Fear Itself

"They got what they wanted." The March 11 Madrid commuter train bombings influenced Spain's election. (Pablo Torres Guerrero - El Pais via Reuters)

"Saudi Arabia," he said.

Yes, yes, security for this flight had been formidable. This was the sister flight to the infamous Flight 223 -- the return leg on the Corridor of Terror. There were two separate inspections of our persons and our belongings. The second machine was so sensitive it busted a woman with a gold chain no thicker than a yo-yo string. Security officers took aside a little girl, 5 or 6, with a gappy smile, and wanded her thighs up under her skirt. This sort of thing went on for 25 minutes, until it came time to board, at which point the final 20 or 30 people in line, and their carry-ons, were waved aboard with no inspection whatsoever. I was one of those people. Hani, here, came in after me -- he must have been one of them, too. His duffel bag was enormous.

So, what does a terrorist seem like, anyway? How do you know one if you see one?

Social scientists and law enforcement agencies have been focusing on this question for more than a quarter-century, with no coherent results. In the late 1970s, a psychologist interviewed 80 imprisoned terrorists in 11 countries and concluded that most of them had defective vestibular functions of the inner ear. This was an exciting finding, until it fell apart under scrutiny. More rigorous studies have found, disturbingly, that terrorists tend to be fairly ordinary people -- relatively sane if politically extreme individuals of ordinary appearance and demeanor. Like Hani, my seatmate.

What should I do? Summon a flight attendant? Stop the plane on a wild suspicion? Too late anyway, we were in the air.

I think you know where this is going. My seatmate's name turned out to be Tareq Ali Alghamdi. He's 22, an engineering student at the University of New Haven -- a nice guy, no more of a terrorist than I. I know all about him because he burbled it all out within minutes of takeoff, even showing me his visa papers, unbidden. I'm guessing he does this all the time -- he knows what he looks like, and is aggressively and engagingly open about himself in a preemptive defense. I know, for example, that he's a Muslim but no fanatic. He will have a beer every once in a while and is, he emphasizes, a regular guy: "Hey, if I see a pretty girl, I'll look at her ass, too."

Tareq says customs officials often detain him for unreasonable lengths of time, simply by virtue of his passport and his general appearance. He says that his brother, who is diabetic, has been held for questioning for hours without access to his insulin.

As we began our trip across the Atlantic, Tareq and I solemnly agreed that terrorism is making people too tense, that ethnic profiling is a dreadful indignity, and that dumb Americans are too darn willing to leap to unjustified conclusions about people, on slim evidence.

"Life is possible only with illusions. And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"

-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

IF THERE WAS ANXIETY, it was not apparent on the faces of the people on this double-decker commuter train that brings workers into Madrid from the blue-collar, northeastern suburbs. People dressed for work sat quietly, in that state of swaying, hypnotic detachment familiar to subway riders everywhere. Some glanced at the time and temperature, which flashes continually in these trains on a dot-video display. But no one seemed to be noticing a large hiker's knapsack, left unattended. It was getting stares only from me, and only I bothered to nudge awake a dozing man across the aisle, to ask if it was his. It was.

Of course, most of these people had ridden here 50 times since the day that this very train -- same destination, same time of day -- exploded. That was 10 weeks before, March 11, one of four bombings that occurred almost simultaneously, in different rush-hour trains, along the 40-minute commuter line. The instruments of destruction were backpacks detonated by cell phone. Al Qaeda masterminded it; Spain was said to be a target because of its cooperation in the war in Iraq.

This train took the worst hit, multiple bombs detonating a minute before it was to roll into the giant Atocha station -- Madrid's version of Grand Central. Dozens of people died in unspeakable ways. When some survivors tried to describe for TV crews what they had witnessed, they began, but fell grimly silent.

On this day, on this train 10 weeks later, there was nothing. Soldiers with assault rifles had been very much in evidence at the park-and-ride suburban station of Alcala de Henares, where I had boarded. Alcala was where most of the terrorists were thought to have entered the system with their deadly cargo.

But the train itself held only commuters, staring blankly ahead as they passed through gray industrial parks, clotheslined shantytowns with rusted corrugated metal roofs, and the familiar New York-style graffiti that turned rocks into gaily spray-painted monogrammed pastel pillows. For many people on 3/11, this was the last sight they ever saw.

The train I was on was now standing room only. As we neared Atocha and the display time hit 7:39 -- the moment of the bombing -- I approached a small, trim woman in her forties, and asked her if she was nervous. Celia Alves, a secretary, was headed for work. Nervous? She shrugged no, and nodded disgustedly toward the newspaper I was carrying. It was that day's El Pais; I had picked it up at the station but hadn't yet looked at it.

"Obtuvieron lo que desearon," she said. They got what they wanted.

