Word: zazie
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...think Najibullah Zazi would stand out on the high, dry plains southeast of Denver, where the earth is as flat as a starched shirt and mere wrinkles count as topography. But if heartland suburbs were ever enclaves of uniformity, that day is long gone. Aurora, Colo., is a city of people from somewhere else, a low-slung municipality of 315,000 that includes extremes of both poverty and prosperity. Aurora is vast - nearly 154 sq. mi. (400 sq km) - and dense, with a high concentration of multifamily housing units, apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums. Those homes contain a patchwork...
...aunt of the accused, Rabia Zazi, 35, confirmed that despite the money woes, her nephew managed to visit Pakistan recently, where she said he went to visit a cousin he married in 2006. But since Zazi and his father were arrested, Rabia and her husband have clammed up: the shutters remain drawn at their tan-colored house, and despite a cluster of SUVs in the driveway and a pile of plastic flip-flops on the front stoop, no one answers the door. Neighbors said the family kept to itself even before the arrests, and other Afghan-American families who came...
...Zazi would turn up for afternoon prayers each Friday - Islam's holy day - parking the ABC van in the parking lot outside the sprawling brick complex with its black dome and narrow minaret. Other regular worshippers agreed that he never spoke to anyone and usually rushed off immediately once the service ended. Many are suspicious of the charges against Zazi but say that, if true, Najibullah Zazi could not possibly have been indoctrinated in Denver. "He was like an outlier," says a mosque official who didn't want his name used. "This is a community that is very close...
...Since Zazi's arrest, many Denver-based Muslims have quietly braced for a public blowback. "Of course we are not happy if he was really doing these things," says Shohaib Ghori, a Karachi native. "But when there is so much publicity, it makes us all feel guilty by association, despite the fact that 99.9% of our community are law-abiding citizens...
...Afghans - especially ethnic Pashtuns like Zazi who follow a strict code of conduct - the arrests have brought shame not just to his family but to the entire community. "The dishonor of getting accused is just as bad in our culture as being guilty," says Ahad Shahbaz, who runs English-language-teaching programs in Boulder. "Even if he is honest, now he has dishonored his family...