Mourning
with the Mothers
by Donne Hayden
It
has been difficult not to think about the death of Osama bin Laden this week.
And
so I have.
My
thoughts took me to Syria, first. In
1995, after teaching four years at an American school in Brazil, I interviewed
for a job at a similar school in Aleppo, Syria.
At one point in the interview, the school principal told me that if I
accepted the position, I must be aware of women’s status in Syria. For instance, he told me, “if you are
standing in a long line at a cash register, a man may cut in front of you, and
you must not object. That’s just how it
is.” Even though the job paid quite well
and was in a fascinating part of the world, I knew I would be angry all the
time if I lived there, so I turned down the job.
I
remembered that this week because I have been thinking about Osama bin Laden’s
mother. He had one, you know. Her name
is Hamida al-Attas and she
is from Syria. She married Mohammed bin Laden in 1956 when she was
22, becoming his tenth wife; her first child, Osama, was his 17th
child.
According
to a 2002 book of interviews with the family, Osama bin Laden’s father
. . . took
full advantage of the indulgences permitted wealthy and powerful men under
Islamic law. He had 54 children, more or less, born of 10 or 11 wives. [Other
sources say 22 wives.] The fact that his biographers are not even sure of the
number of his wives and children highlights the unimportance given to women in
Saudi culture. . . . Islamic law allows four wives, but Mohammed circumvented
this rule by maintaining three long-term wives and reserving the fourth slot
for a series of short-termers. When he divorced a fourth wife, he continued to
support her and her children on the family compound at Jeddah, but in a
diminished status. Osama bin Laden's mother was in this situation when he was
born.
(Later in life, Osama would tell a reporter
that his mother and father were not married according to the Koran, true if the
Koran permits only four wives.)
Osama's mother, Hamida, was a beautiful young Syrian woman who caught
Mohammed's fancy late in life. . . . she had lived a relatively modern lifestyle in Syria,
including shopping trips to Damascus. She had an independent streak, and found
life within the bin Laden compound confining. She did not like covering her
face with a burka, and was scorned by the other wives and ex-wives. By the time
Osama was born, she was ostracized by the other women. They referred to her as
"the slave," in reference to her resentment of her status. Osama was
known by the nickname, "son of the slave."
Osama was raised largely by
nurses and nannies, with his mother kept in the background and sometimes not
even living at the compound at Jeddah, but at other family residences. The
nurses and nannies were, of course, of even less importance to Saudi culture
than the wives, and no information is available about them[1]
One source says that after Hamida became
pregnant again and miscarried, she asked Mohammed bin Laden for a divorce, to
which he agreed. Other sources say she was still married to him when he died in
a helicopter crash in 1968. After Mohammed bin Laden died, ten-year-old Osama—the
son she barely knew—was sent to live with her and his stepfather, Mohammed al-Attas. According to
sources interviewed for the book, the boy “felt more and more that he was the
black sheep,” the only member of the bin Laden family
to be sent away. “His mother tried to reach out to him, but he kept his
distance. Within a few months, there was almost no interaction between them.”
We
have no way of knowing what happened between mother and son throughout the rest
of his youth, but it seems that they must have reconciled at some point. On September 9, 2001, a telephone call from
Osama bin Laden to his mother in Damascus, telling her “something big” was
about to happen and that he would not be in contact with her for a while, was
one of the first “clues” the United States uncovered that he was involved with
the 9-11 attack.[2] Think about it. He called his mother. Sometime later in
Osama’s life, it was known that there was "a conflict between bin Laden
and his mother over his treatment of his wives and children. Hamida [believed] he should allow them to live normal lives
in Saudi Arabia, while he [kept] them in hiding [in
her words], ‘almost as hostages on the verges of his life.’"[3]
So
I have been wondering how Osama bin Laden’s mother felt last week when news of
his death caused such celebration in many parts of the world. I have tried to put myself in her place, though
I understand she comes from a completely different world—one in which men do
whatever they wish and women’s lives are closely circumscribed. But I am pretty sure something about mothers
is the same in every time and culture.
We
can know that in part because we have a record of maternal behavior in the
Middle East that goes back several thousand years. The following metaphors comparing
God to a mother come from the Bible, and though they were used by the
Israelites, a Middle Eastern people several thousand years ago, what they say
about mothers and our relationships with them still resonates with us. Listen.
In Hosea 11: 3-4, God says: “Yet
it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I who took them up in my arms; but they
did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with
bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I
bent down to them and fed them.” Again in Hosea 13:8, God says: "Like a
bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and tear them asunder...”
