The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [104]
Troubling clues that raise suspicion as to the true role of the Saudis, and particularly the activity of certain Saudi royals, proliferate throughout this story.
“GO TO SUDAN,” a friend in the government had advised bin Laden. “You can organize a holy war from there.”
An Islamic regime had recently come to power in Sudan, and bin Laden had been buying up land in that desperately poor North African country. So it was, in the summer of 1991, that he made Khartoum his destination. His four wives and their children—fourteen by now—arrived later direct from Saudi Arabia. They were whisked through the airport, ushered into luxury cars, and driven away in style. As a hero of jihad, and a very generous millionaire, bin Laden was the guest of Sudan’s president.
Bin Laden and his family were to stay for five years. They took over several houses in a wealthy suburb of Khartoum, a three-story home and large garden for the wives and children, three houses for the servants and security men, an office, and a guesthouse where bin Laden received visitors. The family dwelling had some European furniture and a profusion of blue cushions laid out Arab-style but not a single picture to decorate the walls.
In this new setting, bin Laden continued to insist on austerity. Modern conveniences were to his mind contrary to Muslim law or just plain extravagant. On a visit to Sudan, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi asked him why his robe appeared all wrinkled. “You know how many kilowatts of electricity an iron consumes?” bin Laden asked. “I don’t need an iron. I’m trying to live my life without electricity.” He told his wives not to use the refrigerator, the electric stoves, or—in the searing heat—the air-conditioning.
Bin Laden’s sons attended the best private school in Sudan, while the girls went to no school at all. Instead, they got rudimentary lessons at home, from an aunt. Bin Laden did not approve of formal education for girls. He had more time for his children now, though they might have preferred otherwise. Omar recalled how he and his brothers were punished. “His wooden cane was his favorite weapon.… It was not unusual for the sons of bin Laden to be covered with raised welts on our backs and legs.”
If he thought his sons had defied him, bin Laden could turn apoplectic with rage. Once, when he told Omar to wash an honored guest’s hands—in line with bin Laden’s reading of the correct etiquette—the visitor demurred, saying he would wash himself. Omar handed over the water jug accordingly, only to have his father misconstrue what was happening. “Why do you embarrass me?” he bellowed. “Why should he wash your hands? You are a nobody!” So angry was his father, Omar recalled, that “spit spewed from his mouth.”
Notwithstanding patriarchal explosions, first wife Najwa found a measure of contentment in Sudan. “My husband did not travel so much.… He had arrangements with high officials in the Sudanese government to build roads and factories.… Osama’s favorite undertaking was working the land, growing the best corn and the biggest sunflowers.… Nothing made my husband happier than showing off his huge sunflowers.”
Eighteen months later, in his first interview of substance with a Western journalist, bin Laden described himself as merely an “agriculturalist” and “construction engineer.” Using the bulldozers and other equipment he had once used to build roads for the mujahideen in Afghanistan, he said, he and his men had undertaken a major highway project for the benefit of the Sudanese people.
The reporter, the British Independent’s Robert Fisk, looked carefully at his