Each culture, country, or city is its own vortex of energy—a swirling funnel of collective past and current beliefs, emotions, intentions, and values. Los Angeles is the vortex of the cinema and television industry. Washington, D.C., is a political vortex. At 9:30 A.M. on Saturday, January 27, 1996, I put the final touches on my makeup, fastened my money belt around my waist, and rode the elevator down to the lobby to meet Fateh. I was about to go on a day tour of Algiers, the capital of Algeria and the world capital and vortex of terrorism.
The sixties—that tumultuous, memorable time of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War gave birth to many forms of political and personal expression. Peace movements, demonstrations, and rallies became popular forms of social protest, powerful tactics to effect change in democracies. But the sixties also gave birth to the underside—the darker side—of speaking out for a cause. That octopus of terror, the international terrorist network, simultaneously began to stretch its tentacles around the globe. Its members were not only willing to die for their cause; they were primed to kill for it, deliberately using cold-blooded tactics that would send shock waves of terror to the masses, making victims of them, too.
The first waves were sent around the world in 1968, when terrorists hijacked an Israeli airplane, then forced its pilot to fly to Algiers.
Over the ensuing years, the tentacles of terror reached closer and closer to home. In 1972, terrorists attacked Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. In 1976, we watched Israeli commandos perform their daring and brilliant rescue raid on Entebbe. In 1986, the United States bombed Algeria’s neighbor, Libya, hoping to destroy its leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi. In December 1988, as Pan Am flight 103 passed over Lockerbie, Scotland, on its way from London to New York, a bomb exploded, killing 270 people. Of them, 187 were Americans.
By the early nineties, the shock waves from world terrorism had reached Stillwater, Minnesota, where I lived at the time. A rash of pipe bombings and bomb threats, coupled with the Persian Gulf War and a national FBI terrorism alert, had me and many others looking over our shoulders. One afternoon, my son, Shane, asked me to take him and a group of friends to a basketball game at a local sports arena. “No,” I had said. “It’s not safe. It’s a target. Choose something else.”
In February 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York City. On April 19, 1995, a bomb exploded outside the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a structure housing a day-care center. This time 169 people were killed. Of them, 19 were children.
Over the years, as bomb threats continued to increase, the United States had responded with increased security measures. The most noticeable change occurred at airports. Travelers in the United States could no longer simply check in and board a plane. They had to show photo identification. They had to answer questions. “Did you pack your luggage? Did anyone give you anything to transport?” We as a nation began to react to terrorism with subtle antiterrorist tactics. Now I was groomed, prepped, and ready for a drive by the terrorist training camps in the foothills of Algiers—one of the places contemporary terrorism had begun.
Fateh was waiting for me in the lobby. He scanned my appearance and approved. My instincts had been right on this trip. It had been easy to follow his instructions of the night before, to dress in un-American garb. I had brought only one extra set of clothing with me. I wore a dark, loose-fitting sweater and pants. With my short dark hair and olive skin, I felt almost invisible in this cultural mix of French, Arabian, and Berber heritage.
Fateh gave me my next set of instructions as he whisked me through the security checkpoints on the way to the parking lot.
“We are going to the country today,” he said. “I have arranged for my friend Nazil to come with us. He is a college graduate. He has studied English for many years and speaks the language better than I do. He can tell you things that I cannot because there are many words in your language I do not know. We have not been for a drive to the country or to the parks for a long time. It will be a fun day for all of us. But there are dangers.”
Fateh stopped walking and turned to me. “Do not speak to anyone, even if you are spoken to. If anyone comes to us, if anyone stops our car—even the gendarmes—do not speak. Do not look in their eyes. Look down at your feet and be silent. That is the only way we will be safe,” he said. “Do you understand?”
Fateh looked so intense. “Not even a quick ‘Bon jour’?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m getting better with my French . . .”
He glared at me. “Not a word,” he said. “Do not speak one word.”
“I understand,” I said.
