ALEXANDRIA Va. – There was a book left in a Pakistani hotel room where five young men from Virginia were arrested, suspected of trying to join Taliban forces. Called The Pact, that book tells the true story of three boys from a rough neighborhood and broken homes who bond and eventually help one another through medical and dental school.
“This is a story about the power of friendship. Of joining forces and beating the odds,” reads one snippet on the back of the book.
It is also a story with a happy ending.
But the saga of these five young men from Virginia, friends who grew up together and attended the same small neighborhood mosque. has been anything but that, quickly turning from one of promise to despair for many of the family members and friends they left behind.
There is sadness in their tight-knit Muslim community, and anger. These were young men who grew up with modest means, still living in small homes and apartments with their families, but who, in at least some cases, seemed as though they were on track to achieve good things.
Some of the young men, who range in age from late teens to early 20s, have been described by friends and neighbors as polite, quiet, even kind. They went to public schools. Some were athletes.
Right up to the time they disappeared a few weeks ago, they regularly attended prayer services at the mosque. Then two or three of them would head to a nearby gym five days a week, “like clockwork,” a gym manager says.
