Hatred at Home: al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest

6. Hardworking Truck Driver

 6 Hardworking Truck Driver In january 1994, an immigrant from Turkey named Mehmet Aydinbelge began taking English classes through Ohio State University ’s continuing education program. Once his English improved, he intended to take graduate classes in agricultural engineering. Like many Muslim immigrants temporarily residing in Columbus, he was going to need a roommate to make ends meet. Just in time, Faris arrived in the city.1 Faris had flown from New York to Detroit and then driven to Columbus because friends had told him the cost of living was reasonable and there were a lot of Pakistanis living there. Having arrived with $1,500 in his pocket but little else, Faris checked in with leaders of the mosque on Riverview Drive, who, as they often did with new arrivals, found him a roommate and a nearby apartment. He found a school where he could improve his English, and using the visa he’d obtained overseas, got a driver’s license and Social Security number.2 One of Faris’s first jobs in Columbus was as a clerk at a Speedway gas station along a gritty stretch of Hudson Street on the city’s north side, an area where many of the stores and gas stations were run by immigrants. Working at the station helped Faris improve his English, and it certainly led to his acclimation to American society. Women were drawn to Faris, a handsome man with a muscular physique , olive skin, and dark, wavy hair.3 It was at this gas station in 1994 that Faris met a woman named Geneva Bowling, who often stopped by for the station’s cheap gas. Faris already had a girlfriend, but by the following year he and Bowling were dating and before long Faris had moved in with her and her ten-year-old son, Michael. The match was an unusual one from the beginning. Bowling, born in 1956, was thirteen years older than Faris. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher from rural Kentucky, she had been raised by her grandmother and grandfather. She had been Hardworking Truck Driver  married four times before she met Faris, the first time at age thirteen when she lived in Pike County, Kentucky; her husband had been all of sixteen years old—her best relationship, she later recalled. Her most recent divorce had come in June 1994. Nevertheless, the two hit it off. “He was exciting,” Bowling recalled. “Everything about him was different. He added that whole spice of life thing.” Racism was a fact of life where Bowling had grown up in Kentucky. Yet her family immediately took to the dark-skinned Faris, in part because he was so friendly and respectful. The couple was married September 9, 1995, at the Omar mosque, with Bowling wearing a red Islamicstyle dress that Faris’s father had sent her from Pakistan. Just a few of Faris’s friends and a handful of women from the mosque attended.4 After the wedding, Faris became a delivery driver for a local Pizza Hut and often worked nights. The family occasionally went out to eat at an American-style buffet up the street, the Taj Palace for Indian food in nearby suburban Hilliard, or a tiny Somali restaurant around the corner on Cleveland Avenue. They also liked watching movies: Faris leaned toward Jackie Chan films and comedies. Another favorite was Air Force One, in which Harrison Ford portrays a president battling terrorists aboard the presidential plane. Faris spent hours with Bowling’s son, Mike, watching Steven Seagal’s Under Siege II, examining martial arts moves frame by frame. When they played video and computer games together, Faris often picked Comanche II: Maximum Overkill, a helicopter combat simulation game. In fact, when Bowling first met Faris, he had told her he wanted to learn to fly. She took him to Don Scott Field, an airport operated by Ohio State University, to ask about lessons, but Faris didn’t follow up. Throughout their marriage, he occasionally bought glider and airplane magazines. On one occasion in December 2000, Faris even traveled to South Bend, Indiana, where he paid forty dollars for a test flight on a gyrocopter, a small airplane-helicopter hybrid. Faris was also frequently at the Omar mosque, going on picnics with other “brothers” and playing club cricket on fields at Ohio State, where he was known for his bowling and batting skills.5 Early in their marriage, Faris announced to Bowling that a friend had talked him into becoming...