Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [173]
No one in the family heard from my father, although in the past he had always managed to make contact when he wanted to.
Everyone in our bin Laden family became so subdued that we rarely spoke about any topic. Each was lost in his or her own thoughts.
Finally, the suspense was over when the United States started their attack. On October 7, 2001, the Americans retaliated in the most massive bomb attacks anyone in that country had ever seen, which continued all through October and into November.
Thousands of people in Afghanistan were dead. People were running for the borders, desperate to escape the bombings. Several of the Arab newscasters carried reports of the dead fighters because many were Arabs. I saw the image of Abu Hafs and heard that a bomb had demolished his home. Supposedly many people died along with him. I wondered if my brother Mohammed and his young wife were among the dead.
Later I saw a fuzzy image of Abu Haadi flash across the television screen. He, too, was dead. My thoughts kept drifting back to the day when Abu Haadi said that I should leave, or I would die with him. He had been right; he was dead, and I was alive. I remembered that he had prepared his burial shroud, and kept it handy. I wondered if anyone had had time to wrap him in it for the burial.
I could discover nothing about my brothers and sisters, although there were constant reports of sightings of my tall father. Knowing that Osman was the same height, I wondered if the satellites were picking up images of my younger brother.
Supposedly, my father had returned to Tora Bora, to the mountain where he felt most at home. He would be hard to find there, I knew. No one knew those mountains like my father. I remembered that he recognized all the big boulders, knowing exactly the distance from one to the other. I heard reports that my father had sent his wives and children to Pakistan, and that he had followed.
I will forever be haunted by the image of poor Ladin. My baby brother was the most nervous and easily frightened of all the children in our family. He had recently turned eight years old, too young to be without his mother. Was Ladin scrambling over those huge boulders and hidden paths I had maneuvered through so long ago when my father forced me to hike to Pakistan? My greatest anger was reserved for my father for forbidding Iman and Ladin to leave with their mother.
Much time has passed since those awful moments. I have experienced many disappointments and I have known joy. Some people have tried to harm me, and those I will not name, while others have graciously offered a helping hand, including my bin Laden relatives, my mother’s relatives in Syria, the Egyptian government, led by President Hosni Mubarak, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia.
My mother is alive and well. She wants to say a special thanks to all the people who have helped her since she returned to Syria. She wants to thank her family, my father’s family, and most importantly, the Syrian government headed by President Bashar al-Assad. President al-Assad and his family have been gracious and kindly to her and her children. My mother is very busy caring for her young daughters. I feel I played a small role in her survival. As for the fate of my siblings Sa’ad, Osman, Mohammed, Fatima, Iman, and Ladin, I have no idea if they are dead or alive, for I have not seen them since 2001, and, as far as I know, no one in my family has had contact with them. I have been married twice, and I have a handsome and sweet son, named Ahmed. My lovely Aunt Randa recently died of ovarian cancer, leaving many people to mourn her.
During these years of loss and sorrow, I have had to reconcile