The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [210]
Azza was carrying her youngest, Aisha, the Down syndrome child, who was still in diapers although she was four years old. Azza worried that if she died no one else could take care of Aisha. The girl was wide-eyed and so small and needful.
By now it had gotten bitterly cold, although the war was still in the cities, the men of al-Qaeda were making their stand in Tora Bora, and their families decided to head to Pakistan. A large convoy formed and they made a slow drive through the mountains. Azza and her children stopped in Gardez at the guesthouse of Jalaladin Haqqanni, a Taliban government official, but Maha’s family went on to Khost. That night there were two thundering explosions, so great that some of the children vomited and others had diarrhea. In the morning, one of Maha’s sons went to check on the Zawahiris. He found that the house they were in had been struck. The cement roof had collapsed, pinning Azza underneath. The rescuers had found little Aisha injured but still alive, and they set her outside on a bed while they tried to save Azza. She was still alive, but she refused to be excavated because of her fear that men would see her face. Eventually, her cries stopped. When the rescuers finally returned to take care of the child, they discovered that she had frozen to death.
IN THE CAVES OF TORA BORA, bin Laden and Zawahiri visited the remaining al-Qaeda fighters and urged them to hold their positions and wait for the Americans. Instead, the al-Qaeda warriors found themselves fighting Afghans in the first two weeks of December, while the Americans flew overhead in B-52s, so far out of reach, dropping Daisy Cutter bombs on their caverns. “We were about three hundred mujahideen,” bin Laden recounted. “We dug one hundred trenches that were spread in an area that does not exceed one square mile, one trench for every three brothers, so as to avoid the huge human losses resulting from the bombardment.” Despite his preparations, on December 3, after American bombers struck a cave complex, Afghan ground troops uncovered more than a hundred bodies; they were able to identify eighteen of them as top al-Qaeda lieutenants.
Bin Laden felt betrayed by the Muslims who had failed to join him. Even the Taliban slipped away. “Only a few remained steadfast,” he complained. “The rest surrendered or fled before they encountered the enemy.” He wrote this on December 17. The brief battle of Tora Bora was over—a crushing loss for al-Qaeda, but also for the United States and its allies, who failed to nab their quarry. Bin Laden and the remaining al-Qaeda fighters had escaped into Pakistan, getting away with their lives but losing Afghanistan. Bin Laden chose this time to write what he described as his final bequest.
In his will, bin Laden tried to salvage his legacy. “I consider all Muslims in this immensely miserable time as my relatives,” he wrote. He pointed to the bombings of the embassies in East Africa, the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the attack on the Pentagon: They were great victories. “Despite the setbacks that God has inflicted upon us, these painful blows will mark the beginning of the wiping out of America and the infidel West after the passing of tens of years, God willing.”
Then he addressed his own family. “My wives, may God bestow His blessings on you,” he wrote. “You knew from the very first day that the road is surrounded with thorns and mines. You have given up the pleasures of life, your families, and chosen the hardship of living by my side.” He adjured them not to think of marrying again. “My sons, forgive me because I have given you very little of my time ever since I have chosen the path of jihad…. I have chosen a perilous course, filled with all sorts of tribulations that ruffle one’s life…. If it were not for treason I would have triumphed.” He then advised them not to join al-Qaeda. “In that I follow the example of Omar bin