Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [101]
In Afghanistan, he revealed a few stories that I had never heard. “Omar, here is a story you must know about your grandmother. I remember once when our family was visiting in Syria and your step-grandfather Muhammad Attas had taken your grandmother and me for a short drive. We were on holiday and feeling leisurely. Muhammad failed to notice that our sluggish pace had irritated a minibus driver on the road behind us. That ill-tempered driver became so irate that he pushed his gas pedal hard, passing to block our car before leaping from his minibus and rushing toward us with a red, angry face. That man was so enraged that when Muhammad opened his door to receive him politely, to attempt to defuse the situation, the heated driver actually threatened him before giving him a rough push.
“Omar, you remember how gentle Muhammad has been for his whole life, never lifting a finger to harm anyone. Anyhow, wishing to avoid an altercation, Muhammad slipped back into the driver’s seat, closing the door, leaving the man outside to rant, to wait him out. Although Muhammad remained calm, that man’s behavior had so incensed my usually gentle mother that she jumped out just as Muhammad jumped in! She moved so quickly that neither Muhammad nor I could catch her. She rushed up to the rude man and hit him across the face before pushing him to the ground. Unsatisfied and furious that such a person was free to harass other drivers, she noted his minibus license tag and hurried to report the incident to my half-brother, who happened to know the Assad family, who as you know are the Baathist rulers of Syria. The result was that the man was arrested within a few hours.”
He shook his head, smiling. “My mother is a strong, willful lady.”
The stories I liked best of all had to do with his own father, Mohammed bin Laden, who had been killed when my father was only a child. My father, who had never emotionally recovered from the loss, kept the long-dead Grandfather bin Laden on a pedestal.
There was something odd that I had noticed from my youth. I never heard my father call his father, “my father.” Instead, he always referred to him as “your grandfather.” I have no explanation for this, other than it seemed to pain him to use the words “my father.”
There are many false stories regarding my father’s relationship with his parents. For example, I read once that my Grandmother Allia was divorced by my Grandfather Mohammed bin Laden almost as soon as my father was born. Not true. In fact, my grandmother was the one who requested the divorce, although this did not occur until after she had become pregnant a second time.
Not so long after my father was born, Grandmother Allia found herself expecting another child. She has never said whether she was glad or sad, but in those early days the women living in Saudi Arabia did not have the easy life that came later. Although married to a man who was becoming one of the wealthiest in the kingdom, Grandmother Allia was not provided with domestic help, leaving her responsible for cleaning and washing. She had recently acquired one of the newest gadgets on the market: a wringer washer machine. It is thought that the machine had not been put together properly, because while washing, the wringer part of the machine snapped loose, swinging around and hitting her in the chest and stomach. She fell to the floor in great pain. The following day she lost the child she was carrying, a child that would have been my father’s full brother or sister.
Something about the loss triggered a desire for change in my grandmother. Shortly afterward, she asked her husband for a divorce. My Grandfather Mohammed, seeing that she was unhappy, graciously and freely gave her a divorce. He was very agreeable about the matter.
In those days a divorced woman was not allowed to live on her own, so she was soon married to Muhammad al-Attas, who became my father’s stepfather, a gentle and wise man who regarded his stepson as he did his own children.
There is another rumor that when