Chapter Fifteen
In the months that followed our fateful meeting in the hotel lobby on the periphery of a black march that weighed down on me like a nightmare, I managed to penetrate the hinterlands of her life. From our first meeting, she categorically forbade me from speaking about her past in Aden or her daily life in Sana’a in the guru’s palace complex.
Even so, from the moment I met her I’d been transformed into a questioning machine.
‘Is it true that someone who kills “infidels” without “martyring” himself, let’s say by leaving a bomb in a garbage bin in the metro station, receives the same “reward” as someone who does “martyr” himself?’ I once asked Hawiya.
‘It’s a matter of intent. Anyone who intends to engage in jihad in the name of God will be rewarded, whether he martyrs hims
