The faces of Islam: Ra'ed al-Banna's personal journey from laddism to piety, jihad and "martyrdom" is one that still mystifies his deeply traumatised family, Mary Fitzgerald writes from Amman
The converted garden shed they used to call Ra'ed's den is empty now except for two sofas and the bunk bed he used to sleep in. On one wall hangs the framed decoration common in Muslim homes which lists the 99 names of Allah as described in the Koran.
Facing it is a poster of an F-117 Stealth fighter plane hovering over a neon-lit city.
Before the phone call from Iraq last year, the al-Banna family knew this cramped room as the place where Ra'ed, a 30-something Jordanian lawyer, moped after his dream of living in the US fell apart. Now they wonder about his transformation in that tiny space, a change that saw him go, quietly and unnoticed, from mild-mannered son and brother to suicide bomber in Iraq.
They find it difficult to square the Ra'ed they thought they knew with the man exalted on jihadist websites as "the martyr Abu Radwan al-Urdani [ Abu Radwan the Jordanian] . . . a lawyer by profession who chose to defend Allah's religion and the dignity of Muslim men and women in Iraq instead of defending people in court".
The phone call, they remember, came just weeks after Ra'ed told his family he was going to Saudi Arabia for work.
"Congratulations," the unidentified caller said in a strong Iraqi accent.
"Ra'ed was martyred in an honourable operation against the enemy in Iraq."
The caller did not say where al-Banna died or when, or if he was killed trying to attack US forces or Iraqi security personnel.
Three days before, a suicide bomber had carried out the single deadliest attack in Iraq since the war began, ploughing through a crowd queuing outside a police registration centre at Hilla and killing more than 130 Iraqis. Al-Banna was initially linked to the bombing, but his family and the Jordanian government insist he died in a suicide attack on US soldiers in Mosul.
The exact circumstances of his death remain a mystery, as does much of the story of the young lawyer turned insurgent.
Everyone who knew him says Ra'ed al-Banna loved America. After his graduation from Jordan's Mu'tah University, Ra'ed's father Mansour helped him set up his own law firm. The practice struggled, however, and Ra'ed became disillusioned with his work. He toyed with the idea of working for the UN's refugee agency and completed an internship at their Amman offices.
But his dream was to see the US, and in early 2001 he secured a visa, telling his family he hoped to further his legal studies there.
Ra'ed spent almost two years living in southern California, doing odd jobs to fund what friends say was a hedonistic lifestyle far removed from the one he was used to in Jordan. He grew his hair long, went clubbing, dated American women and loved to listen to Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails.
He called his family regularly, telling them he hoped to fall in love with an American woman and eventually settle in the US.
"He always talked about the opportunities in America," his father remembers. "He felt at home there. His friends started to tell him he even looked like an American."
More than a year after his son's death, Mansour al-Banna can hardly bear to look at the bundle of creased photographs Ra'ed sent home during his time in the US.
Tears roll down his cheeks and he strokes his son's face on each photograph. "Darling, darling, why?" he murmurs in Arabic between snatches of whispered prayers.
There are snaps of Ra'ed sightseeing at the World Trade Center and the Golden Gate Bridge, straddling a Harley Davidson motorcycle and enjoying a barbeque with friends. Others show him in Hawaiian print shirt, chunky gold necklace and shades, posing on a California beach and driving with a blond female friend.
In one picture, Ra'ed is holding a small US flag while standing in front of a military helicopter.
On September 11th, 2001, the young Jordanian was working as a pedicab driver at an airport near Los Angeles. A fellow employee told the LA Times Ra'ed was horrified by the attacks on New York and Washington DC, telling people: "Not all Muslims are like that. Not all of us hate America."
Another American friend told the paper: "At the time, he hated the terrorists. That's why I don't understand why he joined them."
No one knows exactly when Ra'ed began the personal journey that would lead to his death in Iraq, or what triggered it. Friends in the US say he began attending the mosque more regularly and praying five times a day a few months before he returned to Jordan for a visit in early 2003.
"One day he simply said he was tired of living like he was - drinking, womanising and the like. He said God had a purpose for him, but never said what it was," one friend told the LA Times.
A purported biography published on a jihadist website following his death gloated that Ra'ed was "distant from blessed Allah" until the September 11th attacks. "This event moved Abu Radwan and so he embraced blessed Allah once again."
On his way back to the US, Ra'ed was denied entry at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport for visa irregularities and sent back to Jordan.
"From the moment I picked him up at the airport, it was different," his father recalls. "He was depressed and disappointed, but he still talked about going back to America."
But soon the days turned into weeks and then months of disappointment as Ra'ed's attempts to find a job in Jordan failed. With no money of his own, he spent much of his time holed up in his room. The rest, his family says, he spent going to the mosque.
"He wasn't very religious up to then, but he would pray. We noticed he started praying the full five prayers. We had never seen him do that before."
Then Iraq was invaded. His family remembers Ra'ed spending hours watching news footage of the war.
