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 10 Four Hundred Years Mouhamed tarazi, the imam who had married Faris and Bowling in 1995, could tell something was seriously wrong when he picked up the phone a couple of years later. Bowling was on the line and wanted him to hear something. In the background, Faris was screaming and ranting. “As if he’s hearing something,” Tarazi recalled. “Something talking to him.”1 Bowling knew something was wrong with Faris. Her husband was prone to strange behavior from time to time, going on long walks during which he’d blank out and couldn’t say where he’d been. One day, a few years into their marriage, she got a call from the police, saying Faris had tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge on the west side of town. He spent a week in a mental hospital. Even more disturbing, Faris told Bowling he was seeing things and referred to a “half-man” following him around like an imaginary friend. On one particularly bad day, Faris was at home, his face swelling as though he were being choked by some invisible hand. Christopher Paul, whom Bowling always referred to as Abdulmalek, came by and prayed with Faris until the attack, whatever it was, had passed.2 By 2000, despite Faris’s difficulties, Bowling had had it with him. From the beginning, their marriage had been an odd match: a physical attraction with some shared interests that collided with their very different backgrounds. Five years in, the novelty was wearing off, and Bowling had grown tired of caring for her husband without much reciprocity, either around the house or financially. “I got tired of fighting for money all the time. I said, ‘If you can’t help me, we don’t need to be together,’” she recalled.3 They separated in February 2000, the same month that Faris went to Mecca to perform Hajj. Photos he gave Bowling from the trip show a smiling, happy-go-lucky person who doesn’t seem on the cusp of a major life change. Nevertheless, their amiable divorce went Four Hundred Years  through two months later; the divorce papers show Faris still going by Mohammad Rauf. They split their meager assets and parted ways. These were dark times for Faris. His father fell seriously ill and died before Faris had time to return home to see him. This was a blow to Faris, who’d stayed close to his father even after he came to the United States. His father frequently had called and even sent gifts of clothing to Bowling; the two occasionally chatted over the phone with Faris translating. Faris eventually flew to Pakistan and spent several months in Karachi before returning home, where depression set in. He’d moved back to an apartment on Riverview near the mosque and did little but lie on his couch and drink Mountain Dew. Eventually , his stepbrother, with whom he’d stayed in touch, convinced him to return to Pakistan for a longer visit. On May 30, he arrived in Karachi for a trip that lasted nearly a year.4 it was late summer when Faris and his old friend Maqsood Khan arrived at the camp, a collection of tents and buildings tucked between two mountains. They had traveled by bus from Karachi, first to Quetta, near the southeast border of Afghanistan, and then on to Kandahar. There they stayed at a safe house with several Arab men, then rode in a minivan to the camp about an hour away. Faris wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but it wasn’t hard to guess what the camp was with all the men wearing black scarves and bustling about, carrying guns. Earlier that summer, Khan acknowledged to Faris that he had joined al-Qaida and encouraged him to consider it as well. The confession came during a period of questions Khan put to Faris about his devotion to Islam and about how Americanized he seemed to have become. Faris assured him he still believed in Islam. The morning after their arrival at the camp, Faris, Khan, and others set out on a thirty-minute walk to another set of huts. There they had lunch, and a few minutes later, as a tall man arrived unexpectedly , surrounded by bodyguards, Faris’s life changed forever.5 The visit with Osama bin Laden lasted about forty-five minutes and appears to have been about as sinister as a camp commandant welcoming the latest round...

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