The Looming Tower (14 page)

“Osama was very stubborn,” Khalifa said. “We were riding horses in the desert, and we were really going very fast. I saw fine sand in front of us, and I told Osama this is dangerous, better stay away. He said no, and he continued. His horse turned over and he fell down. He got up laughing. Another time, we were riding in a jeep. Whenever he saw a hill, he would drive very fast and go over it, even though we didn’t know what was on the other side. Really, he put us in danger many times.”

It was a time of spiritual questioning for both of them. “Islam is different from any other religion; it’s a way of life,” said Khalifa. “We were trying to understand what Islam has to say about how we eat, who we marry, how we talk. We read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation.” Many of the professors at the university were members of the Brotherhood who had been run out of Egypt or Syria. They had brought with them the idea of a highly politicized Islam, one that fused the state and the religion into a single, all-encompassing theocracy. Bin Laden and Khalifa were drawn to them because they seemed more open-minded than the Saudi scholars and were willing to lead them to the books that would change their lives, such as Qutb’s
Milestones
and
In the Shade of the Quran.
Each week, Mohammad Qutb, the younger brother of the martyr, would lecture at the school. Although bin Laden never formally studied with Qutb, he usually attended his public lectures. Qutb was extremely popular with the students, who noted his calm demeanor despite the fact the he had also endured the rigors of Nasser’s prisons.

At that moment Mohammed Qutb was jealously defending his brother’s reputation, which was under attack from moderate Islamists. They contended that
Milestones
had empowered a new, more violent group of radicals, especially in Egypt, who used Sayyid Qutb’s writings to justify attacks on anyone they considered an infidel, including other Muslims. Foremost among Qutb’s critics was Hasan Hudaybi, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brothers, who published his own prison book,
Preachers Not Judges,
to counter Qutb’s seductive call to chaos. In Hudaybi’s far more orthodox theology, no Muslim could deny the belief of another so long as he made the simple profession of faith: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His messenger.” The debate, which had been born in the Egyptian prisons with Qutb and Hudaybi, was quickly spreading throughout Islam, as young Muslims took sides in this argument about who is a Muslim and who is not. “Osama read Hudaybi’s book in
1978,
and we talked about it,” Jamal Khalifa recalled. “Osama agreed with him completely.” His views would soon change, however, and it was this fundamental shift—from Hudaybi’s tolerant and accepting view of Islam to Qutb’s narrow and judgmental one—that would open the door to terror.

That same year, Osama and Najwa’s son Abdullah was born. He was the first of their eleven children, and following Arab tradition, the parents came to be called Abu (the father of) Abdullah and Umm (the mother of) Abdullah. Unlike his own father, Osama was attentive and playful with his children—he loved to take his quickly expanding family to the beach—but he was also demanding. He had unyielding ideas about the need to prepare them for the tough life ahead. On the weekends, he brought both his sons and his daughters with him to the farm to live with camels and horses. They would sleep under the stars, and if it was cold, they would dig and cover themselves with sand. Bin Laden refused to let them attend school, instead bringing tutors into the house, so he could supervise every detail of their education. “He wanted to make them tough, not like other children,” said Jamal Khalifa. “He thought other kids were spoiled.”

Bin Laden’s second son, Abdul Rahman, was born with a rare and poorly understood birth defect called hydrocephalus, commonly called water on the brain. It results from an excess of cerebrospinal fluid building up inside the neural ventricles, which in turn causes the head to enlarge and the brain to shrink. After birth, the head continues to expand unless the fluid is drained. Abdul Rahman’s condition was so serious that bin Laden himself took the baby to the United Kingdom for treatment—probably the only time that he traveled in the West. When the doctors told him that Abdul Rahman would need a shunt in his brain, bin Laden declined to let them operate. Instead, he returned to the Kingdom and treated the child himself, using honey, a folk remedy for many ailments. Unfortunately, Abdul Rahman became mildly retarded. As he grew older, he was prone to emotional outbursts. He had difficulty fitting in with the other children, especially in the robust outdoor life that bin Laden prescribed for them; often he would cry for attention or provoke fights if things weren’t going as he wanted them to. Nonetheless, bin Laden always insisted on including Abdul Rahman, taking special care to make sure he was never left alone.

