When Osama Bin Ladin was killed in May of 2011 he left behind four wives and dozens of children and grandchildren. We have not heard much about their story since, and to my knowledge, Growing Up Bin Ladin is the only inside account of the Bin Ladin family life before the attacks.
The book is a disturbing memoir of a wife and son who watch the man they love descend deeper and deeper into radicalism. The chapters alternate between those authored by Najwa, Bin Ladin's first wife, and her and Osama's fourth son Omar. The book opens with Najwa, young, innocent, and marrying her deeply religious cousin. He is from the well-to-do Bin Ladin family and offers her a life of comfort and safety in Saudi Arabia. Najwa leaves her home in Syria to join the Bin Ladin clan in Saudi Arabia, were she dons the hijab and remains virtually secluded within the confines of the family home. But all of these things are perfectly acceptable for a Middle Eastern woman from a traditional Muslim family. Her husband, not yet a religious extremist, treats her well, provides for her, though urges her to live simply, and rejoices with her at the birth of their sons.
This is the life that Najwa, and many other Muslim women, yearned for. For a few brief years it was the life she had. But her husband, always the devout Muslim, began taking his religion more and more seriously. He spent longer time periods away from home, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Eventually that war ended, but the fuel for Jihad had been ignited in Osama's heart. He asked her if he could take another wife to produce more sons for Islam . These sons would be raised in the service of Allah. Many would later serve their father's nefarious purposes. Osama eventually took four wives, the maximum number dictated by Muhammad the Prophet. He spent equal time with each of them, alternating the nights that he stayed in each wife's quarters. The wives became friends. Truly, they had to. They had no one else. As Osama's activities became more radical he was exiled from Saudi Arabia, and they moved to Sudan where the women and children lived in seclusion, with only occasional trips to the family farm outside Khartoum.
Omar, a young child when his family left Saudi Arabia, mourns the loss of the horses on his families horse farm in that country. Growing up, Omar became an avid animal lover. He loved dogs, a species deemed unclean by Islam. He was an avid horseman like his father. He seemed to understand animals better than he understood the people in his world. Better, certainly, than he could understand his father who grew increasingly distant and radical during their days in Khartoum. Osama once trekked his entire family, wives and sons included, into the desert to sleep with no provisions, in order to train them to survive in harsh circumstances. The day would come, his father claimed, when the comforts of their home will be no more.
These words were darkly prophetic. Osama's actions became more radical, his rhetoric more virulent, and his was kicked out of Sudan, taking his son Omar with him to Afghanistan. The Taliban offers him refuge and a home in the city, and a mountain in Tora Bora. At this point Osama's radicalism had brought him to shun modern conveniences, so he moved his family, and his growing troop of followers all to the primitive outpost at Tora Bora. Omar is forced into his father's militant movement. Najwa continues bearing children, uncomplaining, yet unhappy. Omar begins questioning his father actions, he begins to consider escape.
Omar and Najwa were not living in the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan on the night that the rest of the family was killed/captured. In fact, this book was written a few years before the raid. They had left the clutches of religious fundamentalism. They were the lucky ones.
Osama Bin Laden has been the villian of our nation's story since September 11th, 2001. Yet, he was not the villian of this story - at least, not for Najwa. Perhaps he became a villain for Omar, yet deep at the heart of Omar's story is a boy just longing for his father's love and approval. Najwa's story is far more stoic. She is a woman telling the facts. She and Osama never divorced, she was still his wife, living in Syria on the day he died in Pakistan. She knew little of his political activity and judged him solely on how he treated his wives and children. He was, in her world, a very good Muslim. He took his devout nature to extremes later in their marriage, and yes, it resulted in much inconvenience for the family, but she remained with him, uncomplaining. She had to be essentially prodded away by her son, who warned her that something big was going to happen -something that would endanger her and her children's lives. I cannot understand this woman. How can you watch docilely as your husband takes another wife, and then another, and then another? How can you become friends with those wives?
Omar was a character that was easier to get. He was the one that rebelled against his father's extremism. Teenage rebellion is not something difficult for us to comprehend, and it's even easier when you're rebelling against the world's #1 terrorist. But through Omar's eyes we saw a man who was not a terrorist. He was a father. Not a very good father, but a father nonetheless. He did not love America, nor did he wish to throw away his religion. He just wanted a normal, Muslim life.
After finishing this book I went back and read the news reports from that fateful day two years ago. However, I read them with a different perspective. In those reports I read the stories of the women and children sequestered in that house, and indeed, in that mentality. They, like so many others in the fundamentalist community, are imprisoned in a world without education, without access to the outside, and with few avenues to change their situation. Nawja did not know what her husband was doing. She trusted that it was in the name of Allah and it was for the good of the Muslim world. But why can't Najwa and other women make that decision on their own?
Sadly, extremist Islam is growing. Though Osama Bin Laden's death caused a major setback for the Al Qaeda organization, extremist enclaves are expanding throughout Africa. We need to fight this battle, but let's do it with less drones and more books. Who's giving these kids education? Who's providing the resources? Who's getting them? Just boys? Or are girls allowed to go to school too? Are girls allowed to choose their path? If they are educated and given the chance to choose, my bets are that they are not going to choose a life of baby-making for jihad.
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