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Bin Laden's Blind Spot
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144 Bin Laden’s BLind spot Once before I told you a story about being the barber in the cave of Osama bin Laden, son of Alia Ghanem and Muhammad bin Laden, and about the bald spot the size of a baby’s fist on the back of his head, shaped exactly like Iceland, complete with the Vestfjarda Peninsula to the west, which he does not like to speak of, and about how my noting this bald spot led to the ban on me speaking aloud while on duty in the cave, which is not a duty I volunteered for, exactly, but that is another story. The story I want to tell you now is about something that happened in the cave one day. There are fifteen men who live in the cave complex on a regular basis, and another twenty or so who have regular business with Himself, and while they are all devout Muslims, you cannot live in a cave with a large number of men for years and years without developing affections and detestations, and finally two of the men fell in love with each other, and after a great deal of thinking and discussing, they asked Osama to marry them. You can imagine the roar with which he greeted this request, and in fact he lost his temper so thoroughly that he had to cancel a video production he had been writing and rewriting for weeks, for which the props had just arrived, the right sort of rifle and wrinkled fatigue jacket and that sort of thing. Brian Doyle | 145 Osama wanted to issue an execution edict on the spot but his subcommanders pointed out that technically no crime had as yet been committed that anyone knew of, so far this was affection rather than abomination, and also one of the men was Osama’s driver, the only man in the cave who knew how to drive a stick shift, and without the driver no one could drive the truck that delivered actors and props to the site where they filmed the videos, and then where would they be? No videos, no glorious revolution, am I right? I sat silent while they argued about this all night long. One thing no one ever admits about Muslims is that they are chatterboxes of the first order, willing and able to talk all night long and argue about the tiniest nuttiest things, like the time Osama went into a hissy fit that lasted for days because he lost an argument about whether chess was the work of the devil, which of course it isn’t, although it was invented by the Hindus or Buddhists, who are all going to hell apparently because they are not Muslims. I am myself not Muslim, but I am a very good barber, and while I am sure they are sure I am going to hell, I am sure I am not going to hell, because I have never done any of the things they have done, and from what I have seen of what they have done they are most definitely going to hell. For example I once saw Osama poring over a list of the poor people who were roasted to death in America on September 11, and on that list there were many children, and he never said one prayer for any of them, or apologized for their murders , or did anything but smile as he made little check marks by their names, counting up victims of the glorious revolution. Now there is a man going to hell on the express train. Anywayhisdriverandtheothermanstartedholdinghandswhen they walked around the cave, which drove the Sheik insane, but they never kissed or did anything else that would provoke fatwah, and indeed their respect and affection for each other soon began to have a salutary effect, and elevate morale, and humanize life in the cave, which before had been pretty much military and religious edict all day and night. I suppose that their friendly banter, and the way they reallylikedeachother’scompany,remindedeveryonewhatlifecould be,andmaybehadbeenforsomemen—someofthemweresoyoung [3.237.65.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:47 GMT) 146 | Bin Laden’s Bald Spot and impressionable that I am sure they had never known any other life but that of soldier in the glorious revolution, which had led them to scuttling through a cave complex in what must be the hottest driest mountains on this holy earth. Well, if I was a storyteller, which I am...