This week’s Village Voice has a really interesting story by Bernice Yeung about Phyllis Rodriguez, who lost her son at the World Trade Center and her unlikely friendship with Aicha
el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui. The photo of the two of them pictured right is by Yeung. Here’s an excerpt:

  The Rodriguezes’ mementos of Greg are subtle but
omnipresent. On their right wrists, both Rodriguez and her husband wear
silver bracelets engraved with Greg’s name, a parting gift, of sorts,
from Cantor Fitzgerald. Photos of Greg posing on a hiking trail or in a
snowy forest are arranged in the study and on the refrigerators of both
their White Plains home and their summer retreat.

And in nearly equal number, there are pictures of Aicha
el-Wafi: one tacked to the refrigerator, a framed photo on a bookshelf,
a snapshot of the two women together in New York that serves as the
background to Rodriguez’s computer screen.

The photos of Greg can be harder to look at for Phyllis
Rodriguez. In contrast, the photos of el-Wafi are like a shield from
grief, a reminder that Rodriguez has tried, in the name of her son, to
always do better and to push the limits of grace and generosity.

"How do you accept death when you don’t believe there’s a
heaven or an afterlife?" Rodriguez says. "It’s a fact of life. It’s an
end. It’s a loss. The only thing I feel I can do is to not succumb to
the tragedy and define myself through it and always be the long-suffering
mother. The loss will always be there. But I’m not miserable. As a
matter of fact, the more good I can do that can come out of it, the
better: by helping Aicha, by speaking out for more understanding
between people, by trying to understand what makes people who do
extremist acts arrive at that point. What can we do to eliminate some
of the conditions that make people so angry?"