Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad

by Åsne Seierstad

  A reviewer of the book in Dagbladet was hesitantly positive. Uncovered provided “an adequate number of new insights” to make up for “the many passages of ruminating truisms.” With regard to Aisha’s contribution, he was not convinced. “It is obviously a political choice, a strong marker, and for those of us on the outside it is difficult to understand Aisha Shezadi when she says that ‘the niqab has made me happier than I ever have been.’”

  At the same time that people were reading and discussing Aisha’s chapter, her life was falling apart around her. She wanted to run away from home. All their lives, Aisha and her sisters had seen their father beat their mother against the wall, against the furniture, and to the floor. She had been scratched, slapped, and punched, struck with belts and objects. Their father was on partial disability benefits after a car crash and was taking antidepressants. His wife, a cousin he had brought to Norway in the 1980s, was the first to suffer when his mood darkened. In time he also directed his ire at his five daughters, to whom he didn’t hesitate to say he would have liked to swap for sons. They tried to avoid arousing his anger, for fear he would break things, strike out, take their mother in a stranglehold, or drag her around by her hair. Sometimes they had to throw themselves over him in order to save her.

  Their mother made sure there were as few breakable objects as possible in the house, as few items of any kind, in fact, because the father could fly into a rage when he didn’t find something he was looking for, so it was best to keep things tidy.

  Aisha was used to hearing her father scream and shout Whore! Dog! Pig! at her mother. The children were told they were piglets.

  By the time she was twelve, Aisha could not take any more. During a quarrel between her parents, she had stood in front of her mother to prevent her father from hitting her. He punched his eldest daughter in the face instead, pushed her out of the way, and let loose on his wife. But her daughter’s protest seemed to give the mother strength. For the first time, after fifteen years in Norway, after fifteen years of abuse, she called the police. A patrol car came around. But nothing changed. The following year, while her husband pushed her to the ground, straddled her, and beat her head against the floor until she thought she would die, while her youngest daughters cried, she made up her mind that if she survived she would report him. The case went before the Mediation Service, where it was noted with regard to Aisha’s father that “he promises never to be violent to his wife again. He will try to understand her better and give her more time. He promises to refrain from swearing—in particular to abstain from references to pigs.”

  But nothing changed. One evening, the father was alone with his daughters and, enraged by their bickering, began hitting one of the younger girls while shouting that it was their own fault that he beat them. The children ran to the bathroom to escape his blows but their father chased them. Aisha blocked the doorway, and he first beat her and then her sisters. Aisha’s fingers got caught in the door, and were injured badly enough to require hospital treatment.

  When her hand healed, she wrote the text for Uncovered.

  * * *

  Aisha had become a writer, and Ayan and Emira were rising through the ranks of Islam Net. In the summer of 2011 they were appointed to the group’s organizing committee.

  At the first meeting, on a hot, drowsy Wednesday in July, a handful of students sat planning the following year’s big event—the Peace Conference. Who was going to speak? Where would it be held? The previous year’s conference had been held at Sentrum Scene, a concert hall downtown, but holding it at such a central location was expensive. The farther out of the city you went, the cheaper the premises. On the other hand, the more central it was, the more chance of walk-ins. The first two days of last year’s event had been aimed at non-Muslims, who paid no entrance fee. Islam Net was ambitious with regard to conversion of Norwegian youngsters.

  Two days after the meeting of the organizing committee, a twenty-thousand-pound bomb detonated outside the government buildings in Oslo. The immediate reaction was that it was the work of Islamic terrorists. Speculation centered around al-Qaida. Two hours after the bomb went off, a blond man dressed in a police uniform shot his first victim on the island of Utøya, where the youth wing of the Labor Party was holding its summer camp. During the course of the evening, it became clear that it was not a foreign terror organization behind the attacks, but Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist. The terrorist act resulted in the deaths of seventy-seven people.

