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

by Åsne Seierstad

  “What about IS?”

  “If Assad falls, IS will fall. That’s for sure. Time will prove me right.”

  Their conversation continued into the early hours.

  “Have they silencers?” Sadiq asked.

  “You can buy them for $2,000. Be patient.”

  “I want the guards watching my girls out of the way.”

  “I have five men on the job and two women. They have five rifles and two handguns. I’ve bought the ammunition and one of the handguns, the lads have their own weapons.”

  “It’s not enough for an operation like this.”

  “My dear friend, we cannot open fire in the middle of IS territory … we can only strike on the sly.”

  “Do whatever you have to, shoot the girls if you want, get rid of them, just put an end to this!”

  “Your daughters are also my sisters!” Osman wrote back.

  Around one in the morning Sadiq wrote, “Put an end to this torment, this torture I’m going through. Concentrate, focus!”

  “Cool down!” Osman answered.

  * * *

  Bærum was cool enough. The temperature hovered under 40°, did not rise above 50° at a stretch, and they called this spring?

  Sadiq wore a winter coat, heavy boots, and a gray-flecked beanie with a black ribbed bottom. He felt the chill constantly but did not want to put on the heat too often, since he was the only one there. Ismael was out a lot. He had gotten a girlfriend during the spring and was at home even less. Sadiq had met her once; she was so pale she was almost translucent, with long blond, almost white, hair.

  He could tackle the cold in winter, when he was prepared. But now in May, when the grass was green and the new leaves on the birch trees shimmered, no, that made him shiver. He slept with his hat on, but it did not help because without Sara the bed was cold.

  He often got up at night to wander around the neighborhood. He walked a lot during the day as well. Ascending Kolsås ridge was a favorite. Struggling up the steep path. He enjoyed the view from the top, no matter how sad and frustrated he felt otherwise. But mostly he stayed in. Drummed his fingers on the table. Ethiopian rhythms. Eritrean rhythms. Somali rhythms. He found himself composing a few lines. Calling a friend. And then another. He sent texts. To Osman: Has anything happened? To Sara: I miss you. To Ismael: Will you be home for dinner? But not to the girls anymore. He had not heard anything from Ayan since November. It was also months since he had received a message from Leila. Osman replied: Stop nagging. Sara answered: The boys miss you too. Ismael answered: I fix food myself. Sadiq was being worn away inside.

  It was as though fate was always one step ahead of him. Something or other with a fiendish temperament threw a monkey wrench in the works. Every time they were close to getting the girls out, something happened to thwart their plans. But if whatever it was, was of this world, he did not know.

  “I’m in the hospital, in Dar al-Aisa, near Aleppo,” Osman wrote one day. “There was an air strike. I was almost killed. My back is full of shrapnel.”

  Two MiG fighters had roared above him. As if the highways in heaven came crashing down, he described the noise. These were the aircraft, purchased by Assad from the Russians, that had wrought the most destruction on Syria.

  “I thought my number was up.”

  Sadiq stayed cool. “When are you going to get around to kidnapping those bloody girls?” he inquired.

  Osman responded by sending him a picture from his hospital window of the Euphrates flowing gently past. “I’m still bedridden, surviving on painkillers. My neighbor committed suicide yesterday. Threw himself down his well.”

  “My younger daughter is soon in her ninth month. The elder in her seventh.”

  Sara had told him about Ayan also being pregnant.

  “The lads hinted at it, that she was expecting. With regard to the younger one, her husband is around her the whole time. But I’ve got wind of plans to send the husbands to the front. They’ll be gone for a few weeks,” Osman wrote from his sickbed. “Rumor has it the Americans are planning to bomb Atmeh, everyone has evacuated their headquarters. My Facebook account has been shut down btw. I have lost all my contacts. According to the message from the Facebook administrator because of ‘support of a terror organization, incitement to violence, and posting pictures containing violent images.’”

  On May 8, Sadiq wrote: “I’m forty today. I love my mother. She’s the one I’m thinking about today.”

