Book review: Growing Up bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, jihadist plotter and breeder of giant sunflowers.  That's one of the odder images -- Osama wandering through the fields cutting sunflowers for his wives -- presented in this absolutely fascinating book.  At the same time bin Laden was plotting with various fanatics to strike a blow against the infidels corrupting the Muslim world, he was trying to grow the biggest sunflowers in Sudan.  The man loved farming, and apparently some of his happiest moments came when he'd pile the whole family (all four wives and his zillion kids) into cars to go out to the farm, first in Saudia Arabia and later in Sudan.  At the same time he was laying the groundwork for Al Qaeda, he was promoting innovations in agriculture as a way to lift Sudan out of poverty.   

This book is not academic history, meticulously researched, nor is it political analysis.  It may provide some insight into what motivates Osama, but that isn't the intent of the book.  It's oral history on the family level, life inside the bin Laden family as seen by Osama's first wife, Najwa, and his 4th son, Omar.  Najwa married Osama when she was 15 and he was 17, and by her account it was for many years a happy marriage.  They were first cousins so had been childhood playmates and friends long before the idea of marriage occurred to either.  They had what within the well-to-do Muslim world was a rarity:  a love match.  Still, most marriages are arranged, generally by the mothers, and Osama and Najwa's was no exception.  If the marriage hadn't been agreeable to both sets of parents, it wouldn't have happened no matter how the young people felt about each other. 

According to Najwa, marrying young and first cousin marriage are both extremely common in Islamic countries, particularly among wealthier families.  Cousin marriage is a way to keep the wealth and control consolidated.  Whether or not it's had any effects on the gene pool in terms of inherited diseases or simple-mindedness is debatable; Saudi society is sufficiently secretive that there could be whole herds of crazy relatives locked in the figurative attic and no one would know.  In any case, another odd image in the book is evoked by Najwa's happy description of herself as a newlywed in Jeddah fixing breakfast for her husband and being proud of how handsome he looked in his high school uniform before he headed off to school. 

As the book progresses, it struck me several times just how totally alien Saudi (and maybe traditional Muslim in general) society is compared with what we're used to in the United States.  The bin Ladens lived in a traditional manner to the extreme:  Osama was intensely devout from a young age, and spent many hours reading and memorizing the Koran.  Najwa said that many of their happiest moments as newlyweds were spent sitting together reading religious texts.  Osama's fundamentalism inspired his desire to live very simply, no decadent Western inventions in the home, which meant no air conditioning, no television, and, rather bizarrely, no refrigeration.  That last quirk presented challenges for Najwa because it meant food spoiled quickly.  Fortunately, she did have servants who could shop daily -- Najwa herself lived in purdah, leaving the house only when accompanied by a male relative such as her husband or her father (or, once they were old enough to be considered adults, one of her sons).  The only western invention or luxury Osama indulged in was automobiles:  he always drove the latest and fastest models.  Najwa doesn't seem to have resented being trapped in the house, though, especially once Osama married additional wives.  She not only describes the wives as becoming her good friends and sisters, but actually selected wife Number 3 for Osama.  Omar describes his mother as "naive," and no doubt she was -- but it's also clear she viewed her marriage as successful and, at least for the first decade or so, quite happy. 

As long as the family lived in Saudi Arabia, the boys had some contact with influences other than their father and his circle.  They attended school, an experience Omar describes as having been pretty horrible -- Osama insisted his sons go to a public school, not a private one, but the bin Laden name meant many of their classmates and even their teachers resented them for their supposed wealth.  Omar describes suffering both verbal and physical abuse -- he and his brothers lived in constant fear of being raped by fellow students or their teachers; male rape is apparently a major problem in Arab countries, one of those things no one talks about, especially when male rape victims are treated as harshly as female ones.   The boys were targeted because everyone assumed the bin Laden kids were wallowing in luxury at home when the truth was they weren't even allowed to have simple toys, like cheap plastic cars.  The one "toy" Omar remembers his father allowing was a soccer ball.  Osama's daughters received no formal education beyond being taught to read by their mothers.   

Osama's involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s had made him a hero to the general public in Saudi Arabia, but his public disagreements with the royal family over U.S. involvement in the Gulf War threatened to land him in prison.  Before he could be arrested, he left the country and moved his family to Sudan.  Omar describes the initial time period in Sudan as being the happiest of his life:  the boys were enrolled in a school where no one knew anything about them, he was able to make friends, he and his brothers had a good time building tree forts in the garden at their compound, kept many pets, and generally were more relaxed than they had been back in Saudi Arabia.  This idyllic period did not last, of course.  Osama's involvment in radical jihad intensified, there was an assassination attempt that led to the boys being pulled out of school, and limited their contacts to only the immediate family and servants, and eventually the Sudanese government told Osama and his cohort to leave the country. 

