Ordinary but for the Evil They Wrought

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: May 20, 2005

n his absorbing new book about the 9/11 hijackers, the Los Angeles Times reporter Terry McDermott provides a detailed portrait of one of those hijackers, Ziad al-Jarrah, and his tortured marriage to the vivacious Aysel Sengün. When they first meet at a German university, Mr. McDermott writes in "Perfect Soldiers," he seemed a good match: "a big-city boy with an easy smile, like her a moderate Muslim who enjoyed a good time," and like her, an aspiring dental student.

As he is drawn deeper and deeper into radical jihadi politics, however, Jarrah grows increasingly secretive and elusive, and Ms. Sengün begins nagging him to share more of himself. But even as Jarrah's absences grow longer - he has moved to America to learn how to become a pilot - she continues to dream of the life they will share: she will become a dentist, while he will get a job with an airline. "It made sense to Aysel," Mr. McDermott writes. "He had told her years before how much he had loved flying as a child; he constantly drew pictures of airplanes." In February 2001, they discuss having a baby together.