  “The IS men have still not left the house,” Osman wrote three days later. “My boys are bored of hanging around and waiting. The girls are lucky, their soldier husbands are always around. These guys never go anywhere, what is it they actually do? The latest from Raqqa is there’s a lot of internal squabbling in IS. Quite a few desertions. I think the situation will soon turn bloody, the tools are being put away and the weapons taken out.”

  “Due date soon, this is our last chance!” Sadiq pestered.

  Two nights later, Sadiq came home from the miserly spring, placed his phone on the living room table, sat down on the sofa, and stared at it. It was close to midnight. He picked it up and checked his messages and e-mail. Nothing new. He put it back down, took it up, and tapped on the messages from Leila. He wanted to write to her, even though she had stopped writing, stopped responding.

  “It’s Dad. I’m worried about both of you.”

  Not a peep, as usual.

  The house, on the other hand, made sounds. The refrigerator hummed, the stovetop emitted clicks now and again, the washing machine could suddenly gurgle, and the dishwasher swished, sounds he had never thought about before, but now, on his own, it was as though the bare apartment was trying to say something.

  He sent another text.

  “Salam aleikum. Have you given birth?”

  Secondary school students were out celebrating the approaching end of their final semester. Horns from the buses and vans they painted and partied in could be heard. Rain was forecast for later that night and heavy drops were already beating upon the windowpanes. Leila would be eighteen in October. Next year she was supposed to be one of those students out enjoying life. He sighed. He was getting to his feet to find something to drink when the screen of the mobile phone lit up.

  “Aleikum salam.”

  Followed by: “No, not yet.”

  Then another peep: “She’s not due for a month.”

  Then she logged off.

  Sadiq sat stupefied on the sofa. Leila had replied as though they had seen each other just yesterday. She is not due. Did she know it would be a girl, or was she guessing?

  Who is my daughter, actually?

  This was a question he found himself asking more and more. Who was she? Did he ever really know her? And Ayan, people said they were birds of a feather, he thought he understood her so well. Did he actually know her at all?

  He wrote a message to Osman: “My younger daughter, the tall one, called me tonight, in four weeks she is giving birth to a daughter. This is our last chance. We only have a month.”

  * * *

  Exhausted, Sadiq fell asleep on the sofa in the early hours of the morning. It had been a restless night, spent toing and froing, looking at the internet, and smoking. He did not stir until late in the day. When he woke up, he thought about the Somali twins he had read about online the night before. The girls had called their parents in Bristol to say they had fled from the Islamic State and were in hiding. Their parents had gone to the police, and the British prime minister had appeared on television to say that if they were penitent, they would receive a pardon and face no punishment. The seventeen-year-olds had, however, been tracked down by IS, taken prisoner, and beheaded. Killed because of what they had said to their parents, punished because their parents had gone to the media, slaughtered by IS because that kafir David Cameron had shown support for them. They had been beheaded in the center of Raqqa. In the photograph they had looked so much like his daughters. He could picture it all so clearly, their pleas for mercy, the
knife cutting their throats, the screams, before it went quiet. The thought of the blade against a throat made him feel nauseous.

  But when he went to read the story again that Saturday morning, it was no longer online. Yet he had read the entire thing the previous night, even seen the photograph of the beheadings. He thought it had been on Al Arabiya’s web pages, or maybe on Reuters. But it had disappeared from the net, as though it had never existed. He was confused. Had he imagined the whole thing?

  He stared out at the gray morning. It looked chilly. Tomorrow was Constitution Day. People in Bærum were ironing the shirts of their national costumes. They were shining their shoes. Getting flags out. Placing sprigs of birch in vases. Shopping for the May 17 breakfast or buying flowers and champagne for the host. Final-year students were preparing for their last big party prior to exams.

  Sadiq was not invited anywhere.

  There were no small boys to accompany to the children’s parade. No one to cheer on as they hopped along in a sack race, balanced on stilts, or threw balls at tin cans. All that would still happen, as usual, only without Isaq and Jibril.

