Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [73]
After she had departed our father acted as though she had never been part of our family, yet nothing was ever quite the same after she left. Although we kids adjusted to our Auntie Khadijah’s absence, we missed Ali. We had been playmates for many years and had been taught to be loyal to all our half-siblings.
Ali was the oldest child of Auntie Khadijah and was considered old enough to return to visit his father. His one visit to Sudan a year later was awkward and brief and he never returned. Neither did he visit us in Afghanistan.
But we were active boys with boundless energy, so we recovered from the change. After our father forbade us our pigeons, we scouted around for other activities to fill our time. The Nile was only a few minutes away from our home and we desperately wanted to go and take a swim there. Much to our pleasant surprise, our father agreed to our idea and even accompanied us. Who would have guessed that he wanted a swim, too?
Twisting wormlike through Sudan and Khartoum, the slim Nile was deceptive to a swimmer’s eyes. My brothers and I always spurred the others on, taunting until all dove into the dark waters and swam for the opposite shore.
The waters were rough and the distance longer than it looked.
Yet none of us would admit fear to the others, so in the process we all became excellent swimmers, and avoided any serious problems. However, one of my father’s friends nearly drowned. On that day we were all swimming when suddenly that foolish man excitedly leapt into the water like a teenager. Before we knew it, the strong current was washing him away. We all began to shout, alerting our father. None of us could catch up with the man. The last we saw he was in a panic, his head bobbing up and down, his arms desperately flailing. When he disappeared from view, we assumed the Nile would become his watery grave. But there was a happy surprise when some Sudanese fishermen found the poor man splashing and crying out for help some distance downriver. They were kind enough to bring him back to us. We were all smiles when we saw that he had survived. My stern father said that he had acted like a fool, and advised him, “Steer clear of the Nile,” and I believe that he did.
Our father even allowed us to take our beloved horses for Nile swims to give them respite from the heat. Our father’s friends loved to hang on to the horses’ tails for some strange reason and we would pull them across the Nile. At other times our father gave the order for his cattle to be led to the Nile and we enjoyed riding their backs or splashing them with the cool water. Those cows seemed to like the Nile as much as we did.
One funny episode occurred when my father had one of his Egyptian employees build a boat. The boatman’s building skills were poorer than my father believed, as the finished boat proved a big disappointment. The boatman claimed to have coated it with some special substance that made it go very fast, and indeed, that appeared to be the case, for on the day of the big launch, the boat proved impossible to control, spinning one way and then another before lurching forward at a high rate of speed.
It just so happened that our father had claimed the right to captain the boat. We stood in amazement as the boat moved so rapidly that our father was quickly swept down the Nile. Alarmed men loyal to my father began slapping the water with their palms, loudly yelling, “The prince is in trouble! The prince is in trouble!”
Father’s men ran to a neighbor by the name of Osama Dawoud who owned a very fast boat. Luckily, the man was home and quickly gave chase, catching up with father’s boat to tie it to his motorboat so he could tow it back. I remember standing on the banks