The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll

Author:Steve Coll
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Saudi Arabia, Business, Political, Yemenis, General, Middle East, Biography & Autobiography, History
ISBN: 9780143114819
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

26. AMERICA IN MOTION

THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION of 1979 cast thousands of privileged Persians into exile. Many gathered in Los Angeles, where they poured their agitations into business. First-and second-generation Lebanese and Armenian entrepreneurs maneuvered among them—builders, restaurateurs, retailers, developers, and hustlers sui generis. Some blocks on the west side of Los Angeles already resembled a stucco-and-Spanish-tile bazaar when the Saudis turned up in numbers, their pockets bulging after the second oil shock. Young merchant scions from Jeddah and Riyadh and Dhahran rolled through Beverly Hills in Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes, their sunglasses just a little too fashionable, their aftershave a little too pungent—as conspicuous a population of marks as ever swam in the seas of capitalism. Accountants looked at them and saw fees; lawyers saw billable hours; stockbrokers saw commissions; jewelers saw gold. There were plenty of Saudi businessmen who held their own in America, but many suffered from deficits of guile and ruthlessness. They were newcomers, flush but lacking in confidence and inside angles, and they did not have a locally rooted diaspora to protect them, as the Armenians and Lebanese enjoyed. Their instincts and traditions did not always serve them well. Arabian elites esteemed dignity, decorum, and reticence. Americans shouted, shoved, and brawled over money. Arabians settled disputes discreetly. Americans sued in open court.

Salem had thrived on this frontier, but his death cut the main artery connecting the United States to the Bin Laden family. Bakr was certainly interested in business partnerships with American multinational corporations, but he very rarely traveled to the States. By 1989 the most active family investor on American soil was Khalil Bin Laden, who lived in Los Angeles several months each year, usually in the summer, when Jeddah’s heat was particularly intolerable. He was a younger full brother of Yeslam, a half-brother of Bakr and Osama. He had come to America with considerable business ambition. Gradually, however, Los Angeles and its lawyers were threatening to strip him of his money and his serenity.

Khalil Bin Laden had studied business at the University of Southern California during the 1970s, but he never graduated. He was a thin, shy man, exceedingly polite, curious about American mores but conservative in his habits of mind. He dressed well but not flamboyantly—he wore Greg Chapman gray flannel suits handmade in Beverly Hills and Bally shoes. For a time he drove a Rolls-Royce convertible; later, as he settled into America, he chauffeured his family in a considerably less conspicuous green Ford minivan with cloth seats. He prayed punctually five times each day and gave up alcohol after a few cursory experiments, according to friends. He could be ruthless at French card games—“In cards, I don’t know my own mother”—but he was otherwise gentle and diffident. When he met his future wife in a Beverly Hills nightclub, some of his acquaintances thought she was probably the first woman he had ever dated seriously.1

She was a formidable character—Isabel Bayma, a Brazilian who had grown up in poverty in her native country, migrated to the United States, and found her way to Beverly Hills.

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