The incarnation of evil appeared in a turban and flowing garments, and it was worship at first sight. When Abdurahman Khadr was introduced to the preacher of Jihad six years ago in the mountains of Afghanistan, he was surprised by Osama bin Laden's gentle nature. "This," thought Khadr, an adolescent at the time, "is supposed to be one of the world's most feared terrorists?"

The Al Qaeda leader's unassuming appearance in a remote mountain village not far from the eastern Afghani city of Jalalabad simply did not match the description of a wanted man, a man the fundamentalists, even then, were describing as the perfidious mastermind of the dual attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. When encountered in person, Abdurahman says today, the fanatical ideologue of Islamist expansion was occasionally even capable of showing gentle affection: "He's really quite normal."

Until 2001, Abdurahman, now 21, experienced the elusive Al Qaeda leader from a very close distance. For many years, his family was on friendly terms with the bin Laden clan, and lived next door to the sheik's rather large household in his sparsely furnished mountain camp near Jalalabad.

Abdurahman was born in the Gulf state of Bahrain. His father, Ahmed Said, emigrated to Canada from Egypt in 1977, and acquired wealth and status working as an engineer in Ottawa. In the early 1980s, after the Soviets had marched into Afghanistan, the entire family relocated to Pakistan, where Abdurahman's father took a position as the head of an international refugee assistance organization.

That was when the family first came into contact with bin Laden. Following a brief return to Canada in 1996 - the Pakistani authorities had accused Abdurahman's father of involvement in a bombing attack - Khadr eventually took his family to Afghanistan, where he worked for the Taliban regime, building schools and orphanages.

A short time later, Khadr, nicknamed "Al-Canadi" because of his origins, was placed in charge of Al Qaeda's finances, which brought him into the inner circle of advisors surrounding bin Laden and his chief strategist, Aiman al-Zawahiri. The sheik of terror was the guest of honor at the wedding of Khadr's daughter Zaynab to a Jihadi from Yemen.

Abdurahman, just 15 years old when the family moved to the mountains, did not adapt well to the monotonous daily life of the Al Qaeda camp. Like his three brothers, Abdurahman, the second-eldest son, was given a Kalashnikov ("it was a rather large weapon"), but showed little interest in pursuing a career as a devout fighter.

Instead, the son of bin Laden's friend became known as a prankster, once even blowing up a soda can filled with gunpowder in front of the Al Qaeda leader's office. "For some time," Abdurahman now recalls, "I was considered too unreliable to take part in explosives training."

In his mountain camp, Osama bin Laden emphasized the strictest adherence to Islamic principles, especially for his wives. Nevertheless, the Al Qaeda boss, always reverently addressed by the title of "Emir," was not the undisputed master of his own house. Abdurahman observed that "sometimes there were quarrels about the lack of money, and sometimes about the children."

Bin Laden was an extremely modest man. Not only did he do without modern conveniences, such as ice cubes and electricity, he also forbade his family from consuming Pepsi or Coca-Cola, things he viewed as the incarnation of the US society he despised: "America has destroyed our culture, our economy and our daily life."

Nevertheless, frowned-upon Western goods were secretly smuggled into the camp, and even bin Laden's children bought forbidden soda pop. But the Al Qaeda leader was generous in other respects, promising a horse to those of his children who did well in their Koran studies, which encouraged even the youngest to diligently study the Suras of the holy scriptures.

In the pious atmosphere of this mountain camp, Khadr's son Abdurahman, with his Western notions, soon emerged as someone with little respect for bin Laden's strict rules. In defiance of the Taliban's rigorous precepts, he listened to music and openly flirted with girls, behavior that threatened to thoroughly destroy his family's reputation and status.

The senior Khadr finally took his "misguided son" to task, telling him that "if you stay with us, you will lead your younger brothers astray, with your smoking and drinking," and scolding and cursing his first-born as a "scourge on the family."

There could be only one way to save the family's honor, said the father: Abdurahman was to be trained as a suicide assassin, a prospect the son categorically rejected: "I did not believe in killing innocent people."

Given this mindset, he was also unable to share the general euphoria that prevailed in bin Laden's surroundings after the attacks of September 11, 2001. When US troops marched into Afghanistan, Abdurahman's father went into hiding, and he was shot in a twelve-hour battle last October. The Americans also arrested the son, Abdurahman, and sent him to Guantanamo.

Allegedly to help his younger brother Omar, who is still in detention in the prison camp in Cuba, Abdurahman offered to assist the CIA by spying on his fellow Al Qaeda prisoners. It was a rather unsuccessful endeavor. The fewest of the Guantanamo inmates, "no more than ten percent," says Abdurahman, were hardcore Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

Meanwhile, the Americans have released their useless collaborator and deported him to Canada. In his new home, he has recently been plagued by misgivings. Former friends and members of his family curse him as a rebel and traitor, and his mother continues to assert that she would be willing to give her life at any time for the cause of Islam.

Abdurahman still finds it difficult to recognize his erstwhile neighbor as the mastermind of international terrorism.

In his opinion, bin Laden is fundamentally a "human being." He is also unable to forget his memories of daily life in the camp, where the godfather of the terrorists, a man whose head is now worth a US-proclaimed bounty of 50 million dollars, played volleyball with his children almost every afternoon.

"He had his own special serve, like a Russian grenade launcher: First the ball went up in the air, and then it began to rotate," recalls Abdurahman. "When the ball came back, it was virtually unstoppable."