Riding a bus with Osama Bin Laden, Part 1

I knew I wasn't going crazy when even the Chinese border guards stopped our bus to question our fellow passenger, Osama bin Laden. So we called him anyway. Our Pakistan-bound bus was traveling the Karakoram highway from Kashgar, an ancient city along the Silk Road in Southwest China. Our 18 passenger bus was full of Pakistanis of various tribes, a few Ughier, and me a white American with a clean military-looking haircut. Oh, and also a passenger who bared a terrifying resemblance to O.B.L., whom the Chinese guards were now questioning behind a closed door at this lonely high altitude boarder post, a few dozen miles away from where Osama was supposedly in hiding. I nervously waited on the bus while my fellow passengers talked in their own languages, seemingly saying something like "nah, he can't be... or could it really be him?".

It was July 2006 and I was on my way to Pakistan to work with Shelters for Life, a group helping the victims of the devastating earthquake that took place the year before. The two day, once-a-week trip from the Kashgar bus station was suppose to leave at 10am, but because of a prolonged cargo negotiation by one of passengers, we did not leave until noon. Waiting outside the bus, I was getting familiar with the other passengers and what they looked like. But it was only a minute or two before we departed, after we were on the bus, did "Osama" and his two friends emerge from nowhere and sit down just two rows ahead of me.

My heart raced and palms moistened at the same time as the bus jerked forward into first gear, inching out into the traffic of Kashgar and heading south towards Pakistan. My mind began to process what was happening. It was obviously preposterous to think that OBL could actually be on my bus, but at the same time, it was shocking to me that I couldn't entirely rule out the possibility. I tried to remember "facts" that our U.S. government knew about the man. He was said to be fairly tall, in his 50's, and travelled with an entourage of security. This man was not that tall, younger looking, perhaps in his 40's, and only had two people with him. Not a match. Ok, I can relax. But what if the intel on him was wrong? We were wrong and missed so many obvious things both pre and post 9/11, that the tiny chance I was now a target of a drone missile was still on my mind. Was Osama getting plastic surgery in China and laying low among the million or so Uigher muslims? I actually looked out the windows for a time, trying to see if there was anything up there circling us in the clear blue sky and I studied the lock mechanism on the window in case I somehow had to make a jump for it before the bus was blown into a million pieces.

Part 2 coming soon!