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

by Åsne Seierstad

  The manifesto echoed the sentiments expressed in Halal Dating: Always keep an eye out for the devil. He never let up, he would pierce a woman’s heart, tempt her to undress in the sight of others, and encourage her to scorn God’s creation by having surgery on her nose, ears, and cheeks—or “hang things from her ears,… have hair in some places and not in others.” The devil’s work flourished in clothing stores and beauty salons, the authors warned.

  “Abide in your houses! Do not display yourselves as was the display of the former times of ignorance!” the Koran 33:33 decreed. This was God’s command to the wives of the Prophet. For IS, the edict was to be obeyed by all women, only in some circumstances was it halal to go out. Doctors and teachers could work, but never more than three days a week. A woman could leave the home to study Islam, or if chosen to wage jihad, as long as she remained wary of the devil and was properly covered up.

  This meant full niqab, ideally in three layers, and also covering the eyes. A woman being veiled and hidden from men was always preferable. But that did not take away her importance. A woman’s role could be likened to that of director—“the most important person in a production, who is behind the scenes organizing.”

  The authors of the manifesto used the same rhetorical devices as the radical preachers Ayan had listened to prior to her departure: first ridicule, then threats. Western civilization was obsessed with science and carried out research on “the brain cells of crows, grains of sand, and the arteries of fish,” a distraction from the fundamental purpose of humanity—to worship God. Everything that went against or took time from the praise and veneration of God led directly to hell. As the Prophet said, “My prayer, my rites of sacrifice, my living and my dying are for God, Lord of the worlds.” The blame for women being forced out of their natural state was ascribed to feminism. This had caused both sexes to become confused and lose sight of their distinctive characteristics. Only in the caliphate were Real Men and Real Women to be found, because God had created woman “of Adam and for Adam.” Women had forgotten their fundamental roles, and the destructive consequence of this “was obvious to anyone who looked.” Modern society was the work of the devil, under the guise of words like “development,” “progress,” and “culture.” The authors did, however, grant some latitude regarding the use of modern technology; sciences that “helped facilitate the lives of Muslims and their affairs” were permissible.

  The tone was a religious variation on Soviet propaganda texts. Everyone was enthusiastic, well fed, and strong in belief. “Al-Khansa Media traveled these lands to check on the happy situation that Muslim women face on their return to what was there at the dawn of Islam. We saw the black robes that enrage the hypocrites and their friends and the progress that the state brings us. We are ascending to the summit of this glory through the expansion of the State of Muslims.”

  The manifesto concluded with a call to rally for jihad: “Despite the raging war and the continued coalition against the Islamic State, the bombers in the sky flying back and forth, despite all this destruction, we find continued, patient, and steadfast construction, thanks be to God.”

  Onward!

  * * *

  In the caliphate, a man had the right to educate his wife if she was disobedient, and he defined what constituted disobedience. For a short time, Aisha had been the wife of Oslo’s Alpha Islamist par excellence—Arfan Bhatti—the charismatic playboy possessing the X factor of power that Bastian had always felt he lacked. Now she was Bastian’s property, his second wife. The transition was nothing like what Aisha had expected.

  Bastian locked her indoors. He locked her out of the house. He hit her. Worst of all, he beat Salahuddin. He now had in his custody the son of Arfan Bhatti, the man he had always dreamed of impressing and resembling.

  When Aisha attempted to protect her son, when she screamed at her new husband, he just pushed her aside.

  He boasted that he was going to teach Bhatti’s son how to be tough. Salahuddin was going to be a Cub of the Caliphate, and thus he needed to be disciplined from an early age. The boy was not yet two.

  Aisha was forbidden from going out. Bastian told her he would kill her if she left the house. One day, needing something for Salahuddin, she had tried to sneak out.

  Bastian found out and fired shots after her in the street, she later told a friend, forcing her to turn and go back.