I sat on the passenger side of the front seat of Fateh’s old Rambler. Fateh started to get in the driver’s side, but before he could the car seat collapsed, falling backwards. He groaned, sighed, then dug under the seat, pulled out a screwdriver, and began tinkering with the seat back. Fixing the car would become part of this day’s routine. It was part of the daily routine for many people here. Most of the automobiles were old, used cars—the kind we call junkers in America.
While Fateh worked on the seat, I turned to the young man, Nazil, sitting in the back seat of the car. He had dark wavy hair and graceful features. He was of slight build, much thinner than Fateh. I would later learn he was twenty-four years old—one year younger than Fateh.
I told Nazil my name was Melody and I was pleased to meet him. I offered him my hand.
“It is my pleasure to meet you,” he said, “and my honor to spend the day with a woman from your country. I have studied the English language most of my life but have only been able to use it in the classroom. I am happy today to have the opportunity to use the language I have studied so hard.”
After Fateh fixed the seat, he climbed in the car, shifted the gear stick, let the car roll backwards, and fired up the engine.
We drove around the narrow city streets of downtown Algiers for a while. A small number of men were out walking, some in groups, some alone. One man hurried across the street in front of us. He was carrying a child, a young boy.
“The museums are closed. Most of the stores are closed,” Fateh said. “There is not much here to see.”
A few blocks later, we hit a traffic jam. About half a dozen cars had stopped ahead of us in the lane of traffic. Fateh slowed, then stopped the car. It was a roadblock. When we reached the barricade, two young men, armed and dressed in uniforms, walked to the car window. Following Fateh’s instructions, I looked down at my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nazil lift up the papers and jacket that were lying around the car to allow the police to see the contents and the surface areas inside. The gendarmes smiled weakly, then waved us through.
“They seemed friendly,” I said, as we picked up speed.
Nazil leaned forward over the seat back. “The gendarmes are decent, gentle people,” he said. “They have been hurt by this too.
“I have a friend who is a gendarme,” he continued. “The terrorists set him up. They knew that on this night my friend would be walking alone, without his gun. They knew where he would be walking and at what time. They hid in the bushes. When my friend walked by, the terrorists jumped out. One held a gun to my friend’s head. ‘Now you are going to die,’ the terrorist said to my friend. He pulled the trigger. But the gun stuck. My friend’s life was saved.
“The terrorists have connections,” Nazil said. “They know people’s routines and their plans. I do not know how they know so much, but they do. They know who is here, and when people are coming and leaving. If they do not already know you are here, they will soon learn of your visit.”
We drove through town, winding our way down to the street that ran alongside the harbor. Soon, we reached another roadblock. Fateh stopped the car. I stared at my feet. Again Nazil showed the gendarmes the contents of the back seat. Again, the police waved us through.
“We have lost much,” Nazil said. “Most of us have lost someone we love. We all know someone who has lost a loved one. We live in fear each day of losing our friends and families. And as you can see, we have also lost our freedom.”
Fateh stopped at a gas station at the edge of town, then we headed to the country. Before long the street we were driving on turned into a coastal highway.
“I remember the day it started,” Nazil said.
Fateh nodded.
“June 5, 1991,” they said, almost in unison.
Nazil gave me a brief course in Algerian history. Algeria had been colonized by France. Following an eight-year revolutionary war, Algeria had finally won its independence in 1962. By the early nineties, the Islamic party had won preliminary elections and threatened to take control of the government. That’s when the civil war began. Algeria had stopped fighting France, but its two main political parties, the secular National Liberation Front and the religious Islamic Salvation Front, had begun to fight each other.
On June 5, 1991, the president of Algeria declared martial law.
“That’s when the first terrorist incidents occurred,” Nazil said. “It started with one or two isolated bombings. Then terrorism became a way of life. A few years ago, the military took over the government.”
“There was an earthquake here that killed five thousand people,” Nazil said. “You have earthquakes, too, where you live. But our real national disaster here is terrorism. It has now taken somewhere between ten and sixty thousand lives.”
“I noticed the price on the gas pumps,” I said, after a while. “It’s 1.45 dinars a liter. Gas costs more here than it does in the United States and it’s your leading export. Why is gasoline so expensive here? Doesn’t that make your people angry?”
