—Osama bin Laden explaining the purpose of the 9/11 attacks Khaled Batarfi was bin Laden’s closest buddy when they were teenagers living in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They met in 1973, when bin Laden was sixteen, three years older than Batarfi. The Musharifa district, where the two friends grew up, is a typical upper-middle-class Jeddah neighborhood dotted with white-walled villas and anchored by the small mosque in which they offered their daily prayers. Next door to the mosque was a scruffy playground where the two played soccer after school. The young Osama was so pious that the neighborhood kids didn’t swear or tell off-color jokes in his presence. Bin Laden even scolded Batarfi for wearing shorts to play soccer; he said they were immodest. As a teenager bin Laden fasted twice a week in imitation of the Prophet Mohammed, and when a group of friends assembled at his house it was to chant religious songs about Palestine. Batarfi says his solemn friend would often say, “Unless we, the new generation, change and become stronger and more educated and more dedicated, we will never reclaim Palestine.”