  Dilal had tried and tried but had not been able to get in touch with her since she had received the picture of the battered and bruised little boy. She didn’t have a phone number for her, so she sent a message on WhatsApp.

  “How are things with Salahuddin?” she asked. “What’s happened to him?? Answer me! Aisha, please!”

  There was no reply from Raqqa.

  Then one night she received a message from Aisha saying she needed the money in the aid account.

  “What happened to Salahuddin?” Dilal asked.

  Everything was fine with him now, Aisha answered, adding praise for the Islamic State. The system was fantastic, everything worked, they were very happy and were having a great time.

  Dilal told her she had given the money to Save the Children, and inquired more about Salahuddin’s blue marks in the photo she had been sent a few weeks earlier. Aisha did not respond. Then several hours later, shortly after midnight, when Dilal was about to doze off, she received a new message on WhatsApp.

  “I have to tell you something,” it began.

  Aisha was typing.

  She and Bastian had argued, a couple of weeks back, she wrote. He had slapped her before throwing her into the backyard, locking the door, and beginning to hit Salahuddin. She had stood with her ear to the closed door, pleading for him to stop.

  The child had screamed. Loudly, desperately. Gradually, only exhausted crying was audible. She heard a thump against the wall. The sobbing stopped. It was quiet.

  Then she heard the sound of Emira gasping from inside, the key was turned and the door thrown open. Salahuddin lay lifeless in her friend’s arms.

  His face was swollen, covered in blood and vomit; his cartilage was smashed, the whites of his eyes were red, the blood vessels burst. Aisha tried to bring him around, shook him. His body was warm but limp. He had no pulse. No heartbeat. No breath.

  Dilal sat in bed, shuddering.

  The blows to Salahuddin’s head must have caused him to throw up, she reasoned. He would then have lost consciousness and suffocated on his own vomit, or his respiratory tract might have filled with blood.

  The student nurse sat looking at the words as they appeared on the screen.

  “I held him in my arms. I carried him out to the backyard,” Aisha wrote. “I went around the garden the whole night with my dead son in my arms.”

  Dilal was numb.

  She was also furious. At the child murderer, and at her friend. She was to blame for her son’s death, she had taken him to a war zone filled with psychopaths, for her own damn sake. She was deranged!

  “What about Emira?” Dilal asked. “Couldn’t she have stopped him?”

  Emira, who had just given birth, sought refuge when Bastian became violent, tried to protect herself and her own child. Bastian never laid a hand on her, Aisha added.

  Dilal received another picture.

  It was a grave in sandy soil, some dry straws coming up through it. There was Arabic writing on the stone that Dilal could not read. Perhaps they were words of praise to Allah, perhaps it read Salahuddin. The light was yellowish, a breeze must have been blowing, filling the air with sand.

  There, beneath the stone, beneath the thistles, beneath the sand, lay Salahuddin.

  Just shy of his second birthday.

  “He’s in a better place now,” Aisha wrote. “He is a martyr. He is with God.”

  Children went straight to God, she emphasized. Their souls were carried by beautiful birds. In paradise, the children were free, they could fly anywhere they wanted, and when they grew tired they could rest in the lanterns hanging from God’s t
hrone, just like the martyrs.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” Aisha continued. It was now late at night.

  “Of course,” Dilal replied.

  “Can you tell my mother that Salahuddin is dead?”

  Dilal could not believe it. “Have you not told your mother?!”

  “I can’t bring myself to…”

  That night the student nurse wept for the boy she had kissed as a newborn but barely known. She was still married to Ubaydullah back then. He had held the boy and said he had Arfan’s smile. Later, she had cuddled with him, pushed him in his stroller. What if she had reported Aisha to the police when she had started talking about traveling to Syria? She had threatened to contact Child Welfare but had not. She had been busy with her own life. The student nurse was at a loss. She might have been obliged to report it? Could she have saved Salahuddin’s life? Would he still be alive now…?