“Yes,” Nazil said. “My people are angry. They’re angry at the government. They’re angry at the rich. They’re not sure who let them down, but they know they’ve been betrayed.”
We drove for a while, then Fateh pulled off the highway into a parking lot by a shopping complex. I opened the car door and started to get out. Fateh immediately reached across me and pulled my door shut. Then he just sat there.
“Mafateh is afraid,” Nazil said. “Always afraid.”
Fateh and Nazil spoke to each other for a while in Arabic. Then Nazil exhaled deeply, and explained to me what he and Fateh had been discussing. “Mafateh’s fiancée was killed a year ago,” Nazil said. “A bomb blew up the bus she was riding on. Now Mafateh always thinks it is going to happen again. He is afraid the terrorists will kill someone he loves or him next. I told him it was safe for us to get out and walk around for a while.”
We got out of the car and walked around the shopping center. All the stores were closed and boarded up. Nazil led us around the side of the shopping complex. Then Fateh and I followed him down a dirt path that led to the sea. We scaled, single file, a stone pier that extended into the water. We walked as far as we could, then we all sat down on the rocks.
Sitting on the edge of the pier, Fateh now appeared almost relaxed for the first time this day.
“I’m sorry you lost your girlfriend,” I said after a while.
“I was at her mother’s house when it happened,” he said quietly. “We were waiting for her to come home for dinner. The telephone rang. Her mother answered. When she dropped the phone and began to cry, I knew my girlfriend was dead.”
“It hurts to lose someone in one moment,” I said, “to have them ripped out of your life . . .”
He nodded.
We sat for a while, not talking. When three men approached the end of the pier, we simultaneously stood up and hurriedly returned to the car.
Fateh pulled the car onto the highway. A short time later, he exited again. This time he pulled into a parking area outside a park. Fateh reluctantly and nervously got out of the car. Nazil and I followed. The three of us walked across the lot to the park entrance.
A young couple, a man and a woman, sat in their car with the door open at the end of the lot. I felt a wave of fear rise in all three of us as we passed their vehicle. We entered the park, then walked at a brisk pace through the littered, almost vacant field. The land felt barren and untended. Even the trees felt strangely lifeless.
We walked to the park’s recreation center. It was closed. We stood there looking at the closed facility for a moment. Then we turned around and headed back through the park to the car. After fixing the seat and rolling the car to start it, Fateh pulled back onto the highway. He continued to drive away from the city toward the looming hills.
Nazil pointed to the hills. “That’s where the terrorist camps are,” he said. “That’s where they run to. That’s where they train and live.
“It used to be that when a young man grew up, he made a decision to go to college, or go to work, or go into the military,” Nazil explained. “Now there are two choices. Does he join the military? Or become a terrorist? The young men of our country take that decision very seriously.
“I have two friends. They were best friends. They played together as children in each other’s homes. They knew each other’s mothers. As they grew, one decided to join the military. The other decided to become a terrorist. They knew, as they were growing up, what they were going to be.”
Nazil paused as he struggled to find just the right words to express his thoughts. “Each became . . . how do you say it . . . dedicated to his choice. When they reached eighteen, one of the men joined the military. The other ran for the hills to become a terrorist. Being a terrorist was his ambition.
“Just a few weeks ago, the man who had become a terrorist sneaked into the home of his friend, the one who had joined the military. His friend’s mother was in the kitchen cooking. He crept up behind her. ‘I’m going to kill him someday,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ Then the terrorist ran out the door.
“They think their power comes from strength. They think power comes from guns, from killing people, from hurting people. That’s not power,” Nazil said, shaking his head.
“I don’t know what makes them do it,” he said. “They must be taking drugs. People would have to be using drugs to slit throats and kill people without thinking about it.”
Fateh nodded.
After driving for about half an hour, Fateh again exited the highway. We were in a seaside resort town. Nazil explained that before the days of terrorism, people had crowded to this village for luxury vacations and fun weekend outings.
