The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [144]
“My dad is not going to destroy them,” Fatima protested. “He’s not really that hard. He just acts like that in front of the men.”
“He actually listens to songs?” Zaynab asked, amazed.
“Oh, yeah, he doesn’t mind.”
Reflecting his love of horses, bin Laden kept a library of books on the subject in Umm Khaled’s house, and even tolerated coloring books and calendars with pictures of horses on them, although no one else in the community allowed pictures on the walls. Zaynab concluded, “The Sheikh was pretty broad-minded.”
The older bin Laden boys were usually with their father nearby in Tora Bora. Among the teenagers, there was a strange, unstable mix of boredom and mortal danger. Unlike the girls, the boys had the opportunity to go to school, but they did little other than memorize the Quran all day. Bin Laden let his younger sons play Nintendo because there was not much else to entertain them. The boys were quite wild and inclined to reckless behavior to escape the monotony. One of Zaynab’s younger brothers, Abdul Rahman, became friends with bin Laden’s son by the same name. They were the only two boys in the compound whose fathers could afford a horse for them. Sometimes, instead of riding, they would goad their animals into fighting each other. Abdul Rahman bin Laden’s horse was a spirited Arabian, but when Abdul Rahman Khadr brought a stronger horse that nearly killed the Arabian, the bin Laden boy chambered a bullet in his gun and pointed it at Khadr, saying he would shoot him if he didn’t pull his horse off. Murder and mayhem were always brewing.
In the afternoons, the boys often played volleyball, and Osama would sometimes join in the game. He was apparently in excellent health. Once, he bought a horse from the Taliban, who said they had captured it from Ahmed Shah Massoud. It was a large golden stallion with three white stockings. Nobody could ride it until bin Laden jumped on its back and galloped off. Twenty-five minutes later, he rode back into the compound with the horse completely under his control.
The men who were so feared and despised in the rest of the world did not seem so terrifying in their own homes, where they roughhoused with the children and helped with their homework. Zaynab remembered one occasion when her family was at the Zawahiris’ house in Kandahar and the father came in carrying his machine gun. As he was going up the stairs, Zaynab’s ten-year-old brother grabbed Zawahiri’s legs and begged him to give it to him. “Abdul Kareem, just wait until we go to the room!” said Zawahiri. The boy wouldn’t let go; he kept begging and grabbing for the weapon. Zawahiri finally relented and let the boy examine his weapon. This struck Zaynab and the others as a tender moment. “And this is the man, they make him seem like a monster!” she exclaimed.
The four Zawahiri daughters were bright, outspoken, and beautiful, particularly Nabila. When she turned twelve, she became a subject of intense interest among the bride-shopping mothers in the community. Mohammed, the Zawahiris’ only son, was also very attractive, the pet of his older sisters. As he got older, however, he was spending more time with the men and with his classmates. It was a rough environment for such a delicate, well-mannered boy, and he was constantly teased and bullied. He preferred to stay at home and help his mother.
The Zawahari girls would often get together for games or exercise. Azza, their mother, liked to have small parties, although there was little to offer her guests—sometimes no more than noodles and tomatoes. When Zaynab visited the Zawahiris for the engagement of their second daughter, Umayma, the girls talked and talked through breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Late at night, they were still singing, making so much noise that they couldn’t hear Dr. Ayman knocking on the door asking them to keep it down. “I thought about how this guy scares the whole world but he doesn’t even scream at us. We see them as nice and gentle.”
Despite her modest manner, Zawahiri’s wife insisted on retaining a certain