  In his manifesto, which was available online, Breivik demanded the eradication of Islam in Europe; all mosques were to be demolished, all traces of Muslim cultural heritage needed to be destroyed, and all Muslims had to either convert, be deported, or face their allotted punishment: death. Arabic, Urdu, Somali, and Farsi were to be banned, converted Muslims had to adopt Christian names, no Muslim was to have any contact with relations in their home state if that country’s population was over 20 percent Muslim, and they were not allowed to have more than two children.

  In spite of his declarations of hatred of Muslims, it was the Labor Party the terrorist attacked, not a mosque or Islam Net. The powers that be were the traitors. They were the ones who had let the Muslims in. The act of terror would force them to see the error of their ways and stem the tide of Muslim immigration.

  Norway was in shock. People reached out to one another.

  “Hi Ela, how are you and your loved ones?!” Ayan wrote straight after the attack. The friends, who had been so close at one time, had not seen each other since lower secondary school. The circumstances that had brought them together in the immigrant gang in Gjettum had dissipated when they no longer needed one another. They had taken separate paths, developed and cultivated new sides of themselves. Sides that no longer seemed compatible.

  “Hi you, I’m fine ☺,” Ela replied. “No one I know was hurt. You?”

  “Good to hear, I don’t know, haven’t heard of anyone I know so far.”

  “Ahh, that’s good!” Ela wrote. “Hey, we have to get together soon! When is good for you?”

  “Ehhhh I can meet up any day except Wednesdays and Fridays, hehe ☺”

  “What about tomorrow then?”

  “Good stuff, what will we do?”

  “We can head over to Sandvika, buy strawberries and sit on the quay? Or go shopping?”

  “Haven’t been to the mall in ages but I wouldn’t say no to strawberries,” Ayan said.

  They arranged to meet at Ela’s. The sun was shining, people were walking around wearing hardly anything.

  Ela was taken aback when she opened the door. But she did not say anything other than “Ayaaaaan!”

  “Is your father home?” Ayan asked when she came inside.

  Ela shook her head.

  “What about your brothers?”

  There was nobody else in the house. She removed all her veils and eventually she was standing in a sleeveless top and light trousers. She was drenched in sweat. Ela looked at her. Ah, it was good to see her! Both began to laugh. They threw their arms around each other and hugged.

  “Remember? Allahajaja! Haram, Haram!!”

  “And you laughing!”

  “Islam & Black Hair forever!”

  They joked and reminisced. They found their way back to the strings of their friendship. On Ela’s terrace, the sun warmed parts of Ayan’s body that she did not reveal to anyone, they ate sweet strawberries, looked at each other, and laughed. The seventeen-year-olds did not get around to shopping or make it to the quay. They merely needed to be together, just like everyone else in Norway those days.

  For some time, a few weeks, maybe a few months, the words “unity” and “love” had real meaning. But for Ayan and Ela, as for others, that solidarity would not prevail.

  It was to be the last time they met.

  * * *

  “Unless otherwise specified, any e-mails from me require a response within twenty-four hours!”

  Five days after the terror attack
, the leader of Islam Net was demanding increased discipline from the organizing committee.

  “Who of you have gone through all the documents I sent and asked you to read?” Fahad Qureshi inquired.

  The committee was discussing how to make more money and agreed to organize a fund-raising dinner. “Everyone must ensure they sign up five wealthy people. Nafeesa needs to make sure one hundred women attend, and Saad must get one hundred men, inshallah,” the leader demanded. He was angry because he hadn’t been kept abreast of the marketing for a Way to Paradise event. Emira was supposed to make the invitations and Ayan was to supervise her. “Nadia needs to make sure Ayan does her job” read the minutes of the meeting. “Has Ayan found sisters to come to the event? Promotion on Facebook MUST improve. There have to be seven hundred participants confirmed on Facebook by Friday.”

