Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia...

The author lived with her divorced Persian mother in Switzerland. The author met her husband, Yeslam bin Ladin (Laden is the extended family name), who was a younger brother of Osama bin Laden. Her courtship extended between Europe and California, where both went to college. With the extended family wealth, they lived in Saudi Arabia, but took frequent trips to Europe and America. While in S.A., she detailed her experiences while living in wearing the Chador cloak, and the problems of not being able to drive a car, nor could she even walk across the street from her house to her cousin's house alone - she had to have a male companion. She details not being able to visit a cinema, go swimming, no concerts - a restricted, boring `lassitude' lifestyle for women. She never saw one of her many (40) sisters-in-law read a book. She had a tennis court built so that she could play tennis, but she had to have the tennis rackets imported through diplomatic bags - so that the customs officials could not confiscate them. She learned that both Saudi men and hired male servants would not listen to her commands - she had to find some male relative to give instructions. She noted the time that when a young Saudi female refused to marry a prince, she tried to flee the county, but was captured and shot (p. 107). She met Osama only a couple of times, and talked with him only very briefly - but she saw his hatred towards the `West.' She did the lesser umra pilgrimage to the Kaaba. As she bore only daughters, her marriage crumbled, he was ignoring her, and she finally caught him `dating' another woman. She sought a divorce in Europe, but as her husband disputed it - the divorce proceedings barley crawled through the European court system. Not until after the 9/11/2001 New York Twin Towers attack, was the author able to finally convince a European judge to grant her a divorce - from the bin Laden family. She was able to keep her daughters in New York City, rather than allowing her ex entice them to return to Saudi Arabia and keep her from seeing them. As dancing was forbidden, she took her daughters to Europe to learn social dancing. Maids ironed on the carpet, rather than getting an ironing board. Other families would not allow their maids to sit on the coaches. Carmen discusses Saudi customs, but doesn't explain their tie-ins to the hadith; observances, but no serious religious analysis. Not a deep, detailed study of Saudi life (dolls were faceless, foreigners couldn't buy property, the bin Laden's were the only ones with detailed maps of Mecca, how the Saudi schools taught children to hate Jews), but interesting in learning Carmen's views of living inside the extended bin Laden family.

I could not put this book down. It is an eye opening account of the opressions faced by women in Saudi Arabia. She also emphasizes the hypocrisy of wealthy Saudi men who study in the west, clearly revel in western freedoms and then return to SA to decry the western infidel. In the final chapters, Carmen includes dire warnings about the future of western freedoms we tend to take for granted as fundamental Islam spreads.

I bought this book this morning, started it this afternoon and it is now early evening and I just finished it. I will be passing this book on to my three daughters. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, tells a love story of herself as an independent European woman falling in love with Yeslam bin Ladin, a half-brother to the infamous Osama. Carmen is accustomed to living in Europe, mainly Switzerland, and she and her husband also spend time in California. Family matters take them back to Saudi Arabia where she is always an outsider and a foreigner. Life really begins to change in 1979 when Saudi Arabia begins to turn back to the strict rules of Wahabi Islam after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Life for women and all females becomes even more oppressive, to put it mildly. I once worked in a bank where one of the many Saudi Princes had his accounts while attending college in Calif. His free spending habits and the arrogance of his groupies was mind-boggling. Carmen bin Ladin tells of the exhorbitant wealth of the royals and some of the decadence. The author's struggle to raise her three daughters as independent, educated thinkers and her crumbling marriage against the backdrop of the bin Ladin family is a wonderful read.

This book should be required reading for women who take their freedom for granted. We truly never know just how hard life can be for women in other countries around the world. This book, written by a former wife to a Bin Laden, begins with a beautiful love story and ends in heartbreak and abandonment. The author details day-to-day life for women in Saudi Arabia with it's brutality, oppression, manipulation and boredom. The author married a Saudi because she truly believed he was different but when push came to shove he shows her that he is no better than his brothers. This is one book that you can't put down and you will never forget.