The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (28 page)

Because all my new converts were American and had lived all their lives in sin, I did not hit them hard with the rules of Islam. Instead, I directed them little by little—how to pray, how to wash, how to read the Koran.

At first, I saw Antonio every day, always building him up, telling him I was impressed with his progress in the faith. After a couple of weeks, I began teaching a few do’s and don’ts of Islam—no ham, no bacon, that sort of thing. But it was still too early for the higher rules: Do not drink alcohol. Do not use your right hand in the bathroom. Do not look upon women. Do not tolerate a disrespectful woman. Do not tolerate your grandma’s Christianity.

When I learned Antonio had a girlfriend he was sleeping with, I went to her apartment and, towering over her in her doorway, commanded her to break off the relationship completely. “And if I find out you have been calling him, remember, I know where you live.”

Then, to make up for the new lack of sex in his life, I lied to Antonio about how many virgins he would receive in
jannah
for picking up trash at the mosque.

Not every recruit was as easy to harvest as Antonio. But sometimes the difficult ones yielded the sweetest fruit. One evening in 1983, while canvassing city streets, I met a black gang-banger named Solomon. Two-hundred-seventy pounds of solid muscle, he wore a black bandanna like a headband and traveled with a posse. Over a period of months, I learned his reputation as a drug-dealing street king who loved the ladies and ruled his little corner of the city.

Solomon regarded me as a religious man and had apparently told his men not to hassle me when they saw me on the streets. Whenever I ran into Solomon himself, I never failed to invite him to mosque.

Surrounded by his posse, he always listened to my pitch politely, but
then laughed it off. “Why would I want Islam, man? I got everything I need. Dope. Money. And all the women I want.”

Laughter, high fives all around.

But later that year, Solomon was busted for dealing cocaine after his laughing friends ratted him out to the police. And just like that, prison. No ladies, no money, no dope. But I knew he did not need those things any longer. What Solomon needed now was power. I went to visit him in jail before they shipped him off to the penitentiary.

We sat together in a dirty dayroom at a table topped with chipped orange Formica. “Now you are going to prison,” I said. “You are young. You will be fresh meat.”

Solomon stuck out his chin and scowled. “I can take care of myself.”

“What if I told you I know someone on the inside who can help? Someone who helped me once?”

Then I told Solomon about the Muslim Brotherhood.

At the state prison, the brothers gave Solomon a new name: Mustafa. And when he was released from prison two years later, my cell sent Mustafa to a terror camp in Pakistan.

3

A couple of months after putting Mustafa on a plane, I sped down a main city artery with the wind in my hair and the bright urban sun beaming down through my open T-top. The car, a nearly new red Mazda RX-7 had only a little over three thousand miles on it when I bought it through Muslim connections to an American car theft ring.

After a morning at the apartment mosque, I had stopped off at my own apartment to change clothes. I had just leased the apartment in another area of the city, near a college I wanted to penetrate. I was meeting some Moroccans for an early dinner at a Jordanian restaurant and wanted to make a good impression. Since I was still living out of boxes, I bought a new shirt at Dillards and stopped in at the apartment to put
it on. Now, flying south down the expressway, my left hand on the steering wheel, my right hand on the shifter, a sense of blessedness thrummed through my bones. New clothes, hot car, power. I had worked hard in America and made many influential connections. I had a good cover job, women at my whim, and an unending supply of money, all the while advancing the cause of Islam and bringing glory to Allah.

Ahead of me, a black sedan slowed. I downshifted, then nudged the steering wheel left and switched lanes. I hit the accelerator and flashed by the sedan, hugging the grass median strip on my left.

My thoughts drifted back to the Moroccans, a golden opportunity. They were newcomers to the city and, my sources told me, Muslim zealots. I would tell them about the advance of Islam in America. Mentally, I rehearsed the complete speech I had prepared for them. Buy them dinner and the best wine. Hint at the financial backing I could bring. Invite them to join us for prayers. It would be an achievement to add another nation to our growing network. As the RX-7 ate up the black ribbon going south, I mused over my four years here: the Islamic converts I had made, how many I had wooed into the finer parts of the faith, into
jihad
itself. The mapping, the false documents, the money laundering fronts.

