Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [43]
Calling to mind that my father did seem to enjoy having many women around, I thought Sa’ad’s idea was sound. “Yes!” I chimed in. “Our father would like to marry you!”
Sa’ad and I opened the door as wide as possible, indicating with our hands that the women should come inside and make themselves comfortable for a wedding.
Seeing that we were serious, the veiled women turned and fled, moving as fast as their black veils and long abaayas would allow.
Panicked that potential brides for our father were escaping, Sa’ad and I ran after them. Sa’ad launched his nimble body in front of the bewildered women, his voice pleading, “Come back! You must come in! It’s true! Our father wants to marry you!”
Thinking how excited our father would be to gain three wives in one go, I was determined not to let them escape a second time.
Becoming agitated by this bizarre episode, those poor women pushed us aside and ran faster than before. The last we saw of them, their black abaayas were flapping.
There was another incident that seemed humorous at the time, but that was because we were ignorant of the actual danger. One of my brothers spied a pigeons’ nest in one of the round planters built on the outside of a fourth-storey window. Always looking for a new pastime, we made it our business to keep watch. Soon enough, there were two eggs that hatched into two baby pigeons. Each day we would observe the chicks.
One morning the mother pigeon did not return on schedule, and we decided that we must save those baby chicks. To reach the chicks in the planters, we ran up the stairs and onto the roof, where Abdul Rahman volunteered to swing from the roof to the fourth-floor planters. Once in place, he reached into the nest to pluck out the baby pigeons. My brothers and I watched Abdul Rahman tottering about while clutching the baby birds and trying to climb back to the roof. But we were so hyper that we quickly lost interest and found another pursuit. We rushed off without considering our brother, locking the door from the roof to the staircase.
Like many Saudi homes there was a round shaft in the center of our home, reaching from the bottom floor to the roof. Soon Abdul Rahman was shouting at us from the top of that shaft. Rather than climbing back up four flights of stairs to unlock the door, we yelled for him to jump.
Abdul Rahman hesitated. My brothers and I set up a chorus, “Jump! Jump! We will catch you! Jump! Jump! Jump! We will catch you!”
We didn’t realize that if Abdul Rahman listened to us and jumped, he would suffer serious injuries or possibly even death. Pain and death simply had not crossed our minds that morning, although we knew about pain from our father’s beatings and had heard about how many humans went from life to death in just a moment. After death, some people even went to a frighteningly hot place called hell. Our religious instructors often concentrated on the terrors of hell, so we had no desire to make a trip there.
We truly believed that Abdul Rahman could make the leap from the roof down to the ground floor without pain or death. We would reach out and catch him.
Becoming convinced by our chants, Abdul Rahman put down the chicks and took the plunge. At the last moment, he thought better of the plan, instinctively grasping the edge of the high floor while his fast-moving feet found a tiny ledge on the inside wall.
We were laughing and screaming all at once, “Let go, Abdul Rahman! We will catch you!”
I have no idea why our mother, or one of our three aunties, did not respond to the uproar. Looking back, I suppose that my father had trained them so well to remain behind locked doors that they ignored all that went on beyond them. Thankfully, our cries alerted one of our family’s drivers, who dashed in the front door to check on the commotion. Our driver looked where we were gazing and saw Abdul Rahman hanging. The driver, his head in his hands, gasped loudly before letting out a few screams and then ran as fast as he could, taking three steps at a time to reach the top where he grabbed