Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World

by Jean Sasson

  Fisk pleasantly asked my father if we would like a photograph taken with me. I was excited when my father agreed, because he was not a fan of photography, and his agreement to be in a picture with me meant more than the photo itself.

  After Fisk left us I found the nerve to ask, “Father, are you nervous about what this reporter might say?”

  My father shrugged and said, “No. He will be fair.”

  Later I was able to get a copy of Fisk’s interview and felt strangely disappointed that I was not mentioned in any way, even though I knew that my father was the only person that mattered in our family. The world had no reason to be interested in me, although I had reason to be interested in the world. The time to be on my way was drawing near.

  Chapter 22

  Jihad Vacation

  OMAR BIN LADEN

  As time passed, our bin Laden lives became even more bizarre. This was because my father’s passion for making Jihad appealed to people who were lost in life and had a longing for war, rather than with those who sought the ordinary pleasures of living. While some of the recruits were temporary visitors, their stay in Afghanistan more of a “Jihad vacation,” most of the soldiers quickly became addicted to the Jihadi life. They were seeking violent Jihad because they believed this was the purest cause for a Muslim. They felt that their lives had great meaning because they wanted to give that life to God.

  Those young men became the companions of my father’s sons, exposing us to many strange happenings.

  My father was always a source of awed conversation because his men were so overcome by his presence that they believed every little thing was a sign from God. One day several of the men were struck by a strange phenomenon. Each summer the birds of the region would flock to Kandahar on their migration. Arabs like birds, so we made special efforts to make the birds comfortable. My brothers and I even opened the glass above the door so that the birds had a nice place to nest. Once their eggs hatched into baby birds, they would leave. The men began to notice that one particular bird was a return visitor for several years in a row. She had a distinctive twelve-inch red tape on one of her legs. No other bird wore such a tag.

  One of the soldiers speculated that the bird was being used by the Americans to track my father. Soon he decided that was not the case, but still there were many laughs about how a little bird repeatedly found my father’s home while the technically advanced American military could not.

  There was a military trainer who was especially pleasant to me, always greeting me with a ready smile and offering a helping hand. I never heard his true family name, of course, because he was forbidden to use it, being known as Abu Zubair to everyone in my father’s army. Abu Zubair held a high-ranking position in my father’s organization, going back and forth between Kandahar and the training camp near Kabul.

  There was one incident with Abu Zubair that I will never forget. He was the proud owner of a handsome black and white cow, which won him the envy of many soldiers because food and drink were so carefully rationed. Soon the cow gave birth to a male calf, which was another source of pleasure for Abu Zubair, for he had plans for the calf.

  One night he suffered a bizarre nightmare. He dreamed that two of his soldiers had secretly milked his cow, taking the milk that belonged to the baby calf. The following morning he couldn’t get the dream out of his mind. Even after saying his first prayers of the day, the message of the dream still lingered. Abu Zubair called in another trainer, a man by the name of Abu Atta, and the two discussed the dream with great seriousness. Knowing that he couldn’t relax until he got to the bottom of the troubling business, Abu Zubair finally sent for the two men who had appeared in his dream.

  The men appeared, visibly nervous.

  Abu Zubair cleverly questioned them. He knew they were very superstitious. “Did you commit a sin last night?”

  The soldier named Abu Walid broke down immediately, confessing that the two of them had sneaked into the cow shed to milk Abu Zubair’s cow. They had already drunk the evidence, so no one but the hungry calf would have known about the illegal milking were it not for Abu Zubair’s dream.

  Of course, Abu Zubair was furious at the breach of trust and his punishment was severe. Both soldiers had to run up and down the mountains until they swore they had learned their lesson. Of course, word spread that if anyone committed a sin, God so favored my father’s work that He would alert his leaders as they slept.

  There were other amusing stories. I remember when I accompanied my father and some of his highest lieutenants on a driving tour to survey the land, confirm particulars regarding the fighting, and check the status of the latest recruits who were training in the camps. My father was in one of the lead cars, and I was a passenger in a rear vehicle. As usual the journey was strenuous due to the inferior roads and lack of amenities available to Afghan road travelers. Many of the fighters were cranky with fatigue, so my father called for frequent stops to break up the trip. When approaching small villages, he would have his vehicle pull over so that we might fill our water containers from the village spring, consume some simple village fare, and of course, relieve ourselves.

  Since there were no public toilets, or for that matter, private toilets, available to villagers, it was necessary for the fighters to scatter to seek privacy in isolated corners in the fields. After finding relief, fighters would return to the caravan to wait under a shady tree for the other soldiers. We seldom objected to the delays because no one was particularly eager to get back onto the rough roads of Afghanistan. We liked having extra time to sit and exchange gossip.

  I remember a certain soldier who had waited to the very last minute, and rushed off to be gone for so long that we began to wonder what had happened to him. We lingered under the tree, taking our time enjoying the breeze, when suddenly he came hurrying through the tall grasses, grinning widely.