And the money—the money. My group had been the conduit for millions of dollars coming into America for the specific purpose of slowly, carefully eating away at America’s infidel Zionist faith, preparing it for the Day of Islam.

My heart danced.
Surely, Allah is pleased with me.

I pressed the accelerator past the forty-mile-per-hour speed limit. I wanted to be a bit early so I could order drinks and hors d’oeuvres before the Moroccans arrived.

On my right I noticed the black sedan again, passing me but drifting left as though the driver did not see me. Then the car veered sharply, sweeping into my path, the driver’s-side door no more than ten feet ahead.

I braked hard and steered left. But the road curved to the right and my tire bit the median curb, lifting me up over the grass.

I was airborne.

“Allah!” I cried.

Reflexively, I jammed both feet into the brake pedal. The car landed hard in the grass and spun clockwise. I squeezed the steering wheel in a death grip and watched, amazed, as time seemed to slow down.

Tick: I watched the lane I had just been in spin by—

Tock: Still spinning, now facing the opposite direction—

Tick: My front end pointed at the northbound lanes, sliding toward heavy oncoming traffic—

Tock: A dirt construction site on the far side of the lanes. Hope flickered—if I could just slip through between cars….

My car was pointed southeast when I slid into the northbound lanes and the grille of a trash truck blocked out the sun.

The 3 Ex-Terrorists were scheduled to speak together at the Air Force Academy in less than eighteen hours, and Zak had been missing for the better part of two days. As the minutes ticked past, my anxiety notched higher and higher. Most people, when a loved one is missing, reasonably hope for the best and imagine the worst. We had good reasons to feel certain of the worst.

Since Zak had been speaking out against radical Islam, jihadists had set fire to his home and his car, and physically attacked both him and his family.

It was part of the risk we all took, a risk that some Americans threw back in our faces with abandon. The day before the AFA event,
The Gazette
published a second story that attempted to discredit us, this time quoting a college professor who specifically called me a “fraud.” Again, the reporter did not bother to ask me my side of the story.

I had just finished reading the story when my phone rang. It was Keith. Zak had called and was okay. “You’re not going to believe what happened,” Keith told me. Zak had decided to fly straight from London through Chicago to Colorado Springs to meet us for the AFA event, instead of stopping off first at his home in Canada. But at O’Hare, his blood sugar had dropped so low that he nearly fell into a diabetic coma.
Airline personnel were able to retrieve his medication from his bags, but the episode left Zak so weak that it was all he could do to dial the phone to let Keith know where he was.

Relief showered my soul. This frail man had carved a special place in my life. He was a kindred soul, a man who like me had thrown down his arms, a brother who understood me exactly. I did not think I could bear it if he were harmed.

The next morning, Walid, Zak, Keith, and I rendezvoused at a hotel in Colorado Springs. By then we had a new problem: During the night, someone had broken through the tinted rear window of Keith’s rented SUV and snatched Zak’s luggage. In a packed hotel parking lot, it was the only vehicle touched.

We did not have time to contemplate whether this was a crime of opportunity or Zak was the specific target: We were scheduled to do an interview on a local CBS morning show. Keith quickly arranged alternate transportation, and we crowded in for the ride to the television studio. Zak was forced to wear the rumpled suit he’d been flying in for two days.

We passed quickly through makeup and waited only moments in the green room until a production assistant ushered us before the cameras and hot lights of the set. The female host ran through introductions, then asked, “How are terrorists getting into the United States?”

I am so glad you asked that question,
I thought.

“Jihadists today do not have to import terrorists,” I said. “The majority of the jihadists in the United States are recruited here from poor neighborhoods, universities, and jails. The Muslim Students Association and other groups operate in hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States. Their members are not all radicals, but the radicals among them are busy recruiting new members.”

