Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [132]
After we moved to Kandahar, Sa’ad had gotten into a habit of prattling endlessly about food. No one knew why, although I believe it was because we were often hungry and when we did eat, our food was so inferior. One bad meal followed another, giving Sa’ad an obsession with cuisine. One day in Kandahar he managed to get a sweet cake, from where we never knew. Sa’ad discussed it so incessantly that even today I remember that cake as if I had eaten it myself! That cake had sweet shredded wheat covering the top and was dripping with sugar and honey.
Sa’ad had eaten the whole cake, refusing to share even a crumb. For weeks afterwards, Sa’ad would approach strangers on the street to launch into a detailed description of what the cake looked like, tasted like, and how he believed it had been baked. Grown Afghan men backed away, thinking that my brother was not right in the head. My father’s soldiers listened to Sa’ad babbling about that cake until they began to run away when they saw him approaching. I finally threatened to beat him if he didn’t shut up. But he carried on regardless until one day he got hold of a special pudding and began to describe that pudding as he had the cake. Not even my father’s disapproval could stop Sa’ad’s tongue from wagging.
My father’s choices for our lives had begun to drive his sons crazy!
Osman had a difficult time maintaining a normal friendship with anyone, primarily because he wanted to control their opinions, in much the same manner as our father.
Today when I read news reports that my brothers are important leaders in my father’s organization, I question those reports. By the time I left, they had formed their adult personalities, and none of them was capable of organizing a fighting force.
My younger brother Mohammed is the only sibling that might have risen to a high rank, for he was of a quiet and serious character. Even before I left Afghanistan, I could see my father transferring his hopes from me to Mohammed for the title of the “chosen one.” Once he had Mohammed photographed with him, while my brother was holding a rifle in his lap. In our world, this is a message that the father is passing his power to his son.
Before then, however, his confidence and trust grew in my direction. I remember when he came to me about a growing problem, the shortage of food and other provisions. We all knew by that time that my father was no longer a wealthy man. Although a system was in place to procure funds from those who supported Jihad, for there were a number of friends, family, and royals who still offered financial support, at times the coffers were empty.
During one week when family members were going hungry, my father came to me and said, “Omar, I have noticed that you are a just man. I need someone I can trust to ration the food. From now on, it will be your job to calculate the amount of food necessary for each wife and her children. Take into account that teenagers need more than most, for they grow so rapidly. You must sort out all the food supplies and divide them fairly.”
I speculated that my father knew that Abdul Rahman could not be considered for the job because his personality so craved isolation that he would have found it impossible to interact with others while distributing the food. Sa’ad was not suitable because we all knew that he would eat the tastiest morsels himself.
I took the job seriously. I could not bear for my mother and aunties or the children to be hungry. Although our diet was generally bland and sparse, there were a few times when visiting royals who traveled to Afghanistan to accompany my father on hunting trips would bring gifts consisting