CP Note: October 7, 2001, witnessed the start of Operation Enduring Freedom. The bin Laden family–and the rest of the world–watched as the strikes began.
A weird wail, followed by an excited voice, woke me from a deep sleep. I was at my grandmother’s home in Jeddah when my uncle came crashing into my room, his voice high, his words confusing. “Look what my brother has done! Look what my brother has done! He has ruined all our lives! He has destroyed us!”
He continued to shout, “Come quickly! Come and see what my brother has done! See what your father has done!”
I dressed hurriedly and followed him into a room with a television screen. I saw flames belching from tall buildings. I had no idea what I was looking at.
I knew soon enough, however: America was under a serious attack.
The words and the images were too horrific to comprehend. Although my uncle had expressed his worst fears, none of us could truly believe that someone we knew, someone we had loved, had anything to do with the catastrophic events we were watching.
Despite Abu Haadi’s warnings, it seemed impossible for my father to be the one responsible for the chaos and death going on in America. The attack I was seeing was far too vast, something that only another superpower could organize. This was far bigger than my memory of Abu Haadi’s words and gestures, first holding his hand only a few inches from the ground, telling me, “Omar, this is how big the Embassy bombings were” then, raising his hand as high as he could reach, “This is how big the next mission will be.”
Was this the mission? Surely not!
Then I remembered a surreal moment. The night before, I had received a surprise telephone call from my mother, saying that she had taken my advice and had built her courage to ask my father for permission to leave. She had left Afghanistan and was now in Syria. She had her two babies with her, along with Abdul Rahman. Her other children had been left behind in Afghanistan.
“Ladin?” I asked.
My mother paused, then said, “He is with his father.”
That little boy’s plight tugged at my heart.
In light of the current calamity, the implications of my father allowing her to leave struck me like a big stone. Had he let her go only because he knew what was coming?
After seeing the New York towers, I called my mother, to learn that she was watching the television from Syria. But she was too distraught to have a normal conversation. The phone call was brief.
The members of the huge bin Laden family reacted in the same way as my mother. Everyone shut down. No one spoke of the incident. My uncle never again addressed the possibility that my father was behind the attacks. My grandmother refused to consider the idea that her son had anything to do with the burning buildings.
I, too, fed my own uncertainties with a million reasons why he could not have done this terrible deed. I did not want my father to be the one responsible.
Only much later, when he took personal credit for the attacks, did I know I must give up the luxury of doubt. That was the moment to set aside the dream that I had indulged, feverishly hoping that the world was wrong and it was not my father who brought about that horrible day. After hearing an audiotape of my father’s own words taking credit for the attacks, I faced the reality that he was the perpetrator behind the events of September 11, 2001.
This knowledge drives me into the blackest hole.
Everyone knew that the American president, George W. Bush, would not let the day go unanswered. We were waiting and wondering as to when the mighty American military would send their response. Truthfully, I lived in dread, thinking of my younger siblings and the horror they would experience beneath those massive American bombs.
No one in the family heard from my father, although in the past he had always managed to make contact when he wanted to.
Everyone in our bin Laden family became so subdued that we rarely spoke about any topic. Each was lost in his or her thoughts.
Finally, the suspense was over when the United States started their attack. On October 7, 2001, the Americans retaliated in the most massive bombing attacks anyone in that country had ever seen, which continued all through October and into November.
Thousands of people in Afghanistan were dead. People were running for the borders, desperate to escape the bombings. Several of the Arab newscasters carried reports of the dead fighters because many were Arabs. I saw the image of Abu Hafs and heard that a bomb had demolished his home. Supposedly many people died along with him. I wondered if my brother Mohammed and his young wife were among those dead.
Later I saw a fuzzy image of Abu Haadi flash across the television screen. He, too, was dead. My thoughts kept drifting back to the day that Abu Haadi said that I should leave, or I would die with him. He had been right; he was dead, and I was alive. I remembered that he had prepared his burial shroud, and kept it handy. I wondered if anyone had had time to wrap him in it for the burial.
I could discover nothing about my brothers and sisters, although there were constant reports of sightings of my tall father. Knowing that Osman was the same height, I wondered if the satellites were picking up images of my younger brother.
Supposedly, my father had returned to Tora Bora, to the mountain where he felt most at home. He would be hard to find there, I knew. No one knew those mountains like my father.
Excerpted from Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
Copyright © 2009 by The Sasson Corporation.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the publisher.