Now the streets were almost deserted. Most of the shops were closed. We walked down the sidewalk for a few blocks, past the locked or boarded-up storefronts. Occasionally, we encountered people—mostly men—who hurriedly walked by us. When we did, I continued to follow Fateh’s instructions, avoiding all eye contact and looking down at my feet.
By now, my role as a subordinate woman—one who didn’t speak or look directly into the eyes of anyone—felt oddly comfortable, almost familiar. It ran deeper than just following Mafateh’s instructions or trying to avert an attack. I saw that it was frighteningly easy to dance to the rhythm of a culture and—almost by osmosis—adopt its beliefs and practices as our own.
I now understood the behavior of the woman at the reception desk at the hotel, the one who had told Mafateh about me—the one who had barely spoken to me and had avoided my eyes. She wasn’t avoiding me. She was following the customs of her culture, dancing to her country’s rhythm.
When we crossed the street at the end of the row of shops, we found ourselves at the gateway to a park. The gate was locked. We clung to the fence, trying to peek inside. In the courtyard just on the other side of the gate, untended plants in a sprawling garden had intertwined themselves around majestic Grecian ruins, crumbling stone reminders of Greece’s influence in Algeria’s rich history. We stared through the fence for a while, then turned and began walking back to the car.
“This is a fun day,” Fateh said earnestly. “We’re having a good day, aren’t we? We went to the country.”
Nazil and I nodded.
“Yes, Fateh,” I said. “This is fun.”
We got back in the car. Fateh again fixed the collapsed seat, rolled the car until it started, then headed back to the highway.
“We will drive down another road for a while,” Fateh said.
He turned inland at a juncture, driving away from the sea, toward the ominous hills. After a while, he looped back in the direction of the city of Algiers. We drove past miles of expansive but desolate countryside, encountering few other vehicles along the way. Then, at a juncture where the intersecting road led directly to the hills, we pulled to a stop at a barricade.
This time I noticed I was holding my breath while I stared at the floor. I remembered the travel advisory warning about ambushes at false roadblocks. The gendarmes searched the car and waved us through.
“I love and respect my beautiful country,” Nazil said after a while. “Terrible things have happened to my people. But the worst thing that has happened is that this has given them a spirit of vengeance.
“Vengeance,” he said, “is not the purpose of what we are going through.”
A heavy silence permeated the inside of the car. Then Nazil began speaking again.
“It is a tragedy what has happened to my country and my people. But the biggest damage is what’s been done to our hearts. We don’t even cry anymore when we hear of death. We have lived with the abnormal so long it’s become normal. Our hearts have gone numb.
“That is the real tragedy of Algiers.”
We drove for a while, looking at barren fields and rolling hills. Nazil explained that despite the country’s fertile land, Algeria now imported most of its food.
He pointed to a large, windowless building tucked into the landscape on our left.
“That is where they take the terrorists who have been captured,” he said. “Once, a doctor treated an injured terrorist. The police arrested the doctor and put him in jail. Two men I know were arguing about it the other day,” Nazil said. “One of them could not understand why they would put a doctor in jail for treating an injured man.”
I noticed stretch after stretch of buildings, tenements that looked abandoned or destroyed. I asked Nazil what had happened, if this was the result of terrorism or something else. He told me that most of the vacant buildings were projects that builders had begun, then abandoned when they ran out of money.
“This has gone on for so long,” I said. “Do your people still have hope?”
“Hope?” Nazil said. “Yes, we have hope. But we do not hope for an improvement in our economy. We no longer hope for more agriculture, or more art. We only hope that one day the terrorism will stop.”
Fateh turned onto the coastal highway. As we neared the city of Algiers, we all began to relax. Nazil started talking about college, about art classes he had taken, and about some of his friends from school. Soon after we reached the city limits, Fateh pulled the car to the side of the road by the harbor and told me we were dropping off Nazil. Fateh had to go to work.
Nazil told me how much he had enjoyed speaking English all day and that he hoped he had done a good job of expressing his thoughts to me.
