NEW YORK TIMES, June 12, 2011—Author of GROWING UP BIN LADEN: OSAMA’S WIFE AND SON TAKE US INSIDE THEIR SECRET WORLD by Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, Jean Sasson, answers questions.
Q: Why did Omar bin Laden, Osama’s fourth son, choose you to write “Growing Up bin Laden”?
A: It’s hard for an Arab person to open up with an American they don’t know, but my books on Princess Sultana were all over Saudi Arabia, and he had heard through some of the family who knew her that I was a person that could be trusted. In February 2008, he sent an e-mail to me through my publisher’s Web site.
Q: More shocking was that Najwa, the first of Bin Laden’s wives, also told you her story. Did you see that as an act of betrayal?
A: I always said I felt like Osama wouldn’t be nearly so bothered by Omar as he would by Najwa. I really believe she only did it because her son asked her to. And I got the feeling that once she started the process, she enjoyed talking about her life. This is a talented woman with a lot of promise who wasn’t able to sit in a garden without upsetting her husband.
Q: We learn from Omar that pretty much whenever Bin Laden wasn’t neglecting his children for his terrorism work, he was beating them. Is this a revenge memoir?
A: I don’t think that would even enter his mind. Omar has a pure heart. He just always wanted a normal life, and he couldn’t have one with his father.
Q: What’s something the family told you about Osama that made your jaw drop?
A: Osama had these kicks where he would take the boys out into the desert and have them march long distances and not give them water. But after 1994, after the Saudis froze his assets and revoked his passport, and there had been attempts on his life, he became more paranoid and decided that the whole family had to survive with nothing. He started including the wives and the small children, and he would drive them into the desert and have them dig holes and sleep in them, using only the sand to keep them warm.
Q: It’s like the worst family road trip ever. But Omar says that his father was never happier than when he was hiking, particularly through Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
A: Omar said his father just loved walking over those mountains. He told me: “Once I tumbled off the mountain and thought I was going to be killed. My father remained completely calm. He just stood there, watching me. When I finally got my footing, I looked at him and said, ‘My father, what would you have done if I had been killed?’ And he just said, ‘Well, I would’ve buried you, my son.’ ”
Q: Do you think Osama was crazy?
A: No, although Omar told me his father often suffered from depression and got very quiet.
Q: Didn’t he condone the slaughter of a monkey because he believed it to be a Jew that changed forms?
A: Someone told Omar that his father had said that, but Osama didn’t say it to Omar. In court, that could be considered hearsay.
Q: Do you buy the reports that Osama had a stash of herbal aphrodisiacs at the compound?
A: I wouldn’t be surprised at that. He had a younger wife, plus two other wives there. I remember that on the day a clinic opened in Saudi Arabia for men who were impotent, cars lined up through Riyadh waiting. And most of the men were elderly, and they were very concerned because they had four wives, and they said they could only do it twice a day. Some of these men were, like, 80.
Q: Najwa seems so modest that I can’t imagine you broached her s*x life with Osama.
A: I wouldn’t ask that of any Arab woman. But when I asked Najwa what her favorite time of day was, she admitted that it was “the sleeping time.”
Q: When I read that I assumed she meant that the rest of her life was so bleak she took pleasure only in sleep.
A: No, that’s when he was giving her all his attention. Omar said that when he was a child, Osama would come home from Afghanistan and take Najwa into the bedroom and they wouldn’t come out for days.
A: In reporting the book, did you ever have surprising feelings toward Osama?
Q: I felt a lot of regret at what could’ve been. Omar always said, “If my father had only not met those Egyptians.” He felt the Egyptians around him — men like al-Zawahiri — influenced his father to be more violent than he ever would have been.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Sunday, June 12th 2011 at 11:57AM
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