This was May 25. The headline read "Los Ultimos de Irak." It reported that the final group of Spanish advisers had returned from Iraq. The troops had been ordered home by Spain's new antiwar government, elected in a backlash after the bombings.

They got what they wanted. Nothing to worry about anymore.

Can it be that easy to banish fear? Just find a reason for optimism, and optimism returns. But is the threat really gone? Isn't Spain still a modern, Western, capitalist, secular democracy, flagrant corrupter of a large Muslim population -- as despised by radical Islam as any country other than ours?

The fact is, the Spanish economy has rebounded nicely from 3/11. When I was there the country was giddy over the marriage of the dashing Crown Prince Felipe to a pretty TV anchorwoman. And at Atocha station, when I got off the train into a crowd five deep waiting to board (this disaster would have been much worse had the train detonated in the station), things were at a brisk and seemingly normal morning pace -- though everywhere, a police presence was evident.

The public consciousness of the dead and wounded of Madrid's 3/11 wasn't gone, it was tucked away at one corner of Atocha, behind barriers, next to vending machines that sell Doritos and Toblerone and ham sandwiches. The improvised shrine was similar to those spontaneous memorials in downtown New York that sprang up after 9/11 -- personal messages, religious icons, photos, flowers, teddy bears. But there was an additional element that made this particularly powerful.

I felt it before I actually understood what it was. Many people who left a letter or a message also left a votive candle, contained in a broad, foot-deep glass cylinder. These candles have stout flames that burn for a week or more. Hundreds of them were on the floor, maybe a thousand in all, and, as I approached this shrine, I literally felt its warmth. I knew none of the dead, and yet, standing there at the barrier, at this small furnace of grief, I was startled to feel a tear on my cheek.

Weeks later, a wire story would report that the candles at Atocha had been removed and replaced with video screens and computers on which passersby can leave messages. People had complained that the candles were too emotionally powerful, preventing them from putting the attacks behind them.

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

-- Genesis 2:17

ADAM AND EVE'S PUNISHMENT FOR GETTING TOO CURIOUS WAS BANISHMENT from the Garden of Eden. But that was the least of it. The Bible is unclear about whether the first couple were immortal before their expulsion, but in a way, it is immaterial. What matters is that, as their punishment, they learned that they would someday die. That's when their Hell on Earth began.

To enter the modern, stone-porticoed building on King David Street in Jerusalem, I needed to give my name and show ID to an armed man who stood outside with a walkie-talkie. He radioed the information to a woman inside, who checked the name against her manifest, and radioed back a clearance. Only then was I admitted.

"Welcome to Jerusalem," the guard said, deadpan. I was not sure if this was meant ironically or not. Probably not. This was my hotel.

Things are different in Jerusalem, different from anywhere you have ever been. Before entering a grocery store, or a bus station, or a movie theater, you are stopped and wanded, often questioned, and sometimes frisked. Many restaurants keep their doors locked and buzz their customers in. At Ben-Gurion International Airport, the X-ray machine is the size of a panel truck, and the inspection of a single laptop computer can take 15 minutes. Ordinary citizens walk the streets of Jerusalem carrying concealed pistols -- this is not only legal but encouraged, to maintain an omnipresent citizen militia. Soldiers on weekend leave stroll the street in civvies, but with assault rifles slung over their shoulders, like ugly, 15-pound handbags. This, too, is encouraged. Soldiers are also under orders to carry tourniquets, just in case. All of this is to make ordinary people feel safer, against the onslaught.

There is a Hebrew word, hamatzav, that is used to describe the state of dread that has swaddled Jerusalem like damp, clammy gauze since the Palestinian intifadas made merely living a daredevil act. Hamatzav literally means "the situation," and it seems to cover everything: the high security, the high anxiety, the high-stakes game of chicken. Palestinian militants believe they can make the Israelis so fearful, so desperate for peace of mind, that they will end their occupation and surrender more land than they ever bargained for. Israeli leaders believe their fierce reprisals will, in time, crush their attackers' will to kill. Both sides, of course, know fear: Plenty of innocent Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military actions -- for Palestinians, the act of living must also, at times, seem like a mortal risk. Each side accuses the other of terrorism. Each side describes its own actions as self-defense. And so it goes.

On my first night in the city, I walked from my hotel to the Western Wall, Jewish Jerusalem's holiest site, and there I met Ozer Bergman. It is hard to miss Bergman. He stands 7 feet tall -- 6-foot-5 of it is Ozer, and the rest is hat, a dramatic, thick cylinder of fur. It was sundown on the holy day of Shavuot, and Bergman, a Hasidic Jew, had come here to pray. He works for a research institute that translates the writings of Nachman of Breslov, a revered 19th-century rabbi.

"That's a full-time business?" I asked.

"In Jerusalem, it is," he said with a laugh.