On a hot August afternoon, aspiring pop star Wafah Dufour walks into the media lunch hub Michael's, in Midtown Manhattan. Accompanied by her publicist, Richard Valvo, the slender, exotic young woman with long dark hair in a high ponytail à la I Dream of Jeannie is dressed in a white tank top, green love beads, lacy miniskirt, and backless pumps. Conversations continue as heads look up to check her out.

Ms. Dufour passes by Anna Wintour, the editorinchief of Vogue, who is lunching with designer Isaac Mizrahi, then stops at the next table to meet former Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola and NBC head Jeff Zucker.

"You know Wafah bin Ladin" Valvo asks the men loudly.

"Wafah Dufour," she snaps, shooting him a look that's more pleading than hostile.

The niece of the man who orchestrated the destruction of the World Trade Center seventyeight blocks to the south has a point. After September 11, the name bin Laden (which is how it's spelled when referring to Osama) turned radioactive, borderline satanicbyassociation. It made her feel cursed, presumed guilty—made her wonder if it might keep her from ever getting a record deal. So she took her mother's maiden name, Dufour, which makes for a better first impression, even though the bin Laden taint is always there.

Ms. Dufour, who's vague about her age but almost certainly younger than 30, sits down at a good corner table and thanks me for helping her tell her story. "It's really important for me," she says with a French accent. "I was born in the States, and I want people to know I'm American, and I want people here to understand that I'm like anyone in New York. For me, it's home.

"It's really tough that I have to always explain myself," she continues in a soft, husky voice. "It's like every time I meet someone, I have to move a huge mountain that's in front of me, and sometimes I get tired."

The face is alluring (big dark eyes, long lashes, plump lips, caramel skin), but she looks wounded. And there's something else. At first I can't quite figure it out, but then it hits me: She looks a little like her uncle, albeit a waify ninetyeightpound tinyfooted version. Sexy Osama! I hold that thought while I listen to her explain that she's his half niece and one of hundreds of bin Ladens, most of whom are in Saudi Arabia, where she hasn't been since she was 10. She has no contact with most of her relatives, including her father, doesn't speak Arabic, has an American passport… The list goes on. "At the end of the day, I believe that the American people understand things and they have compassion and they see what's fair," she says. "They're very fair, and that's why I love America, and that's why my mom loves America."

Her mother, Carmen bin Ladin, is the author of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia, a memoir about her fifteen years with Yeslam bin Ladin, Osama's older half brother. It is a devastating insider's look at Saudi society. The 2004 best-seller reads like a thriller, with Carmen gradually realizing that she is trapped in a culture where women are brainwashed into accepting their role as pets. She endured nine years of virtual confinement inside the bin Laden family compound, broken occasionally by a family vacation. In 1985, at the end of one such summer abroad, the apparently hypochondriacal Yeslam complained of a weak heart and lungs and of stomach pains, delaying the family's return to Jeddah. Carmen seized the opportunity to enroll her daughters in a school outside Geneva. They never went back to Saudi Arabia.