The Osama Bin Laden I Knew

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Monday, September 11 2006, 9:00AM

Kola Boof New York -- It was five years ago today at this time when I received a phone call from a friend who told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. As a new New Yorker, I was intrigued by the news but I had no appreciation for the gravity of the events that were unfolding. Within the next 30 minutes, my view of the world had changed dramatically. By the end of the day, the nation's air traffic had come to a halt for the first time ever. By the end of the week, almost all Americans had become familiar with the name Osama Bin Laden. By the end of the year, we had fought and "won" the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But we had not fought or found Osama Bin Laden. He was the prime suspect behind the World Trade Center attack. Today, five years later, he remains at large. Most Americans still know very little about Osama Bin Laden. That's why today I am publishing an exclusive essay by Kola Boof called "The Bin Laden That I Knew." Longtime readers of this site will recognize Kola's name from several years ago. But in the past few weeks, she's been in the national news again thanks to a series of articles that have labeled her as Osama Bin Laden's "sex slave." Today, on this site, Kola Boof sets the record straight. Her story is below.

The Bin Laden That I Knew

By Kola Boof

Kola BoofAs a gossipy snippet from my autobiography was taken apart and “restructured” for maximum sensationalism in Harper’s Magazine two weeks ago, and as my name made international headlines and the media began embracing and ripping me apart, it suddenly dawned on me how unlikely it is that the Americans will ever capture Osama Bin Laden—and that the reason for this is—they can only think, dream and analyze in English.

I’ll get to the Osama Bin Laden that I knew and lived with in a moment, and as well, I will address head on my many critics, such as Peter Bergen, who’ve claimed that I’m making all this up—but first I want to share with you that as my story broke, ignorant white women on the internet demanded: “Who would name their daughter Kola Boof!?”; black women charged: “Oh god—another SuperHead making sistas look bad and trying to make a buck!”; a black man announced: “With all the fine bitches in Morocco, why would Osama choose her?” (oblivious to the fact that there are virtually no beautiful women in Morocco who can speak Arabic, English, are tall enough to compliment Osama’s 6’7 frame, can shoot a rabbit with more precision than Osama, and of most importance to Osama, are vaginally infibulated all in one), and though I’m about as liberal as Democrats come, and more in the mindset of Malcolm X than Condoleeza Rice, there arose the usual chorus of Martin Luther King-quoting white journalists and sexist black nationalists to assign me “agent for the CIA”, “lying nut job” and “Bush’s new whore”.

Making matters that much worse, was the American media’s continued insistence on creating their own fictional Kola Boof—instead of falsely branding me a prostitute who doesn’t really exist (as the N.Y. Times did in 2002), they this time dubbed me a former “sex slave”—something they’d never dare call Patty Hearst (a rich white woman who also had sex with her captors after being held captive)—and not only did they falsely report that I was the one who dubbed myself a “sex slave”, but they became outraged and resentful when I refused to be called by such a degrading and problematic slur. One Producer at a top network late night comedy show actually quipped, “We’re making this bitch a star and she’s complaining about what we call her!”

Like water on the brain, the preconceived notions about what Osama Bin Laden would be like, and what one of his “mistresses” would be like, trickled resisting heat, and in the true fashion of a people bred on the protocol of Hollywood, blue-eyed journalism and Hip Hop Colorism, they began to re-assign and re-cast us Osama and I their own stereovision, never once acknowledging their cultural blind spot. These people who don’t know what the word “infibulation” means or what the Holy Koran states about those “captured by the right hand”—the same people who trust Connie Chung, a supposedly smart newswoman who told me and my assistant several years ago via her Producer that a man of Bin Laden’s wealth and stature would never have a black woman as his mistress—these people took it upon themselves to disrespect my cultural identity—openly deriding my name and my bare African breasts (something they can stand as long as I’m on the cover of National Geographic with the ridiculous monikers “earth mother-mother Africa” written across my navel as flies come out of my mouth) and dismissing whatever information I offered as “funny, hilarious—can’t possibly be true”.

I wish I could laugh, but as the Americans gasp over the latest headline: “The Pope’s parents met through personal ad”, you can understand why I don’t think they’ll ever find Osama.

