Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [51]
My father was a patriot in those days, loyal to his country and his king. My father already knew that he had displeased the Saudi royal family with his public comments about Saddam, so he cautioned his employees: “If any of you are ever attacked or even arrested by the police or soldiers, do not protest. Raise your arms in surrender and go in peace. Do not run away. Do not defend yourself. I will see to your freedom.”
Time and again my father repeated, “The bin Laden family supports the royal family. My own father was a trusted friend of our first king, Abdul Aziz. Now the sons of our father support Abdul Aziz’s sons.”
As a son of Mohammed bin Laden and a war hero, my father still maintained loose contact with the royals. Convinced that Iraq would cross the Kuwaiti border to invade Saudi Arabia, he approached the royal family with his ideas. During that tumultuous time he met with a number of princes, but most importantly, called on the powerful interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who was a full brother to King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. My father offered the royal family his services in fighting Saddam, volunteering to bring in twelve thousand well-armed veterans from the Afghan war still under his command. He assured Prince Naif that he could have his soldiers equipped to defend Islam’s holiest land at lightning speed. All he needed was royal approval.
It is the Saudi way that no important decisions are taken hurriedly. The royal family did not say yes, and they did not say no, but told my father that they would get back to him.
Meanwhile, Saddam increased the tension by making hateful public statements about the Saudi rulers and menacing our borders with his huge army. American leaders arrived in the kingdom with great fanfare, attempting to convince the royal family to allow the U.S. military access to Saddam from our land. To my father’s shock, he soon discovered that his offer to defend the kingdom had been ignored.
He learned through the Arab media that it would be a huge coalition of military forces, led by the United States, that would defend Saudi Arabia. My father believed that his fighting force could trounce Saddam. I heard him demand in great anger, “Are Saddam’s armies more powerful than the mighty Russians? No!” He muttered, “We do not need the Americans!”
While my father announced his bitter feelings to family and friends, he did not speak out in public, for he remained a loyal supporter of the Saudi royal family. For many years the bin Laden and al-Saud families had worked closely for the advancement of Saudi Arabia. Yet the rejection was distasteful, for he had told family, friends, and acquaintances that he had offered his military services to the royal family.
There was another important issue besides pride. In my father’s mind, the whole of Saudi Arabia was Islamic holy land and should not be contaminated by the presence of Christian or Jewish soldiers from America and other western nations.
Since the formation of the Jewish state in 1948, few Muslims considered America a friend to the Arabs. Now, many besides my father were convinced that the American government was using the crisis as justification for establishing their forces in Saudi Arabia so that they might use our country as a base to flood the region with their unwelcome secular views.
My father’s loyalty to the royal family soon changed.
I was enjoying a fine day because my father had invited me to accompany him on his routine appointments in Jeddah. We were walking from one business to another when my father was approached by a trusted employee, a man who appeared noticeably tense even to my youthful eyes.
The man whispered in my father’s ear.
My father’s face paled.
I’m certain that my face paled, too, when I heard that government forces had raided our Jeddah farm earlier that morning. We heard that heavily armed Saudi troops had surrounded the farm before arresting our farmworkers and the