We’d entered the CBS studio before sunrise. After the interview, we stepped out into chilly sunshine. Less than thirty minutes later, we arrived at the Air Force Academy. Pine-covered foothills sloped up into higher peaks capped in blankets of snow. Military police had configured the academy entrances for heightened security, with concrete barriers forming an S-shaped gauntlet meant to frustrate would-be car bombers. We snaked through with the rest of the traffic. At the guard
house, armed MPs arranged for a public affairs officer to escort us into the heart of the institution.

Our first stop was a briefing room where a general laid out the ground rules for our talk. We were prohibited, he said, from talking about Christianity and party politics.

I asked a question. “Can I talk about how I came to leave
jihad?
That story involves my conversion from Islam to Christianity.”

“I don’t have a problem with you telling your own personal story,” the general said. It was proselytizing he didn’t want.

Which was fine with us, because that’s not what we wanted either. We only wanted to warn Americans that vipers were living among them—and that the vipers were laughing.

1

As the image of the truck grille filled my window, events sped up, then flashed past like scenes in a movie trailer: the truck’s right headlight exploded through my passenger window, showering me with glass. My body slammed up and forward, tearing the seatbelt loose. The impact ejected me from my seat even as the truck still pushed the RX-7 north. My ribs, then thighs, then knees, ripped over the steering wheel as I catapulted up through the open T-top.

I don’t remember flying through the air. I only remember plunging head first into a mud hole, the weight of my body hammering my head into the ground like the point of a stake. Pain slashed into my neck. Then, like the falling tower, my body arced all the way over and my back smashed on the ground. Bright flecks of light swam in my vision, but I did not lose consciousness.

I tried to get up, but could not move.

Allah, where are you!

From my bizarre position, I could see legs running toward me.

Allah, I have done mighty things for you! Do not abandon me now!

One set of legs turned into a face as a man in a blue T-shirt knelt beside me, using his body to shield my face from the sun.

“Everything is going to be all right,” the man said in a gentle south
ern accent, his blond hair backlit by the sun. “We’re going to take care of you.”

Through bleary eyes, I saw that the man’s eyes were the bright blue of an autumn sky. He smiled at me. Angry at my own helplessness, I wanted to hit him.

Then a crushing thought:
the Moroccans! I have lost the Moroccans.

I would not have another chance to impress them. My neck was probably broken, but I was more concerned about losing the opportunity to add zealots to our network.

The man with the gentle voice continued to annoy me with his irritating smile. “My name is Brian,” he said.

Again, I tried to pull away, but pain pierced my neck like stabs from a dagger. I found I could not move my extremities at all. Fear roared in like a dragon, fear such as I had not known since the Golan Heights. Brian must have sensed my distress because he said, “Don’t try to move. Somebody’s already called an ambulance. We don’t want to move you because you might have a neck injury. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to take care of you.”

Silently, I vowed to break
his
neck if he said that again. Mud crept into the corner of my eye, stinging, blurring my vision. Instantly, the man stood, stripped off his T-shirt and knelt to clean my face with it. The dagger sawing into my neck now sprouted a second blade and attacked my brain. Blood thumped in my ears, and the drumbeat was excruciating, maddening. Slowly I realized I could no longer feel my arms and legs. What could I have done to make Allah so angry with me?

I am your great warrior! I have done mighty works for you!

Dimly, as I heard the high, faint thread of a siren somewhere far away, I began to whisper the sacred writings: “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, have we not expanded thee thy breast and removed from thy burden they which did gall thy back? And raised high the esteem in which Thou art held? So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief.”

Allah! Where is my relief?

My memories of the next hour are like a packet of snapshots tossed one by one on a tabletop:

My first clear memory is of a dark-haired physician with a widow’s peak and a face that appeared to be smiling even when he was not. “I’m Dr. David,” he said. “I’m an orthopedic surgeon. The ambulance attendants tell me you’re a Frenchman? Do you speak English?”

Looking up at him, I nodded.

Only yes or no answers. Don’t give too much information.

“You’ve got some pretty significant injuries here, but it doesn’t look like anything life-threatening,” Dr. David said. “Is there anyone we should notify? Any family? Friends?”

I could not give out the names or telephone numbers of my brothers. Many were in the country illegally. What if the hospital sent the police to the apartment mosque? The videotapes and literature alone were enough to tell our story.

