Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [164]
None of our men carried on a conversation, but spoke in short bursts, reporting what they could see out the windows of our vehicle. Omar insisted on driving, so Abdul Rahman looked for signs of danger on our left side, while Mohammed looked to the right. Fatima carefully watched behind us, to make sure no one was coming up from behind. I felt myself in good hands, to tell you the truth.
I tried not to think about what we might do if criminals came after us, although I went over in my mind what Osama had taught me about weapons. Several times after moving to Afghanistan, he had taken me and my sister-wives to an isolated place to show us how to hold a gun in our hands and what levers to push to make the bullet fly out of the barrel. Each of us had held our husband’s heavy gun and done as we were told, but Osama soon saw the reality, that it was nothing more than a little fun for us to try to hit the targets he placed against the big rocks. I don’t believe that any of us ever came near those targets. Now that the day had come when I might actually need such skills, I wished I had tried harder to become an accomplished gun-woman.
Omar was so worried for our safety that as soon as the sunlight began to fade, he insisted we take our vehicle well away from the road. Darkness brought the greatest danger for travelers. We left the road and climbed a few high hills, with Omar parking the vehicle on a high spot so that our men could take turns looking out over a wide area.
My darling Fatima insisted that she and her husband sleep on the ground outside the car. Abdul Rahman slept with them. Omar refused to rest, keeping watch with his big gun. Little Rukhaiya and I slept as comfortably as a heavily pregnant woman and a small child can in a small space inside an car.
We traveled like this for three days and two nights. We were not alone in that car, I’m sorry to say, because fear, danger, and discomfort were our constant companions.
At the end of the three days, we were all in need of a good bath, but no one cared, for we had arrived safely. The sad part was that we had to say goodbye to Fatima and Mohammed. Mohammed said that he was going to take a rest on the Pakistani side of the border, then drive straight through. How he would manage that, I had no idea, but my daughter had married a strong man with a lot of determination. If anyone could do it, Mohammed could.
Omar, Abdul Rahman, Rukhaiya, and I made the rest of the Pakistani journey in a taxi. I couldn’t help but recall how our family used to travel, in long black cars with escorts. Now we were poor and no longer enjoyed special treatment. Life had changed in many, many ways.
We went to the airport and boarded a plane to Syria. We were pitiful-looking travelers, soiled and tired, but I was still under the burqa, so no one knew that it was Najwa Ghanem bin Laden under the billowing cloak. This garment had its advantages.
Words cannot describe the joy in my heart at seeing my dear mother and my beloved siblings after seven long years.
Syria was a world of calm after life in Afghanistan. There was no excitement for a change, which was good for me. I visited my family, and I rested. By the time I had my eleventh child, two months after arriving in the country, I felt healthy and fit, like my old self. I told Omar that he had been right, that I needed greater care for this birth. My child was a little girl, called Nour, the name Osama had chosen in honor of his half-sister Nour, who had died in 1994.
While gazing at little Nour in my arms, I was struck by the thought that after twenty-five years of marriage, and at the age of forty-one, I was the mother of eleven children. As a young teenage girl in my mother’s home, never had I dreamed of having eleven children, although