The Osama Bin Laden that I knew in 1996 Morocco was a painfully soft spoken, religiously driven but politically and psychologically astute psychotic gangbanger, a chronic pot-smoker whose favorite foods were spinach yogurt and watermelon, and whose greatest joys were sex (“not the kind one has with his wife”, he used to tease as he grabbed me), hunting Snipe-duck and fishing (which we did every Friday), writing poetry beside the virgin pond at La Maison Arabe and the professional horse breeding he did with his best friend Isam al Turabi in Sudan. Prayer to Osama was serious and beloved labor, as he did it on Tuesdays and Thursdays from sun up to sun down, and though I had no idea in those days that he was a terrorist (he was not famous back then), I was indeed privy to his financial bail-outs of the Sudanese government and had witnessed him break into tears, on more than one occasion, after ordering someone to be killed—but make no mistake, though I speak objectively about Osama—I saw him as the devil and I loathed and pitied him completely—but what could I do about it all? There is no one in this world to protect African women.

I had been actress Naima Kitar back then, and had been taken by Osama and his men at a restaurant in Marrakech, raped the first night by Osama, moved from my hotel and installed in the Winston Churchill room at La Maison Arabe, which was an estate located inside an ancient fortress in the Medina that had only one secret road leading out (Bad Doukkala), and within two months, out of fear for my life, I was calling Osama “Somi” and catering to his every whim. For that cooperation, I lived in undeniable luxury (Osama sent me shopping in Milan), was given a white a maid, and though monitored by Osama’s guards—I was also the person who supervised them along with the rest of Osama’s staff while he was away in Afghanistan, Sudan or Ethiopia. Whether I’m right or wrong, I never, at any time, felt like a “sex slave”.

What I felt was that I was very cunning and practical in my manipulation of Osama, and that because of my personal will and sexual “etiquette”, we were, on an animalistic level--equals. I felt that I took my beatings well and that I challenged him as a poet—his work ultimately surpassing my own—and of course, one of Osama’s chief complaints about me was that I strived to be Alice Walker when what he really dreamed of was Nefertiti, but alas, I survived and I am alive, no matter what I had to endure, and unlike Osama’s wives and other mistresses, I became an entity unto myself. I left the Arab world and became Kola Boof, an activist, an internationally published novelist and poet…a mother.

Certainly there are those who doubt the veracity of my experiences with Osama Bin Laden, something I can understand to a point, but what I can’t tolerate are the full out lies that have been made up to slander me and discredit my book—lies that have been told most notably by so called Bin Laden “expert” Peter Bergen. He claims, quite stupidly, that Bin Laden has never been to Morocco and then wrote on his web site about me: “for instance, there is one vividly recounted scene in which Boof performs sex acts on a group that included bin Laden; Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two; Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden’s mentor, and Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian jihadist theoretician. Boof says this happened in Morocco in 1996. However, in 1996 bin Laden was living in Sudan, Ayman al Zawahiri was imprisoned in Dagestan, Azzam had been assassinated in Pakistan thirteen years earlier, and Qutb had been lying in his grave for three decades. Boof should stick to poetry."
-- Peter Bergen

Mr. Bergen is full of camel-crap, because for starters—Ayman al Zawahiri didn’t go to Chechnya (Dagestan) until December of 1996, which is when he was arrested, and wasn’t imprisoned until April, 1997. In my autobiography, the entire Bin Laden episode takes place between January 1996 and July 1996. As for Qutb and Azzam being dead—Bergen is totally wrong, because the men mentioned in my book were not the two men he is talking about, but are very young men (late twenties, early thirties) who claimed to be the son and grandson of the men Bergen “assumed” I was talking about. Please note that we don’t have “Jr.” or “Sr.” in my culture—my uncle is named Karbonis Kolbookek, his son is named Karbonis Kolbookek, and his grandson is named Karbonis Kolbookek. But unfortunately, in Bergen’s desperation to discredit my book, he resorted to lying and name calling, and though neither he nor any western government has been able to capture Somi or pinpoint exactly where he was in 1996 (they declared him “un-find-able” you may recall), Bergen’s word as a white journalist who’s only obsessed with Osama was given immediate and complete credence over my word as a woman writer and activist who claimed to have actually shared Bin Laden’s bed. It didn’t help that I was black (I believe this no matter what anyone says), but as I’ve stated before—in any mansion, it’s the maids and the whores who know the most.

