A Moveable Kingdom

Locals find it amusing to read journalists describe Osama’s house as a ‘mansion’. Albeit constructed on a six-kanal plot (3,630 sq yards), a mansion, as Pakistanis understand the word, it sure was not, with neither a grand facade nor even marble flooring. What they glimpsed on TV was shabby interiors, prompting a wag to comment, “Even our domestic helps live in better condition. No brownie points for his wives.” Located in the unplanned part of the town, the infamous house didn’t stoke suspicion because the locals thought it housed an ngo given “the high walls and barbed wire and their general obsession with security”, says Shazia, who owns a summer getaway here. Militants in the region have often targeted ngos for their progressive agenda, which is erroneously believed to have the stamp of western donors. More’s the irony—who would have believed Osama lived there with his harem?

Yet the spacious house must have been an improvement for Osama, doomed as he had been to hide in primeval caves and in nondescript villages. Quite surprisingly for a man on the run, some of his extended family seemed to have accompanied him to all his hideouts. Many of them are now languishing in Pakistani custody, the information gleaned from them during interrogation being supplied in driblets to feed a hungry media.

Three of Osama’s wives were apprehended from the compound—Amal, Khairiah Sabar and Shiam. Osama’s favourite was the 29-year-old Amal, who seems to have kept his bed warm as her husband plotted massacres. It was she who took a bullet in the leg as American troops barged into their room. A tender 17 at the time of her betrothal to Osama (who was then 44), it was Al Qaeda member Rashad Mohammed Saeed Ismael who brought them together. In Sept 1999, Rashad received a telephone call in Kabul, where he then lived, saying Osama wanted to marry a fifth time. The caller detailed Osama’s specifications: “She must be pious, dutiful, young, preferably aged 16-18, well-mannered, from a decent family, but above all patient.” Obviously, she was required to adjust to Osama’s life as a fugitive.

Rashad has been quoted saying he returned to his town of Ibb, in Yemen, where he approached Amal, who was told about Osama and the jehad he was waging against the Americans. The young and adventurous Amal accepted the offer, and his family was wired $5,000 as bride money. Amal reached Karachi, then travelled to Quetta, from where Osama’s guards accompanied her to Kandahar. Rashad has said the wedding celebration was typically Yemeni—there was song and dance and a sheep was slaughtered at the feet of Osama. To Amal was soon born a girl child, Safiya (who’s said to have witnessed the killing of her father on May 2), and a boy seven years later. Amal has disclosed to her interrogators that Osama was in fine fettle, and did not require dialysis after undergoing two kidney operations during his stay in Kandahar.

The complex had a fairly large kitchen garden, suggesting a degree of self-sufficiency in vegetable supplies. Some 100 hens were found in the backyard, testifying to the family’s fondness for eggs; two cows replenished the milk supply. Security officials who have been inside the house say the kitchen shelves had dates, nuts, eggs, olive oil and dried meat—staples of the Arab diet. The cows have been now sent to the nearby military dairy farm. (Imagine this if you will—Pakistan’s army officers are now drinking tea laced with milk from Osama’s cow.)

It was Shamraiz, a local farmer, who had planted the vegetables. He has said that he had never been inside the house, a fact not surprising considering the code of purdah followed in these parts of Pakistan. Before the US raid, Shamraiz had recently been asked to enlarge the kitchen garden. “Shamraiz ploughed up the grass in the garden using a tractor,” Zain Muhammad, his 80-year-old father, told the media. So was Osama expecting new visitors to join him?

Meanwhile, Pakistan faces a piquant situation over the future of Osama’s surviving family members. “Amal and her children are Yemenis and could be handed over to Yemen. But it is still too early to even begin thinking about it,” a foreign office official told Outlook. And since Saudi Arabia has withdrawn Osama’s citizenship, it’s hard to tell whether Riyadh will accept his Saudi wives and their children.