WHAT TERRORISM is about:

Nina Joubran met her would-be husband on the Internet, a fitting footnote for a woman who spent much of her day tapping away at a keyboard.

For more than a year, the young librarian at Lebanon’s Balamand University exchanged e-mails with her new cyberfriend. They chatted about everything, but the conversations often turned to Canada. Elie Joubran had studied here and he was anxious to return one day for good.

By the time the pair finally met face to face in early 2002 — they were married by that summer — moving to Canada had evolved into a mutual goal.

“They had their hopes to live a beautiful and prosperous life in Canada and they looked forward to it,” Hazem Wehbe, Ms. Joubran’s cousin, recalled yesterday. “She looked forward to escaping this style of life in the Middle East. They wanted to live a free life, independent.”

The couple’s plan was brought to a violent halt just before midnight on Saturday, when a group of terrorists unleashed a suicide bomb in the Saudi Arabian housing complex where they lived.

Ms. Joubran was among the 17 people killed in the attack. Her husband survived, but he remains in a Saudi hospital, recovering from both wounds on his body and the knowledge his new wife is gone.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think this happened because the United States didn’t ratify Kyoto.