Diary of a terrorist: Fazul’s journey to Pakistan

The second Gulf War was about to break out because Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and occupied it in a cowardly and unprecedented operation.

He had barely had time to rest from his war with Iran when the Zionists schemed to get him into another conflict with Kuwait so that there would be a pretext for the United States to enter the region.

I began to bid people farewell, not forgetting my Shaykh Sadiq and all the relatives and neighbours. Whoever heard the news could not believe it immediately and people thought that I was joking, especially when I told them that I was going to Pakistan.

Most of them knew nothing about Pakistan other than that it was a Muslim country and a big rice exporter. But I knew something about that country, the Afghan jihad and the state of Afghanistan and about the Palestinian issue.

Further studies

As far as education was concerned, there were two groups of people: those who go to Europe or North Africa and those who go to Saudi Arabia for further studies. Those opting for Saudi Arabia went to study religion.

The Pakistan era began in our time and many young men from Comoro went to Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore to study. I was accepted at a Lahore university.

Comoro youth in Pakistan learned a lot about the Ummah’s causes and about sensitive legal issues such as governance and legal policy. They acquainted themselves with many books, some of them banned in other Islamic countries. In fact, these young men are the ones who changed a lot of things in the country on their return.

Nearly two years later, in 1992-93, the Sudanese school of thought emerged. It consisted of a mixture of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist ideas. The important thing is that they worked with each other and I helped them a lot with their ideas. We used to get together and plan for the future of Comoros.

Political tranquility

The atmosphere was a little cool and relative political tranquillity prevailed in the Comoros when I bade my brothers and sisters farewell and got into the car with my mother.

Sadness showed on the face of my mother who didn’t know what would happen to me on the way because the trip was long and it was not a direct flight to Lahore.

We got into the departures hall and filled out the necessary travel documents. My mother kept on urging me to be courageous, to be wary of thieves and not to mix with foreigners I did not know.

Before boarding the Madagascar Airlines plane, I looked at my mother who was watching me from the airport’s waving bay, and bade her farewell a last time as I entered the world of adventure.

In the plane was another student from Comoro going to the same university.

The plane took off at about 10.40am. It is then that I realised that I had become a man and was no longer a child.

The plane landed in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, at noon. We boarded another plane and touched down at the Mauritius airport in the evening.

We stayed in Mauritius for a week, during which we worked hard to get the visas. We kept on going to the Pakistani embassy until we acquired them, with Allah’s grace.

I made friends with a Mauritanian family through Muhammad Ghul Zar, a friend who worked near the hotel and who I have not been able to see since then. The hotel driver also helped us a lot in getting the visas.

We bade my aunt and her daughter farewell at the hotel, trusted ourselves to Allah and headed for the airport. We boarded a luxurious Boeing 777 Mauritanian Airlines flight that took off at 5.00 in the evening and arrived in India at 12.30am.

We slept in the transit hall and had our breakfast at Bombay International Airport.

Ten days later, we still had not arrived in Karachi and I was well aware that my mother was very worried about me. She was always on my mind. I missed her. Who was going to do my laundry and cook for me? I had a thousand questions on my mind. But one has to be strong in such situations.

I didn’t like India. Although I know it is the land of my ancestors, I have an instinctive hatred for cow worshippers. The airport was big, but it smelled bad because of the chemicals they use to clean the place, overcrowding and pollution.

At 10 o’clock the next morning, the operator called, telling us to get ready to board. However, the call was late and we were informed that we had to rush to get on board. We told them that we had luggage that had to be weighed, but they told us to leave the luggage for another flight.
At this point, I recalled my mother’s words. The airport people were real thieves. How could we leave our luggage to strangers?

So I said to my friend: “This is impossible. We have to travel with our luggage.”

“So what do we do? We have no plan,” he answered.

“Be patient,” I told him, “they will solve this issue themselves because we will not travel without our luggage.”

Soon a clerk and luggage handler called to tell us that we could travel with our luggage. We were the last to board the plane.

But I had not seen a more deplorable plane. I don’t know whether the reason why it was picked to fly the route was because of the security problem between the two countries. It was like a bus, and I had to go to the lavatory several times to throw up because of that bad smell.

When we approached, the captain said: “We are about to land. Please, buckle up.”

“Madam,” I called the stewardess, “please, may I go to the lavatory?”

“That is impossible. We are about to land,” she replied.

“Then I have to throw up somewhere. I cannot endure this smell,” I told her.

“Okay, take this pill and you will feel much better,” she said as she handed it to me.

I swallowed the pill and buckled my seat belt. We landed safely.

I was glad because we were in Pakistan. However, I am still sad for two reasons — that I still miss my mother and that we have not arrived in our destination as we still had a domestic flight from Karachi to Lahore. I was already tired of planes.