  It turned out Aisha had approached several friends and asked them to tell her mother about Salahuddin. Three of them met to consider what to do.

  “Every time I see a little Pakistani baby, my eyes well up with tears!” one of them said.

  “What Bastian did was nothing short of torturing him to death,” said another.

  They were angry at Aisha for viewing Syria as “romantic,” for thinking it was “cool” to wage a war against the West.

  Aisha’s mother lived in their neighborhood. Which of them would tell her? Should they all go together? It was unbearable. They agreed to seek the advice of an imam.

  The imam told them it was not their responsibility to inform the mother of the terrible news. “That’s something your friend has to do herself,” he said.

  The media beat Aisha to it. In late February, TV2 covered news of the death.

  “A two-year-old Norwegian child, taken by his mother to Syria last year, where she planned to join the terrorist group Islamic State, has been killed,” the report began.

  The only person named in the report was Bastian Vasquez. But the reporter made reference to having spoken to the father of the child, who claimed Vasquez was responsible for the child’s death. Social media quickly identified Arfan Bhatti as the father.

  No one had informed Aisha’s mother of her grandson’s death prior to the news item. She called and texted everyone in her list of contacts who could know anything. Eventually she reached one person who could confirm that yes, it was true.

  She had not seen her daughter or her grandson since last summer. Aisha had left for Syria without saying goodbye after marrying Bastian on Skype. The last the grandmother had heard was a voice message in which Aisha had said that they were fine and she hoped everyone at home was well.

  Her initial reaction was to travel to Syria and be with her daughter, but she had no idea where to find her.

  The father of the child gathered the inner circle of the Prophet’s Ummah to discuss how to avenge the murder. Should someone be dispatched to Syria, or could one of the Norwegian jihadists down there end the life of their former brother?

  Bastian’s blood was halal for them now, killing him was permissible. A life for a life.

  * * *

  “He’s the one who held a knife to my throat,” Sadiq wrote to Osman. Bastian was the man who had wanted to kill him at the prison in al-Dana, he told friends in Oslo.

  “Really?” Osman wrote back.

  The Chilean was the man who had tortured him, Sadiq confirmed. He had recognized him from his photo. The same unkempt hair, the same crazed look on his face as the one who hit hardest in the prison, the fat one with the broken Arabic.

  “Wow. I know him too. I’ve met him,” Osman wrote, but Sadiq was done talking about Bastian.

  “Send me the photos of the Norwegians!” Sadiq urged.

  “Calm down. I had an accident last night. It was raining a lot, I dropped my smartphone and now it’s fucked.” Several weeping emojis followed. “All my photographs were erased. The phone’s IC was wiped.”

  “How, how is that possible??”

  “We’re going to Tabaqa on Wednesday. That’s near Raqqa. We’ll try to get some new photos of the Norwegians then.”

  “Inshallah.”

  “But, my friend, what happened with wiring the money? Time is running out. The lads are waiting for you. They are waiting for me. It’s time for both. I gave people my word. What am I to do, my dear friend? Seriously, Abu Ismael.”

  “Just tell me what you need from me?”

  “We have to buy a camera to take better pictures and I need a computer. I also have to pay for the trip to Raqqa. It’s best if you come. Don’t be late.”

  Osman texted again around midnight to remind him.

  “Are you sleeping, my dear friend? Time is running out. If you want to be here when we get the girls back you need to come quick as a flash.”

  “When should I come?”

  “Today!”

  * * *

  That same week a trial opened at Oslo District Court. Three men were accused of having participated in, planned to participate in, or supported hostilities in Syria. It was the first time a Norwegian court of law would try someone for suspected violation of section 147d of the General Civil Penal Code, which stated that “imprisonment of up to six years shall be imposed on those who form, participate in, recruit members, or provide financial or other material support to a terrorist organization, when the organization has taken steps to realize their purpose by illegal means.”

