Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [61]
My poor sons reported being dizzy and short of breath, with painful joints and pounding heads. Although I served food and water, nothing I could do would ease their discomfort. Poor Abdul Rahman became dangerously ill. The wretched look on Abdul Rahman’s face finally brought Osama to the conclusion that he must seek medical treatment for himself and for our boys. Weak though he was, he roused everyone who was sick and had them transported to a local clinic.
I was saying many prayers as I watched them disappear from our home, and many more prayers during the brief time they were away. Thanks be to God, after receiving special medical treatment, including fluids that were pumped directly into their veins, all of them returned, weak but alive. That’s when Osama told me that he had been informed by the doctor that there was no guarantee of evading malaria, despite using a nightly mosquito net. On occasion, mosquitoes would bite victims even before dusk. There was really no way to be completely safe unless one wore a mosquito net over one’s body throughout the entire day.
Perhaps that is why we females were less likely to be bitten, for we never left our home without being covered from head to toe in our customary abaayas.
A good day came at the end of our first year in Khartoum when my father traveled to Sudan for a holiday. His jolly face was the best sight I had enjoyed in many months. Although I remained at home with my daughters, Osama escorted my father to the most interesting sights in Khartoum, which I was told had a modern central city, although the outskirts were very simple. Most pleasant of all were the relaxing hours when my father sat with me and shared news of my mother, siblings, and other relatives living in Syria.
I hoped that my dear father could return at least once a year for similar holidays. Yet within a short time of my father’s visit to Khartoum, I received the most alarming telephone call from a family member in Syria whispering that my father was bedridden with a lung infection. We Arabs break bad news very slowly so as not to shock loved ones; therefore it took some time for my relative to confess that the lung infection was quite serious, and in fact, was lung cancer.
My father had loved the smoking evil since the time he was a young adult. Those cigarettes had finally turned on him. My father was unable to fight the spiteful disease and quickly lost the ability to live a normal life. He was suffering with pain that forced him into bed.
To my dismay I learned that even after being diagnosed with lung cancer, he could not overcome the desire to smoke. I was told that he had lost so much of his body weight that he was all bones with a little skin, and that he was in so much pain that he had to fight not to cry out. Yet, there he was, a gravely ill patient reclining in bed with a cigarette hanging from his lips. That habit carried on until the moment of death; he stubbornly clenched a cigarette between his teeth until God called him away.
Since I was unable to travel from Sudan to Syria, it came to pass that my beloved father died without his daughter Najwa by his side. This was a big hurt in my heart because any daughter feels close to a father who is so caring. I was helpless, so far away in Africa. I could only pray to God for Him to bless my father’s soul and to put him in white paradise.
Despite my knowledge that God knows best for all of us, I have never erased the sadness from my heart, even though my husband, Osama, reminded me that God decides all things and that whatever God decrees should be celebrated.
I was also reminded of the premonition I had suffered when last visiting Syria, during the time our family had not yet left Saudi Arabia. I remembered the dark foreboding surrounding me, strong feelings that something terrible was going to happen to someone.