"Ziad has always wanted to be a pilot," says father Samir Jarrah, refusing to speak in the past tense about his son, one of the suspected plane hijackers in the anti-US terror attacks.
"He studies aeronautics with that aim and his only interest is science."
Ziad Jarrah's father receives visitors at his two-storey house in Marj, a township of 15,000 in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Syrian border.
Apart from his well-off family in Marj, few people in this mainly Sunni Muslim district, populated also by a handful of Christians, say they ever knew Ziad.
Circled by relatives and friends, Samir Jarrah -- a mild-mannered employee of Lebanon's social security services -- is worried. Yet none of them, including women in western dress, are in mourning.
He swears that Ziad telephoned him last Sunday evening from Miami, Florida to say he had received 2,700 dollars, sent on September 4 by his mother from Beirut via the Western Union transfer service.
"He sounded upbeat on the phone. He reiterated that he planned to complete a second semester in a pilots' school in Miami before returning to Germany," said the father.
His uncle, Jamal, a senior employee of a bank belonging to Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, has accused the press of reporting nonsense.
"A passer-by in the street happened to tell CNN and (the Lebanese newspaper) As-Safir that Ziad was in Afghanistan 18 months ago and that he even fought in Chechnya ... People are trying to harm us," he protested.
The Jarrah family also have an apartment in Beirut, where they spend part of the year, and they are prominent in the Bekaa region.
The mayor of Marj is a member of the family, which also includes a colonel with the general security services, Nazem Jarrah, based in Zahleh, a main town in the Bekaa Valley.
"For now, Ziad is listed as missing. It's up to the American and Lebanese authorities to inform us about his whereabouts," Jamal said, stressing that his nephew does not match the profile of an Islamic militant.
"He lived for the last four years in Hamburg, he had a German fiancee and has never been interested in politics nor played any active role.
"Besides, Ziad did his schooling in Christian schools, at La Sagesse in Beirut, and as a family, we are not very interested in religious education," he said.
That comment caused a friend in the family house to object.
"Anyhow, do we Muslims now have to show a certificate of not practising our religion so as to not be suspected of terrorism?" he asked.
Three young girls spoke of their cousin Ziad as a "pleasant" young man.
"All the family took to his German fiancee, Ilse, who is delightful. She came to Lebanon in August for the wedding of a cousin. Ziad didn't come because of his studies," explained cousin Najat.
For Jamal, the suspicions weighing on his nephew, who allegedly took part in the hijacking of a United Airlines flight from New Jersey that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, "just do not make sense."
"They are trying to implicate him in a network led by the Egyptian Mohamed Atta, who apparently studied at Hamburg's Technical University (TU). But Ziad was a student of the University of Applied Sciences of Hamburg and not the TU," he said.
At the mosque in Marj, dedicated to the imam Shafei -- a key 14th century theologian of the Sunni branch of Islam -- a cleric later chased away journalists.
"Go away! You are going to bring misfortune on us. I don't even know Ziad Jarrah and he has never set foot here," he cried -- MARJ, Lebanon (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
