It is fascinating how religion acts as a shield against the tyranny of the family: the Quranic authority overthrows his father’s, releases him from the structure Zahi grew up with. Only gradually is this freedom limited again: It is for example forbidden to cheer during football matches, because only God can be honored and love for the team is blasphemy. The religious conversations are themselves increasingly darker: visions of hell take over the paradisiacal vistas, intimacy and contemplation is replaced by the aggressive proselytizing and moral campaigns.

“On the recording, there were pictures of young men who had received weapon training, were singing martial songs, listened to sermons and roared battle cries. It was like watching us back in the camps of the Puritan movement. Nineteen men brought death and destruction on this September day, and if I had stayed in the movement and let myself be persuaded to go to Afghanistan, I could have easily become the twentieth. I could have been an accomplice in one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity”

Terrorist no.20, by Muriel Steinmetz for L’Humanité

Abdullah lights Marlboros one after the other, in a restaurant in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. A few years ago, he would have thought himself doomed for smoking just one. He also would’ve beaten up anyone refusing to put his cigarette off before him. This was the time when Abdullah righted the wrongs

Beside its inherent literary quality, this books presents the main interest of being the work of a writer of Arabic language, borne in the country that gave birth to Al-Qaeda.

Zahi wears a beard and white tunic. Gradually, his “heart swells with hatred”, like his companions: “I thought like them, I felt like them, I belonged to them.” Yet, his “friends” will end up cursing him. They accuse him of loving music. And it is music that saves him.