  Ayan was assigned responsibility for poster design. The minutes went on: “Has the lettering for the heading been decided upon? No. Nadia needs to remember to ask Ayan about this and Ayan needs to give it thought. When you are working with events planning you have to keep your mind on the event the entire time in order to stay alert to things that need fixing.”

  Fahad Qureshi was the undisputed leader of Islam Net. The student of construction engineering ruled the organization like an Arabian kingdom—where he, together with his brother, made all the important decisions. Other family members had central roles; Fahad’s wife, Madia, was queen of the women at court. Democracy was nonexistent, total loyalty expected.

  This authoritarian style did not suit everybody. There were those who attended a couple of meetings and disappeared. But more people were flocking to the organization than leaving it. Within the space of a few years, Islam Net had become the most important Salafist movement in Norway and claimed to have two thousand paid-up members. The goal was to be even bigger.

  The committee was planning an event to recruit more girls. “When can Ayan get the flyers designed?” the leader asked. “Ayan needs to ask me to send her the logo for Islam Net. We need ten sisters to work on fund-raising. Ayan has to find these but they have to be approved by Madia because it is of the UTMOST importance that they understand the job 100%.” Ayan put four exclamation marks in the margin beside this last point.

  A week prior to the beginning of the school term, Fahad tightened the reins: “The minutes of meetings are to be sent out to everyone the same day the meeting takes place. Ayan needs to remember this. Meetings are mandatory. If one person does not show up it is detrimental to the group as a whole. If this were a paying job everyone would turn up on time. We are doing this for Allah and it is more important than paid work.”

  Fahad was not pleased with ticket sales. “Ayan was responsible for recruiting sisters and for promotion online. Ayan, do we have ten sisters to work on fund-raising?”

  * * *

  Summer ushered in a change in Ayan’s style of dress. She showed up for the first class of the new term in dark clothing that covered her from head to toe.

  The American-educated economics teacher presumed her parents were putting pressure on her. As soon as the opportunity arose, she asked her.

  “Why are you dressing like this? Why black? Why brown? Why not green or blue or pink?”

  “Ah, my mother says the same thing!” Ayan replied.

  The teacher was surprised by her answer. Was the mother not the one responsible for her covering up? Surely the parents must be behind it. In Somali culture, Ayan would have been considered marriageable for some time. Ayan had caught the teacher’s eye in the hallways the year before, because she thought Ayan was so stylish in her colorful shawls and modern jeans. She had admired how her head scarves always matched whatever she was wearing.

  One day Ayan showed up wearing all black.

  “Is everything all right?” the teacher inquired.

  “I’m going to the mosque, it’s Friday,” Ayan answered.

  The teacher took her aside and asked, “Does your mother wear this?”

  “No, but she soon will,” Ayan replied. “And my sister already does.”

  Ayan then asked if it would be possible for her to leave a little early in order to make it to prayers. A request she from now on would make every Friday.

  Her parents were called in for a meeting. Sadiq showed up alone.

  “What exactly is going on?” the teacher asked.

  Ayan’s attire was not the only thing that concerned her. She seemed to have stopped doing schoolwork entirely. She was not delivering assignments and was showing up to class unprepared. The International Baccalaureate program required pupils to put in a lot of work on their own time, the economics teacher stressed.

  Sadiq was surprised. He had not been aware of this. It seemed to him that Ayan was busy with schoolwork all the time. He apologized, admitting he was perhaps too preoccupied with his own studies. He was studying to be an engineer, he added.

  The teacher looked at him sternly. Pupils needed to apply themselves. She herself had gotten where she was through strict self-discipline.

  Ayan spent most of her time on the computer in her room, Sadiq went on.

  “Yeah, exactly, she has the computer on in class too,” the teacher exclaimed.

  At times she had to go over to Ayan and close it. “There’s nothing on there of relevance to this class!” she had told her once when Ayan had an Islam Net web page open.