  The life around him no longer concerned him. He used to be happy, for the most part. He thought about that now, how cheerful he had been. Even during the civil war, even when he lost his father and brother. Now he was mainly indifferent. Nothing had any effect on him.

  At the same time, he was becoming forgetful, unable to remember things or words. Sometimes, like now, he wondered if he was imagining things; he believed he had read things he had thought up himself, things that really did take place, but only in his head, stories born of his own anxiety.

  He decided to take a shower. It enlivened him a bit. While he was in the bathroom, his mobile phone on the living room table received a message.

  “Abu Ismael, your younger daughter, the tall one, is in Atmeh.”

  The hot water poured over him. He wondered if he was losing it. He pondered, had he read about the two girls or had he dreamed it? It had all been so clear to him: The Somali sisters from Bristol, Cameron making his statement, and now it was all gone. No sisters, no beheadings, no Cameron.

  In Atmeh, Osman was growing impatient. “Abu Ismael, are you asleep? Wake up!”

  The mobile phone emitted its peeps into the empty room. Sadiq dried off, dressed, put on water for coffee, and checked his phone, as he routinely did several hundred times a day.

  “I need to drive to al-Dana, won’t have any signal, be back in two hours. Reply to me,” read the last message. Sadiq scrolled up the screen. And stiffened. Then everything loosened. Like an avalanche. Leila was rescued! A wave of relief washed over him. Tears ran down his cheeks. Then in the next moment he thought: Only Leila? Why only her? Where is Ayan?

  He began frantically texting Osman. Tried to call him. But the Syrian had no coverage. Should he ring Sara? No, he had to wait.

  So he waited.

  Two hours passed. Leila was out! Three hours. A burden had been lifted off one shoulder. But the thought of Ayan still weighed upon him, casting a shadow on the news.

  Osman finally got in touch again. “Abu Ismael. Good news. Your daughter with a child is in Atmeh. Your tall daughter.”

  With a child? Had she already given birth?

  Osman was overcome with joy at having saved Leila. She had come out onto the street outside the house they lived in, dressed in a niqab, with the child on her arm. Osman’s boys had driven slowly past her, pulled in, handed her the note, told her they could drive her out of Raqqa, whereupon she had jumped into the car and they had driven through all the roadblocks, all the checkpoints, just driven, driven, they had not been stopped anywhere along the way.

  “A godsend,” Osman wrote. “He showed us mercy today.”

  Sadiq asked to speak to his daughter.

  “Wait awhile. She is tired, wants to sleep.”

  “I can fly down first thing tomorrow. Do not send her to Turkey before I am in Hatay.”

  On receiving no answer, he tried to call. Osman’s mobile phone merely made clicking sounds.

  “This is good news, don’t worry,” Osman wrote.

  “I’m worried about everything,” Sadiq responded.

  “She says she is tired, that she doesn’t want to talk to you. Your grandchild is four weeks old.”

  A four-week-old child? Leila had just written that she was due in four weeks. Had he misunderstood? Had she actually written that the child was four weeks old?

  “I want to hear her voice.”

  Was it someone else? Perhaps it was Emira, Bastian’s wife. She had a child. She was also tall. Her father had said she wanted to travel home but had not been able. But she was Pakistani, not Somali. Osman could not have been so mistaken. On the other hand, Osman had not seen her face, only written that she was tall. His mother and wife were looking after the runaway and her child now.

  Hours went by. Finally a message came: “Dear brother. My best friend. The girl is in my house. Don’t worry. Please. Calm down.”

  11:20 p.m.: “Eh…? Who is she or who are they? Let me speak to her.”

  11:21: “Just wait, I don’t want to pressure her.”

  11:22: “Have her send a recording on WhatsApp.”

  11:22: “The girl says she knows your daughters.”

  Do not crack now. He was floating in another dimension. It was over.

