Fertile times

Between the mid-1940s and the late 1960s, Mohammed bin Laden fathered fifty-four children (twenty-five sons, twenty-nine daughters) from an assortment of wives (he married twenty-two times). It should hardly surprise that such a large group included several extreme personalities. The eldest son, Salem, channelled his manic energy into aeroplanes, cars, girls and the good life. The eighteenth son, Osama, born in 1957, chose a very different path. This would eventually leave New York’s skyline smouldering, Osama repudiated by his family and disowned by his country: a ‘black sheep’ in a league of his own.

Yet Salem, Osama, and a host of other bin Ladens (and their hangers-on), who inhabit Steve Coll’s fascinating book, may never have come to notice if it were not for their extraordinary father, whose energies and ambitions were not confined to the bedroom. Mohammed bin Laden’s arrival in Jeddah as a penniless migrant coincided with Abdulaziz Ibn Saud’s forced creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (formally announced in 1932). As oil revenues flowed, especially after World War II, so did demand for building. Much of this involved ill-advised self-indulgence by the royal family. Saud’s eldest son reportedly spent US$250,000 on an American kitchen for his new palace in Riyadh; the ‘state’ budget allocated five times more for the royals and their residences than it did for the ministry of health; in 1952 the royals went on a car-buying binge, handing out 800 new vehicles to family and friends.