Inside the Kingdom Makes Its Mark

The publishing house of Time Warner released "Inside The Kingdom: My Life In Saudi Arabia" by Carmen Bin Ladin in 2004 in retrospect of the 9/11 suicide bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The author writes first-hand of Afganistan 's spin-out because so many Bin Ladin family members were living in Saudi Arabia and communicating with Osama at the time of the bombings. Carmen's biography is the succinct account of her adult life married to Osama Bin Ladin's younger brother Yeslam whom she later divorced. Difficult for most angered American readers to obtain knowledge about the Saudi Arabian culture without reading about religion, her story is the true account and inside look at life in a country void of recognizable parallels to Western thinking. The ironic part is the fact so many of the Saudi businessmen, as she surmises, attained education and degrees within the U.S. many years before Sept. 11, 2001. This author's insight is truly like looking at water in the middle of a desert. Her mother Persian and father Swiss, she was brought up and educated in Europe. Her Western viewpoint does allow for easier comprehension for many Americans who have found approaches to what's behind middle-Eastern thinking obscure or radical otherwise.

In 2002, when "Inside The Kingdom" was published, Saudi Arabia produced over 261-thousand-million barrels of oil. Compared to the 19-million of the U.S. at that time it causes an incompresensible complexity for most Americans to fathom the wealth and waste.

Her book also does take the reader "inside" a country ruled by kings and sheiks, many with countless wives and children with no more importance than used furniture. A section of the book includes family album type photos that really do help give a perspective of the author and her three children as individuals. The maintenance of her own pride, character and dignity during the dilemma of 9/11 and self control with the Bin Ladens truly deserves merit. This book is a must for readers uncomfortable with approaching middle-eastern culture, but written in a style and point of view U.S. citizens can grasp and tolerate, especially after what happened and one woman's path to survival within an absolute pinnacle of trouble.