Mohamed Atta
Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in Egypt's Nile Delta region. His father, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, was a lawyer, educated in both sharia and civil law. His mother, Bouthayna Mohamed Mustapha Sheraqi, came from a wealthy farming and trading family and was also educated. Bouthayna and Mohamed married when she was 14, via an arranged marriage. The family had few relatives on the father's side and kept a distance from Bouthayna's family. In-laws characterized Atta's father as "austere, strict, and private," and neighbors considered the family reclusive. Atta was the only son; he had two older sisters who are both well-educated and successful in their careers — one as a medical doctor and the other as a professor.
Mohamed Atta
In 1994, Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, invited him to Aleppo for a three-day archaeological visit. Atta ended up spending several weeks in Aleppo during August 1994, and visited again that December. While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman, who worked there in the planning bureau. Volker Hauth, who was traveling with Atta, described Amal as "attractive and self-confident. She observed the Muslim niceties, taking taxis to and from the office so as not to come into close physical contact with men on the buses. But, she was 'emancipated' and 'challenging'." They appeared to be attracted to one another, but Atta regretfully explained to Hauth that, "she had a quite different orientation and that the emancipation of the young lady did not fit." This was the closest thing to romance for Atta. In mid-1995, Atta spent three months in Cairo with fellow students Volker Hauth and Ralph Bodenstein, on a grant from the Carl Duisberg Society. They looked at the effects of redevelopment in the Islamic Cairo old quarter which the government wanted to develop for tourism. Atta remained in Cairo with his family, after Hauth and Bodenstein returned to Germany.