Growing Up bin Laden

by Jean Sasson

  After the last lecture, the soldiers were free to talk to others, or read the Koran. On rare occasions the men would play soccer, sparking my guilt with the memory of the time in Peshawar when I had ended up with the fighter’s ball in my hands.

  Generally, the solders were so physically shattered at the end of the day that they fell asleep the moment their bodies stretched out on their thin mattresses. I comforted myself with the thought that few were dreaming of playing soccer, or any sport.

  Personal hygiene was not a priority, as none of the soldiers changed clothes while I was there, but instead trained and slept in the same garments. When the weather cooperated, soldiers might trek to a spring or river to wash their bodies with a cheap piece of soap, and try to wash their clothes still on their bodies. I noticed that all the soldiers were thin, yet their muscles rippled.

  Weapons training was a big part of their program. There were so many weapons around the camps that it boggled the mind. There were stinger missiles, previously given to the Mujahideen fighters by the Americans. Trainees were taught how to make explosives and how to plant bombs. Most astonishing for me was that trainees were taught to drive tanks. From our time in Sudan, I had learned to operate some of the equipment owned by my father, so I was familiar with heavy machinery. For the fun of it, I volunteered to learn that skill, although I have never had the occasion to fight in a tank battle. When I wearied of the harsh camp, I returned on my own to Tora Bora, thankful that my father was too busy to ask questions. I’m sure he assumed that because I was his son I had inherited his love of fighting.

  There were other stories about my father’s fighters that I will reveal, although for the life of me I cannot recall the exact dates I witnessed the events. Our lives were chaotic and no one kept a diary, or even referred to calendars. It is virtually impossible to look back and accurately date specific events.

  While many fighters bore an authentic desire to uphold Islam by fighting against the West, there were other very bizarre characters who appeared in my father’s army. I remember one particular Pakistani man who came to join the Jihad. He was so religious that he made a name for himself by doing nothing but training, eating, and reading the Koran in a loud voice. One day he started a hugging campaign and made it his business to hug every tough fighter, which I admit was not met with a lot of cooperation. He refused to sleep until he had hugged each fighter.

  The fighters tried to work out what was going on with the Pakistani. In our culture it is not unusual for men to hold hands or to offer a kiss at a greeting, but it is not customary to be a chronic hugger. The barracks were unheated and became so frigid during the winter months that, out of necessity, the fighters slept side by side, sometimes wrapping their legs around their nearest bedmate in order to generate heat. None of this meant that any of the men had any sexual intentions. Quite simply, they were freezing.

  One night after the Pakistani had gone to bed, a young man who spoke no Arabic came fleeing from the room where the Pakistani was sleeping. He was screeching at the top of his lungs that the man was hurt. Everyone dashed to see for themselves, finding the Pakistani with a large hole in his neck. He had been shot and had died instantly.

  The young man with the hysterics claimed that it was an accident and he had been “playing with his gun.” Of course, no one knew the truth of that night. Whatever happened, the result was tragic because two men lost their lives when the young shooter was hauled off by the Taliban, most likely to be executed.

  There was a practical joker in every camp. I remember one specifically who created havoc by using Super Glue on his sleeping mates. One man had been injured, and the other men were sleeping close to him, trying to keep him warm. While they were sleeping, the joker glued their hands and legs together with the Super Glue. Surprisingly, his friends didn’t beat him bloody, but it took many months before they saw the humor.

  Although there have been many reports of men who claimed to be my father’s driver, the truth is that he never had one specific driver. Wishing to avoid jealousy among his followers, my father had a habit of walking up to a trusted follower and saying, “Drive me to Kandahar” or “Drive me to the camp.” None of the men who drove my father’s vehicles knew when they might be asked to transport my father, although all were hoping to be chosen for the honor.