In
Deuteronomy 32:11-12 we find this
description: “Like the eagle that stirs up its nest, and hovers
over its young, God spreads wings to catch you, and carries you on
pinions.” Again, a few lines later (Deuteronomy 32:18): “You were
unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.”
The
book of Isaiah makes several references to God as mother; speaking through the
prophet Isaiah, God says “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort
you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 49:15) and “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or
show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will
not forget you” (Isaiah 66:13). And again, God tells the Israelites: “For a long time I have held my peace, I
have kept myself still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman
in labor, I will gasp and pant” ( Isaiah
42:14).
There are far fewer such metaphors in the New
Testament. My favorite is Matthew 23:37
(and Luke 13:34) in which Jesus says, “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
In addition to images comparing God’s way of loving
to a mother’s, we have other images of mothers in the Bible, including the
mother of a “terrorist.” In the book of Judges, Sisera,
a mighty enemy who has been terrorizing the Israelites, stops to rest at the
tent of Heber the Kenite. Jael, Heber’s wife,
brings him curdled milk in a bowl, and while he is off guard, she grabs a tent
stake and a “workman’s hammer” and drives the stake through his temple. He falls at her feet and dies. Following this graphic depiction, we find oddly
poignant verses imagining Sisera’s mother:
“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;
behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
The wisest of her ladies answer her;
indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
‘Are they not finding and dividing the
spoils:
a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,
colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck—
all this as plunder?’ (Judges 5:28-30)
Though
universal and timeless, motherhood is complicated. Some of us may have conflicted relationships
with our mothers, all tangled up in love and need and family history, in her
humanity and our own. Not all women are
good mothers; not all mothers love all their children. But the abiding norm is that mothers love
their children unconditionally. No
matter what her child does, no matter how disappointing her child’s actions, no
matter, even, how horrific those
actions, a mother does not judge with the eyes of the world; she cannot simply
stop loving the child she has known since its birth, or in the case of an
adopted child, since it came into her care. Something in a woman responds to
the vulnerability of a child, and when a mothering woman looks at a child, she
sees potential, the possibility of its life.
The
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska,
who lived through WWII, brings home this point in a poem called “Hitler’s First
Photograph.”
And who’s this
little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That’s tiny baby
Adolf, the Hitler’s little boy!
Will he grow up to
be an L.L.D.? [i.e..,
lawyer]
Or a tenor in
Vienna’s Opera House?
Whose teensy hand
is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?
Whose tummy is full
of milk, we just don’t know:
printer’s, doctor’s,
merchant’s, priest’s?
Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?
To a garden, to a
school, to an office, to a bride?
Maybe to the Burgermeister’s daughter?
Precious little
angel, mommy’s sunshine, honey bun.
While he was born,
a year ago,
there was no dearth of
signs on the earth and in the sky:
spring sun, geraniums in
window,
the organ-grinder’s
music in the yard,
a lucky fortune
wrapped in rosy paper.
Then just before
the labor his mother’s fateful dream.
A dove seen in a dream means joyful news—
if it is caught, a
long-awaited guest will come.
Knock knock, who’s there, it’s Adolf’s heartchen knocking.
A little pacifier,
diaper, rattle, bib,
our bouncing boy,
thank God and knock on wood, is well,
looks just like his
folks, like a kitten in a basket,
like the tots in every
other family album.
Sh-h-h, let’s not
start crying, sugar.
The camera will click
from under that black hood.[4]
Mothers
love the Light within us, the innocence and potential with which we arrive on
the planet. Whether her child issues from her own or another woman’s body, and
no matter what sort of adult the child becomes, a mother carries always a deep
imprint of the innocent, fragile, vulnerable being that comes into her arms and
heart.
Nothing
is more wrenching to most mothers than the death of a child. Today, on Mother’s Day, let us acknowledge a
kind of love that crosses all boundaries of religion or nation—the kind of love
we hope God’s love is. Let us remember
mothers everywhere who have lost a child to death, whether that child was an
American soldier or a Muslim terrorist.
May we feel compassion for mothers who mourn a loss of Light within a
child, a Light that perhaps only they could see and love.
[1] Ted Goertzel, Ph.D, review of a book
by Adam Robinson, Bin Laden: Behind the
Mask of the Terrorist (New York: Arcade Books, 2002). < http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/osama.htm>
[3] Goertzel.
[4] Wislawa Szymborska, View With
A Grain of Sand (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), p. 146.