I shook my head:
No. There is no one to call.

“And I see here that you don’t carry health insurance,” the doctor said, tapping a clipboard. Then he looked up at me and smiled. “That’s okay. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to take care of you.”

Exactly what the irritating blue-eyed man had said at the scene of my accident. What was
wrong
with these idiots? Everything was
not
going to be all right. I could not move my legs or arms. The pain medication had only slightly dulled the searing pain in my neck. And now my head continued its violent throbbing, the pressure in my skull so intense it squeezed water out of my eyes.

On the ceiling, long, white fluorescent lights marched away like highway stripes leading toward some hated destination. Suddenly, they grew unbearably bright.

“My head,” I whispered, and I saw a nurse with teddy bears on her shirt coming toward me with a needle.

2

My eyes flickered open in a dim room, and for a moment I could not get my bearings. But as my head cleared, images of the accident, the ambulance, the emergency room came flooding back. I did not move, but slid my eyes slowly left, then right.

I am alone.

Looking toward the foot of the bed, I could see that most of my body was immobilized, my legs and hips strapped to some kind of boards. Even on the battlefields, I had never been this helpless. Even when Abu Zayed shot me, I got up and limped away.

Allah, why have you allowed me now to be at the mercy of infidels!

I heard the whisper of a door opening, footsteps, and a cheery voice: “Ah, good to see you’ve rejoined the land of the living!”

I turned my head slightly to the right and saw a white-coated man smiling down at me. “I’m Dr. James, head of physical therapy. How are you feeling this morning?”

I’m lying in a hospital unable to move. How do you think I’m feeling?

“A little pain,” I said.

“A little, huh? Well, I’d say that’s good news considering what you’ve been through.” He moved to the foot of my bed, retrieved the chart, and returned to stand by my head. “Mind if I raise your bed a bit so we can chat?”

I shook my head, and a moment later a buzzing set in as the top half of the bed rose to a slight angle.

“I just want to let you know what’s going on, what the prognosis is,” Dr. James said, his face full of calm assurance. “You have chipped posterior fractures of the C-5 and C-6 cervical spine. In English, that means
you broke a couple of vertebrae in your neck. But not badly, nothing permanently debilitating.”

Dr. James reviewed my chart aloud: referred pain through the right arm and hand with numbness radiating out into the right thumb. Severe contusion of the right shoulder, limited movement of the right arm. Similar symptoms in the left arm. Lower extremity pain, respiratory difficulty, blurred vision in both eyes.

“None of these things are life-threatening, but I’ll tell you what, to look at you, looks like you’ve been through a war.” Dr. James ended with a chuckle. “Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Okay, then, not to worry,” he said with a smile. “Everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to take care of you.”

What?

Brian, Dr. David, now this man. They were all saying the exact same words. Like a chant, a spell, an evil mantra. I began to seriously wonder if the
jin,
the demons of
Gahenna
, were alive in these smiling infidels, conspiring against me.

Later that morning, Dr. David stopped in. “Are you sure there’s no one we can call?” he said.

“No. No one,” I said, pouring on the Parisian. “My family lives in France.”

On my fifth day in the ward, the door opened and in walked Brian, the blue-eyed man from the accident scene, arms full, smiling his infernal smile. “Hey, Kamal. How’re you feeling?”

He spoke as though we were old friends. I wanted to rip his throat out.

Wearing a brown blazer over a blue polo shirt, Brian crossed the room and unloaded his cargo of cut flowers, mixed nuts, and homemade cookies in an orange-lidded Tupperware container.

The door opened again, Dr. David walked in, and a smile lit his face. “Well, good morning, Brian. What are you doing here?”

“Me? What are
you
doing here, John?” Then Brian gestured toward me. “This is the man I was telling you about, the one I helped at the accident.”

“You’re kidding,” Dr. David said, wrapping Brian in a back-slapping hug. “This is the man I told
you
about, the Frenchman.”

Oh, no,
I thought.
Born-again Christians. Only foo-foo Christian men hug each other like that.

