The Tsarnaevs from top left to right: The father, Anzor; his brother, Ruslan Tsarni; Anzor's wife, Zubeidat; and their sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar. In the background: the Boston bombing in April and a scene from Grozny in 1995. Photo Illustration by Gluekit; Reuters (Anzor Tsarnaev, Ruslan Tsarni, Boston bombing); Associated Press (Zubeidat Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev); Agence France-Presse/Getty Images (Grozny); Getty Images (Tamerlan Tsarnaev)


I was on sabbatical that year, taking classes at Harvard on a journalism fellowship, and had wanted to meet some of the refugees from Russia's war to reconquer the breakaway Muslim region of Chechnya. I expected to write about Russia's Islamist insurgency in the future, and I thought some Chechen expatriates might help me with my stories.


Dzhokhar Tsarnaev emerges from a boat on April 19 in Watertown, Mass., at the time of his capture. The red dot of a rifle laser sight is on his forehead. Massachusetts State Police/Associated Press

A decade ago, there was nothing about the Tsarnaevs to suggest any involvement in Islamist extremism. But they already seemed like "losers," as their successful Americanized uncle told reporters after the attack. They were out of place in the U.S., and my relationship with them developed because they needed so much basic advice about how to get by. I didn't sense impending danger in their household, but looking back, I can see now that I glimpsed a new type of threat to the U.S., one that we have only recently begun to confront.


The parents sat me in a chair before a meal of dumplings and chicken soup—typical fare of Russia's North Caucasus region—and we spoke Russian, while Tamerlan stood in the doorway with his arms folded. They interrogated me about America while I ate. What was a good profession for young men in America? What was the difference between state and private colleges?



For a few weeks, tightening up my car with Anzor became my escape from academic routine. Anzor had no garage, so finding a place to work was a frequent problem. In good weather, we jacked the car up in the street and lay down beneath it on a piece of cardboard that he'd brought along. In a half-dozen meetings, we replaced my car's alternator and brake pads and went over the whole electrical system, but we never did learn why the air conditioner blew hot air.


His status inside his family seemed to be slipping. One evening, soon before I left Boston, I dined at their home, and as Anzor and his wife walked me to the door she praised me as a "real dzhigit"—or "warrior." The moment was awkward. I replied, "No, your husband—he is the dzhigit." She waved her hand dismissively, while Anzor just frowned at something on the floor.


But a welter of tribulations soon followed. Health inspectors found lead-based paint in the apartment above the garage, and they had to abandon it. Zubeidat's business floundered. Their two teenage daughters married Chechen men, and then both got divorced.


Then came the attack in Boston last April. And although I was stunned to hear police say that Tamerlan and his brother were the bombers, it fit with the profile of terrorists I'd encountered in my work. The failed suicide bombers I'd interviewed in Afghan prisons were mostly young men with no prospects. One told me he was planning to kill himself because he had no job or family, and some Islamists persuaded him to try to take out some American soldiers while he was at it. He was arrested for stopping his bomb-laden car on the shoulder of a road to urinate.


In 2004, they already seemed like 'losers,' as their uncle told reporters after the attack.




In Kyrgyzstan, Anzor married Zubeidat, whom his family didn't approve of, partly because she wasn't Chechen. Anzor found sporadic work as a car mechanic and was jailed when the Kyrgyz government began a broad crackdown on Chechens. Ruslan said he worried that his brother and his family might not do well in America, but that he could be in danger in Kyrgyzstan. "I gave him the money for the tickets, and I said to Anzor, 'You know, by changing countries, you don't change everything,'" he said. But, he said, his brother was determined to try.





A text message on the phone of Zubeidat Tsarnaev on April 21, sent by her daughter. Sergei Rasulov

Zubeidat, the boys' mother, told me that she was the one who got Tamerlan interested in Islam, because she worried he was becoming wayward and was partying too much with American friends. But even Islam didn't give him a place in society that he could keep. In Cambridge, he was told to leave the local mosque because he couldn't control his outbursts against speakers whom he considered too moderate, according to a spokeswoman for the mosque.

In 2012, Tamerlan went to Dagestan and Chechnya to get acquainted with his roots, but he had some difficulty fitting in, his parents said. He stayed only briefly in Chechnya, in part because he didn't speak the language (his mother, after all, was Dagestani, and the family spoke Russian at home).


In the end, Boston police say, Tamerlan turned to an article called "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," published in an online al Qaeda magazine. I suspect that nobody wanted to work with him, not even other suspected terrorists. As many experts now tell us, "lone wolf" killers are a fearsome new threat, in large part because they are so much harder to track down than conventional terrorists who belong to organized extremist groups.





She had hoped religion would straighten the family out, she said, but she also said it might have been a mistake to go to America at all, because the adjustment was too much for her children. "We tried, but I wouldn't do it again," she said. "I don't know if we would have done it if we had known."

Write to Alan Cullison at