  * * *

  The minutes of the next organizing committee meeting warned of an even more rigid regime.

  “Madia and I have experienced communication problems with the committee. People are not answering e-mails, are not taking responsibility and things are not getting done. This cannot go on if we are to reach the goals we have for Islam Net.” Fahad Qureshi emphasized that the committee was supposed to operate as the right hand of the board. He had hit upon an idea. “As of today we are implementing a system of fines. Every assignment will have a deadline and failure to carry it out within the time limit will incur a penalty. Everyone needs to respond to e-mails from me and the other board members within 24 hours or face a fine. Status reports have to be sent in before 3 a.m. on Saturday every week. If they are late there will be a fine and deadline number two is Sunday at noon. Fine number one will be 100 kroner and fine number two 200 kroner, a total of 300 kroner if neither deadline is met. A new deadline and fresh fine will be determined in each individual case.”

  Sanctions were the new whip.

  There were only a handful of rank-and-file members on the committee, so each individual had a lot resting on his or her shoulders. Ayan was assigned the task of directing fund-raising for the Peace Conference 2012. She was given a deadline of two weeks to collect 50,000 kroner and place advertisements in two local newspapers, send in the logos, and get contracts with a mobile phone company signed. The committee was still looking for somewhere to hold the conference. Unfortunately many of the places had the “drawback of not being allowed to actively separate men and women.”

  Emira was given the job of applying for public funding for the conference. “By next Wednesday she needs to have found relevant subsidies and started on the application process as well as learned how to keep accounts,” the minutes stated.

  At the end of September, Ayan received her first fine. She had failed to place an advertisement in one of the local newspapers and the minutes drily recorded: “Deadline not met, Ayan fined 100 kroner, has this been paid?”

  The committee was planning an event involving the Egyptian preacher Fadel Soliman. Its aim was to improve Islam Net’s missionary work. “Presentation skills, public speaking skills, presenting Islamic beliefs & rituals, questions of non-Muslims” would all be looked at. Admission was free for members of Islam Net. “Fahad organizes brothers to volunteer, Ayan organizes sisters,” the minutes stated.

  Soliman was controversial. He had said that it was “fine to hit a wife who doesn’t please you.” A slap was okay, as was a stick, a small stick, mind you. His views were acceptable as far as Is
lam Net was concerned, but the leader was not happy with the preparations for his visit. “Ayan was to arrange sisters to work. Madia needs to know who they are beforehand, not on the day itself. She also feels the people Ayan has gotten hold of are not competent. Ayan is fined due to my not receiving a list of the forums Emira has promoted the event on. New deadline: tomorrow!”

  * * *

  The form teacher noticed that Ayan was wearing a new ring, a thin band of golden metal, which she fidgeted with in class. Was it an engagement ring? The teacher called her parents in again. Her father came.

  “What are your plans for Ayan?”

  When Sadiq hesitated, the teacher spoke plainly. “Are you marrying her off?”

  “Nononono,” Sadiq replied, adding, “We are not radicals.”

  The thought that they were extremists had not crossed the teacher’s mind; she was merely concerned that they were pressuring Ayan into a cloistered, traditional woman’s role.

  As autumn went on, the teacher found herself driven to distraction by Ayan’s failure to pay attention in class. One morning she was explaining the concept of supply and demand in economics when she noticed Ayan’s lips moving rapidly and silently while her fingers counted invisible prayer beads. She had a contemplative look in her eyes.

  The teacher slammed her hand down on Ayan’s desk. “You cannot do this in front of me!”

  It was not the first time she had told Ayan to refrain from praying during lessons. In addition to viewing it as an affront, it ruined her concentration and demonstrated a lack of respect. She asked Ayan to leave the classroom if she wanted to pray.

  The following day the teacher decided it was time for a serious chat. She wanted to find out what exactly was going on in her pupil’s life. The teacher inquired about the lack of effort Ayan was putting into her schoolwork.