  “She is the image of your daughter Leila. I’m sure it is her, she is just frightened. She told me lots of things at odds with one another. First she said she was from the UK, then she told me she was from South Africa.”

  11:24: “A liar.”

  11:25: “She says she is not your daughter. She also said your daughters are twins.”

  11:25: “Tell God to send her to hell! She’s lying. I don’t care who she is. I won’t waste time. Or energy. You’ve kidnapped the wrong girl.”

  How long had it lasted, the joy at Leila being rescued? He went onto the balcony to have a smoke. Sensing hope and losing it came at a cost. Some sentences formed into a poem.

  The leaves are quite still

  Not so my heart

  Nor my head

  They clamor

  When Ismael arrived home from a May 17 party, unaware of the drama of the last few hours, he sent a picture to Leila. It was of their mother, taken in Somaliland the previous summer. Sara was sitting on the floor with her legs tucked under her, looking into the camera. “Don’t u miss this face?” Ismael asked.

  He had tried reasoning. Tried logic. He was exhausted by the whole thing and just wanted his sister to look at their mother and realize how much pain she had caused her. Leila remained silent. Ismael could not sleep. At four in the morning, he sent a picture of himself and asked, “Why are you and IS in favor of suicide bombing?”

  No response from Raqqa.

  Only Osman wrote. The rescue team had seen a woman in a niqab leaving the large house with a small child, and they thought it was Leila and that she had given birth. They told her they could help her get out of Raqqa. The girl had hopped into the car and sat in silence for the entire journey.

  “Are they staking out the wrong girls?? Have they been anywhere near my girls at all? Remember, my girls have skin like olive oil, if this girl is from South Africa then she’s very black. My girls aren’t that black.” Sadiq added, “My wife will be upset when she finds out you thought the girls were so dark ☺.”

  “Remember, we can only see their eyes,” Osman replied.

  The girl had become a problem for him. He was fearful on several fronts—that she might blow his network, that she would give him away to the Turkish police and land him in trouble next time he crossed the border, that she might still have ties to IS. She knew where he lived, had seen the smugglers. He impressed upon her the importance of not exposing him. After a few days, the girl and her baby were dispatched across the border to Turkey. A family had their daughter returned to them, without having lifted a finger. Out of the war zone, delivered for free. Sadiq felt bitter. Th
e girl had been rescued with the help of his network. The world was unfair. The pain unbearable. He had believed, though, if only for a brief time, that Leila was free …

  Sadiq made no attempt to talk to the girl when he realized she was not Leila, even though she could have had valuable information about his daughters. He could not face it, as if he did not want to know how things actually were with them. Not knowing offers its own type of protection.

  * * *

  In Raqqa the heat had set in. The pregnancies were beginning to take a toll. When the girls were outside, they wore several layers, as well as material covering their nose and mouth. The power outages that had rendered the rooms freezing cold in the winter now stopped all the fans. For a few short weeks the sandy earth had a green tinge to it, now it was again brown, spring in the desert shifted quickly to baking heat.

  But they never called home to gripe. In the caliphate everyone was happy and had faith in the future. Anything else testified to apostasy.

  After a week, Leila answered Ismael’s question from May 17.

  “I have never said anything about suicide bombing,” was her terse reply.

  Ismael wasted no time posing a follow-up question. “What is the IS view on suicide bombers?”

  “Why are you asking me about fiqh, when you don’t even believe in it?”

  Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence and the interpretation of sharia as expressed in the Koran and tradition. In addition to dealing with ritual deeds like prayer, fasting, alms, and the pilgrimage, it covers civil law, criminal law, and the area concerned with Ismael’s question: the law of war. As far as IS was concerned, God was the legislator and sharia a part of the revelation that could not be altered or adapted.

  “I just want to know.”

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “Too difficult a question?”

  “No, just don’t understand why you’re asking me when you can easily find out on the net,” she answered after midnight.

  “Don’t want to read propaganda. Want to hear from you, since you’re there,” Ismael wrote, and sent an image of an ear.