Steve bin Laden

Osama's eldest brother (oh all right, he's called Salim) doesn't quite share his temperament.

Salim bin Laden didn’t plan on coming back [to Saudi] in a hurry. He was having a marvellous time with the friends he’d made at his English public school, Millfield. He was chasing around London talking about becoming a doctor, and doing some female anatomical research on the way. That was 1966; he was the son of the largest construction man in Saudi Arabia and enjoying the proceeds of the palaces and roads his father built. Bin Laden Senior died in a plane crash. Salim came back to take over the firm and play surrogate father to his fifty-two younger brothers and sisters, one of whom wasn’t born, two of whom he had never met.

Nobody in their right mind would take Salim for a multi-millionaire. He’s a skinny Peter Pan who looks about seventeen, is thirty-six and lies through his teeth about his age. “Everyone has one fear. Mine’s the fear of growing old.” He’s sitting on a deckchair overlooking the Red Sea in his parents-in-law’s cosy Creek house. He’s wearing a swimsuit and there isn’t a hair on his youth’s body, nor an ounce of spare flesh… Salim looks like any young man from Selfridge’s having a day’s outing by the sea.

[…] He stays away from the office as much as possible, doing most of his business on the phone from home. One night, when I’m on the phone with him, a bevy of Americans arrive, hot foot from the airport, dazed from jet-lag. The expression on their faces when they finally get to meet the man they’ve crossed the world to see makes the irreverent Salim even merrier. They have to swallow their pride at being confronted with this tiddler.

[…] He doesn’t take much more sense of solemnity along with him to the Dutch ambassador’s celebrated Monday musical evenings, high point of Jeddah’s cultural life. Salim’s regular offering is a cherubic offering of “Where’er you walk”. They’re lucky to get off with that. He usually turns up to official receptions with his harmonica ( Read more... )