Word: zazie
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Dates: during 2009-2009
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...easy to imagine that a little boy growing up in Paktia province might have heard heroic tales of the Battle of Jaji and its hero, bin Laden. When Zazi was about 7 years old, his father moved the family across the border into Pakistan, near Peshawar, another zone of bin Laden influence and a hotbed of jihadist activity...
...Read "Three Key Questions About Zazi and Terrorism...
...father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, eventually immigrated to New York City, where he found work as a taxi driver, saving his money until he had enough to bring his wife and children to the U.S. (The older Zazi became a naturalized U.S. citizen.) Once in New York City, Najibullah proved to be an indifferent student at Flushing High School in Queens, more interested in basketball than in books, and he was a silent watcher at the Hazrat-i-Abubakr Sadiq mosque. His imam in those days, Mohammed Sherzad, remembers Zazi's visits to the white two-story building topped with...
...When Zazi was 16, bin Laden's army delivered a stunning attack on New York City and Washington. The destruction of the World Trade Center towers drove a wedge into the community of Afghan immigrants in Queens, Sherzad recalls, and the mosque was torn apart over the imam's criticism of the Taliban government that shielded bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Zazi family sided against Sherzad, he recalls, and afterward Zazi refused to meet the imam's gaze when they passed each other on the street. Still, an acquaintance told the New York Times that Zazi was baffled...
...There are hints that the young man began to change after 9/11. He dropped out of school and took his place working at a family coffee cart near Wall Street, not far from ground zero. Though gregarious with customers, Zazi grew stern with his friends, chastising them for their interest in popular music and expressing other fundamentalist views. On certain occasions, he replaced his Western clothing with a traditional tunic, and he let his whiskers grow. "Najib is completely different," a neighborhood man told Sherzad a few years ago. "He looks like a Taliban. He has a big beard...