Native Son

ZARQA, JORDAN -- As a teenager growing up in this industrial city in the 1980s, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi earned a reputation as a neighborhood thug who roamed the streets looking to scuffle with anyone over anything from girls to politics to soccer teams. Those who dared to challenge him often were sorry they did. He was, by all accounts, ruthless. "If he could reach your eye, he would take it. If he'd reach your heart, he'd take that too. There was no hesitation," said Haithem, 37, a metal worker in Zarqa who spent much of his youth running the other way when he saw al-Zarqawi and remains frightened enough of him that he asked that his own last name not be used.

WADOWICE, Poland -- Pope John Paul II may have helped hasten the end of communism here, eased centuries of tensions between Catholics and Jews and campaigned for human rights. But to the people of Wadowice, all that mattered yesterday was that he was first and foremost a son of their city. Mayor Ewa Filipiak, signing the guestbook outside the church where Karol Wojtyla was baptized and received his first communion, tried to explain what the pope's death meant to this community of 20,000 people.

KRAKOW, Poland - Eyes glinting with tears, throats hoarse with grief, the Polish faithful numbly absorbed the news last night that the man they regarded as their spiritual father and political liberator was dead. "All the people of my village? How can I explain how they feel?" asked an anguished Slowik Wojtik, a 35-year-old fur and hide trader who lives near Wadowice, the hamlet where Pope John Paul II grew up. "This was a person who was for us like a father. All of Poland is crying now."

Native Baltimorean Paul DeBoy hasn't done a lot of acting in his hometown in recent years, but suddenly area audiences can see a lot of him -- all of him, in fact, since he's one of the few actors who appears in the nude in John Waters' new movie, A Dirty Shame. In the movie, DeBoy and actress Susan Allenbach play husband and wife swingers. It was DeBoy's first Waters movie, as well as his first on-screen nude scene. What surprised him most about Waters, he says, was that "he's so shy. We finished doing the nude scene, which both Susan and I were angsting about, and [Waters]

OQUAWKA, Ill. - The endless fields of corn and soybeans stop here at the Mississippi River. This is a fishing and boating town of 1,539 people. On Sunday it became a golf town. When Todd Hamilton tapped in for par on the 76th hole of the 133rd British Open, there was not another town in the world - not St. Andrews, not Pinehurst, not Pebble Beach - that was more important to the game in that moment. Oquawka (pronounced O-KWAK-a) was mostly known - if it was known at all - for its proximity to the great river, and for its pork tenderloin sandwiches.

IT'S AN OBSCURE piece of history long taught in some Maryland schools, hidden in some history books: A Charles County patriot named John Hanson - not George Washington - was the first president of the United States. This arcane truth, dear to Hanson's descendants and other Marylanders, says the country was formed in 1781 with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, and someone had to be running the country a full eight years before Washington became president under the much-improved U.S. Constitution.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - In a downtown restaurant and pool hall, John Edwards savored the taste of victory that he craved last night, served up by the voters of his native state. "It's a long way from that little house in Seneca, South Carolina, to here tonight," the North Carolina senator said amid a raucous celebration at Jillian's, his voice hoarse from nonstop campaigning. Edwards, a millionaire trial lawyer who frequently talks about how he rose from humble roots in a textile mill town, had called the Palmetto State a "must win."

Flanking Leon's Triple L Restaurant, the Arbutus landmark known as a place to find generous bowls of crab soup and political wisdom, is a bargain market and antiques emporium where a visitor can pick up a pair of used camouflage pants or a nice reflecting lawn ball. On the other side sits the Vet Dry Cleaners that the three Matheson brothers opened when they returned home from World War II. With one foot in the past and the other very much in the present, Arbutus finds itself in the glare of the national spotlight -- native son Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is Maryland's new governor-elect.

When Karen Blue was a teen-ager growing up in Columbia, she used to call the place "Plastic City." "I kept thinking that it wasn't the real world," she said. "It was a bunch of mannequins with two kids and a dog and a goldfish in the living room." But after she grew out of her adolescent rebellion phase and decided she wanted to start a family, she was struck with the realization that she wanted that supposed perfect lifestyle she used to mock. So she moved back to the idealized suburb with her husband to raise their daughter.

When Karen Blue was a teen-ager growing up in Columbia, she used to call the place "plastic city." "I kept thinking that it wasn't the real world," she said. "It was a bunch of mannequins with two kids and a dog and a goldfish in the living room." But after she grew out of her adolescent rebellion phase and decided she wanted to start a family, she was struck with the realization that she wanted that supposed perfect lifestyle she used to mock. So she moved back to the idealized suburb with her husband to raise their daughter.