Khalif was their leader in most things, coolheaded and studious. He'd also been the better player coming out of high school and could have attended a larger Division 1 university on a scholarship, but Columbia had been the only school to offer Rashad a full ride, so he'd opted to remain home with his friend.
It was also Khalif, born Joseph White, who'd first met a Black Muslim who spoke at the high school and began studying the Quran. He'd liked the simplicity of placing his life in the hands of Allah's will, as well as Islam's tenets of peace and faith. He'd persuaded his best friend, Bobby Humphrey, to go with him to the mosque. They'd both converted to Islam and changed their names at the end of their senior year in high school-Khalif because he felt genuinely drawn to the teachings of the Prophet, Rashad because he felt it was more appropriate for African-American men than Christianity "which was the religion of our enslavers."
It was Rashad, however, who had recently introduced Khalif to the Arab man with the pockmarked face and intense glittering eyes. "He's from Saudi Arabia, dawg," Rashad said before the meeting, "here to raise money for Muslim charities overseas. But he's also got a lot to say about how African-Americans are still enslaved to the white man in this country."
"I don't know, Rashad," Khalif said. "Some of those 'charities' are just fronts for terrorists-"
"Freedom fighters, homes," Rashad responded before his friend could continue. "It's The Man who says they're terrorists. But what about the Israelis bulldozing homes and killing little Palestinian kids? And what about the U.S. military machine that is bombing our Muslim brothers in Iraq as we speak? Isn't those terrorist acts?"
Khalif scowled. "You forgetting my auntie was in the World Trade Center? She was just a poor cleaning lady. It wasn't no freedom fighters that done that. And puttin' bombs on kids to blow up innocent people is nothing but cold-blooded murder."
"I know, dawg, I know. I ain't saying all that shit is right," Rashad said. "But Mr. Mustafa ain't no terrorist or freedom fighter, he's just here to raise money for the Red Crescent, which is sort of like the Red Cross. He'd just like to meet us and some of the other guys."
Khalif reluctantly agreed and Rashad led the way to the back of the mosque-really a former grocery store that had been converted into the prayer room, several offices, and another meeting room in the back. As they entered they were greeted effusively by the imam of the mosque, Ahman Zakir, a roly-poly jovial sort whose understanding of the Quran was probably less than many of those who attended his mosque. But he kept the place open and provided clean prayer rugs and a decent enough call to prayer.
What the two younger men, as well as most of the others in the room, didn't know was that Zakir was more of a front man than an imam. He'd found it tough to get by on what his local followers offered in the way of financial support so when the Middle Eastern men arrived in the mid-1990s offering to "sponsor" his mosque, which included a nice stipend for his living expenses, he'd happily agreed.
There were just a few things they required in exchange. Their leader, Mr. Mustafa, the only name he ever had offered, asked him to have a back storage area converted into a sort of barracks "for pilgrims" with cots, a stocked refrigerator, and a hot plate for cooking. Before being allowed access to the room, the pilgrims were supposed to give him the current code word-taken from a different page of the Quran each week. He wasn't supposed to go into the room himself, which meant that he just had to once when none of the visitors were around. But he wished he'd resisted when he saw the assault rifles and other weapons neatly arranged on a rack.
Mr. Mustafa later told him that he knew he'd been in the room. "Please follow my instructions from now on or we will have to find someone who can," he said.
Noticing that Mustafa did not say they would find a new place, only a new host, Zakir took it for the threat it was intended to be. But he'd still managed to complain about the guns.
"They are for defensive purposes only," Mr. Mustafa assured him. "In case the climate in this country should someday-encouraged by the Zionist murderers-turn against Muslims. Then you will be glad that we were prepared."
At times there were no pilgrims staying in the back room. At others there were as many as a dozen men-some Arab, some African. They were always mysterious about their comings and goings, never together but always one at a time. It all made Zakir nervous, especially because there was a lot of activity again, as there had been before September 11, 2001.
One of the other conditions of his agreement with Mr. Mustafa was that he introduce him to the young men from the neighborhood who came to the mosque to pray. "I am recruiting missionaries from America to go to Muslim countries to see how their brothers and sisters are subjugated so that they can return to the United States and be a strong voice against Zionist propaganda," he said.
Zakir didn't really believe him, but he did like the three-thousand-dollar bonuses he received for every young man who signed up for Mustafa's missionary program. The money went a long way toward assuaging his conscience. He'd recently pointed out the two tall young basketball players and told Mustafa how they'd been wronged by the white man's judicial system. "They might make good…missionaries," he'd said.
Tonight's meeting was going to be fairly well attended. Besides the two basketball players, there were six other young men. Even if only four join Mustafa, he thought, that's an easy twelve thousand dollars.
He had to admit that Mr. Mustafa was clever and didn't start right in with a high-pressure sales pitch. Instead, he concentrated on talking about the plight of fellow Muslims and how the United States had been duped into helping the Jews establish their "One World Order, in which all true believers will be forced to kneel to their false God or die." He asked why the richest, most powerful nation in the world continued to oppress people of color both at home and abroad. "Because it is in the interests of the white man and the Jews to subjugate brown-skinned people. After all, why be the master of no one?"
Zakir noticed that of the two basketball players, the one called Rashad seemed the most agreeable to Mustafa's message. The other, Khalif, had stood in the back of the room with his arms crossed and a skeptical look on his face. He'd barely listened for five minutes before saying he needed to go home. He tried to get his friend to leave-"Come on, dawg, this joker's full of shit"-but Rashad had stayed.
When Khalif stalked out by himself, Zakir caught the appraising look on Mustafa's face as he watched the young man leave. But he'd turned his pockmarked face back to his audience and shook his head as though sorry to see Khalif go. "We must always be careful of those among us who are so desperate to be a part of the world of whites and Jews-though they would never allow it-that they would betray our holy cause."
An hour after the meeting was over, Mustafa, an Iraqi whose real name before joining Al Qaeda was Anan Al-Sistani, left the mosque with one of his bodyguards. He didn't stay at the mosque-he had a luxurious suite in midtown Manhattan from which he directed his operations-and didn't like being there. Too exposed. But he needed recruits to pull off his "event" and the mosque was the best place to find them.
Outside on the sidewalk, he'd looked around with irritation for a second bodyguard who was supposed to be watching the front entrance in case the police or federal agents showed up.