"He would get angry and upset and started talking all the time about what was happening in Iraq and Palestine. Abu Ghraib affected him a lot," his father says.
"He wanted to know why America would kill and torture innocent people in Iraq but he still wanted to return to live there. He always said the American people are far away from the policies of their government. He would say they were two completely different things."
In November 2004, Ra'ed travelled to Saudi Arabia to perform the umrah pilgrimage, telling his family he also planned to look for work there. A month after his return, he said he was leaving again to work in Saudi Arabia. Jordanian authorities have told Mansour al-Banna that after leaving Jordan in late January, his son crossed over the border into Syria, a favoured route into Iraq for would-be jihadists.
In March this year Jordan's military court convicted seven men of plotting to attack US forces and Iraqi police.They were charged with recruiting six Jordanians, including Ra'ed al-Banna, to travel to Syria in preparation for suicide bombing operations in Iraq.
Trials of Islamic militants are nothing new in Jordan. Certain towns are known to contain pockets of militant and extremist elements, many of which adhere to an austere interpretation of Islam called Salafism.
One of its key modern ideologues, a Palestinian named Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, arrived in Jordan in 1991 and went on to build a following that included Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant accused of leading the Iraq insurgency until his death in a US air strike last month.
Information published on a jihadist website about Ra'ed al-Banna claimed he had read and distributed books written by al-Maqdisi, currently in jail in Jordan.
The Al-Banna family comes from Salt, a former Ottoman trading outpost now referred to by jihadists as "the city of the martyrs". More than 20 of its men are believed to have died as insurgents in Iraq. Others went to fight jihad in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya and never came back.
Like many other towns in Jordan and across the Middle East, several of Salt's mosques ring out with fiery anti-US and Israel rhetoric at Friday prayers. Some imams go even further, explicitly calling on Muslims to fulfil their obligation to fight jihad against "the Crusaders" in Iraq.
After the triple suicide bombings that killed 60 people in Amman last November, the Jordanian authorities attempted to clamp down on such sermons.
In the case of one imam in the north of Jordan who had regularly hailed al-Zarqawi a hero and urged people to "join their brother in Iraq", the turnaround was swift.
The week after the Amman bombings, his sermon dealt with the importance of greeting fellow Muslims with "as-salaam aleikum" [ peace be upon you].
A sheikh in the same town told The Irish Times he had been warned not to preach about politics or Iraq. As a result, he had received many complaints from those who attend his mosque, he claimed, asking why he no longer talked about "the mujahideen" in his sermons.
Mansour al-Banna appears deeply personally conflicted over what his son did in Iraq. At times he talks about the importance of jihad in Islam as a means to fight invaders, later he condemns those whom he believes "brainwashed" his son.
The family's response to Ra'ed's death has been the focus of fierce debate. A week after they received news of his death the family paid for an obituary in a local newspaper. "Announcing the death of a martyr," it read, "who got his martyrdom in the land of Iraq at the age of 32. Don't think that those who were killed for God are dead - quite the contrary. They are alive, and are even born again."
Al-Banna insists the obituary did not intend to imply that the family was celebrating his son's role in the Iraqi insurgency.
Instead, he says, Ra'ed was referred to as a martyr because, according to Islamic custom, anyone who dies in a foreign land is considered as such. A local newspaper report identifying Ra'ed as the Hilla bomber and claiming his family celebrated his "martyrdom" in a huge funeral ceremony was later picked up by Arab satellite channels, outraging Iraqis and prompting an attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.
The Jordanian government later said fresh evidence proved al-Banna had nothing to do with the bombing. They stressed reports the family had "celebrated" were erroneous.
"I don't believe it was Ra'ed who died at Hilla because he had no hard feelings towards Iraqis, instead he was against the enemy causing so many problems for the Iraqi people," his father says.
"Our religion tells us that if someone occupies your land you must fight in the jihadi way to take it back. Personally, I think this is an Iraqi problem and Jordanians should not get involved. If I knew my son was going to fight in Iraq I would not have allowed him to go."
Why Ra'ed decided to take that path is something Mansour al-Banna admits he cannot stop thinking about. He grasps at possible reasons and then dismisses them, insisting it was God's will.
His grief, still raw 17 months after his son's death, suggests any initial burst of pride has long given way to a bitter sense of loss.
"The basic idea comes from our religion but I don't know how these people, these sheikhs, got into the mind of my son to brainwash him," he says, his voice strained with emotion.
"You look at the poor economy, the unemployment, the fact many of our young people are desperate and have nothing to do - maybe that explains some of it.
"Young men in that position start to look at life in a different way and they are easily influenced. I cannot see a wealthy guy who lives in a villa thinking like this.
"Maybe my son asked God to become a martyr because of the circumstances he found himself in. We will never know. We thought he had everything to live for, but obviously he didn't feel the same.
"We thought we knew Ra'ed's dreams and goals, but God's plan for him was different. God's will was that it happened this way."
• Mary Fitzgerald is the inaugural Douglas Gageby fellow.