The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [94]
Nearly every month bin Laden would attend one of these events, more out of courtesy than curiosity. He disagreed with almost everything Turabi said, but he was no match for the professor in his drawing room. The Islam that Turabi was straining to create in such a radical, nondemocratic fashion was, in fact, surprisingly progressive. Turabi advocated healing the ancient breach between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam, which was heresy in bin Laden’s eyes. Turabi spoke about integrating “art, music, singing” into religion, offending bin Laden’s Wahhabi sensibilities. Early in his career, Turabi had made his reputation as an Islamic thinker by his advocacy of women’s rights. He thought that Muslim women had suffered a long retreat from the comparative equality they once enjoyed. “The Prophet himself used to visit women, not men, for counseling and advice. They could lead prayer. Even in his battles, they are there! In the election between Othman and Ali to determine who will be the successor to the Prophet, they voted!”
Now that he was finally living in a radical Islamist state, bin Laden would ask practical questions, such as how the Islamists intended to apply Sharia in Sudan and how they proposed to handle the Christians in the south. Often he did not like the answers. Turabi told him that Sharia would be applied gradually and only on Muslims, who would share power with Christians in a federal system. Bin Laden would stay ten to thirty minutes and then slip away. He couldn’t wait to get out of there. “This man is a Machiavelli,” bin Laden confided to his friends. “He doesn’t care what methods he uses.” Although they still needed one another, Turabi and bin Laden soon began to see themselves as rivals.
KHARTOUM BEGAN AS THE HAPPIEST PERIOD in bin Laden’s adult life. He opened a small downtown office on Mek Nimr Street in a sagging, single-story building with nine rooms, a low ceiling, and a heavy air conditioner that dripped on the sidewalk. Here he started Wadi El Aqiq, the holding company for his many enterprises, named after a river in Mecca. Across the street was the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, in a building that had been a famous brothel during the British occupation. “Osama just laughed when I told him that,” recalled Hasan Turabi’s son Issam.
Bin Laden and Issam became friends because of their common passion, riding. There are four million horses in Sudan, a country that relies on them for transportation and farm work but loves them for sport. Although Issam was only twenty-five when bin Laden arrived in Sudan, he was already one of the country’s top breeders, and he kept a stable at the Khartoum track. One Friday bin Laden came shopping for a mare, and Issam showed him around the fly-ridden stalls. Issam was very struck by his Saudi visitor. “He was not tall, but he was handsome—his eyes, his nose—he was beautiful.” Bin Laden settled on a stately thoroughbred from another breeder, and Issam arranged to buy the horse without asking a commission. Bin Laden was so used to people taking advantage of his money that this simple courtesy impressed him. He decided to quarter his horses with Issam. He added four more Sudanese thoroughbreds for himself and bought his children about ten local horses, which he bred to some Arabians he had flown in from the Kingdom. Issam was disdainful of what he saw as bin Laden’s romantic attachment to