Word: atta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iman Ismail's incredulity at the news of Mohammed Atta's day of infamy is typical among those he left behind in Cairo nine years ago. Although they immediately recognized the face on the mug shot of Atta flashed around the world, they recognized little else about him - not even his name. "Atta" was born Mohammed Mohammed El Amir; Atta had been a disused name on his father's side adopted, possibly, as an alias. Nothing that Ismail and her circle remembered about the shy, sensitive, gentle striver had prepared them to make sense of his horrendous final...
...exclusive interviews with TIME, some of Atta's close friends from college could not accept that their friend had the capacity for such epic cruelty, while former colleagues ruled out his leadership and technical capability to lead such a complex operation. Says former classmate Osama Abul Enein, "During college Mohammed was very calm, quiet, not very bright. He had no interests nor activities. He was not violent nor hot- tempered, not a trouble maker. He never stood out or was a person that would do something that would be noticed...
...knew him in Cairo insist that Atta had shown nothing but disdain for the radical Islamist movement...
...schoolmates remember an average and unremarkable student: polite, introverted, gentle, sensitive; extremely shy about girls; uneasy in male company, too. Ismail recalls his discomfort in a social scene where men could openly flirt with women. If Atta was interested in a woman, she explained, his inclination would be, rather than speak directly to her, to meet her father to discuss marriage...
...dream girl was an angelic kind of character," says Ahmed Khalifa, the best friend with whom Atta shared confidences, worked night and day on engineering projects and relaxed over movies, outings and listening to romantic ballads belted out by Egyptian crooners. "He never ran after a girl and flirted. He would never point out the physical features of a girl. He would say this is a good girl, would make a good wife. He had some secret crushes in college, but was not in love...