‘I Had Assumed He Was Dead’

[Editor’s note: ‘Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and Jihad in the Post-9/11 World,’ out now from University of Regina Press, takes as its focus the post-9/11 rise of Islamophobia, surveillance and the ‘new discourse of jihad’ emerging in part from state violence being enacted against Muslims overseas. In this excerpt, which opens the book, University of Manitoba researcher in Islamophobia Youcef Soufi receives an unexpected call from the RCMP. The Americans, the detective tells him, have finally nabbed a man — one of three ‘homegrown radicals’ — who had left Soufi’s Winnipeg Muslim community ‘a mess’ when he disappeared nine years prior.]

July 2016. I am walking through Ottawa’s Parliament security. My phone rings: “Private number.” It’s the third time that someone blocking their number has tried to reach me. I wonder who it could be, what they want. I answer hastily and slightly nervously: “Hello.”

“Hi, is this Youcef Soufi?”

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Paul from the RCMP in Winnipeg, I’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve left voice mails but you haven’t gotten back to me.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police? I start to think about all the possible reasons why Canada’s national police force might want to talk to me. I haven’t murdered anyone, and last time I checked, I don’t sell or do drugs. Did I accidentally do something? A tax problem? A traffic violation? Library fines are the most probable crime I can come up with. But most of all, I can’t shake the impression that this has some connection to my Muslim identity — in one way or another.

Voice mail? I don’t have voice mail on my phone. No bother. “What can I do for you?” I ask Detective Paul.

“Well, is this a good time to talk to you?”

“It’s not, actually. Is there a way for us to speak in a couple of hours — say, noon Winnipeg time?” That would mean 1 p.m. Ottawa time.

“Sure, I’ll call you then.”

Before he ends the call, I quickly ask whether everything is all right.

“Oh yeah,” Detective Paul replies; then, tentatively, trying to avoid telling me too much, he adds: “it’s just in relation to what we talked to you about a few years ago.”

‘Being Muslim involves continual reassertions of one’s Canadianness’

I complete the security screening and enter the building’s gathering area for tourists. My thoughts are racing as I wait for my tour to begin. I stand looking at the posters and video displays in the waiting area, but I am not all there. I have an idea of what the RCMP wants, but Detective Paul has still given me very few details to go on.

I see my sister. She is the tour guide, and she is ushering in visitors from security, directing them to the waiting area. A second-year student at the University of British Columbia, where I am starting as an assistant professor in the fall, she is 13 years my junior and working at Canada’s federal legislative assembly to save money for school.

I had taken the bus the night before from Toronto to Ottawa to visit her, and she had reserved tickets for me to take her tour. I wonder if she knows I am unsettled. I try to mask it. I know how much she is looking forward to showing me her presentation.

The tour begins in the visitors’ chamber, where golden plaques listing the elected members of each parliamentary session are on display. I locate the 23rd Parliament (1957-58). There, I see my grandfather’s name, “LOUIS DENISET,” written in engraved black letters, alongside other members of Parliament.

As my sister speaks, I wonder how the other visitors read her. She is wearing a headscarf. Are they reading her as foreign to Canada? As a new and welcome addition to Canada? Born of immigrants from overseas? How many of them would be perplexed to know her grandfather represented the parliamentary constituency of St. Boniface, Manitoba, long before most of them were born? How many of them would suspect her French Canadian origins?

I think about how being Muslim involves continual reassertions of one’s Canadianness — continual claims of entitlement to the nation.

The tour begins. I know the building well — exceedingly well. I had been a parliamentary tour guide myself in the summers of 2004 and 2005. My sister leads us from the House of Commons to the Library of Parliament. We walk through the Hall of Honour.

Here, my mind wanders back to my phone call with Detective Paul.

My gaze lingers on a small alcove. The other visitors don’t know the significance of this place. A year earlier, the alcove’s Tyndall limestone had been riddled with bullets. Michael Zihaf-Bibeau, a self-declared ISIS supporter, had run into Parliament armed with a Winchester rifle.

Before entering, Zihaf-Bibeau had gone to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier across from Parliament and shot and killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, an unarmed soldier and young father symbolically guarding the tomb. The attacks rattled Canada. Zihaf-Bibeau hid in the alcove before being killed. Decidedly, I tell myself, these are troubling times.