After arriving in Afghanistan and seeing where Osama expected his wives and family to live -- a cluster of primitive stone huts at Tora Bora, buildings that had no running water, electricity, or even glass in the windows (the openings were covered with animal hides) -- Omar said he knew then that he would eventually break with his father.  It had become clear to him that Osama's single-minded focus on jihad and increasing fanaticism was dragging the family down and could never have a good end.  Still, he stuck it out for several years until he was able to persuade his mother to leave, too, late in 2000.  They went first to Syria, which was where his mother's family lived, and Omar appealed to the Saudi government to reinstate his Saudi citizenship and allow him to go to Jeddah, the city he considered home.  He was eventually able to do so, and an aunt, one of his father's half-sisters, helped him get re-established in Jeddah. 

I'm not sure what surprised me most about the book.  I had read elsewhere that Osama was noted for his devoutness and strict adherence to religious doctrine; I guess I didn't realize he'd taken it to the extreme of practically becoming the Islamic equivalent of Amish.  No refrigeration or air conditioning?  And his wives just say, sure, fine with us?  That was bizarre.  (One of his wives did divorce him, but it wasn't until after they'd had three children.)  Najwa's comments on clothing were intriguing -- her struggles with the abbayah, for example, weren't what a person would expect.  It didn't bother her to be fully veiled in public, something that wasn't common in Syria where she grew up, but it did annoy her that she felt so clumsy in the abbayah.  She wanted to glide gracefully like the Saudi women she saw instead of worrying all the time about tripping over things.  By the time they moved to Afghanistan, however, she'd gotten so used to the abbayah that she wasn't happy when Osama announced his family would now dress as the Afghani people did.  Given a choice between the abbayah and the burqa, she preferred the abbayah even if (and this was another surprise) the burqa is easier to wear because it leaves both hands free and also allows for the woman's eyes to be exposed so vision isn't as restricted as it is with traditional Saudi veils. Burqas can also be quite colorful, made from bright fabrics and decorated with embroidery while the traditional Saudi abbayah is black.  

The one thing with implications beyond insights into Osama bin Laden's personal life was the references  to Pakistan.  Over and over Omar bin Laden mentions Pakistan as being Osama's fallback, the place he can go if things get too hot in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is the country Osama's friends, allies, and supporters flew in and out of (they'd fly into Pakistan and then drive across the border to Afghanistan), it's the country Osama ducked into when he was feeling paranoid, and it's where many people believe Osama fled in the fall of 2001.  He obviously had safe houses and bases established there.  So why, then, are we still bombing the shit out of Afghanistan? 

My co-workers are idiots

And that's putting it kindly.  In the past year the workload has increased approximately 25% -- the journal went from averaging 40 articles per issue to averaging 50 -- without a commensurate increase in staff.  If anything, staff has gone in the other direction, from 6 fulltime copy editors to 5.5 (5 permanent fulltime regular employees and one half time contractor).  So how have my co-workers responded to this work load?

By doing the absolute, dumbest thing any worker who gets paid an hourly wage can do:  taking work home to complete it in the evening or on the weekends.  They are, in short, donating their own time.  Unbelievable. If you only have one thing to sell, you don't give it away.  A colleague mentioned at our most recent editors' meeting that she has been routinely spending her lieu day (she's on a 5/4 schedule) working from home.  Another logs in to the system in the evening to work on his own time.  When I asked how on earth management would ever realize we had a problem if they kept hiding it, I got blank looks.  They won't even ask for credit hours or comp time because, and I quote, "[the managing editor] doesn't like people asking for credit hours."

People are becoming increasingly stressed out and it shows.  A colleague has a cold she cannot shake and is becoming more and more accident prone, one has become so hypercritical when she does 2nd and 4th edits that she's driving the rest of us crazy, and another fellow who used to be notable for his jokes and truly horrible puns now looks distracted all the time and has begun snapping at people (and shouting obscenities at his computer; he's next door to me so I can hear the frustrated "what the fucks?!" pretty clearly) . . .

You know, I don't get it.  I can understand this type of behavior in work environments where people are terrified of losing their jobs, like out in the private sector, but we're federal employees!  Job insecurity is not one of our fears, especially if everyone on the editorial staff stuck together. (It's easy to berate one person for failure to meet deadlines, but when the entire staff is late?)  But, as usual, there are a couple people who are still naive enough to believe that someone will notice their self-sacrifice and reward them for it.  Given that they're already at the maximum promotion potential for their current job and have absolutely no desire to go elsewhere in the agency (a couple have had chances to do so), just what do they think that reward will be?

And how am I coping, you may ask?  By looking at the calendar, thinking about the retirement bunker in the U.P., and telling myself I'm now so short I can walk under doors.  I hope the arbutus are still blooming when I get to the farm in May. . .  

