Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [127]
Kabul was an example of what total war can do to a country. Factional fighting since the Russians left Afghanistan had left the once prosperous city a pile of rubble. Although there were a few habitable homes scattered about, most of the suffering population lived in blown-out concrete shells that little resembled homes.
The city was so dismal that my mother, siblings, and I were happy to leave, and most pleased to hear that we would traveling the more than three hundred miles to Kandahar by air. By that time, we all had had our fill of the roads in Afghanistan.
My father refused to board any kind of aircraft, declaring that the equipment was in such disrepair that he didn’t trust any of the Afghan planes to stay airborne. So when the time came for us to depart, he bid us farewell and left with a few of his men in vehicles. Despite his concern about the safety of air travel, traveling across Afghanistan on appalling dirt roads during the middle of a ferocious civil war would not be a picnic. Ignorant of his plan at the time, I now know that he was surveying military bases abandoned by the Russians. Those military compounds had been built near every major Afghan city. Mullah Omar had told my father that he could make use of any of the complexes not occupied by the Taliban.
Still hugely embittered by his exile from Sudan, which he continued to blame on the Americans, my father was in a heated rush to set up training camps. He was obsessed with training many thousands of fighters to unleash on the western world.
The plane used for our journey was owned by the Taliban, but generously placed at my father’s disposal. When we boarded I could see that every passenger seat had been removed. There were so many of us that everyone had to sit bunched together on the floor. The women automatically filed to the back of the plane, while the men settled in the front. All the men were heavily armed, with guns looped across their shoulders and grenade belts around their waists. That was standard practice in Afghanistan, where one never knew when a fight might ensue and every man felt the need to be equipped for battle.
We were told that the flight would last only a few hours. We gathered collectively in groups, pleased to have an excuse to be social. Young men sat with young men while the older fighters banded together. I was in a rare good mood, excited about the move to Kandahar. I had never been there and was hoping that there was one place in Afghanistan that I would find agreeable.
I was sitting with a friend of mine named Abu Haadi, who was fifteen years older than me. He had grown up in Jordan, but seeking a higher purpose, had traveled to Afghanistan to join the Jihad. My older brother Abdul Rahman was in my view, and I noticed that he was playing with his grenades, but I thought nothing of it at the time.
An hour or so into the trip, Abu Haadi urgently nudged me, whispering loudly, “Omar! Look! Look at your brother!”
One glance and my heart raced. Abdul Rahman had accidentally armed one of his grenades. The pin was on the floor and the grenade was in Abdul Rahman’s hands! Any moment the grenade would explode, bringing down the plane and killing everyone on board.
Abu Haadi moved more quickly than I’ve ever seen a grown man move, grabbing Abu Hafs and hurriedly telling him the problem. Abu Hafs was the man my father had entrusted to deliver his entire family safely to Kandahar. Abu Hafs seized the grenade from Abdul Rahman, then solicited the help of one of the grenade experts on board. The two men stabilized the grenade before dashing into the cockpit. It happened that the plane was flying low, and somehow they tossed the grenade out a window. They claimed the grenade detonated in midair, although none of us heard it explode.
No one ever related the story to the women on board.
After that great excitement, we landed safely in Kandahar. The airport was small with only one main building and one runway. There were vehicles waiting to take us to our Kandahar homes. We didn’t know what to expect but we were driven