Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [175]
The questions in my mind continued to fester. Had Osama’s sons been forced to participate in fighting? Had his young daughters been married against their will? Was Osama bin Laden cruel, or kind, to his wives and children? What really went on in the Osama bin Laden household?
Certainly, Osama bin Laden had always been extremely private about his personal life. Suddenly here was an opportunity for the world to discover the unknown truth about a man who had lost the right to maintain that privacy.
I discovered that no books written about Osama bin Laden or his family had the cooperation of a single bin Laden family member. Although Carmen bin Ladin’s book, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia, was a wonderful read, Carmen had married into the family. Her best-selling and very interesting story was more of a personal account of life in Saudi Arabia and her ongoing divorce dispute with Osama’s half-brother.
Steve Coll’s highly praised book, The Bin Ladens, was meticulously researched and well written, yet the author received no cooperation from any primary bin Laden source. As the author himself puts it, “In response to numerous requests for interviews over a three-year period, bin Laden family members offered only very limited cooperation, other than those in Yemen; senior family members based in Jeddah granted no extensive or substantive interviews . . . Nonetheless, after the manuscript was substantially drafted, Julie Tate and I attempted to fact-check material about living bin Ladens with family representatives. Through their lawyers, the family declined to respond to the great majority of written questions submitted.”
I soon learned that Omar’s mother was Osama’s first cousin and first wife. In fact, the couple had never divorced, although Najwa was no longer living with her husband. I was surprised to receive a letter from Najwa, telling me about Omar. Her letter touched my heart, for I realized the effort it took for her to write a letter to an American woman whom she did not know. I had learned through Omar that his mother was a highly conservative Muslim woman who had always lived in seclusion. Such a woman does not easily reach out to a westerner.
But Najwa was a mother proud of her sensitive son, revealing sweet little stories about Omar’s character and life. As I read Najwa’s letter, I felt compelled to ask Omar if his mother would agree to her story being told as well.
Much to my surprise, Najwa agreed, but only because her son asked her to participate. Najwa had no desire to attack Osama through this book. In fact, there were limits to the topics she agreed to discuss. As a woman who had led her married life in total isolation, she was not privy to accounts of war, or of her husband’s participation in Jihad. Nevertheless, I knew that others would share my fascination to learn what life was like for the first and most important wife of Osama bin Laden.
Suddenly I was struck with the thought that Omar’s story would be the first book by a real bin Laden. It would be the only story to tell the truth of life in the home of the infamous terrorist.
I spoke with Omar several more times, asking Omar’s true feelings about his father’s activities and the deaths of innocent people. I did not want to participate in the project if Omar believed that his father had valid reasons for his murderous behavior. I was concerned, too, when I read a number of internet articles in which Omar seemed inconsistent about his father’s cruel actions. Indeed, while Omar proclaimed his hatred of violence, for a long time he seemed unable to accept as true that his father had been the man responsible for 9/11 and other despicable acts of violence. Then I reminded myself that most people would find it difficult to believe that someone they loved could be capable of terrorism.
The fact that a son could not fathom his own father ordering the deaths of innocent civilians was easy to comprehend. Moreover, conspiracy theories dominate public opinion in much of the Arab world. Much of the convincing evidence of