In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an extraordinary photo came to light. Taken in 1971, it’s a holiday snapshot showing the Saudi bin Laden family on vacation in Sweden. There they are, twenty-two of them, with a healthy complement of brothers and sisters ranging from toddlers to tweens to twenty-somethings, posing in front of a big pink car, grinning and laughing, resplendent in crazy-patterned bell-bottoms and loud shirts. How could this family, looking so characteristic of its ’70s heyday—so Westernized, so likable, so much like us—have spawned the most virulent anti-American terrorist on earth?
