Nine Lives A Novel

And in my book Nine Lives, I opened with a story of this nun I met at the same place, Savannah Bellagol, in the same place that Chandragupta Moria went to die.

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Go listen to Conflicted, go read his book. We'll link to it in the show notes.

I did write it. I have to ask my wife permission and she granted it.

Ironically, I found the entire writing of the book to be therapeutic. It was not as bad as I expected. I mean, I thought basically I will end up really having bad dreams or regrets and episodes of depression, but in fact basically like, I mean, it brought into sharp focus that what I did was the right thing.

And then of course, basically I went into podcasting, and yeah, I joined, you know, a very good friend of mine who I met six years ago, you know, an American who grew up in, you know, suburban California, who grew up in an evangelical Christian family, decided to become a Greek Orthodox monk, who then basically decided that he wanted to study about Islam and the Arab world, and who lived in many different countries in the Arab world, and then he got a massive degree in Islamic studies in Arabic language, became a documentary maker, a filmmaker, toyed with the idea of converting to Islam, but he remained a steadfast Greek Orthodox Christian at heart, but he and I basically, we became intellectual soulmates, so we decided to do this podcast series called Conflicted, which we talk about the conflicts of the Middle East and beyond from the prism of his deep Christian faith and my deep Muslim faith and how we all came into this point.

You started your book with this story of missing your nephews wedding and that to me really put your whole life kind of in the spotlight here because tell us why you missed the wedding.

It was September 2016. My wife was pregnant with our first child, our daughter and so I was supposed to go from Dubai to Bahrain to attend the wedding of my nephew for some reason you know three days before the wedding my wife was beginning to have some this bad vibe.

I remember I had a mass teacher in Saudi Arabia in middle school when I was 14 and he was such a wonderful young man only 26 he come from a quite affluent family his father was a Brigadier general in the security forces his uncle was the minister of transportation so affluent family his name ironically was Osama Mansouri.

When I arrived in Baku another bayjan and you know I talk about lots of many you know some funny incidents there for there but I leave it to the listener to read it in the book but when I arrive there I remember I was told by the leader of the Arab jihadist contingent in Cheshney as that look you know the mountain passes are not safe right now but you know what basically you're very good at math you know young students you know so how about you help us basically you stay in the office of a charity there in Baku and you help us with you know everything that we need in terms of diverting funds calculating the cost of you know five thousand tens for refugees in fact basically only two thousand but you know just inflate the numbers and you create a accounting really in order to divert as much money food, guns medical supplies and the cash of course for weapons as well as cash for bribes.

I remember him telling us this very ominous in the warning he said the art of bomb making is extremely fine and delicate your first mistake is going to be your last remember sorry I was checking my phone I think I did this one goes first right yes and then boom that's it.

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This is part two of two with former Al Qaeda bomb maker turned MI6 informant Aimen Dean.

I did write it I have to ask my wife permission and she granted it so and yeah to write a book you had to ask permission to write a book because it would be such a pain in so much time.

I'm very proud in a Boris Johnson so I voted for him twice when he was a mayor of London and so I'm a conservative by heart but nonetheless you can confuse them enough to stop them from doing stupid things which then put them on the journey towards discovery of the truth.

You started your book with this story of missing your nephews wedding and that to me really put your whole life kind of in the spotlight here because tell us why you missed the wedding.

When I was 14 I was attending a middle school it was late 1992 and the Bosnian conflict was raging by then for several months and as you know basically the you know in Bosnia they voted for independence from Yugoslavia I know the Serbian minority within Bosnia aided by you know the Serbian Republic launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing right against the Bosnian Muslims and therefore the news you know and the footage that used to come from there were you know so vicious and so shocking in their nature.

