The couple had been separated for fourteen months while each attended school in different countries. he had gone to Germany five times to visit her during that time, and she had gone to visit him in the United States once. Six months earlier, he had traveled home to visit his father, who was having heart surgery. Before returning to school, he had spoken to Aysel, who had found him to have been deeply moved by his father's illness. He had said that he wanted to have children soon so that his father could see them before he died. His father had been generously supporting his studies, sending him $2,000 a month and making sure that his young fiancée was well supported. The family had been pleased that the handsome happy-go-lucky playboy was going to marry. In the elite private schools in which he had been educated, he had seemed, or so his family complained, more interested in girls than geometry. While not spectacularly wealthy, hi family was very comfortably off. They owned two homes, drove fashionable Mercedes, and enjoyed good whiskey. Their only son and middle child enjoyed spending their money. When visiting his fiancée, the young couple would take a trip to Paris to eat, drink, and take in the sights, and when she came to visit him they took a trip to the Florida Keys. Rather than staying with those he know, he was quick to make friends with classmates at his new school and took a fun trip with them to the Bahamas. He often stated in their apartment, cooking dinner for them in the evening and making everyone an early-morning cup of tea. 'He was a friend to all of us' said the head of his school.
Unlike the other passengers who said good-bye to their family members that morning, however, the twenty-six-year-old Lebanese student, Ziad Jarrah, knew that he would not be seeing them again. He boarded United Airlines Flight 93 on the morning of September 11 with no intention of ever steeping off the plane. "
-- Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want 139-140 (2007)