J
AMAL
K
HALIFA
also wanted to marry. The custom, in Saudi Arabia, is for the groom to pay a bride price and furnish a home before the wedding takes place. Khalifa found a suitable young woman, but he didn’t have enough money to provide an apartment. Bin Laden owned a lot near the university, and he built a small home for his friend. Unfortunately, it was too spartan for Khalifa’s bride.

Bin Laden did not take offense; indeed, he made an even more generous gesture. At that time, he was living in his mother’s house with his stepfather and their children. Osama and his family occupied the first floor, which he divided in half by building a wall through the middle of the living room; then he invited Khalifa and his bride to move in. “You live on this side, and I’ll live on the other,” bin Laden said. Khalifa and his wife lived there until he graduated from King Abdul Aziz University in 1980.

While they were still in the university, Osama and Jamal made a resolution. They decided to practice polygamy. It had become socially unacceptable in Saudi Arabia. “Our fathers’ generation was using polygamy in not a very good way. They would not give equal justice to their wives,” Khalifa admitted. “Sometimes they would marry and divorce in the same day. The Egyptian media used to put this on television, and it made a very bad impression. So, we said, ‘Let’s practice this and show people we can do it properly.’” In 1982 bin Laden set an example by marrying a woman from the Sabar family in Jeddah who was descended from the Prophet. She was highly educated, with a Ph.D. in child psychology, and taught at the women’s college of King Abdul Aziz University. Seven years older than Osama, she bore him one child, a son, and became known as Umm Hamza.

Managing two families wasn’t easy, but bin Laden wasn’t discouraged. He developed a theory of multiple marriages. “One is okay, like walking. Two is like riding a bicycle: it’s fast but a little unstable. Three is a tricycle, stable but slow. And when we come to four, ah! This is the ideal. Now you can pass everyone!”

He bought a run-down four-unit apartment building on the corner of Wadi as-Safa Street and Wadi Bishah, about a mile from his mother’s home. The units were in alternating gray and peach colors, and each had window air-conditioning units. There used to be an old pasta factory nearby, and because street numbers are rarely used in the Kingdom, bin Laden’s new dwelling got to be known as the house on Macaroni Street. He put his two families in separate units. He married again a few years later a woman from the Sharif family in Medina, who was also highly educated—she held a doctorate in Arabic grammar and taught at the local teachers college. They would have three daughters and a son, so this wife was known as Umm Khaled. His fourth wife, Umm Ali, came from the Gilaini family in Mecca, and she bore him three children.

Academically undistinguished himself, and clearly uninterested, bin Laden would never pursue the respectable professions, such as law, engineering, or medicine, that might have given him independent standing. His brothers were being educated at the finest universities in the world, but the example that meant the most to him was that of his illiterate father. He spoke of him constantly and held him up as a paragon. He longed to achieve comparable distinction—and yet he lived in a culture where individuality was discouraged, or at least reserved for royalty. Like other members of the Saudi upper class, the bin Ladens prospered on royal favors, which they were loath to put at risk. Moreover, they were outsiders—still Yemenis, in the eyes of clannish Saudis. There was no political system, no civil society, no obvious route to greatness. Bin Laden was untrained for the clergy, which was the sole alternative to royal power in the Kingdom. His obvious future was to remain in the family company, far down the list in seniority, respected within his family ambit but never able to really make a mark.

Bin Laden continued to pester his older brothers to let him work for the company, and finally they gave him a part-time job in Mina, in the holy complex of Mecca. They expected it to take six months, but bin Laden declared, “I want to be like my father. I will work day and night with no rest.” He was still trying to finish his studies, so after classes he would race to Mecca, where his job was to level hills to make room for the new highways and hotels and pilgrimage centers that the Saudi Binladin Group was building. He insisted on working directly with the laborers he was supposed to oversee, and he spent many hours operating bulldozers and earth-moving equipment. It had already become unusual to see Saudis doing physical labor—most such jobs were held by expatriates from the Philippines or the Indian subcontinent—so the sight of the founder’s lanky scion caked with the sweat and dust of heavy construction made a startling impression. “I recall, with pride, that I was the only family member who succeeded in combining work and doing excellently in school,” bin Laden later bragged; but, in truth, the schedule was unmanageable, even for him. At the end of the semester he dropped out of the university, a year short of graduation, and went to work for the company full-time.