  Section 147 was known as the antiterror paragraph and was the basis for the conviction of Anders Behring Breivik. It was supplemented with part d in June 2013 in order to take account of those connected to international terror organizations. The prosecution claimed that the Kosovar Albanian brothers Valon and Visar Avdyli and Somalian Djibril Bashir had illegal ties to the Islamic State. All three denied the charges.

  The court case revealed the three men’s activities in Syria. It also shed light on friends of theirs, including Hisham and Bastian. Egzon, the third Avdyli brother, who once had brought Aisha home after she’d been thrown out into the staircase by Arfan, had been killed in combat the previous year. Evidence produced included photographs of the accused posing together with weapons. E-mails containing details of arms purchases were read aloud. PST had bugged their apartments and their cars, and set up listening equipment at their regular haunts. When the police overheard two of them discussing blowing up a kindergarten, they no longer dared allow them to walk around freely.

  “You see, we can’t come home anyway, we’ll be put in prison if we do!” Leila said to her mother. Leila knew the wife of the eldest Avdyli brother; she had remained in Raqqa when her husband had returned to Oslo for a short visit.

  Was the girls’ hijra also deemed criminal? Would they face charges if they returned home? They had, after all, taken part in, planned to take part in, and supported a terror organization. Perhaps, Sadiq considered, it would help to say that they were brainwashed. Would a waiver of prosecution be granted on the grounds of someone being brainwashed?

  A couple of days into the trial, Leila got in touch with her brother. It had been several months since he had heard from her.

  “Hi,” she wrote.

  “Oh my God!” Ismael replied, typing in a smiley and four red hearts.

  “Long time no see,” his sister responded.

  “Indeed.”

  “What’s happening?” Leila asked.

  “You tell me. How’s it going?”

  “I’m pregnant!”

  “Hahaha.”

  “7 months! I have a big belly!”

  Ismael sent a shocked emoji and asked, “Everything else good?”

  “I’m good Alhamdulillah, the cold is the only thing I can complain about otherwise things are fine, the man of the house was wounded a few months back, but maybe you heard about that. How are things with You?”

  “Great. I’ve accepted the world as it is.”

  “How is Mom getting on? And don’t be so pessimistic! The world only seem
s like a bad place if you choose to view it like that, it’s all about perspective.”

  “Mom has gone to Somaliland. And taken the boys. Dad is here in Norway.”

  “I know all that.”

  “I’ve learned to accept that Mom doesn’t love me and that my sisters are in Syria.”

  “What do you mean she doesn’t love you?”

  “It’s because I have no belief. I’ve been, like, disowned. Kinda.”

  “Then we’re in the same boat, Dad has done the same to me.”

  “Not exactly the same boat. Same sea. Different boat nigga.”

  “Fine I don’t want your stupid boat anyway, mine cooler! IS**”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Go for it.”

  “Do you seriously believe IS will take over the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I know how far down in the sand your head is buried. No offense.”

  “I’ve lived here over a year now, I can see how things are headed.”

  “IS is not a proper army, with ground forces and airplanes.”

  “From a military viewpoint they have a really good army and FYI they have well-organized ground forces and are building up their air force.”

  “They can’t even fly. Or have I been misinformed? I have seen videos of the ground forces.”

  “Ismael, the media make them out to be a gang of unprepared noobs living in a bubble who just want to pick a fight with the world. But that’s far from the truth. They’re taking over airports and military airstrips and there are many among them who can fly.”

  “But not one plane in the air.”

  “They have a national army and are prepared for an attack by the Americans, they’ve even invited them to try.”

  “That’s like me writing to John Cena saying ‘come and fight me, you coward, I’m ready for you.’ U feel the analogy.”

  “When the Americans pulled out of Iraq after declaring ‘mission accomplished,’ IS promised to return bigger and stronger than before,” Leila responded.

  “The USA annihilated the Iraqi army and killed Saddam. Because they could,” Ismael wrote back.

  “Are you aware of what little effect their air strikes here have had?”