Inside the Jihad (2 of 5 free samples)

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BRUSSELLS

CAST OF CHARACTERS
http://www.dailylit.com/books/inside-the-jihad/cast1

TIMELINE
http://www.dailylit.com/books/inside-the-jihad/timeline1

OMAR

My name is Omar Nasiri. I am Moroccan. I was born in 1967. I am a Muslim.

I am very sorry. Almost none of this is true.

My name is not Omar Nasiri, or at least that is not the name my parents gave me. It is the name I am using to write this book, but it's only one of a long list of names I have used over the course of my life. Or perhaps I should say my lives--as a son, a brother, a student, a gunrunner, a mujahid, a secret agent, a civilian, a husband, and now an author.

I was not born in 1967. I have to protect my identity because members of my family still live in Morocco, and their lives would be in danger if my name were known. But anyway, what I'm saying is close enough. I was born in the 1960s.

I am Moroccan, but that is complicated also. My parents are Moroccan, of course, and I spent many years of my life there. I love the landscape and the people and the children's broad white smiles, and the smells of the food. I love the women in the bright silks of pink and green. Morocco is in my heart. Although I've traveled all over the world, Morocco is still the most beautiful country in the world to me. I miss her desperately, but know I can never return.

But if my heart lies in Morocco, my head is in Europe, where I was educated, where I grew up, where I've spent most of my life. I read Le Monde, books from America and England. My mind has been shaped by the West, by its patterns of thought, by its agitated, arrogant, thrilling individualism.

Because I'm part Arab, part European, my home is nowhere. When I went back to Morocco as a teenager, my Arabic was weak and other kids mocked me as a European and a foreigner. When last I visited, over a decade ago, I traveled as an outsider, a visitor from abroad. I drank whiskey on the deck of the ferry and smoked cigarettes and checked out girls. But I have no home in Europe either. I've lived in Germany for six years now with my wife, and I've worked in many jobs, but I'm not a citizen. I'm classified a refugee and I'm treated like any other Arab "guest worker."

So perhaps only one thing is completely true: I am a Muslim.