Zacarias, 23, was unable to find a job, and in 1991 he moved to London. His brother thinks that's where he became "a perfect target for well-financed, dangerous Muslim extremists who prey on disillusioned young men." During his first few years in London, he worked on his masters and flew home frequently to see his high school girlfriend. He had a falling out with his mother, he came back months later to apologize, and then disappeared. By 1998, he was in an Al Qaeda training camp.

But she remembers him vividly as a petty criminal, a pathological liar, a violent man. ''This is what their father did,'' el-Wafi says, pulling back the side of her mouth to show where she has gold teeth to replace the ones he knocked out; she pulls down her right eye to show the damage he did a tear duct. '

Nadia's life has been a series of sick days since around 1985, when, as she says, ''the craziness came,'' triggered by a bad breakup. She has since suffered through depression and four suicide attempts. Like her younger sister, Jamila, she has been told she is schizophrenic. Her life has frozen since her first illness. Although she is clearly bright and strikingly articulate, there's something disconcertingly adolescent about the eagerness of her smile, the high pitch of her voice, even the look of her face, which belongs to a woman much younger than 39. She has had odd jobs here and there, but in the months since the 11th, she has barely been able to leave her small, state-subsidized apartment.

Nadia looked altogether elsewhere, developing, when she was in her 20's, an abiding devotion to Judaism. ''In my heart,'' she tells me, ''in my heart, I am Jewish.'' What's more, she loves Israel, would go tomorrow if she could, without blinking; her dream is to see the Brooklyn Bridge, to go to Brooklyn, ''because that's where all the Jews are in America.''