  For this reason I was astonished to follow the 2008 trial of a man by the name of Salim Ahmad Salim Hamdan whom the Americans identified as my father’s driver and bodyguard. Salim was charged with some serious crimes after he was arrested at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001. Two surface-to-air missiles were allegedly found in his car, and the Americans believed he had been delivering weapons.

  I have no idea if Salim was doing my father’s bidding in transporting weapons, but what did surprise me was to hear Salim parrot one of the arrest charges, claiming yes indeed, he was my father’s driver. The Americans had got it wrong, and Salim admitted to something he never was. Perhaps Salim still so revered my father that he wanted history to remember him as a special follower of my father. He probably believed it impossible to have a fair trial and he might as well have some glory attached to his name. In the Arab world, Salim and his entire family would be highly praised and rewarded to be formally identified as Osama bin Laden’s trusted driver.

  I admit I was glad when the American jury found Salim innocent of the most serious charges of conspiring with al-Qaeda to attack civilians because I can say that Salim was never a member of al-Qaeda. Just because a former veteran took pleasure in hanging around my father did not mean he belonged to al-Qaeda. I was with my father for years, and along with my brothers I even observed the fighters’ camps, but I never joined al-Qaeda.

  Before my father’s soldiers were allowed to appear in the camps, they were told to choose a fictitious name. The soldiers were also instructed to “forget their past,” and were forbidden to share personal information about their former lives. My father said that it was necessary to create such smoke screens, making it impossible for captured fighters to reveal the real names of other fighters. How could they reveal a name they had never heard?

  I believe that is why it has been so difficult for the American security to trace many fighters. Only the veterans of the Russian war knew the real names of other veteran fighters. All newcomers never revealed their true names to other fighters, or if they did, the names were quickly forgotten due to the common use of their bogus names.

  For example, my brothers and I knew Salim as Sakhr al-Jadawi, meaning the “Eagle of Jeddah.” Sakhr was born in Yemen and had the typical Yemeni appearance of a small but tough man, with dark skin, brown eyes, and black hair. Sakhr was short, a bit broad, but never fat. He sported a nice mustache with a short beard. Mostly I remember that Sakhr was a jolly soul who was often observed laughing and joking.

  Sakhr became one of my favorite men in Afghanistan. I remember that he had been very young, only a teenager, when he first volunteered to travel from Yemen to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. After the war ended, he remained in the area, discouraged from returning to Yemen, as many Mujahideen fighters had been arrested by their governments upon their return home.

  While Sakhr was not my father’s designated driver, he was an exceptional driver, able to maneuver along the narrow and winding Afghan highways better than anyone I knew. Sakhr was also my father’s chosen mechanic because no one could repair a car or truck with such skill. The position of auto mechanic was Sakhr’s single job for the entire time I was living in Afghanistan, although I cannot swear to Sakhr’s role once I left Afghanistan for the final time in 2001. I feel confident that Sakhr was never a bodyguard, because he didn’t have the qualities necessary to serve in such a position.

  Sakhr was also a favorite of the veterans of the war with the Soviets. He was a peaceful man, often proclaiming that he had finished his fighting duty against the Russians. He was not in typical soldier physical condition; and like the majority of the Russian veterans, never bothered to
brush up his military skills in the camps. He was more of a friend to my father, but never expressed awe or fear of Osama bin Laden, like so many of the fighters. Many times I witnessed Sakhr sitting beside my father, the two of them reminiscing about one thing or another.

  Sakhr spent much of his free time hanging around with the sons of Osama bin Laden. He would arrange barbecues in the flatlands and accompany us on horse-riding jaunts. By this time my father had acquired horses. Sometimes Sakhr would play games with us, or help us with our rabbits or dogs.

  When I returned from my first trip to the training camps, I felt lost and confused. There were times I felt a great anger at the West, for propaganda is a powerful tool and few could withstand the constant half-truths. Without a competing message about the Americans, I believed that the United States was an evil nation with an evil agenda to kill Muslims.

