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One passenger who rode twice in Abouhalima's taxi was John Hockenberry, a correspondent for ABC. He remembers a kind, bubbly driver who went out of his way to help the disabled journalist with his wheelchair. But his taxi was filled with Korans and Arabic books that Abouhalima would read at traffic lights, ignoring what was happening on the streets. Cassette tapes blared Arabic sermons. When Abouhalima spoke with Hockenberry, the cabdriver mentioned that America would lose the war against Islam without even knowing when that moment had arrived.
"He had this contempt for materialistic America, even though he was here," recalls Hockenberry. "He would honk at people and say, 'Look at that rich person,' and 'Look at that person.' He seemed very much out of his element. He had transformed his cab into an impromptu, monosyllabic Islamic institute."
In 1988 Weber's mother visited the couple, toting sweaters for her grandchildren and a photo album of Marianne's childhood. But Marianne wouldn't allow her to bring the book into the sparse apartment in Brooklyn, where the walls were bare except for Islamic scripture. One cousin refers to the environment as "a glorified cell." The family ate on the floor, and Hildegard barely saw her son-in-law. "We are 'real' Muslims," her daughter tried to explain. The Abouhalimas were so poor that the Webers wired them $5,000 in a series of bank transfers.
In early 1990 Abouhalima leased a taxi medallion, which drivers often need to work in the city's regulated livery industry. Seven months later, he vanished. The broker says he wrote several letters to Abouhalima, demanding the return of the medallion, the car's license plates and $1,600. Abouhalima's wife can recall no such dispute.
WARRIOR IN AFGHANISTAN
As he drove his cab, Abouhalima daydreamed about the "jihad," or holy war, in Afghanistan. He was obsessed with the mission of the 200,000 Muslim rebels in that country, the mujahedin, who had been battling for 10 years to oust the Soviet-backed government. The burly cabdriver worked long hours for a nonprofit group in Brooklyn that raised money for the rebels and recruited hundreds of young enthusiasts to join the fight. The fund's director was a fellow Egyptian named Mustafa Shalabi, and both the men and their wives became very close.
After obtaining his green card in late 1988, Abouhalima took several trips to Pakistan during the next 20 months, where he was trained for combat. His Egyptian spiritual leader, Sheik Omar, who was acquitted of encouraging Sadat's murder, had arrived in Pakistan seven months earlier with two sons who would also join the war. It was a heady time for militant Islamists. During the 1980s, an estimated 20,000 Arabs from 50 nations rallied to the Afghan jihad. Many, like Abouhalima and Sheik Omar, were men without a country, fugitives from antifundamentalist regimes. Some traveled under false names on false passports. Others, called holiday guerrillas, went to fight for a few months on tourist visas.