  When he saw his mates, his grin turned into laughter. Interested in anything amusing, we pushed for information, but he couldn’t reveal his story for laughing. Finally he choked out, “There I was doing my business when I heard footsteps. I used the signal to alert the intruder that I was occupied in a private matter. Imagine my shock when the intruder picked up speed, coming directly at me. I kept making the signal, ‘Huh, hum, huh, hum,’ but nothing stopped the approach.

  “I was frantic, for I was not in a proper position to be seen!”

  By this time we were all laughing.

  “All of a sudden, a tall man appeared in front of me! He placed his hand on my shoulder and looked down at my squatting figure to ask, ‘Are you all right, my friend? I heard some very strange noises that so worried me that I had to come and make certain the man behind the noise was okay.’”

  The soldier fell over laughing, “All I could do was grunt some more! What was I to do? There I was with my drawers around my ankles, squatting miserably, having a conversation!”

  By this time a huge circle of fighters had gathered, and for some reason that story struck everyone as hilarious. No one could speak. Tears of laughter were streaming down the hardened faces of every fighter.

  While my life was bleak in so many ways, I tried to console myself with the thought that I was better off than many others. At least I was not living the life of a disabled child in a country racked with civil war. Poor Afghans had no manner of properly handling a handicapped or mentally deficient child. Some of the soldiers had seen cases where the mentally challenged were shackled like dogs, with heavy chains linking them to a tree or to a chair.

  In fact, there was one such boy I identified with, for we were of the same age. He lived in chains in a village near our compound in Kandahar. Over the years he had become adept at escaping. After breaking out of his restraints, he would sometimes make his way to our compound. One day a security guard saw a male figure approaching, and shouted, “Stop! Identify yourself!”

  Unable to understand, the poor boy ambled along, following the sound of the human voice. Convinced that a suicide bomber was comin
g for the compound, the guard began firing above the boy’s head. The boy kept rambling forward, undeterred by the gunfire.

  Finally the guard got a good view and saw that the visitor was the poor chained boy of the village. Other guards, who had rushed to the front gate at the sound of gunfire, hurried to collect the boy and return him to his life in chains.

  As time passed, I noticed that my father had bouts of sadness, though he failed to enlighten me as to his innermost thoughts. Yet his unhappiness would pluck at my heartstrings and, as his son, I would look for reasons to excuse him for his behavior. I wanted my father to give up war and violence. Of course, those were the days before he crossed a line that would ensure he could never again live normally.

  Just when I was feeling more kindly toward my father, certain cruelties came to light that solidified my aversion to al-Qaeda and my father’s life’s work forever.

  My brothers and I had kept puppies as pets from the time of our youth in Khartoum. After Mullah Nourallah presented me with my first pup in Afghanistan, Bobby, our dog population increased. There was no such thing as intentionally controlling pet populations in the world where we lived. In fact, in my culture, it is considered cruel to “fix” dogs so that male dogs cannot have the pleasure of mating and female dogs miss out on the pleasure of mother-hood. The Muslim mind-set is such that we leave nature as God made it. Therefore, puppies became abundant around our compound.

  Shortly after we moved to Kandahar, I heard that my father’s training camps had become more sophisticated, with the men testing deadly chemical and biological weapons.

  One day when I was tending to my female dog and her young pups, several of the fighters came and asked to borrow my puppies. I didn’t like that idea, but thought they were searching for pets for themselves. So I allowed them to take the puppies, who were old enough to survive without their mother’s milk.

  Such requests became commonplace and raised my curiosity as to where all my puppies were going. I had lived in Afghanistan for a number of years by that time, and had noticed few people had affection for dogs. In fact, most Afghans actively looked upon dogs as pests in the manner that many people think of rodents. Rather than running to embrace a cute puppy, they would shoot it. My world had no connection to the great love I am told that people in the West have for their pets.

  A friend soon confided that the puppies my siblings and I adored were being sacrificed for the Jihadi cause. My father’s soldiers were using our puppies as test subjects, gassing them to see how long it would take them to die.

  Shock ran the length of my body. I wept, but nothing could move my father or his men. They must have test subjects, I was told, and our puppies were ideal for that purpose. My father gave no indication of concern that I cared deeply enough to plead for the lives of my puppies. Several of the new soldiers, young men who had been born without sensitivity, enjoyed describing the death throes of those cute little animals. They insisted on telling me of their trem-bling terror, sitting tied in a cage, suffering throughout the ordeal. The gas was not as fast as one might have imagined.

  I never again allowed myself to become attached to any newborn puppies, because while looking at their cute faces, I realized they were dead, they just didn’t know it yet. The gas tests were ongoing even as I left Afghanistan.

  After I learned about the puppies, I turned even further away from my father, recognizing that his path led to nothing but pain, disappointment, and death. In fact, the image of suffering dogs was so painful that I pushed it to the deepest corner of my mind. Today I am speaking about this story for the first time in my life.

  My emotions were tossing about as if in a fierce wind. I decided that my only chance at happiness lay in becoming independent and finding a suitable bride with whom to start my own family. In March of 1998, I turned seventeen, which was a landmark because I had always believed that would be the age that I should marry. Perhaps this age stuck in my mind because my father had married at seventeen, as had my brother Abdullah. Both Abdul Rahman and Sa’ad wanted to marry, too.

