Word: cairo
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...games. He was a scrawny youth--only 5 ft. 7 in. and until recently quite thin. (His dad called him "Bolbol," Arabic slang for a little singing bird.) Atta seemed overshadowed by his two sisters, who rose to become a zoology professor and a medical doctor. Atta graduated from Cairo University with a degree in architectural engineering and was an average student, according to his peers...
Which is why several of his Egyptian classmates could not accept his guilt in interviews with TIME. "I could never imagine him on a plane threatening people, killing people," says Ahmed Khalifa, 33, Atta's best friend at Cairo University. "He would be scared to death...He was not a leader. He had his opinion, but he was modest in everything. His emotions were steady, and he was not easily influenced or swayed. Mohamed was well liked because he never offended or bothered anyone." Says Ismail: "He was good to the roots...
...When Khalifa bumped into his friend by chance on a Cairo street two years ago, he found Mohammed thin and weak, an outward appearance that Khalifa guessed reflected an inner dissatisfaction: "I felt that he was not satisfied, he was fed up with his life there and wanted to return. He was happy at work to a certain degree, but he seemed to regret not having made a family yet. When we met, I had children and he was not yet married. I felt that really bothered him. He appeared sad and when I said good...
...course if Atta had already been drawn into the orbit of the radical networks of Bin Laden or the allied Al Jihad, there may have been other reasons for the signs of stress he exhibited on his final visit to Cairo. But his father concurs that Atta was homesick. "He expressed to his mother that he wanted to return home," El Emir recalls of his son's last visit to Cairo. "He was homesick and said that he had had enough of living abroad...
...depth of the disbelief among those Mohammed Atta left behind in Cairo signifies the extent of the personality change required to have turned their friend into a mass killer. And yet, all are also aware of the powerful cross currents generated by Egyptian society's precarious perch at the intersection between the harsh and conflicting demands of Western modernity and geopolitics, failed Arab nationalism and Islamic extremism...