Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [21]
That was that! Afterwards, I tried to push away any thoughts of what Osama was doing when he was not by my side.
But one day when he was in a particularly good mood, he told me a little story that he had found amusing. Elated that he was finally sharing something of his adventures, I sat at his feet as solemn as an entranced child, so immersed in his story that I felt myself a participant in his adventure.
“There was one night that we went on a particularly dangerous mission inside Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. The terrain in that mountainous region is so rough we could travel only by horse. There was an ongoing battle and our men needed armaments. Our mission was to deliver weapons to our fighters as quickly as possible, so we had to travel an exceptionally perilous route. Our horse train was so close to the Russian soldiers that if they lifted their eyes to look to the perimeter of their camp they would see us. We knew that we must pass through that enemy area as quietly as a feather falling from the sky.
“But there was a special worry. One of our fighters was riding a noisy little horse who was a talker. My, how that horse enjoyed whinnying. My men and I discussed how we were going to keep our talking horse quiet. Finally my closest friend on the mission had a clever idea. He took a small sack out of his bag, a sack made of coconut hair. He nodded at me with a small grin on his face, waving that rough sack. I had no idea how he thought that might solve the problem, but found out when he leaned forward, balancing himself close to the little horse’s face. The next time our talker opened his mouth, my friend pushed the sack in his mouth. Feeling the pressure of the sack, the startled horse quickly closed his mouth.
“Anytime the horse thought to open his mouth to talk, in went the sack. I had to force myself to look away or I would have laughed, alerting our enemy to our position.”
My husband, who was the most serious person I’ve ever known, rarely expressed even the most casual amusement, but suddenly he chuckled at the memory. I giggled, too, imagining the surprised expression on the little face of that chatty horse.
Other times I listened carefully as he spoke with our older sons about his military life. I cannot recall the date, or even the ages of our sons on the occasion, but I do remember once when he had been home for several weeks and enough time had passed that the tension in his mind and body was not so acute. He was sitting with a cup of tea and called our older sons into our sitting room, inviting them with his hand to sit. Knowing that most little boys dream of becoming soldiers, he had decided to share something of his life with them.
The boys looked a bit nervous. Their father was usually too busy for his sons, so they were worried as to why they had been summoned, afraid they had committed some act of disobedience and were about to be punished.
Although it was improper for me to sit in a circle of men, even if that circle was composed of my husband and sons, I remained in the room, busying myself with one thing or another so that I might overhear their talk.
My husband was in quite the rare good mood, entertaining our boys with his tale. “One night we were fighting and out of nowhere came a Russian helicopter. It was difficult to escape uninjured when such a thing happened on the battlefield.
“On that night we were in a specific region in Afghanistan where there was a large flat area where the terrain slowly gained in altitude until the ground reached some mountain caves. I was inside a cave when I heard the approach of a helicopter. I moved to the mouth of the cave to observe our exposed fighters. Caught in the open, without time to seek shelter, I knew that there was little any of us could do to save them. I was fated to stand and watch a massacre, or so I thought.
“My heart pounded as I watched my fighters scatter. When the helicopter gunner began to fire upon my men, fighters began to dart from side to side. Some of them began