I shake my head bitterly at this past weekend’s headlines about Osama not getting along with Sadaam Hussein and how Americans seem so surprised by this revelation, because of course, I had already written first hand about the feud between Osama and Sadaam in my autobiography when it was published eight months ago—yet none of my critics are fair enough to acknowledge that.

Now, as it’s 2006, I really do wish that I was “in good” with the Bush administration and the CIA, because perhaps then, I wouldn’t have ended up classified under the Patriot Act as a “Suspected Terrorist”, and along with my two little boys, threatened with deportation, all because the London Guardian newspaper had contacted the U.S. government in 2002 and alerted them of my involvement with Bin Laden—a relationship that I originally denied in that newspaper, because I was so ashamed, embarrassed and afraid of what people would do to me and my children once they knew I’d been the girlfriend of today’s equivalent to “Hitler”—and not out to “make a buck”—though eventually I was forced to write about it in defending my status as an American citizen and my reputation as a serious literary writer and activist.

Thinking now of the murders Osama is responsible for around the globe, I feel sick knowing the scope of it, and as I watch the American public sympathize with Arab governments and castigate their own and react so nonchalantly to the specter of terrorism that is still aimed at this country like an invisible time bomb—I accept that I have at least done my part in warning them of the devastation that I believe the Arab world still has planned for America and the West, and even after I’ve voted for Hilary Clinton or whatever Democrat we rise up in the next Presidential election, I will still be saying the same thing—that there is a “fatwa” on America—and no one will ever be able to say that Bin Laden’s Mistress didn’t warn them.

Comments (27) reveal

Comments conceal

Kenneth Winfrey[TypeKey Profile Page]
September 11 2006, 10:54AM

This would make an excellent movie!

nakia
September 11 2006, 11:54AM

THANX KEITH..POWERFUL.......MY SISTA IS SO RIGHT ABOUT HOW IGNORANT WHITE AMERICANS ARE AND REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND ARAB CULTURE OR LANGUAGE.........AND YOU ARE RIGHT...........I FEEL MAINLY BECAUSE YOU ARE A BLACK WOMAN......YOUR WORD IS SHIT!..AND CONNIE CHUNG, A WOMAN IHAVE HAD A CRUSH ON SINCE I WAS A CHILD..........GOT THE NERVE TO INSULT BLACK WOMEN.............SHE NEED TO CHECK HER OWN HISTORY.........KEEP DOING YOUR THING GIRL......I ALWAYS ENJOY THE COMMENTS YOU POST!

saint james
September 11 2006, 12:16PM

Being black added to anything we do in this country and around the world so often brings into question our veracity and ultimately our legitimacy. Connie Chung was most probably projecting her own internalized racist view of herself in a white world. "I know that I'm not as beautiful and desirous as white women and I KNOW I'm a better choice for white men than a black woman. So why would Bin Laden want a nigger?"
I believe this woman. Too bad Peter Berg refuses to.

jared
September 11 2006, 12:27PM

wow! she has some good old fashinoed common sense! good for her telling it like it is. and connie "barren" chung? she has some nerve, but, since most white men who want asian women see them as nothing short of a sex servant fantasy, i guess she was appaled to see that some might see a black woman in the same light. this whole story goes to show, the usa still has no clue about bin laden or arabs in general.

C. Baptiste-Williams
September 11 2006, 12:37PM

Excellent post... thanks for bringing this to the light. It is unfortunate that Americans, not only white America, but Americans as a whole discredit things of different cultures that we are not knowledgeable of.

meme
September 11 2006, 12:49PM

The USA knows more about Arab culture and Bin Laden than you think.

gs
September 11 2006, 3:19PM

"Thinking now of the murders Osama is responsible for around the globe, I feel sick knowing the scope of it, and as I watch the American public sympathize with Arab governments and castigate their own and react so nonchalantly to the specter of terrorism that is still aimed at this country like an invisible time bomb—I accept that I have at least done my part in warning them of the devastation that I believe the Arab world still has planned for America and the West, and even after I’ve voted for Hilary Clinton or whatever Democrat we rise up in the next Presidential election, I will still be saying the same thing—that there is a “fatwa” on America—and no one will ever be able to say that Bin Laden’s Mistress didn’t warn them."