I said that he had done an excellent job and thanked him.
I pulled my purse out from under the car seat. “Can I give you something, some money for your time today, as a gift, a way of saying thank you?” I asked Nazil.
He resolutely refused. “I could not take money,” he said, shaking his head. “That would be wrong. It was a privilege to spend the day with you and tell you the story of Algeria and my people. Besides,” he said, smiling, “we went for a drive in the country. We had fun.”
I watched Nazil slip over the ruins, then disappear into a colony of homes by the sea. As Fateh drove us back to the hotel, I noticed for the first time how tensed my body was—and had been all day. Because of Ramadan, we had not eaten or drunk anything. I was getting thirsty. I wanted a drink of water.
“There’s our zoo,” Fateh said, as we neared the hotel. “It’s closed now, but we have the oldest living alligator there,” he said proudly.
We passed through the hotel’s security barricade. Gendarmes searched the car one more time. Then Fateh parked and walked me to the hotel entrance. We stood there looking around at the guards, the barricades, and the treetops in the distance.
“Did you enjoy today?” Fateh asked.
“Yes, very much. Thank you,” I said.
He smiled, and seemed pleased. I turned to him, put my hand over my heart, and looked directly into his eyes. “May God help your heart continue to heal from the loss of your love,” I said.
Fateh looked at me. I saw and felt a strength in him I hadn’t before seen. “I will pray that Allah is gentle with you, too,” he said.
Fateh went to the hotel’s employee entrance to report for work. I returned to my room. I was scheduled to be back in the lobby in one hour. Fateh had arranged several other events for me, including attending a holy Ramadan feast with a Berber family tomorrow evening to break the fast after sundown. My day tour of the Algerian countryside had ended.
Once in a while—not too often—a person crosses our path who, despite tremendous obstacles and pain, has managed to retain his or her identity, values, integrity, and faith in God—whether that person calls God “Allah,” “Jehovah,” or “God.” That person knows what he or she believes and holds fast to those beliefs despite enormous pressure to do otherwise. And that person’s decision to honor his or her values has little to do with what that person has received from life or from God. Although that person has not gotten what he or she has longed for, hoped for, desired, or deserved, he or she has not turned on God, or upon others. He or she has not turned on himself or herself.
There is a glowing power in that person that is irrefutable.
Being in that person’s presence, even for a little while, changes us. We now have a paragon, a model, a jewel exemplar by which to gauge ourselves. We may not always live up to those standards, but we will forevermore be conscious of when we are falling short. And those few moments with that person will help us remember who and what we are striving to be.
That’s what happened to me, in the heart of the vortex of terrorism on January 27, 1996, on my day tour of Algiers. I met a young man named Nazil. He told me the story of his country. He told me what he believed. And I saw a light that shone so brightly I would never again be the same.
In a land where people had lost their freedom and power, he had found a way to be free and he understood the meaning of power.
A true warrior had crossed my path.
DID ANY OF THESE PEOPLE you met in Algiers give you anything to transport? Anything at all?” the Cairo interrogator demanded.
“Yes,” I said. “They gave me some gifts.”
“Show them to me now,” she said.
I unlocked my suitcase, which was sitting on the large platform table between us. I showed her a pink, hand-embroidered Berber gown and a color poster of the Casbah d’Alger. Then I showed her my prized possession. It was a white cardboard year-at-a-time 1996 calendar. The names of the months and the days were inscribed in French. On the top of the calendar, above the months, was the national emblem for Algeria. It was also the emblem that had, by chance, become my personal seal for this trip—a crescent moon and star.
The woman interrogating me paused from her questioning for a moment and studied my itinerary.
“You were originally booked on a flight from Cairo to Greece. That was to be the last leg of your trip. Now it appears you have suddenly changed your plans and instead are flying from Cairo to Tel Aviv to Los Angeles. Why would you spend so much time in Algeria and Egypt, then at the last moment cancel the part of your travels that would have been such a pleasant vacation?”
“Oh, that,” I said. “It surprised me, too. Let me explain.”