Happy birthday, Nerf

Photo of my younger sister, Cheryl (aka Nerf), the middle sister in the family, taken not long before she turned 5.

The month of magical thinking

I went ambling through Target last night after work.  My mission was a simple one -- pick up a gallon of milk -- but being a good American consumer, I had to make a loop through the entire store, not just the dairy section, checking out the clearance shelves and bargain hunting in a rather unfocused way.  The store had Valentine's stuff on display, but that's such a minor holiday it doesn't take up much space.  Instead, the corner of the building where they go all out with "seasonal" merchandise appeared at first glance to have no unifying theme.  There were displays of storage containers, an aisle full of exercise equipment, another aisle with a zillion bottles of Tide and other cleaning supplies . . . and then it hit me.  The marketing geniuses at Target have figured out that January is the Month of Magical Thinking.

January is the month where we all make resolutions:  I'm going to lose weight, eat better, finally clean the house, get my stuff organized, make various lifestyle changes, walk the dog more often, finish writing the Great American Novel, change jobs, go back to school, . . .  and whatever the resolution might be, Target had it covered. 

Going to straighten up your messy house?  Buy some of these plastic storage tubs and organizers.  Want to tone up and exercise more?  Here are the videos, exercise mats, weights, water bottles, and whatever else you might need to do that.  Feeling the urge to spring clean a little early?  Take home some giant bottles of Tide and Lysol. 

I will confess I lingered in the pilates section of the fitness gadgets and goodies.  I was sorely tempted by the exercise balls.  Then I remembered my experiences with the yoga DVD (still in the box, plastic as virgin as the day I bought it), the yoga books, the cardio-glide (it made a great clothes rack), the exercise bike (also a great coat rack), and the dust covered Richard Simmons "Sweating to the Oldies" video tape.  For me it's never been a full month of magical thinking -- it's more like five minutes between making the resolution and forgetting it.  From the size of the store displays, though, Target is counting on most people still being optimistic enough to believe they'll stick with something long enough to get it out of the box.  I'm just not one of them.

Trips down Nostalgia Lane

"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" -- Plato, circa 348 B.C.

One of those ludicrous e-mails that's been kicking around forever landed in my In Box the other day.  The subject line was "How old is grandpa?" (or something similar), and it ran through a long list of things that supposedly did not exist when Gramps was a boy (television, fast food, ballpoint pens), bemoaned the way social mores have changed (when Gramps was a boy, grass was something that got mowed, premarital sex was nonexistent, and there were lemonade springs where the bluebird sings. . . ), and then concluded with "He's 59!"  I laughed.  A lot.  The little trip down Nostalgia Lane obviously hadn't been updated since someone first scrawled it with a goose quill pen quite a few years ago. 

Think about it.  Someone who is 59 now was born in 1950.  People who are 59 now were teenagers in the 1960s and in their 20s during the 1970s -- the era when every male's ambition was to have a Penthouse letters experience.  (For the uninitiated, Penthouse letters were noted for men describing "I never thought this could happen to me!" sexual exploits: sex with incredibly hot twins, sex on Greyhound buses, sex in elevators, sex with strangers, sex with the babysitter, sex with watermelons, sex with kitchen appliances . . . you get the idea.) 

Then, by coincidence, I read Last Child in the Woods.  It's a great book with an important thesis, but it's got the same vein running through it:  things were better in the good old days.  The author, Richard Louv, waxes nostalgic over growing up in a close-to-rural area, building tree forts, messing around in the woods, getting dirty, and generally being able to live a vaguely Tom Sawyer-ish childhood.  He has a serious point to make -- Americans are increasingly disconnected from the natural world; we see nature as something we go and visit, but fewer and fewer of us are actually doing that (visits to national parks have dropped, fishing is losing popularity as a hobby, even the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are moving away from camping and other outdoor activities).  Louv sees the lack of connection with nature as contributing to a whole host of problems:  childhood obesity, crime rates, poor academic performance, social anomie, . . . you name the problem, and we can make it better by providing more opportunities for kids to enjoy unstructured play and explore nature. 

I actually agree with many of the points Louv makes, but think his perception of the wonders of a childhood where kids could flip over rocks, dig for worms, or build tree forts in a vacant lot as they wandered about in a carefree bucolic landscape is more than a tad skewed by his own rose-colored memories of his particular lived experience. (I'm also distrustful of the single cure for everything that ails us even when it's a cure I like, but that's a subject for a different post.)  He's doing the same stroll down Nostalgia Lane that the folks who pass along the "things were better in the old days" e-mails or call in to C-SPAN saying they want "their country" back do -- imagining a past that never was as good as anyone of them think it was.

Blizzard of 2010, part 2

This is it.  The Great Blizzard. 