This is perhaps the most poignant thing said in this piece. I hope terror-sympathizing, far-left liberal Americans take heed to her warnings. Our nation is at war and we are in the crosshairs of Islamic extremists that want nothing but death to our citizens.

Shabaka[TypeKey Profile Page]
September 11 2006, 4:30PM

You couldn't have picked a better topic for today, Keith!Kudos! And Kola, it will take white Americans centuries to understand that Africa has given birth to the most beautiful women on earth, so beautiful that even bloodthirsty terrorists would travel half way across the globe for a piece. I actually wonder how sexually liberal Osama was and probably still is...Food for thought!

manchild1
September 11 2006, 4:35PM

Nobody is discrediting her story,but you can't tell
two stories differently...I do remember that blog
a couple years ago,when she denied the affair...now
they were regular banging buddies....Keith ,could you
please ask her why she denied the whole affair years
ago....plus she look like a man

-G-
September 11 2006, 4:54PM

My concern is not with her. My concern is that those Demons that are running the white house will be so obsessed with terrorism that we will be prisoners in our own country. Can't you see it now, no schools, no social programs, medical care for the rich white bitches and they kids...LOL. And conservative blacks sitting by the door with shot guns, peaking through the blinds and curtains, while every other important issue facing us US citizens fall by the wayside while the right wingers pursue their agendas. And they will do it when everybody is scared shitless...LOL...this is too funny and any person with two teaspoons of good common sense can relate to what I am saying.

Terrorism is real, but to most people, its a smoke screen. Who cares if she Fukked Bin Laden, extremist like him like a little poom poom every now and then.

mark
September 11 2006, 6:12PM

Thanks Keith for posting this story. I was watching coverage of remembrance ceremonies today and wondered to myself where Ann Coulter was? I sure you remember her as the author of the book "Godless", who shamelessly sensationalized her book for profit by promoting it on a platform that claimed that widows of 9/11 were "enjoying" their husbands deaths. I remember how she was on every television station for at least a week and was never really challenged on the obvious pimping of her morals in order to hock her book. Contrast that now to how Kola Boof has been labeled in the press and the amount of credence and exposure her story was given. It should not take more to convince anyone of the longstanding bias in the media.

RoxieGo[TypeKey Profile Page]
September 11 2006, 6:33PM

Manchild...Miss Boof stated in the above article that she was afraid for her children's safety and her own safety if people found out, so she originally denied the affair. When the U.S. government stepped in, however, she had to come clean or face deportation. How did you miss that if you read the article?

I say to Kola Boof, you're beautiful and brilliant. I've enjoyed many of your books, I remember you when you used to post here at Keith's site and I appreciate your strong support of gay issues, gay rights and the way you depicted your lesbian Aunt in your autobiography was quite touching. What people don't realize is that your book is not even about Osama Bin Laden. It's about your life story and he's only in 90 pages of the 450 page book.

Riddler
September 11 2006, 8:56PM

Thanks, so much for this story today. I read it early this morning and was frustrated that there was only one comment when there was so much energy put out in discusing other less relevant topics. I am commenting now because I received a nice poem from a friend about the 'peace, understanding, and the unity of mankind in America' following the 9/11 attack. I thanked my friend and forwarded her the story of this 'Sister.' This is the truth of our beloved and flawed country. There are still two sides of the track. We are still judged by standards that are not ours. While I personally do not know whether the account is true, I do know that Miss Boof is accurate when she says, 'I was very cunning and practical in my manipulation of Osama." It's in the blood. 'We wear the mask.' And it has been through this practice of practicallity for the sake of survival that we survived the middle passage, slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, and Wall Street." They will never get that. Thanks Kola Boof!!!