  The three of us asked our friends what fighters had daughters of an appropriate age for marriage, as puberty is considered a requirement. At that time, there were no suitable prospects on the compound. My greatest desire was to marry a cousin in Saudi Arabia, as Abdullah had done, because I knew I would never return to Afghanistan. But none of my aunties or uncles would allow their daughters to marry the son of Osama bin Laden. Abdullah had been lucky enough to marry before our father’s reputation became so tarnished that it blackened his children’s name.

  I decided that I should travel to Sudan to find a proper bride, and Sa’ad resolved to accompany me. Since Sa’ad was nineteen years old and I was seventeen, our father did not forbid the journey. Our dear mother was not one to forbid anything, but said, “My sons, I pray to God to look over you, keep you safe, and bring you the happiness you want.”

  Sa’ad and I packed a few things and traveled by taxi to Pakistan, where we boarded a plane for Syria via Iran. When we passed through Iran, I reminisced about the day I had accompanied my father from Khartoum to Jalalabad. Although that trip had occurred only two years before, to me it felt like a hundred lifetimes. The dreary life in Afghanistan had a way of expanding time.

  It was fun to be in Syria, especially when we surprised my mother’s family by walking through their door unannounced. We stayed for only a few days, but were there long enough for me to realize that my grandmother suffered greatly from my mother’s prolonged absences. It had been so long since my mother had been in a position to call them over the telephone or to write letters that the Ghanem family did not yet know about my mother’s last daughter, Rukhaiya. They were so eager for details regarding my mother and her children that they couldn’t stop asking questions. Mainly they were worried about my mother’s health and physical safety once they heard the barest details about life in Afghanistan.

  They asked few questions about my father and his current activities. Some topics in life are best left unexplored. After a very pleasant visit, they bade us farewell and we boarded a plane to Sudan.

  When Sa’ad and I finally arrived in Khartoum, I felt a surge of affection for the land and the people. I felt like a prodigal son returning home, for I had never forgotten the friendly people and the joy I felt during our time there.

  My father had provided us with some names of government officials who might offer us some protection. I could feel their fondness for the sons of a man they had known as a magnanimous friend. They expressed sorrow that the government had been forced to expel our father, and gave us official permission to travel to any part of the country, which was unusual in those days.

  Sa’ad and I quickly parted company. He found a family to stay with, as did I. This was for the best, for Sa’ad’s endless chatter quickly grates on the nerves. We conducted individual searches for our wives, relying on old friends to ask around if there were any attractive young women from good families whose parents might approve of their daughters marrying one of the bin Laden sons.

  But before looking seriously for a bride, I sought out the horses we had left behind. I had thought often of our horses, praying that some kind person had purchased them and treated them well. I took a quick trip to my father’s stables, where the horses had been left.

  I entered into a nightmare. I was told all the horses but two had either starved or died of untreated illnesses.

  Adham and Lazaz, two of the strongest, were still alive. But poor Adham was sick to the point of death, so weak that his once muscular legs would no longer support his body. It didn’t take a horseman to know that Adham would not live out the week.

  Lazaz, the proudest horse I had ever known, was so scrawny that his bones were sticking out, trying to break through his flesh. The horse with a spirit so proud that he nearly defeated my dominant father now seemed confused, unsure of who or where he was. He had no memory of me.

  Sorrow seized hold of me. I attempted to save Lazaz’s l
ife. I failed. The subject is so painful that I find I cannot return to those memories. After that horrifying discovery, my heart was so heavy that the joy of the trip was destroyed.

  I found some of my old school friends and we mused over the good times we had enjoyed together. Many of those boys had never known what happened to the bin Laden boys, just that one day we were at school and the next we were not. They had not heard of the assassination attempt on Osama bin Laden, which was the reason our father had withdrawn us from the school. A few admitted that they had later learned we had left Sudan entirely. Most assumed we had returned to Saudi Arabia, to the good life, and were surprised to hear that we had gone to Afghanistan. A few of the boys looked at me sadly, smart enough to know that our bin Laden lives were not as they should be.

  Afterwards I went to visit the businesses my father had set up and the lands he had purchased, all with our bin Laden inheritance. Many businesses had once borne our family name, including a large leather-processing factory where my father had taken his sons on several occasions, proudly noting that it was one of his most successful business ventures.

  I arrived to see that the leather factory was closed and the building had been given to a nearby college, which was using it as housing for teachers. I grew angry at the idea, for that factory belonged to the bin Laden family, and no one had the right to present it as a gift to others.

  I wasted so much time at that factory, pacing about and wallowing in anger, that I suddenly realized that it was growing dark. Knowing I should return to Khartoum quickly, before the night made the journey unsafe, I decided to swim the Nile, rather than take the long route over roads to get to a bridge.

  This decision was not as foolish as it might seem, for my brothers and I had swum the width of the Nile many times. There was no reason to feel foreboding. Although the sun had disappeared from the sky, the full moon lit the night, reflecting light off the river’s waves. By my calculations I could swim to the city within ten or fifteen minutes. Walking would take several hours because the nearest bridge was a long way off.