  Most of the men around my father were passionately committed to my father’s message of hate, even if their support meant that they would die. I heard my father speak many times; and he never ordered anyone to go on a suicide mission, but instead instructed fighters that if they felt compelled to do so, to write their names on a piece of paper and leave it in the mosque. My father was adamant that no one would be pressured to give up his life, even for a cause he believed to be worth any sacrifice.

  While the soldiers enthusiastically embraced the message of hate, it drove me to despair, for I am not a natural hater. I knew that my father expected me to become a soldier, perhaps even to give up my life on a mission. Although I was a boy who relished outdoor activities, such as horseback riding and hunting, I was not and could never be a killer of men. My only real goal was to figure out how I might escape the life my father had ordained for me.

  Desiring mental escape, I often listened to one of my father’s old radios. He had many and often listened to the BBC, enthusiastically following the news of the world as though he had a personal stake in every story. One day while I was sitting in the stables with a friend, both of us drinking hot tea and listening to the radio, suddenly a distinctive voice rang out, singing a song so beautiful it was like poetry raining from heaven. I moved quickly to switch the radio off because my father allowed us to listen only to talking voices, not singing voices. But the switch was stuck, and I could not turn off the haunting song. The emotion expressed by the singer made me feel strangely soft inside, and I asked my friend, “Who is this man singing?”

  My friend said, “That is not a man. You are hearing a woman, the famous Egyptian singer Um Kulthum, the ‘Star of the East.’ Everyone in the world believes her to be the greatest singer ever to live. I believe it, too.”

  “A woman?” I really couldn’t believe it. Her voice was deep and mysterious, unlike any female voice I had ever heard. Listening to any kind of singing was strictly forbidden by my father, yet I was entranced, wanting so badly to hear more that I was willing to risk his wrath.

  “She is dead, now,” my friend reported, striking my heart with unexpected sadness, for the singer had been unknown to me until the previous moment. Instantly obsessed by her voice, the following day I sought out one of the religious sheiks in the area and asked him, “Is it forbidden in Islam for me to listen to poems set to music?”

  That sheik brought hope and cheer into my bleak life when he replied, “One of the most important sheiks in Islam says that it is allowed, so long as the poem does not sing about the body, or the features of a woman, or does not contain any crude lyrics.”

  From that moment on, poems and songs became an important distraction from the backdrop of my miserable existence. I would spend every possible moment listening to Um Kulthum singing her woeful songs of love, longing, and loss. I was so inspired by the idea of love that I even felt compelled to write a few poems of my own.

  Every desire created by those love songs and poems was wrapped around my desperate need to create a new life for myself. Um Kulthum’s message brought me to the realization that there was a parallel world to our bin Laden universe of hate and revenge, a world previously unknown to me where people lived for and sang about love.

  During this time of romantic dreams, my hopes soared that I might return to Saudi Arabia and marry one of my cousins, as my brother Abdullah had done. I spent hours thinking about a certain cousin, a pretty and sweet girl I remembered from my childhood, imagining us falling in love, getting married, and living in a lovely home filled with sweet-faced children. I will not identify her because it might bring her negative attention, since the children of my father are universally believed to be tarnished by my father’s activities.

  There are so many who avoid us because of him.

  I did receive comfort from my dear mother whose instincts warned her that all was not well with me. When I accidentally discovered that she had started a nighttime habit of relaxing by sitting on the ledge outside our hut, breathing in the cold, fresh mountain air and watching the twinkling stars hanging in the night sky, I joined her. Peaceful hours passed as we sat quietly or, when in the mood for talking, discussed our lives, and how strange it was that we had started out in a palace in Jeddah and ended in a rock hut on a mountain in Afghanistan. I had always loved my mother more than I loved anyone else, and through those talks, our mother-son relationship grew closer than ever.

  A few months later when I overheard talk about my father’s plans for an important change, my mother was the first to know. I had discovered that my father no longer confided in her as he had during the early years of their marriage. He was a man pulled in so many different directions that his personal relationships slowly shriveled to the size of a dried fig, even his once loving rapport with my mother.

