The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [28]
ZAWAHIRI TESTIFIED that he did not hear about the plan until nine o’clock on the morning of October 6, 1981, a few hours before the assassination was scheduled to take place. One of the members of his cell, a pharmacist, brought him the news. “I was astonished and shaken,” Zawahiri told his interrogators. The pharmacist proposed that they must do something to help the hastily conceived plot succeed. “But I told him, ‘What can we do? Do they want us to shoot up the streets and let the police detain us? We are not going to do anything.’” Zawahiri went back to his patients. When he learned, a few hours later, that the military exhibition was still going on, he assumed that the operation had failed and everyone connected with it had been arrested. He then went to the home of one of his sisters, who informed him that the exhibition had been halted and the president had left unharmed. The real news was yet to be heard.
Sadat had been celebrating the eighth anniversary of the 1973 war. Surrounded by dignitaries, including several American diplomats and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the future secretary-general of the United Nations, Sadat was saluting the passing troops when a military vehicle veered toward the reviewing stand. Lieutenant Islambouli and three other conspirators leaped out and tossed grenades into the stand. “I have killed the Pharaoh!” Islambouli cried, after emptying the cartridge of his machine gun into the president, who stood defiantly at attention until his body was riddled with bullets.
The announcement of Sadat’s death later that day met with little grief in the Arab world, which regarded him as a traitor for making peace with Israel. In Zawahiri’s opinion, the assassination had accomplished nothing in the way of achieving an Islamic state. But perhaps there was still time, in the shaky interval following the event, to put the grand plan into effect. Essam al-Qamari came out of hiding and asked Zawahiri to put him in touch with the group that had carried out the assassination. At ten that night, only eight hours after Sadat’s murder, Zawahiri and Qamari met with Aboud al-Zumar in a car outside the apartment where Qamari was hiding. Qamari had a daring proposal, this one with the chance to eliminate the entire government and many foreign leaders as well: an attack on Sadat’s funeral. Zumar agreed, and asked Qamari to supply him with ten bombs and two guns. The very next day the group met again. Qamari brought the weapons, as well as several boxes of ammunition. Meanwhile, the new government, headed by Hosni Mubarak, was rounding up thousands of prospective conspirators. Aboud al-Zumar was arrested before the plan could be put into action.
Zawahiri must have known that his name would surface, but still he lingered. On October 23, he had finally packed his belongings for another trip to Pakistan. He went to say good-bye to some relatives. His brother Hussein was driving him to the airport when the police stopped them on the Nile Corniche. “They took Ayman to the Maadi police station, and he was surrounded by guards,” his cousin Omar Azzam recalled. “The chief of police slapped him on the face—and Ayman slapped him back!” The family regards this incident with amazement, not only because of the recklessness of Zawahiri’s response but also because until that moment he had never, in their memory, resorted to violence. Zawahiri immediately became known among the other prisoners as the man