Lebanese's Strange Trip to Jihadism

Of the 19 young Arabs who struck the United States on September 11, the Lebanese-born Ziad Jarrah, who is thought to have been at the controls of the plane forced down by its heroic passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, has always been of greater interest to me than the others, and for strictly parochial reasons: We were both born in the same country, but two generations apart. For me, the contours of his life are easy to make out. He hailed from a privileged Sunni family from the Bekaa Valley and was raised in Beirut. He had gone to an elite French Lycée, Collège de la Sagesse, one of the countryâ??s most prestigious. In the fashion of the Lebanese families of means, great hopes were pinned on him and nothing was denied him. He was his parentsâ?? only male child. There was little if any religious observance in his family. His sisters were modern young women of Beirut; they hit the beaches of the city in the summer, and they and Ziad were carefree souls. The boy wanted to be a pilot; his father had vetoed that choice, so he settled for a course in aeronautical engineering and aircraft design. In a place like Beirut, that occupational ambition was glamorous. It was never easy making oneâ??s way in Lebanon. The country was crowded, and there wasnâ??t enough to go around for all the dreams and ambitions swirling about.