Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [77]
After an investigation, the Sudanese government declared that the assassins had been hired by the Saudi government. My father was convinced, although I did not know what to believe. Certainly my father had deeply angered our Saudi rulers. Later I came to the conclusion that it was not the Saudi government, for they continued to make attempts to convince him to return to the kingdom. Why would they try to kill him when they were more interested in bringing him back into the fold?
My father even confided that the royal family had offered him several high government positions. The only requirements were for him to cease his criticisms of the royal family, give up his militant activities, and return to live peacefully in the country of his birth.
My father was an uncommonly stubborn man, scorning the generous offer.
Later, various high-ranking princes visited, urging him to return to the peace he could find in Saudi Arabia. Even bin Laden family members were sent to persuade my father that he was on a dangerous path. My father loved his family and did not become angry with them, saying that they had no choice but to go along with the royal family, but his answer was a disappointing and unfailing no.
As a last resort, King Fahd sent word for my father to expect a personal telephone call from the king himself. My father refused to take his call, which is a great insult in our part of the world. No one refuses an order from the king!
After that, the formerly friendly relationship between my father and the Saudi royal family was completely destroyed. After hearing these stories, I thought to myself that my father was busily covering himself in thorns so thick that no one would be able to cut through to help him, or to help his innocent family, who had no voice in any of his decisions.
Up until that day in Khartoum, my brothers and I had not fully grasped that there were people in the world who wanted our father dead. To our young minds, our father was a highly celebrated hero. Suddenly I saw a bit more of the full picture, beginning to realize that not everyone agreed with my father’s violent message that the Islamic world was in extreme danger and that all Muslims should attack before they were attacked. For the first time I sensed that our father was addicted to an aggressive pattern of thought that might endanger us all.
Our lives changed immediately after the attack. From that day forward, al-Riyadh Village was surrounded by a wall of security men and Sudanese police. Because of the increased danger, we were banned from leaving the village. There would be no more bicycle rides to neighboring villages. Never again would we roam the nearby shops and neighborhoods. Most tragic of all, we would never again be enrolled in school. And so it came to be that I finished my public schooling at the age of twelve, which proved to be a disaster for my future. The sons of Osama bin Laden would receive religious instruction and home tutoring only.
Once again we became prisoners, confined to a very small and boring corner of Khartoum.
Abdullah was our leader, so long as he remained with us. But we had always known that Abdullah would be the first to marry, and potential brides were readily discussed throughout the years of our youth. So it was no surprise that when Abdullah turned seventeen arrangements were made for him to marry the daughter of Tiayba Mohammed bin Laden, who was our father’s half-sister through his father, Mohammed.
Once the date was set, Abdullah left without any fanfare. There was no send-off party, no pre-wedding celebration. My brother bade our parents a brief and calm farewell, with our father saying little and our mother telling him, “Take care, Abdullah. Go with God.” He packed a few things in one bag, said a casual goodbye to his siblings, and then was taken to the airport by one of my father’s drivers.
I noticed little at the time, because I believed that Abdullah was coming back to us.