Lynn Peghiny, the American pianist from Orlando, had returned to Florida from her adventure with Salem in Pakistan when he called to invite her to London. She flew over, but nobody came to meet her at the airport, so after some confusion, she took a taxi to the Carlton Tower Hotel in Belgravia. She went shopping, and when she returned, she found a handwritten note addressed to “Lin.” It read: “I came by to see you. I feel a little guilty, and I even went looking in the shops for you. I’ll call you sometime.” It was signed “S.”2
He did call and arranged to pick her up, but when she arrived at his brick-walled estate at Offley Chase, she found two other young women already there. Lynn knew that Salem dated others, and she had never been particularly put out about it. Still, she was not sure what to make of this. The two other women were both named Caroline; one was French (“Caroleen”), the other English (“Caroline”).
Caroline of France had dark eyes and thickly curled black hair that wrapped around her cheeks. She lived, as it turned out, not far from Cannes, in a house that Salem had purchased for her and her mother. She had been dating Salem for more than a year.
Caroline of England was Caroline Carey, then about twenty-six years old. She had a thin, angular face with high cheekbones, chestnut hair, and a somewhat regal affect. She had grown up in Kensington, London, with her half-brother, Ambrose, and their mother, Anne Carey. Her family lineage touched the English aristocracy, if lightly. Caroline’s father, Simon Henry Carey, had not married her mother. Ambrose had also been born out of wedlock, to Anne and David Queensberry, the Marquis of Queensberry. Salem had met Caroline in Hyde Park during the early 1960s, when she was just a toddler. He came to London on school breaks and spotted the Carey family nanny in the park; he thought the nanny was cute and tried to ingratiate himself by playing with the children. Soon he was a regular guest for tea at the Carey residence. As the years passed, he fell out of touch, but he resurfaced during the mid-1980s; when he and Caroline were reacquainted, they began to see each other. Like Salem’s other girlfriends, she was his junior by about fifteen years.3
Lynn greeted the two Carolines at Offley Chase. She deduced that Salem had convened some sort of girlfriend summit, but apparently they did not yet have a quorum. Anna from Germany had yet to arrive, and Salem asked a pilot friend to take one of his jets, fly over, and bring her back. Lynn decided to go along, to pass the time—“It was like taking a taxi somewhere.”4
Anna, it turned out, was a very thin, blond woman, even younger than the others, whom Salem had met in a bar at an Austrian ski resort. She had a salaried job near Cologne but traveled often with Salem; he had taken her once to Medina, a city normally off limits to non-Muslims. She was far from imposing in appearance, but when he was with his male friends, Salem sometimes referred to her as his “German tank.”
When Anna and Lynn arrived back, Salem settled on a couch in his living room with all four women. He summoned his most earnest demeanor. He explained that since boyhood, he had been raised in a culture where it was common for men to marry several Arabian wives and then live all together on a family compound.
“But that is not my dream,” Salem said, as Lynn recalled it. “My dream is to have four Westernized women—that has always been my dream and my fantasy. So I picked you four. You would just make my dream come true.”5
He outlined the plan he had refined over several months. It was not a coincidence that each girl he had selected was from a different country. Indeed, his vision was to build in Jeddah a new Bin Laden family estate that would resemble the United Nations.
The compound would have four houses. Over one would fly an American flag, over a second a German flag, over a third a French tricolor, and over the fourth a British Union Jack. Each wife would have a car parked outside, a model from her home country—a Mercedes for Anna, a Rolls-Royce for Caroline of England, and so on. They would each have a home in their native countries, too—Salem already owned luxury properties in America, England, and France.
As Salem spoke, Lynn smiled to herself and thought, “I get gypped—I don’t want a Corvette or a Cadillac.”
Salem kept talking, trying to sell them. He knew they might feel trapped by the prospect of life in Saudi Arabia, so he had come up with an escape clause. He said that if there were children from any of the four marriages, those children would have to remain in the kingdom and be raised there in Saudi tradition. However, if no children were involved, then if any of the women were unhappy after one year, he would give them $100,000 and they could return home. He hoped, however, that they would all be happy together for a long time.
“I would just take turns going from home to home and we would all be friends,” he said, as Lynn remembered it.
Lynn found herself thinking, “Hmmm…That doesn’t sound too bad.” But then she would scold herself silently, worrying that if she left after a year no American man would ever marry her, and also, in any event, perhaps “I’d be selling my soul.” But then, on the other hand: “What the heck?” She was young and open-minded, and she cared for Salem, who had been very good to her.6
The conversation went on for some time. They maintained a civil tone. Caroline of France seemed open to the idea, Lynn thought. Caroline of England—Salem called her “Carrie”—was cool but enigmatic. Anna, however, was clearly unhappy. She rolled her eyes. She seemed the most emotional about the revelation that Salem wanted more than just her. The more upset she became, the more Lynn began to think this wasn’t going to work after all. Finally, Anna walked out.
“I’m in trouble,” Salem reported when he called a friend in America after the meeting. “They all got mad.”7
That was an exaggeration. Lynn stayed that night and played Chopin. The French Caroline returned home, but Carrie stayed on, and a few days later, Lynn flew with her and Salem to Cairo on a holiday. They went from there to Saudi Arabia, and then to a Greek island, where they met Salem’s two children from his earlier marriage and went sailing on a yacht. Gradually, on this trip, Lynn began to conclude that Salem “favored Carrie…They were more connected.”
Lynn flew home; some months later, Salem asked her to Jeddah. They spent some time together, and then Salem said what they were both were thinking: “I don’t know if this is going to work.”
“That’s fine,” Lynn said. “I’ve had a wonderful year.”
“We’ll always be friends,” Salem told her. “I’ll always keep in touch. I’ll always make sure—if you ever need anything.”8
Lynn admired his generosity but did not want to take advantage of him. People who worked for Salem encouraged her to ask him for a house in Florida—after all, Caroline of France had gotten a house—but she declined.
They went their separate ways. Caroline Carey, Lynn could see, would be the last girlfriend standing.
SOME OF SALEM’S brothers and sisters searched, as he had, for forms of marriage that would synthesize modernity and tradition, but they hewed closer to convention. The beliefs and practices of Mohamed Bin Laden’s daughters contrasted almost as greatly as those of his sons; they were just much better hidden from view. In Jeddah, Sheikha and Rafah covered themselves in black abayas, threw themselves into Islamic study, and abjured birthday parties for their children, in the belief that such parties were forbidden by the tenets of their faith—birthdays were a Christian rite, and thus haram, or “forbidden.” Another group of daughters—Huda, Randa, and Mona—still jetted frequently around Europe to shop or across the Atlantic for spring skiing in Aspen with Salem. If they wanted to consider dating, they had to operate clandestinely and be willing to shoulder considerable risk; otherwise, they could wait for Salem to arrange or bless a traditional marriage to a respectable Arab professional. Like Mohamed’s sons, as they reached their thirties, some of these women became more outwardly religious and visited Europe less frequently.9