I remember I had a mass teacher in Saudi Arabia in middle school when I was 14 and he was such a wonderful young man only 26 he come from a quite affluent family his father was a Brigadier general in the security forces his uncle was the minister of transportation so affluent family his name ironically was Osama Mansouri when we arrived back to school when we came back to school after the summer vacation a teacher came to our class to tell us that our mass teacher was killed in Bosnia fighting a jihad there and he had a member of the Bahrain royal family Bahrain is just next door to us it's a small country but it's a small kingdom and you know so one member of the Bahrain royal family was there so I remember wondering why would a Bahrain prince and our teacher who come from a very affluent family would go and sacrifice their lives for people who we hardly knew about until months ago that they existed even and I remember that teacher who was trying his best to attempt some sort of grief counseling with us but ended up you know giving an exhilarating lecture about jihad he said to us that a sacrifice does not taste so sweet unless if you have it all and you give it all away and it was the first time I heard the three words of jihad sacrifice and martyrdom all in the same breath and it got me thinking so much as to how in a fascinating that what I was reading in Sayyid Qotub's interpretation of the Quran on the verses related to martyrdom and how he talked about it so passionately it related these to modern day struggles of the Islamic movements against you know the Arab nationalist and the communist and before that the in a French and British colonial rule of the Arab world as well as the Italian rule in Libya so the way he related all of this suddenly all came together rely relies on my mind therefore for the next two years I was always following what was coming you know out of Bosnia in terms of footage and news about the atrocities and the massacres there.

I remember him giving me a piece of paper with a phone number in it and he said call this number tell them it was me Khaled asheikh that's how we used to know him tell them Khaled asheikh sent you and that said that's all you you know they need to know and they will take you into a good training camp in Afghanistan where you will be trained.

When some of laden arrived he was asking if there are any people from Saudi Arabia and the vicinity he was only about 45 minutes drive in a firmware we were and so 14 of us you know basically all of us went into one car yes and to one pickup car all of us you know it felt like at the time i really felt what you know crammed cattle would feel basically in the back of a clown car you're 14 people on a van well it wasn't the van it was a pickup car so basically it wasn't i pick up truck oh oh so you're like all in the payload of this pickup truck and there's like five people in the camp indeed yeah so i remember basically we were in a just childish you saying bad whatever so you know pretending to be lambs or whatever so we went to see Osama the laden now many people i remember that day was i think either the fourth of the fifth of august of 96 i remember many people were always asking me what was your first impression when you saw Osama the laden and i know that all of them expect me to say that i saw something great something magnificent something overwhelming you know all of that and i say well it was a little bit underwhelming actually the first time i met him because when he arrived back from Sudan he was a guest of one of the Taliban warlords and they were all in a compound that belonged to him he and the rest of the al-Qaeda people who fled from Sudan and arrived in Afghanistan they looked like refugees in suitcases and boxes everywhere unopened you know he came in a usually when you see Osama the laden and the first image that comes to your mind is a nicely dressed individual in a you know a neat turban neat robes in a well iron no crease nothing what i saw in front of me that they basically it was a very crease arabic headscarf you know an arabic robe and looked disheveled you know basically and and camped and all of them looked like that they looked like and they were actually you know a bunch of refugees who just escaped you know with their lives from Sudan just two weeks earlier.

I did write it, I have to ask my wife permission and she granted it.

Ironically, I found the entire writing of the book to be therapeutic.

It was not as bad as I expected, I mean I thought basically I will end up really having bad dreams or regrets and episodes of depression.

But in fact, basically like I mean it brought into sharp focus that what I did was the right thing.

You started your book with this story of missing your nephews wedding and that to me really put your whole life kind of in the spotlight here because tell us why you missed the wedding.

It's a 6000 sorry 4000 page book and six volumes you know so basically of course writing this over nine years when he was in prison he was of course who you know awfully mistreated there you know he wrote it through the prism of pain.

The stories you tell on both conflicted the podcast as well as in your book which will link in the show notes.

I remember I had my doubt basically that this behavior was right I was thinking if the prophet Muhammad was here would he have sanctioned this.

I remember when I arrived in Baku another bayjan and you know I talk about lots of many you know some funny incidents there for there but I leave it to the listener to read it in the book.