Bin Ladin Carmen - Inside the kingdom: my life in Saudi Arabia

Copyright 2004 by Carmen Bin Ladin.

Written in collaboration with Ruth Marshall.
All rights reserved.

This work has been previously published in the French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish languages.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

First eBook Edition: July 2004

ISBN: 978-0-446-50619-9

This book is dedicated to my daughters
Wafah, Najia, and Noor;
and to my mother.

My dearest Wafah, Najia, and Noor,

It is with great joy and hopeand also some apprehensionthat I undertake the task of writing the story of my life. This book is for you. Of course, you will already have heard some of my stories, and are vaguely aware of the Saudi way of life, but I hope that this will enable you to comprehend the part of your background that you, Wafah and Najia, have completely forgotten and that you, Noor, have never known. Over the years, watching you grow into the beautiful human beings that you are, I came to feel that an insight into my personal experiences of living in Saudi Arabia would also give you a better understanding of the difficult times that you have had to go through since we left the country.

As you know, it is my utmost conviction that freedom of thought and expression is the most valuable gift of all. I want you to never take that freedom for granted. I want to reaffirm what you already know: That although material wealth may give pleasure, it is meaningless when it exists in a golden cageespecially when as a woman you cannot do what you want, or be who you want to be.

Although, for obvious reasons, I have not returned to Saudi Arabia in recent years, I continue to discuss events there with my friends inside the Kingdom. I can see that their lives have not evolved. Deep down in my heart, I am convinced that my decision to raise you with Western values was the right one, even though we have had to sever ties with that country. The only regret that I haveand always will haveis the emotional price that you have paid. I hope it is a consolation to you that I feel honored and privileged to be your mother. Without you I know that I would be a far lesser person: You are the source of my courage, my strength, my will.

Above all I want you to know that any steps that I have takenwhether they were right or wrongwere born out of my love for you. Thank you for what you have given me, by being yourselves. By being you.

All the events in this book happened as I described them. However, I have changed the names of two dear friends, Latifa and Turki, at their request, as well as the name of Latifas father.

9/11

S EPTEMBER 11, 2001, WAS ONE OF THE MOST TRAGIC dates of our lifetimes. It took, and shattered, the lives of thousands of innocent people. It robbed the Western world of its sense of freedom and security. For me, it was a nightmare of grief and horrorone that will imprison me and my three daughters for the rest of our lives.

And yet 9/11 began as a lovely Indian summer day. I was enjoying a leisurely drive from Lausanne to Geneva with my eldest daughter, Wafah, when one of my closest friends, who was working in New York, called me on my cell phone.

Something terrible just happened, he told me, his voice urgent, from his office in Manhattan. Im watching the news. Its incredible: A plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. And then, his voice rising further, he yelled, Wait a minutetheres another planeits going straight toward the second tower. Oh my Godhe was screaming nowit hit the second tower!

As he described the second hit, something in me snapped. This was no freak accident. This had to be a deliberately plotted attack, on a country I had always loved and looked on as my second home. I froze. Then waves of horror crashed over me as I realized that somewhere at the bottom of this lay the shadow of my brother-in-law: Osama Bin Laden.

Beside me in the car, my daughter Wafah was yelling, What? What happened? I was in shock. I managed to force out a few words. Wafah lived in New York. She had just graduated from Columbia Law School, and had spent the summer with me in Switzerland. She was planning to head back to her New York apartment in four days time. Now she was in tears, frantically punching in numbers on her cell phone, trying to reach all her friends.

My first instinct was to call my dearest friend, Mary Martha, in California. I had to hear her voice. She had already heard about the double attack in New York, and she told me a third plane had just hit the Pentagon. The world was spinning off its axis: I could feel it.

I raced to the high school attended by my youngest daughter, Noor. The look of shock in her eyes told me she already knew. The blood had drained from her face.

We rushed home to meet my middle girl, Najia, as she returned from college. She, too, was devastated. Like many millions of other people around the world, the children and I watched CNN, mesmerized, alternately weeping and phoning everyone we knew.

As the hours passed, my worst fear came true. One mans face and name was on every news bulletin: Osama Bin Laden. My daughters uncle. A man whose name they shared, but whom they had never met, and whose values were totally foreign to them. I felt a sick sense of doom. This day would change all of our lives, forever.

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS THE YOUNGER BROTHER OF MY husband, Yeslam. He is one of many brothers, and I knew him only distantly, when I lived in Saudi Arabia, years ago. At the time, Osama was a young man, but he always had a commanding presence. Osama was tall, and stern, and his fierce piety was intimidating, even to the more religious members of his family.

During the years that I lived among the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia, Osama came to exemplify everything that repelled me in that opaque and harsh country: the unbending dogma that ruled all our lives, the arrogance and pridefulness of the Saudis, and their lack of compassion for people who didnt share their beliefs. That contempt for outsiders, and unyielding orthodoxy, spurred me on to a fourteen-year struggle to give my children a life of freedom.

In my struggle to sever our ties to Saudi Arabia, I began amassing information on my husbands family. I watched as Osama grew in might and notoriety, spiraling deeper into murderous rage against the United States from his redoubt in Afghanistan.

Osama was a warlord, who assisted the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviet occupation of their country. When the Soviets left, Osama returned home, to Saudi Arabia. For many he was already a hero.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, in 1990, Osama was outraged at the idea that U.S. forces might use Saudi Arabia as a base. He offered Saudi King Fahd the use of his Afghan warriors to fight Saddam Hussein. Some of the more religious princes thought Osamas ideas had merit, but King Fahd refused.

Osama began making incendiary statements against the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the Saudi ruling family, and the Americans who were defending them. Finally, Osama was forced to leave his country, and take refuge in Sudan, where his compound of armed men was surrounded by sentries in tanks. Then he moved back to Afghanistan.

In those days, even though we were separated, I was still on speaking terms with Yeslam, who kept me up-to-date on the evolution in Saudi Arabia and the Bin Laden family newsincluding Osamas whereabouts. Yeslam told me that Osamas power was growing, despite his exile. Osama, he said, was under the protection of conservative members of the Saudi royal family.