He was just over six feet tall—not the giant that he was later made out to be. An acquaintance recalled meeting him in this period, before jihad changed everything. “Somebody died and we went to give condolences,” the friend said. Bin Laden was in his early twenties, he was very handsome, with fair skin, a full beard, and broad, swollen lips. His nose was long and complex, being narrow and straight at the top, then abruptly spreading out into two broad wings with an upturned tip. He wore a black headband around his white headscarf, and under his scarf, his hair was short, black, and frizzy. He was gaunt from fasting and hard work. His high, reedy voice, and his demure and languid manner added to an impression of frailty. “He was confident and charismatic,” the friend observed. Even though religious scholars were present, bin Laden presented himself almost as an equal. When he spoke, his composure was spellbinding. Everyone in the room was drawn to him. “What struck me is that he came from such a hierarchical family,” said his friend, “but he broke the hierarchy.”

4

Change

K
ING
F
AISAL SENT HIS SONS
to America to be educated. The youngest, Turki, was packed off to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey in
1959,
when he was fourteen years old. It was an upper-class prep school, but for Turki it was an experience in American egalitarianism. On the first day, another student introduced himself by slapping the prince on the butt and asking his name. When Turki responded, the student asked, “Like a Thanksgiving turkey?” No one really understood or cared who he was, and this novel experience allowed him to be somebody new. His classmates called him Turk or Feaslesticks.

He was dashingly handsome, with a high forehead, wavy black hair, and a deep cleft in his chin. He had his father’s hawkish features but not the ferocity that animated the old man’s eyes; his aspect was more interior and bemused. Although he was president of the French Club, he was a sportsman, not a scholar. He played varsity soccer and represented the New Jersey fencing team in the 1962 Junior Olympics. He was highly intelligent but unfocused in his studies. When he graduated he went to college a few miles away at Princeton, but flunked out after one semester. He transferred to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where in
1964,
one of his classmates approached him and asked, “Did you hear the news? Your father has become king.”

From the safe distance of America, Turki followed the tumult in his country, including the financial rescue by Mohammed bin Laden—a timely gesture that allowed Faisal to reorganize and stabilize the Kingdom during a period of rising Arab socialism, when the royal family might well have been overthrown. The bond between the royal family and the bin Ladens was particularly strong with the children of King Faisal. They would never forget the favor that bin Laden had done for their father when he assumed the throne.

After Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War, the entire Arab world sank into a state of despondency. Turki became so depressed that he began skipping classes, then had to make up the work in summer school. One of his classmates, a gregarious young man from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, spent four hours coaching him for an ethics test. It was August
19,
Clinton’s twenty-first birthday. Turki got a B in the class, but he dropped out of Georgetown soon afterward without finishing his undergraduate degree. He continued taking courses at Princeton and Cambridge but was never really motivated to graduate.

Finally, in
1973,
he returned to the Kingdom and went to ask his father what he should do next. The king understood him to be seeking a job. He raised his right eyebrow up to the sky and said, “Look, I didn’t give any of your brothers a job. Go look for your own job.” Of course, the king’s youngest son had little to concern himself with, since his place in life was already assured by his family’s immense wealth and his father’s firm grip on the affairs of the Kingdom. Turki’s maternal uncle, Sheikh Kamal Adham, offered him a post in the Foreign Liaison Bureau. “I had no interest in intelligence,” Turki said. “I didn’t even realize the job was in the intelligence field. I thought it had something to do with diplomacy.” Quiet-spoken and intellectual, he seemed more suited to a profession that relied on ceremonial dinners and cordial negotiations on the tennis court than one that called on the darker skills. He married Princess Nouf bint Fahd al-Saud, from a neighboring branch of the royal family, and settled into a life of wealth that only a handful on the planet could match. But the plates of history were shifting, and the blissful existence he enjoyed was drifting toward a cataclysm.