To Be A Bin Laden

Carmen bin Ladin, of Swiss and Iranian heritage, married into one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia—the bin Ladens. It is a large family: her father-in-law had 22 wives (four official), 25 sons and 29 daughters, maybe more. It so happened that one of the sons—either 16th or 17th, Carmen isn’t sure—was Osama, somebody the author has glimpsed just twice. Having grown up in Switzerland, and occasionally visiting Shah’s Iran, taking up a life in Saudi Arabia in the ’70s and ’80s was like entering a tomb, a surreal patriarchal situation where the only escape is death—or in her case a Swiss passport. Carmen’s account of being a foreigner married into a family where women did nothing, read nothing and were kept like pets, is a good introduction to the Wahabi ways of Saudi Arabia. Carmen is able to hang in there with her two daughters till the events in Iran in 1979 (when the Shah was overthrown) have a constricting effect in Saudi Arabia. Yeslam, her husband, turns toward religion and mistresses; Carmen toward freedom in Geneva and a long-drawn-out divorce proceeding on a monthly alimony payment that’s even less than what Yeslam pays his private pilot.