And she knew the relentless energy that had brought them together had weaved yet another thread deeper into their lives.

56

56

Saturday, September 26

In the dark hours before dawn, Hashim was brought out of his cell at FBI headquarters. He was dressed in civilian clothes and his hands and feet were shackled. He stepped into a Humvee and was positioned between two armed soldiers and across from three armed federal agents. There were two other follow vehicles. Two of the agents in the Humvee were young and on edge, their legs bounced. The third was older and Middle Eastern. He stared at Hashim. Hashim looked away, knowing the hatred he saw in the man’s eyes didn’t need the fuel of an imprisoned terrorist’s gaze. Hashim heard the man’s name when the men were talking. His name was Kareef.

When the convoy reached I-95, vehicles split off in different directions. The Humvee and two unmarked FBI cars took Route 1 North. Hashim was on his way to prison, trial, and likely death.

He watched the young men across and next to him. He noticed their fingers were white, knuckle-gripped around their weapons. This threw him back to his own fear—to the time he was a boy and his father had dropped him, from the boat they were in, into deep ocean water with one instruction: “Swim back if you want to live.”

Hashim did swim back and saw his mother filled with relief and panic when he’d reached shore. It was here his mind had crystallized with the thought that nothing and no one was safe. Only rage assured survival.

Rage was the way to let the world know of the plight of his people. He believed bin Laden had come from that place, too, in the beginning. Diplomacy achieved nothing. Attention must be paid. Bombs led the way. They were an answer to ripping the cloak of invisibility from his world, and for the greater world to see the poverty and devastation that had befallen his people, in a land most had ignored. But the experience in the desert changed that. It changed him. Allah had spoken through the dust and destruction and metallic screech of the drone with these two words etched in the air: Nahn wahid. We are One. So simple, yet dismissed as unreal and unachievable. Life obliterated what God had designed.

But Hashim had been drilled down into the inexorable truth of his soul—that great transformation required greater sacrifice, not destruction. He knew the others who’d been with him now had the chance to harness the same truth.