The tour ends. “Good job, kiddo. That was amazing,” I tell my sister.

“Thanks, bro — I’ll see you later, all right, once my shift is done.”

“Sure thing, see you soon.” I make my way to the lawn in front of Parliament. Seven minutes to 1 p.m. I lie down and wait. The sun is bright and the air humid. I am exhausted from the long bus ride the night before and I need to rest.

‘The Americans would like to interview you’

A few minutes pass and my phone rings; I sit up. “Hi Youcef.”

“Hi,” I say, pausing. “So what can I do for you?”

Detective Paul answers plainly. “The Americans would like to interview you. It’s about Muhanad Al Farekh.”

Surprised, I respond in a slow, inquisitive tone: “That’s fine with me. But why Muhanad? What do they want to know about him specifically? Why not the other two guys?”

Detective Paul answers: “Well, because the trial is coming up.”

The trial? I ask myself, puzzled.

“You do know they found him, don’t you?”

What? The statement doesn’t fully sink in. I shake my head in consternation and move the phone away slightly. What did he mean they found him? How could that be? Muhanad had disappeared; all three of them had, without a trace. It had been nine years.

Detective Paul continues, “Yeah, the Americans picked him up in Pakistan last year.”

“No, I didn’t know. I had assumed he was dead a long time ago.”

“Well, the Americans have him in custody and they’ve decided to put him on trial.”

I come back to my senses. “Yeah, I get it,” I say. “Muhanad was an American citizen.”

“Yes, that’s right. The Americans want to gather evidence for the trial. That’s why they want to interview you.”

“That’s not a problem. I’m coming to Winnipeg in a few days to visit family. I’ll be there until the end of July and then I’ll be back in Toronto in August.”

“Great, I’ll inform the Americans and get back to you. I’ll send you my email address so you can reach me.” We end the call.

I look around me. Swarms of tourists everywhere are enjoying the beautiful day. My mood could not contrast more sharply with theirs. With furrowed eyebrows, I am pensive, absorbed in my thoughts. The events surrounding Muhanad’s disappearance had greatly impacted my life. All our lives. Now, just like that, he was back.

‘His eyes are different’

I look behind me to the imposing neo-Gothic clock tower of Parliament. Detective Paul had said Muhanad was on the news. How did I miss that?!

I pull out my smartphone. I can’t remember exactly how to spell his name. I enter “Muhannad El-Ferekh.” Google corrects his name for me. I see a series of news sources that have covered the story in recent months, and select an article from the CBC. It features a sketch from a New York City courtroom.

Plain as day, it is Muhanad. He has gained weight, his beard is long and scruffy, and he has a receding hairline. But it is him. Same short height, oval face, blond hair and round nose. The sketch even shows the distinct crease marks on his forehead.

His eyes are different though. They have lost their life. Muhanad’s eyes used to twinkle, but here he looks pitiable, forlorn and broken. As I read the article, I quickly learn why. He had been in solitary confinement for the last year, in a room little larger than a closet, for 23 hours a day.

So he wasn’t dead. It had been nine years. Nine years I had waited for answers. And not just about Muhanad, but also Ferid and Miawand. All three had disappeared in March 2007.

I remember my friend Dawud’s words: “When they left, they left a mess.”

We resented them for that. They left a mess that the Winnipeg Muslim community would have to deal with. A mess and a mystery. What had happened to these three men? Where were they, what were they doing, and why had they left?

There had been whispers. Whispers of Pakistan, radicalization, terrorism. But whispers were all we heard. Now, with Muhanad in custody, perhaps, finally, we would have some answers.

I lie back down on the grass. I think of our increasingly precarious and polarized world. The emergence of ISIS has led to a proliferation of acts of terrorism worldwide — Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Istanbul.

In the days prior to my trip to Ottawa, Omar Mateen carried out the largest mass shooting in American history at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Muslims are increasingly under the microscope. Donald Trump’s proclamation to ban all Muslims from America is gaining a degree of support that would have been hard to imagine a short while earlier. The road ahead seems arduous, to say the least.

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Excerpted from ‘Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and Jihad in the Post-9/11 World.’ Copyright © 2024 Youcef Soufi. Published by University of Regina Press in Canada and NYU Press (World). Reproduced by arrangement with the publishers. All rights reserved.