Here’s British Arabism taken to its absurd masochistic conclusion; a puffy human interest piece about the tribulations of being an Al Qaeda brood mare devoted to the destruction of Western civilization.

It is almost as if terrorism were the family business - although Maha vehemently denies this. “We believe in defending one’s home, one’s family, and one’s faith,” she says. “Like in that movie, Braveheart.”

Even though divorce and death have now severed their direct marital ties with the terrorists, Maha and Zaynab remain linked to the men of al-Qa’ida by blood, by ideology and by shared experience.

When Allied bombs began to rain down on Afghanistan in October 2001, the Arab women in Kabul packed up in haste. Maha and Zaynab escaped from the capital in a convoy to Gardez, in south-eastern Afghanistan, along with Maha’s other daughter, Miriam, her granddaughter, Safia, and her youngest son, Abdul Karim. They rode along with the wife and two children of Zawahiri, but lagged behind.

To their horror, their destination, a guesthouse of a Taliban commander, was demolished by American bombs and their friends were incinerated inside. Awed and shaken, the Khadr women and children cowered behind a petrol station. “We were supposed to be staying there, too,” says Maha, her eyes filling with tears. Instead, they were told to head back to their orphanage in Jalalabad. On their journey, they kept their minds busy by listening to the radio, and, they say, by making notes of their more portentous dreams about Osama bin Laden - they interpreted soaring birds as signs that he had flown to safety.