Mark Corece
September 11 2006, 11:53PM

Well, I don't know the history of the story very much. Mainly because I refuse to put toxins in my life from the news(although this is news too). However, I believe you are an excellent writer Ms. Boof; I will continue to follow you. Even if this story was found out to be false I wouldn't judge you nor do I think it's my place. Very astute...If I may add

ChicagoChild
September 12 2006, 11:39AM

Too bad people can't tell the difference between a good "story" and the truth. I have read up on this woman. Her story has gone through many evolutions. The woman is no fool and knows how to profit off of her story telling to gullible Black Americans with romantic notions about Africa and the African in America. She is no different from the Nigerian Internet scamer. You will have to read international newspapers to get the true background on her history and her ever evolving story. And she is no lover of the American Black man or woman. Although I have read about her "love" of Malcolm X, she advoctates hatred of all lighter skinned Blacks because of what Arabs have done to Africans on the Continent. Her goal for American Blacks, while singing a beautiful lullabye, is advocating the ethnic cleansing and resegregation of lighter skinned blacks---who she calls "unauthentic."

RoxieGo[TypeKey Profile Page]
September 12 2006, 2:10PM

Interesting comments Chicago Child. I was speaking with some other folks from Africa who said there's no such thing as "light skinned black" people. It seems to be a widely held view with many Africans that too much mixed blood separates one from the authentic blacks. Are we in America the ones who are brainwashed? We sure do seem to hate darker skinned blacks and always have.

As I wrote earlier, I've read many of Kola Boof's books and I found her to be uncompromisingly knowleagable of and in love with "black people". Her books make me proud to be a black woman and I really respect her fierce protection of the black identity. Funny how we detest an African for wanting to be black, but have no problem with White people's open superiority complex. Last up, I believe Kola Boof's story. I remember years ago when nobody believed that Sally Hemmings had all them babies by the President of the United States, but DNA shocked the world, and it was true President Jefferson was having affair with his slave and had eight kids with her.


Luddite
September 12 2006, 3:30PM

Interesting person this Kola Boof:

Boof often appears topless. Insisting that vanity and publicity have nothing to do with it, she has said that she is "topless to honor my mothers and grandmothers, my own African womenfolk who were always bare breasted in the sun and who gave birth to this whole world... They were not dirty and soiled by man's greed and violence. They were naked because it pleases God...and I do believe that it's an abomination against God for any woman's breasts to be covered." [16] In other instances, she has been less spiritual about the subject: "I have no concern...whatsoever...with what White Caucasoids think about my all-natural, God-given bare black titties." [14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Boof

Well, all of my hetero male friends would certainly agree with Ms. Boof about the sin of covering womens' breasts.

DDC
September 12 2006, 4:02PM

Preach, Chicago Child! Kola Boof is a disturbed woman who
can never keep her perverted sob story straight. She also has a BLATANT hatred for black men, white women (the men seem to be ok) and all Muslims- but she'll hide her sentiments when she needs to. She has made so viciously hateful statements which I could actually search and paste here, but honestly she's not even worth the energy. I do distinctly remember the lines: "Black men are the biggest disappointment since God", "White women are two face bitches", "Arabs are the most evil race on the planet", etc. All the "credible" coverage on her is from obscure unknown new sources... No records of her Arab father and Black mum exists. Connie Chung actually said this? Link to the quote, please! If not, Mrs. Pouvich can sue for libel. Then again, why would she even care about what some unknown kook con-artist has to say? She's an entertaining story-weaver, just an unpleasant one.

DDC
September 12 2006, 5:45PM

Believe me, folks, people on other black sites have ridiculed her for years. Don't feel bad for refusing to believe a fellow black person! And you're right, Manchild, she looks way masculine. It wouldn't surprise me if she's really a dude who got re-assignment surgery, invented her past and headed for the U.S. with a plan to conquer our gullible minds. She says she was born to a fair-skinned Arab father and a very dark black Sudanse mother but frankly, based on her physical characteristics she looks neither Arabic nor black Sudanese. Her parents were supposedly human rights activits executed by the (genuinely) racist government. Her father's family refused to take her in because she wasn't fair, but in time a black American couple (somehow) adopts her and brings her here. Jump to 1996 and she's over in Morrocco with Bin Laden fishing & teaching him poetry. Hmmm... and this all happens to a fiction writer, no less. Very complelling and entertaining, hope she wins a Pulitzer.

