I just saw myself on the cover of the National Enquirer. It says “Exclusive Interview with Bin Laden’s Mistress”–but I’ve never given an interview to the National Enquirer; I have never in my life spoken to anyone at that magazine. In fact, up to this point, I have not given anyone anywhere an interview regarding my feelings on Osama Bin Laden’s death.
A week ago, my favorite television news anchor Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) stated that I was Somi’s “ex-wife” (because members of the Sudanese government authored a book claiming this). In Los Angeles, one of the top Black stations reported that because I tweeted about Osama’s demise two days before he died; I must be working for the CIA and was aware he was about to be killed. The cover of the National Enquirer claims that I was kept chained in Osama’s compound. None of this is true.
At this moment, I am embroiled in a serious matter that includes confrontations with Osama’s lead wife Najwa over possible monies that were left to me. I will get to that in a moment, but first to make it clear how I feel about Osama’s death and to make it clear why I haven’t felt like talking about it yet, here’s the Official Statement I gave the night Osama died:
“I rarely ever talk about Somi, but for the last two days on Twitter, something
came over me and I did nothing but Tweet about him.
Now I know why.
At last….I forgive Somi for everything he did to me and for all that I witnessed. I set him free and I dream for him to be healed.
My greatest sympathy is with his mother, Hamida, the only person in that family who is willing to hear from me. One mother to another, I close my eyes and embrace her with so much compassion.
I feel that no one has more accurately and fairly characterized her son than I have. I knew him to be a monster, a genius, a poet, a racist woman-basher and a very passionate, deeply sensitive confused being.
Like all of us, he was somebody’s child.
I am not God, so I leave him to whatever comes next. I still have his poems and each year they have a different meaning. But now the papers are cool to the touch. I feel many things…things that people would not understand…I look at the gray hair I have…and all I can tell you is this….
Usama, Usama, Usama–Peace.”
I think this statement spoken in my own voice reveals a lot for those who have intellect and can understand that the “Monster” Bin Laden was a real multi-dimensional person for those who knew him; not a media contrived cartoon. I have been greatly demeaned and disrespected by the U.S. press regarding my affiliation with him and I would like to say one thing straight out–Ninety percept of the media’s problem with me is that I’m a Black Woman who looks Black and not mixed. It has been said to my face. Connie Chung and her producers at CNN asked me point blank, “Why would a man of Bin Laden’s wealth and stature have a black mistress?”
Exotic deceitful monikers like ‘sex slave’ and ‘chained woman’ are applied to my image but were never applied to Patti Hearst–who was held against her will for more than a year and had sex trains with the nine Black men holding her–yet was not given a single exotic title. And unlike the garden variety White public mistress (Monica Lewinsky, Camilla Parker Bowles, etc.), my word alone nor my stature as a strong African novelist, activist and poet is enough to accrue common respectful treatment towards my person or my image. Extraordinarily literate facts and information I wrote about Osama years ago, things that could have helped them find Osama, are ignored as they focus on tabloid-like single sentences from my memoir (Osama lusted for Whitney Houston!; he was a Pot head). It was me, after all, who said ten years ago that Osama’s guards used cell phones (I was crucified by Peter Bergen for that; though they discovered last week that it’s true). It was me who reported ten years ago about Osama inventing the “kidney dialysis myth”–me who reported on his marijuana gardens and his obsession with Western culture. It was me who first wrote about his hatred for Sadaam Hussein.
Male journalists like Morgan Spurlock (who says he laughed about my rape) and supposed Bin Laden expert Peter Bergen (whose published facts have now been proven to be less accurate than mine) discuss me as though I’m a deceased taxi dancer or a maid who stole coins from their nightstand. Sadly, because Black Americans can’t decipher anything until White people confirm and approve it for them–I have been just as unfairly treated by Black journalists and so called Black academics and intellectuals. Which makes me shudder to think what would have happened to Thomas Jefferson’s slave Sally Hemmings had she dared write in her own words about her affair with the President of the United States. How would her claims of child rape turned to a forced long term relationship to eventual love been received by her own people?
Sally Hemmings was twelve years old when she gave birth to President Thomas Jefferson’s son, Thomas Jefferson Jr. He was in his fifties (I’ve since learned that the majority of Black American slave women got their first rapes between the ages of nine and thirteen and were freely raped by both White masters and fellow Black male slaves). As I well know, and share with Sally Hemmings–just because someone rapes you doesn’t mean you don’t go on to have a deep relationship with that person.
Osama raped me the first night we met. But out of my fear and determination to survive we became comrades; lovers; we wrote poetry together, I did his hair, I cooked for him, he gave me jewels and money; sent me to Milan on shopping sprees; buried one of his guards that I killed and made it so I only did one night in jail. Living at La Maison Arabe was hardly the life of a slave–I wasn’t in chains, honey. I supervised Osama’s men despite not being allowed to leave Osama. And let’s not forget that half the wives of Arab rich men live that exact same way–many are married against their will, fathers give away daughters, women are snatched off the streets. Women had no rights in the Arab Muslim world when I was there modeling, acting and “hostessing.”
It hurts to have so much valuable information; so much intelligence and to be so truthful and articulate–yet have “white powerful news controllers” decide that you’re not the right image for what they’d like to promote. Therefore, part of history is always missing.
Osama’s wife, Najwa Bin Laden, who wrote so snidely about me in her memoir a few years ago is now forced, at last, to recognize me. I’m sure she’d rather have me killed than see me collect money from her husband. According to her I was Somi’s “abeed lan sharmuta” (n***er slave whore). But that’s alright. I’m the one he kept for pleasure and not mere Islamic duty–as she well knows and sleeps alone with–and always slept alone with. Pitiful head covered door mat jockey.
The rank ignorant pettiness (well Kola’s not pretty enough!) and the treatment my story and my personhood have received shows you exactly why the Americans couldn’t find Osama for more than a decade. It shows you why Peter Bergen in all his almighty “million dollar advance” rhetoric could never locate Osama but had to degrade and slander me to protect the credibility of his own toilet-read tomes. And it shows most of all–that you can’t keep a good woman down. I was not the one who revealed that I’d been with Somi. The London Guardian newspaper started it all; I originally denied the story out of embarrassment and then the U.S. Homeland Security (more like “Gangland Security”) forced me to admit to it. From then on, I was trapped in a maze of defending my reputation and my personhood. And so the tragedy of my life is that I have told nothing but truth…yet the truth did not set me free.
My one revenge is that I’m not going anywhere. I think the Americans have noticed that by now. And I leave you with this bit of common sense and mother wit–”In any mansion…it’s the maids and the whores…who know the most.” You can’t stop what’s real.
Vanessa Laker 