The door opened again and in walked Dr. James. “Well, hey Brian, what in the world are you doing here?”

Brian jerked his head at Dr. David and laughed. “Mark!” he said, walking and embracing the doctor. “Dr. David and I just had the same conversation. Kamal, here, is the guy I was telling you about, the one from the wreck.”

Dr. James chuckled. “Wait a minute. I told you about him first, at my house the other night, remember?”

What is this, a competition?

Brian and the two doctors chatted quietly a while longer, completely ignoring me. Now my radar was on full alert. All
three
of these men had been telling each other about me? Why? What did they know? Who else was at Dr. James’ house during this conversation? Police?

Suddenly, the conversation stopped and all three men approached my bedside. Dr. David spoke first. “Listen, Kamal, here’s the problem. Your medical bills are already very high. Between the ambulance run, the emergency room, and the medication, plus five days laid up in this room, you’re already in the high five-figure range. Problem is, you don’t have any health insurance, and if you stay here much longer, the folks down in billing are going to be after you for the rest of your natural-born life.”

I thought of home, Lebanon. There, if you did not pay your medical bills, they sent you to a free hospital known for its butchery. I did not want to go to a place like that. And if the Americans came after me for money, if they got the authorities involved—lawyers, courts—what would they find? A bank account that grew fat then thin then fat again with large cash deposits, while I worked only odd jobs? Would the network be discovered? My American residency revoked?

What about the sheikh? I could call Sheikh Fahim. My bills would be nothing to him.

These thoughts flashed through my mind in seconds as Dr. David continued: “At this point, the reality is you’re in the mending stage.
There’s nothing wrong with you that time won’t heal. But you don’t need to be lying here in the hospital racking up more bills day by day. On the other hand, you don’t have anyone—any friends or family—who can take you home to recover. And in your condition, you certainly can’t take care of yourself.”

He was right about that. No one in my network would be able to stay with me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for what could be months.

Now Dr. David paused and glanced at the other two men, who both nodded their encouragement. “So here’s what we’re thinking,” Dr. David said. “My wife, Theresa, is a registered nurse, but she’s a stay-at-home mom right now. She and I would like to open our home to you. We have a comfortable room you could have to yourself.”

Instantly, I was suspicious. I felt my eyes narrow to slits.

Dr. David saw my expression, but plunged on. “Theresa could take care of you during the day. I could do regular ortho exams right there at the house, free of charge, even drive you back here for your follow-ups. None of this would cost you a dime.”

Now Smiling Brian piped up. “And the three of us also know some folks who just might be able to help you out with your medical bills.

Why? Why would they do this?

When Dr. James spoke next, it was as if he had read my mind. “Kamal, there’s no catch here. No catch at all. We just want to show you the love of God.”

3

John and Theresa David lived in the middle of a pine forest. A long driveway led through a stand of fir and spruce to a grand brick house with high windows of leaded glass and fancy double doors with brass ornaments.

I had considered the Davids’ offer and my alternatives. The medical bills would not be a problem; I was certain Sheikh Fahim would take care of them. But that would require getting alone with a telephone and explaining a long distance call to Saudi Arabia. This would also mean revealing my connection to that country. And even if the sheikh were to send the funds, I could not get out of bed to make the deposit, which would mean one of the brothers would have to do it. And I was not about to reveal Sheikh Fahim as my golden goose.

Looking back, I realize that my own ignorance of American healthcare and finance finally pushed me to the Davids’ house. I did not know Americans often take months or even years to pay off their medical bills and that hospitals cannot do much about it. I also did not know that hospitals are required to render care even if a person cannot pay. I thought if I did not cough up seventy or eighty thousand dollars immediately, the bill collectors would pounce on my head, bringing the authorities with them.

But even beyond the money, I realized with a sudden pang how alone I really was. Dr. David was right: I had no one to take care of me. I thought of my mother, my sisters, how they would fuss over me if they could see me broken this way. My heart squeezed tight in my chest. The truth was, I had many “brothers” in
jihad,
but no friends. To make a friend would mean letting someone get close, and I had learned long before that close friends die. They also provide a way for the authorities to trace you.