ChicagoChild
September 12 2006, 7:30PM

I went to a web site where this woman posts regularly. I cut and pasted an excerpt from the book about Boof and "Osama" that a poster there hilariously entitled "A BEAUTIFUL WESTERN COWBOY LOVE STORY." By the way, I was absolutely shocked by how perverse and profane this woman is on this message board. She comes across as TOTALLY unhinged.

A BEAUTIFUL WESTERN COWBOY LOVE STORY

"Osama very rarely ever ate meat--but after I literally conquered his men with my delicious snipe recipe, he’d have a little of that. My secret was one that Mommysweet had taught me as a little girl--using the cheese from water buffalo milk (if you can get it) in place of cow or goat’s milk cheese. They all taste different, the goat’s milk being the sweetest, but the water buffalo cheese is the best for cooking, because it traps in the flavors."

ChicagoChild
September 12 2006, 8:06PM

A BEAUTIFUL WESTERN COWBOY LOVE STORY....continued
"So I’d take the birds (they look like killdeer only they have an orange spot cover on the back) and I’d get them all plucked and greased with palm oil (stuffing them with chopped onion, garlic, a few salted pond rocks and couscous) and then wrap them in very thin shards of Robiola cheese (made from the Water Buffalo milk), thin slices of Prosciutto and cabbage leaves, all tied up with string. Of course, you season your layers to taste. But it was with that recipe that Bin Laden’s men warmed up to me a little. They just adored my cabbage baked cheese snipe with sugar-water porridge. It got to where I really looked forward to my Friday hunting trips with Osama and the men. That part was fun."

ChicagoChild
September 12 2006, 8:36PM

A BEAUTIFUL WESTERN COWBOY LOVE STORY...continued

To which the poster hilariously replied: ".....Er....FUN?

You say that you are from Africa. That Arabs killed your parents right before your eyes. That you were kidnapped and raped by a TERRORIST.

You say that you have been horribly disfigured vaginally, that female flesh has been cut away only leaving you with a small hole from which to urinate and pass menstrual fluid.

You say that sex is horribly painful, and that this man liked being rough and causing pain for you sexually.

.....And yet your heart and soul were hurting because.....HE (Osama)DIDN'T LIKE YOUR HAIR?!!!!!!!"
(page 189)

titi
September 13 2006, 10:21AM

INDED CHICAGOCHILD YOU DON'T DESERVE ANY ATTENTION IN THAT RESPECT....NOTHING CAN HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE ESSENCE OF THIS TOPIC....A DONKEY WILL BE A DONKEY FOREVER..... NO MATTER WHAT???

RoxieGo[TypeKey Profile Page]
September 13 2006, 4:13PM

For those who haven't seen it, there is a new VIDEO out claiming that Kola Boof is a "mind control victim" working for the CIA.

Here is a link to the video:

http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/179/15751.html?1158178106


ChicagoChild
September 14 2006, 9:50AM

Beware! I have researched this site and have found that Boof is mainly posting here "disguised" as different characters. She makes up these publicity stunt "videos" herself and the ever changing stories such as Osama calling her from a cave (when the CIA claims they can't even find him) with death threats supposedly because he has read her book.

DDC
September 14 2006, 5:30PM

I wish this topic could've stayed a while longer on the main page, because people need to know this woman's true history before they waste time or money on her. When I first read about Kola Boof (online of course since that's the only place she seems to exist), I actually believed in her and had much fascination and admiration for her. I was more than ready to purchase her works. Then the story kept getting more ridiculous and her commentary more outrageous. It's important for unaware people to first read her viewpoints on race and religion, and to talk to people who have followed her ever-expanding biography from her first emergence. Also, the biggest thing that turned me off is that IS obvious that she indeed posts under many many many MANY screenhandles on various message boards to either promote her work or to NASTILY attack anyone who raises objections or skepticism.

Joya989
November 30 2006, 10:03PM

what happened to her? she has disappeared completely within the past couple of months