I'm tempted to give myself a snow day anyway.

The great blizzard of 2010

Okay, so it hasn't actually happened yet, but you wouldn't know that from the reaction locally.  A few snowflakes were briefly visible this afternoon, and the next thing I knew there was an e-mail from our Division chief turning us all loose from work 59 minutes early.  Guess she wanted to give us a little more time to break through those nonexistent drifts as we mushed our way home.  It is snowing in north Georgia, like up around Blue Ridge, but that's a long way from Atlanta. 

I shouldn't scoff.  I know people who rarely have to deal with snow have a hard time coping with it when the real thing actually hits.  I was lucky enough to take driver's ed in northern Wisconsin in January -- we practiced recovering from skids on a skating rink.  Literally.  We drove the driver's ed car on to the rink, spun donuts, bounced off snowbanks, and had a blast.  We also did slalom runs with the car on back streets in Hurley that hadn't gotten salted or sanded in awhile.  That early experience didn't keep me from parking various vehicles in snowbanks over the years, but at least I don't panic when it happens. 

In any case, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed we actually get enough slush tonight for tomorrow to turn into an administrative leave day.  If the kids around here can get a snow day just based on the promise of snow, it's only fair to let us adults blow off work, too, if some white stuff actually hits the ground.  

Is this my future?

They keep talking about a reorganization for greater efficiency at work, but no one seems to know for sure yet just what that means.

Kiddy lit

I started off the 2010 reading list in a rather odd fashion -- a Harriet the Spy book.  Harriet the Spy is a character created by Louise Fitzhugh back in the 1960s.  The books target a 'tween demographic, junior high school girls, so I missed them.  I'm part of the Trixie Belden and Ginny Gordon generation.  By the time Harriet hit the bookshelves, my reading tastes had become a tad more adult, I'd discovered science fiction, given up on girl detectives, and was into more  interesting characters, e.g., Valentine Michael Smith. 

So why did I find myself becoming acquainted with Harriet the Spy at this late date?  Because I'd run out of stuff to read, and The Long Secret was about the only book in the Younger Daughter's house that (a) I hadn't read, and (b) she wouldn't object if I took it with me.  It had been mixed in with a box of books she'd bought at a yard sale, and she didn't care if she ever saw it again.  I don't know if she'd read any of the Harriet books back when she was in the target age group; I do know she's not a fan now.  She read it and pronounced it, to put it mildly, lame.  She couldn't figure out why anyone would be interested in reading about two rich kids spending the summer in Montauk, and for sure she didn't get why anyone would be interested in anything Harriet did. 

After reading the book, I tend to agree.  The book was a lot better than I expected -- more socially aware than any of the Trixie Beldens and Ginny Gordon adventures had ever been -- but nonetheless baffling in its appeal.  I know the Harriet the Spy books were quite popular for awhile in the '60s and '70s.  What I don't get is why.  Harriet's both annoying and clueless.  She spends an inordinate amount of time spying on other people, peeping in windows, asking unbelievably rude questions, and being generally obnoxious and (in a word) stupid.  She may be only 11, but she's already as self-centered and completely oblivious to anything that does not relate directly to herself as any adolescent.

Tammi's criticism about the lifestyles of the rich and idle was accurate, too.  Harriet's own family seems typically 1960s nuclear with no domestic help, but her friend Beth Ellen gets driven around by a chauffeur and lives in a household that includes both a maid and a cook.  And Harriet is a summer person in Montauk -- her family lives in New York City but owns waterfront property in a resort community.  I've never been to Montauk, but something tells me it's not the potato farming part of Long Island. 

On the plus side, The Long Secret does a nice job of emphasizing that it's possible for women to have careers, of questioning organized religion (as in you don't need to go to church to be a good person and that a person's individual beliefs are their own business and no one else's), and of supporting civil rights and social activism, and manages to do so without getting preachy or making the messages too obvious.  Harriet's friend Janie wants to be a scientist, gets super-excited when she finds an intact swan skeleton, and patiently explains menstruation to Harriet and Beth Ellen (Harriet's best friend during the summer, although they apparently never see each other during the school year) while expressing her exasperation over adults who get squeamish about explaining basic biological facts.  I don't recall Trixie Belden ever bemoaning the fact she'd gotten her period or talking about possible careers for women, so Harriet was a distinct step forward in 'tween fiction.  It's just a shame that Harriet herself is so unlikable.

Things learned while traveling

Roadside architecture isn't dead.  The structure above is the Mellow Mushroom located at one of the Anniston, Alabama, exits on I-20.  It looks even more like a mushroom when viewed at a distance from the interstate instead up close in the parking lot. 

I don't know if Mellow Mushroom has any other buildings like this one; all the Mellow Mushrooms I've seen here in Atlanta are in repurposed space, not new construction.