When Osama went to Los Angeles

Four years ago, while researching a book, the American journalist Steve Coll was introduced to a man who had been a friend and neighbour of the teenage Osama Bin Laden.

The meeting sparked a long and frustrating hunt in which Coll chased stories and gathered fragments of evidence to support his budding thesis: that the young bin Laden had once made a trip to the United States.

It looks like he’s finally got his proof. On his blog over at The New Yorker, Coll reproduces an excerpt from the forthcoming book Growing Up Bin Laden, by bin Laden's first wife Najwa bin Laden and his son, Omar bin Laden, soon to be published by St. Martin’s Press.

Najwa describes towing two babies across the world to Indiana, following her husband's whim, only to while away her time in Indiana as her husband makes shadowy business trips.

But it’s the smallest details that are most fascinating. Trips to a shopping mall in Indiapolis, the gawping men at airports… and most of all the thought of Osama on the streets of Los Angeles.