I married a bin Laden

Carmen writes, however, that Osama bin Laden was never, as some have claimed, a playboy as a young man in Beirut. He may have been more Western at one time, but "the now famous photographs that were taken of a crowd of teenaged Bin Laden brothers in Sweden -- they don't show Osama either." She maintains that "the boy identified in the media as Osama is in fact another brother."

Ultimately, what is most interesting and perhaps most important about "Inside the Kingdom" are the details it provides about daily life in Saudi Arabia. "The Saudis are the Taliban, in luxury," Bin Ladin writes. And "Inside the Kingdom" is also a personal, emotional account of a royal family and its bin Laden business friends -- people to whom the United States and President Bush's family remain inextricably linked, despite their autocratic rule and uncertain relation to the author of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The stark transformation of Carmen Bin Ladin's own life might be what strikes readers most personally. The author married Yeslam Bin Ladin very young, when she was a stunning, sexy, glamorous-dressing Westerner, a woman who had traveled freely to her mother's native Iran and back to her home in Geneva. In the early years of their marriage, Yeslam and Carmen lived in California, and the book features happy pictures of the handsome couple in sundresses and suits, T-shirts and jeans, lying on the grass in the sunshine.

When the couple moves to Saudi Arabia, it's as if the world goes black and mute. Carmen writes of her first time wearing an abaya, the suffocating shrouds women must wear over their faces and bodies: "I looked out of the car window and through my veil I saw just a dim light -- no people, no buildings. Even the streetlights were dark." Not surprisingly, it gets worse. An extraordinarily rare trip to the grocery store, so she can get the proper milk for her daughter, involves an arduous charade: "And in order that one completely black-shrouded woman could walk inside with her husband, the store had been emptied -- completely emptied -- of all its clients and staff."

In Saudi society, women simply have nothing to do. "There were no books," Bin Ladin writes. "There were no theaters, no concerts, no cinemas. There was no reason to go out, and in any case we could not go out: I was not allowed to go for a walk, and legally could not drive." Foreign newspapers featured blacked-out, unreadable sections -- those bringing news of two countries: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Her daughters' schooling is all religion, and "no sports, no debates, no discussions. No games, marbles, or tricycles." Wafah, the oldest, returns home one day with "I hate Jews, I love Palestine" scrawled in her notebook, just as a normal girl would scribble her first name beside the last name of the little boy she loved.

After this beginning, it's confusing to learn that just a few years later, the country flush with oil money, the bin Ladens could enjoy Thursday night parties where the sexes mingled and alcohol was served. Carmen Bin Ladin says she initiated these happy nights: Western businessmen and diplomats would visit for tennis matches and a perusal of her proud library. No Saudi women ever showed, but a few Saudi men did. One gets the sense that the Bin Ladens, under the protection of the Saudi royal family and their own astonishing wealth, really could do what they pleased.

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