial.
“Some things a man can’t take.”
The Café Chicago on Mamoun Street, Mezuak’s main thoroughfare and market street, had fallen on hard times. The old owner had died, and the manager—who also looked as though he had known far better days—groaned that the cheapskate sons who inherited the place won’t pay for supplies and so he can’t offer even his best customers milk for their coffee. He shuffled the empty chairs around the table, muttered something incomprehensible at the television, and moved to where a dozen or so young men were playing a board game called parche, several smoking large hashish cigarettes. Outside, the street was bustling with hawkers selling their wares, people chattering and bargaining over anything and everything, cars beeping everything else that moves to get out of the way, and donkeys hee-hawing in protest. The smell of cumin, the sight of so many women and men dressed in formless cloth, and Arabic music blaring from radios in every other shop, all indicated that this is unmistakably the