JORDAN: Yousef al-Khalayleh wasn't the only one in Zarqa to brim with pride when word of the city's most famous son and his exploits filtered back from Iraq.
Yousef had more reason than most. The man the world knows and fears as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is his first cousin, born Ahmed Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh 38 years ago.
His cousin had come a long way from the mean streets of this dusty industrial city to become one of the world's most wanted men, a shadowy figure accused of masterminding the insurgency in neighbouring Iraq.
For Yousef, a taxi driver, his cousin was a hero who fought the Americans just as he had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. A brave muhajed so proud of his impoverished hometown that he picked al-Zarqawi (meaning "the one from Zarqa") as his nom de guerre.
That changed last Wednesday with the news of a triple suicide bombing in nearby Amman that left 57 people dead. Zarqa, like every other city and town in Jordan, reeled in shock when it emerged that most of the victims were Jordanian, many of them guests at a wedding.
In a series of statements posted on the internet, Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying the targeted hotels had become a "backyard garden" for US and Israeli intelligence services.
The final statement identified four Iraqis, including a husband and wife team, as the suicide bombers.
Yousef is sceptical about the authenticity of the internet statements. "We won't believe it until we hear it from him personally or see him saying it on TV," he told The Irish Times.
But if that happens, Yousef's reaction will be unequivocal. "If we find out for definite that he is the one who did this, that he is the one who killed those who are Muslim, Arab and Jordanian - his own people - then we want nothing to do with him. He will no longer be our cousin."
His cousin, Mohammed, sitting with Yousef in the shabby premises from which he runs a rental business, agrees. "Before we are his relatives, we are Arab and Muslim. The people who died are like us. It makes me very sad."
It's a sentiment voiced by many in Zarqa and elsewhere, marking what appears to be a change in attitudes towards Zarqawi and his insurgency in Iraq, which had previously enjoyed tacit support in Jordan.
Some analysts predict that the targeting of his fellow Jordanians could prove to be Zarqawi's undoing.
A poll conducted by analyst Fares Braizat last year for Jordan's Centre for Strategic Studies found that 67 per cent of Jordanians considered al-Qaeda a "legitimate resistance group" instead of a "terrorist organisation".
In the aftermath of last week's bombings, Mr Braizat convened a focus group consisting of 10 of those who previously said they viewed al-Qaeda in a favourable light. Nine of the 10 had significantly different opinions from before.
In recent days, thousands of Jordanians have taken to the streets to denounce the man many once considered a hero, shouting "Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" and "Death to Zarqawi".
"He may well have botched it this time, given the fact that most of those who died were Jordanian," says Joost Hiltermann, an Amman-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. "There is a lot of support at popular level for the kind of resentment he is giving voice to, particularly in relation to US policy in the region and the situation in Iraq. If he had chosen different targets and those killed were not mostly from here, then he might not have come under the same condemnation in Jordan."
The wave of revulsion and condemnation that reverberated throughout the Arab world in the wake of the blasts provoked a hastily issued second internet statement from Zarqawi's group "to explain for Muslims" why they picked such targets.
"Let all know that we have struck only after becoming confident that they are centres for launching war on Islam and supporting the Crusaders' presence in Iraq and the Arab peninsula and the presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine," the statement read.
In the run-down streets of Zarqa, residents still talk of the bombings. One of the victims lived in the town. There is anger and despair but also a trickle of scepticism. In a town that houses Jordan's oldest Palestinian refugee camp, some people mutter about Israeli involvement.
Sawsan Hamdan, a 24-year-old lawyer out shopping with her mother, repeats a view popular among Jordanians before the Amman attacks - that Zarqawi is an invention, a convenient bogeyman for the US administration.
"He doesn't exist. How could one man be responsible for everything that happens in Iraq and now this?" she demands.
Asked who she believes organised the bombings, her answer is swift and firm. "America and Israel - they are always behind everything. I believe there is something hidden in this and we will find it out later."