  After living in Afghanistan for nearly a year, my father finally traveled to Kandahar for a meeting with the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. During their first visit, my father and Mullah Omar discovered that they held mutual ideas about Islam. The two men had agreed that my father should return to Jalalabad for a brief time while arrangements were made for us to visit Kabul, the former capital of Afghanistan, and then perhaps move to Kandahar where Mullah Omar lived.

  I liked the idea of seeing something more of Afghanistan. I was so bored on the mountain that even an invitation to visit an active war zone held appeal, for all of Afghanistan was still boiling.

  My mother said little when I told her that we were leaving the bin Laden Mountain to return to a life in the city. My mother refuses to condemn my father, even to me, her son, yet I saw her small shoulders lift and I believed that motion signified a lifting of stress. I hoped that her worries lessened. I could tell that she was concerned about the safety of her youngest children, particularly her two young daughters. By this time my mother was heavily pregnant with her tenth child, so I prayed that we would be off the mountain before the time came for the child to join us.

  Despite the fact that the civil war had exploded, I believed that any kind of life would be better than the life we were living. For the first time in months, my spirits rose. A pleasant thought crossed my mind: Perhaps after escaping Tora Bora, I might even find a way to flee the country.

  Chapter 19

  Mountain Life

  NAJWA BIN LADEN

  While living on my husband’s mountain, I watched my oldest sons grow into adults. Abdul Rahman was a man at nineteen years, while Sa’ad followed closely at eighteen. Omar, who seemed many years older than the actual time he had spent on earth, would soon be sixteen. Osman, who was growing as tall as a mountain, was fourteen. It appeared that Osman would be the son that achieved his father’s lofty stature. Sweet, quiet Mohammed was twelve, striving to keep up with his older brothers.

  I spent many hours with my youngest children, for we were mainly isolated in our living quarters. Fatima was a serious ten-year-old girl, shadowed by seven-year-old Iman. Ladin, still called Bakr by Osama, was my youngest son, an active toddler at three. My daughters adored their little brother and took pleasure in being little mothers, the way many little girls pamper toddler si
blings.

  My daughters and I had managed to acquire some sewing supplies from my sons, who were sometimes allowed off the mountain to go to the villages below to purchase supplies. So my girls and I sat together and chatted while we darned old clothes and tried to make new ones without the benefit of a sewing machine or electricity.

  The nighttime was spooky on the mountain. Other than moonlight, we only had gas lanterns to light our way. I was still cooking on a one-eyed burner, which was nearly impossible with so many hungry children to feed.

  Hunger and cold were our two most vexing problems. There were many people that my husband must feed, yet his resources were few. Although there were times that I swayed from weakness because there was not enough food, my main worries were for the unborn child I was carrying and the lively children at my feet. Never had I imagined that I would see my children cry from hunger pangs. I have never known a more helpless feeling.

  The cold mountain weather was a big problem. Our only heat was supplied by the wood-burning metal stove. We kept the fire burning day and night, but to no avail, became Tora Bora Mountain was subject to terrible blizzards. With snow piled up to the top of our roof, it was difficult to heat even three tiny rooms. Many were the hours that my children and I hovered close to that metal stove, shivering with cold, and wondering how we might survive without frostbite.

  My sister-wives faced the same challenges, and I do not know what we would have done without each other. Our husband had so many business matters that he was away as much as he was on the mountain. Thank goodness my sons were old enough to take over some of Osama’s duties of looking out for their mother, aunties, and siblings.

  The isolation brought me closest to my son Omar. For the first time I had the opportunity to observe all my children closely, and Omar’s behavior revealed that he had grown the strongest personality and had become a man in all ways. Yet he had many facets to his character. My good son was trustworthy, faithful, and decent, yet he could be short-tempered, reaching quick decisions that he stubbornly held to even in the face of evidence that he might be wrong.