After repeated appeals to the Canadian High Commission and government authorities in Islamabad, the women were finally allowed to see the wounded boy. Last month, Maha and Zaynab were driven in a circuitous route to an unnumbered residence where 10 Pakistani secret police stood guard. They were led down to a subterranean room where Abdul Karim lay on a mattress on the floor, jaundiced and thin. He managed a wan grin. "I'm OK, I'm OK," he told his mother and sister. Mustering all of his warrior's stamina, he scooted on his forearms and boosted himself on to a low couch.

They all chatted away in English. "Usually, when I want to be ill-mannered, I speak English, because it has all the nastiest phrases," Zaynab says. "But we use English among the family, too. We are so proud of Abdul Karim," Zaynab continues. "He seemed cheerful and is coping well with his injuries."

Maha also knows two of Osama bin Laden's wives, from her charity work. (We are not making this up, it's in the article.)

"Osama has one wife who was very well-educated - a PhD in child education and psychology. She was the most practical Arab woman I ever met," Maha recalls. At jumble sales supporting the orphanages run by the Khadr family, this wife would pay twice the asking price for second-hand garments. But Bin Laden's senior wife, one of his Saudi cousins, often seems distracted. Just four years younger than Osama, she had been a delicate 13-year-old beauty when the family married her off to the billionaire bridegroom. Today, Maha says, she hankers after her palatial lifestyle, and resents her exiled existence in cramped quarters with no servants, no ice-cubes, and no way out. "She was bitter about Osama having all these other wives," recalls Maha.

There's even a description of post-9/11 Osama family life:

While Bin Laden travelled and plotted in perpetual hiding, his veiled wives were left to enforce his strict rules on his family. Their children were forbidden such symbols of decadence as chilled water, computer games and American soft drinks. They weren't even allowed electricity. The boys were, however, allowed to play volleyball with their father at weekends, and to go hunting. And a child who memorised the Koran could expect to be rewarded with a pony.

Financially, they seem to be doing just okay.

Maha adds: "Most Arabs in al-Qa'ida are seriously rich. But we pay Canadian tax every year and know how to clean our own houses."

There is one son, Abdurahman, her eldest, of whom Maha is ashamed. Read why:

To Maha and Zaynab's horror, he now seems to be wearying with the family business of jihad. Earlier this month, he appeared on a television documentary after passing a polygraph test. He claimed that the CIA had coaxed him to spy on al-Qa'ida members in Bosnia in exchange for his release from Guantanamo Bay. On camera, he denounced his family as al-Qa'ida members and confessed that his father had groomed him to be a "loser", a suicide-bomber.

Maha and Zaynab claim to be baffled by Abdurahman's "ugly lies". He has, says Zaynab scornfully: "... always kept bad company. He lies, he cheats, and lies some more. Now he is wacko. He is addicted to things that thrill the brain. He told us the 9/11 planes were like some stunt out of a Jackie Chan video. He is no longer part of this family, because we do not work for our enemies."

Zaynab was asked if she'd go back to Canada, home of her maternal grandparents:

Not likely. "I cannot imagine myself in Toronto," Zaynab says, "when my life here is like the nightly news. I would like a little safety. But I will not bow down and say sorry for what I believe in. I won't veil the truth."

We don't know if anything in the article is true, but it's quite a tale.