Omar bin Laden - Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

We dedicate this book to every innocent person who has suffered pain or lost their life in terror attacks throughout the world, and the families who continue to suffer and mourn them.

We pray for peace all over the world.

Acknowledgments

Thank you, Omar, for your sincerity and integrity. Thank you, dear Najwa, for your sweet ways and your oh-so-careful responses to my endlessly intrusive questions at all hours of the day and night. Thank you, Zaina, for your devotion to Omar, and for your encouragement that Omar not give up to make this book happen.

Thank you, Liza, my indefatigable literary agent, for believing in this project when others who should have believed did not. I am a most fortunate author to have you represent me. And Frank, my literary attorney, I thank you for being a rock throughout my literary career, for sixteen years now. Havis, I thank you for your generous nature and unfailing help. To Chandler, foreign rights connoisseur, I thank you for falling in love with this story and for presenting it to publishers worldwide with that love in your heart.

A special thanks to my editor, Hope. Liza had told me you are one of the great editors, and working with you has proven to me that truth. Laura, you never let me down and were always there to answer my questions with a friendly word. I thank you and the many people at St. Martins, who, like me, were pulled into this unique story and enjoyed exercising their skills to bring this important project to full fruit.

Thank you, my dear Hikmat, for your diligence in translating a seemingly endless stream of pages from English to Arabic and Arabic to English for my critical researches. And to you too, Amina, for pitching in when it seemed the translation stream threatened to crest and overflow. Evan, you were a pro from the first moment, and your illustrations add so much value to this work. You have my sincere thanks for never complaining despite the many tweaks on the road to perfection.

Thanks to those who care deeply about this book, as well as care about the other books I have written or planned projects yet to be written. This includes relatives Aunt Margaret and cousins Bill and Alice. My nephew Greg and his son Alec express sincere care by calling to check on my progress and well-being during the difficult days and nights of writing. Dear friends who graciously support me at every turn cannot go unnamed. I thank Alece, Anita, Danny and Jo, Joanne, Judy and her mom, Eleanor, Lisa, Maria and Bill, Mayada, Peter and Julie, and Vicki and her mom, Jo.

And, of course, once again, to my darling Jack, who gives me unconditional love while securing the perimeters of my life.

J EAN S ASSON

A Note to the Reader

From the moment he came to the worlds attention, Osama bin Laden has meticulously guarded even the most impersonal details about himself and his wives and children. This lack of private information about Osama bin Laden and his immediate family has fed the worlds imagination ever since September 11, 2001.

While there have been many books published about Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization, this is the first book written from inside Osama bin Ladens family life, with personal accounts directly from his first wife, Najwa, and their fourth-born son, Omar. I want readers to know that nothing in Growing Up bin Laden has been filtered through the opinions of this writer. Memories of events, stories, and personal thoughts have come straight from Najwa and Omar to me. Although I was startled by certain revelations, I let the truth of the bin Laden family life unfold naturally. Like other members of the vast bin Laden family, Najwa and Omar are not terrorists. Neither has ever harmed anyone, but are in fact two of the kindest individuals it has been my pleasure to know.

It is important to remember that this book is about the private life of Osama bin Laden and his family. Please keep in mind that his son Omar bin Laden was a young boy until the time he lived in Afghanistan, and that Omars mother, Najwa, lived in isolation during her marriage according to her husbands wishes. This is strictly a personal account of family life because much of Osama bin Ladens political, militant, and Islamic life was hidden from his wife and son, although it permeated their own lives in ways they did not always understand at the time.

During the turbulent years they were living with Osama bin Laden, Omar and Najwa were often occupied with survival rather than with keeping notes or diaries. They acknowledge that the timing and dates of family events may not always be exact, and ask that readers consider that the information in this book is essentially an oral history, and therefore subject to the omissions of memory.

Finally, although this book is the story of Najwa and Omar, and their recollections and views as they recounted them to me, the reader should understand that those clearly identified materials I have added to the narrativethis and other authors notes in the text and the Appendices at the end of the bookreflect solely my views and opinions and not those of Omar or Najwa bin Laden.

* * *

When seeking to deepen our knowledge of those who bring great harm to the world, perhaps we should be guided by the words of Sir Winston Churchill at the end of World War II:

Now that it is over we look back, and with minute and searching care, seek to find its criminals and its heroes. Where are they? Where are the villains who made the war? We ought to know; we mean to know. Smarting under our wounds, enraged by our injuries, amazed by our wonderful exertions and achievements, conscious of our authority, we demand to know the truth, and to fix the responsibilities.

People are not born terrorists. Nor do they become terrorists in a single stroke. But step by step, like a farmer preparing a field for planting, their lives unfold in a pattern that leaves them prepared to receive the seed of terrorism.

And so it was with Osama bin Laden. And the man, men, and events that planted that seed faded away. But the seed grew and the terrorist walked. And the man before, became the terrorist thereafter.

Najwa Ghanem bin Laden knows only the man. The West knows only the terrorist.

J EAN S ASSON

PART I

Early Days in Saudi Arabia

Chapter 1

My Youth

NAJWA BIN LADEN

I was not always the wife of Osama bin Laden. Once I was an innocent child dreaming little girl dreams. These days my thoughts often drift back in time and I remember the little girl that I was and the safe and happy childhood I enjoyed.

Often Ive heard adults speak of their childhood with regret and even anger, glad that they have escaped the younger years. Such talk is baffling to me, for if I could, I would go back in time to the first part of my life and I would remain a little girl forever.

My parents and siblings and I lived in a modest villa in the port city of Latakia, Syria. The coastal region of Syria is lovely, with sea breezes and fertile land where lucky farmers grow fruit and vegetables. Our backyard was abundant with green trees bursting with delicious fruit. Behind our narrow seaside plain one could see the picturesque coastal mountains, with terraced hills of fruit orchards and olive groves.