Sons of the Mothers

Other anguished Sept. 11 families would publicly denounce the hijackers as animals themselves. But that was too simplistic for Marilynn. Marwan al-Shehhi, who piloted United Flight 175 into the South Tower, was obviously a fanatic, she concluded. But he was something else, too:

"Another mother's son."

When Rep. Cynthia McKinney organized a briefing last year to dissect the findings of the government's 9/11 Commission Report, Marilynn was invited to speak along with other family members frustrated by what remained unanswered. The number of victim subcultures seemed to keep multiplying as the years passed. "There's a revenge movement, and a forgiveness movement," Marilynn says. "There's one woman -- a widow or a mother -- whose whole focus is skyscraper safety."

After Marilynn's presentation, a woman approached her wanting to know why she hadn't delved into the failed military response on Sept. 11. Didn't she wonder why fighter jets hadn't intercepted or shot down any of the hijacked planes? The stranger pressed a disc of her own research into Marilynn's hand. Marilynn remembers how alarmed she was, not by the woman's words but by her face. "She had this look that was just utterly stricken," Marilynn says. "And I wondered, do I look like that, too?"

Through the Eyes Darkly

"Look at that face, look at that face! He's only 17. His birthday is the day before mine, May 9. What do you see in that face?" Marilynn peers at the photograph in her freckled hand. Something different -- tenderness? dismay? -- seeps into her professorial voice.

The boy in the picture gazes back with unreadable brown eyes.

"He's a murderer," she goes on. "He murdered my son. I see an innocent, rather pleasant, good-looking kid who looks a little uncertain."

The photo of Marwan al-Shehhi goes back inside the blue folder labeled "Portrait of an Islamic Terrorist." The folder has a copy of a high school report card -- "he had the same grade-point average as Josh, B-plus" -- and a copy of a thank-you note Marwan wrote to his German landlady, wishing her long life and good health.

Marilynn can't remember when, but at some point in her obsessive research, the terrorist became simply "Marwan." She finds herself referring to Marwan's faith, Marwan's training, Marwan's plane.

"Here's another photo; look how fat he's become!" Four years have passed, Marilynn explains, and Marwan has gone to study in Germany on a military scholarship. He has begun attending a radical mosque and moved in with an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta, whom investigators will later identify as the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"Now he's a true believer," Marilynn says. She has the transcripts of cryptic phone conversations German intelligence monitored between the Muslim extremists. "The Germans gave Marwan's name to the CIA in March of 1999, but the CIA didn't do anything because there was no last name," Marilynn learned. She has a German police report from Marwan's family, reporting him missing when he failed to call home on Ramadan. But Marwan resurfaced, and the case was closed. The photo she holds is from his application to replace a supposedly lost passport -- a common ploy of fanatics wanting to hide trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training in paramilitary camps. Once the new passport was in hand, Marwan got a visa to visit the United States, where he and Atta enrolled in flight school.

Marilynn routinely winters in Florida, but it wasn't until 2004, when she noticed small planes circling overhead, that it dawned on her: the flying school! The Venice flying school Marwan attended was only 15 minutes down the road!