Nov 06, 2003: A Western woman's journey inside the Bin Laden 'village'  
 
As a Bin Laden wife, she could not even cross the street unveiled or walk in her garden. Once, when she wanted to buy swimwear, a male servant went out and returned with two suitcases full of bathing suits. She made her selection and the rest returned.

While her husband was out working, Binladin was confined to the house, caring for her baby daughter Wafah and "suffering the company of women who never read a book and only talked about their relatives and the Koran."……………..


GENEVA In the late 1970's, Osama bin Laden went to visit his brother Yeslam, who lived in the sprawling family settlement near Jidda. Answering the doorbell, Carmen Binladin, Yeslam's Swiss-born wife, stood face to face with her brother-in-law and invited him in.

But Osama bin Laden froze, grumbled something in Arabic, and turned his head away. "I was unveiled and he couldn't bear looking at my naked face," recalled Carmen, who is back in Switzerland and involved in a tortuous divorce battle with her Saudi husband, who also lives in Geneva. "My brother-in-law never deigned to speak a word with me," she added.

......
..........
..............
A Western woman's journey inside the Bin Laden 'village'
Osama's Swiss sister-in-law –

http://www.iht.com/articles/116599.html
By: Robert Kroon, International Herald Tribune