Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad
Page 42
“A dirty game,” Osman hammered into the telephone.
One day he wrote: “NATO air-dropped twenty tons of ammunition, provisions and fresh water to the FSA.”
It was sorely needed. The opposition forces were running low on supplies now that the roads were impassable.
“They dropped a further thirty tons, but in the wrong location, it all landed in ISIS hands! I’m not kidding, NATO gifted the supplies to ISIS!”
Osman believed the world was conspiring against the Syrian people—that Russia, Assad, and NATO were together against the ordinary Syrian. At least that was how it looked on the ground.
The next message Sadiq received was a picture of a corpse. He had no trouble recognizing the man. It was Hamza, Osman’s best friend, the one they had called the Lion. He lay outstretched, a red mark on his face, like a bruise. His face was framed by black curly hair and an unkempt beard that was dusty looking, or perhaps he had begun to go gray.
“Aaaaa I am hardly able to write this. Hamza, you remember him? The Lion in al-Nusra, killed north of Hama. He was with us when we went to the court in al-Dana. May Allah accept him as a martyr. Console me! I’m crying. My family is crying. He left behind two wives and seven children.”
Sadiq remembered Hamza as a force of nature; like Osman, in his early thirties.
He wrote back, “God accepted him into paradise. How was he killed? A sniper? Regime air strike? The Russians?”
“Russian air force.”
“May Allah raze the house of the pilot.”
“He wouldn’t listen to me. He never did, there was nothing I could do. Life has become miserable for us. For me and my family … our circumstances worsen by the day.”
* * *
The only woman in the Norwegian IS contingent maintaining a presence on social media was Aisha. While the sisters had not shared anything publicly, she published updates with reports on life in Raqqa on Facebook. The first post came in the middle of October 2015.
“I’ve noticed there are numerous people who want to know what it’s actually like living in IS so I’ve decided to write about it a little, in order to give a more genuine perspective.”
She wrote in Norwegian. The posts seemed intended for Norwegian girls considering traveling and were a sort of IS for Dummies. She had titled the initial post “Life and the Building of a Society in the Islamic State” and described how every district had its own administration, schools, court, police force, hospital, and welfare system.
“The criteria in order to receive assistance is of course in accordance with Islamic guidelines,” she emphasized. All that was not good in the state was the fault of the enemy: “The enemy’s brutal bombing of the civilian population and the hospitals is the reason for the lack of resources and equipment.” Enemy attack was also to blame for schools not functioning. The descriptions that followed were similar to what other IS girls had posted online. You were given a house or an apartment “dependent on availability,” everything was free, the refrigerator, microwave, washing machine, air-conditioning, and TV.
The portrayal of the caliphate was almost becoming a genre all of its own: Welcome to the lovely life where everything is free and, moreover, helps you get to paradise.
* * *
Sadiq had first promised he would vacate the apartment by October 1, then he’d been granted an extension to November 1. But October turned to November and his possessions still lay strewn about.
He awoke to hoarfrost and a chill in the air; the temperature would drop below freezing at night, and the white shimmering layer covering the ground would then melt in the course of the day. Autumn was at its most beautiful, with colors in bright yellow and red, and a breeze that cleared the air. One day, when he finally forced himself to start packing, he came across the gray-flecked beanie he had put away in May. It was time to pull it back down over his ears.
One evening in early November, as darkness fell outside, he was sitting at the computer. He heard a voice in his head: “Here’s some advice. Get the girls out! It’s going to get worse. This is only the beginning. This war will not quiet down for a long time. The girls must get out.”
The voice continued, “To think straight you have to forget they’re alive. You have to imagine you will ship two corpses home.”
He got to his feet. He had to leave. He had to get them out now. Everything but the war had been emptied of meaning. At five in the morning, he sent a text to a friend. “I have to travel to Hatay, then on to Dubai, before returning to Hatay, then.….… into Syria … If I survive I’ll see you again, if not just try to do what you can for my children. Best regards, Sadiq Abdallah Juma.”
A few hours later he sent a new text: “I’m going to sleep now. Think about it for eight hours and get back to me.”
His friend texted back as soon as he woke up: “Traveling to Raqqa now sounds ***extremely dangerous.”
Sadiq wrote back saying MI6 had requested he come. That the British were going to help him with the rescue operation. Four agents from Dubai were going to assist. British Intelligence wanted to recruit him.
A few days later he got in touch again. “I’m in Raqqa. Unbelievable.”
“You’re joking!” his friend replied.
“I’m serious.”
“Keep your head down!”
Later that day his friend heard that a mutual acquaintance had run into Sadiq at the local Oslo shopping center.
* * *
Sadiq the poet had taken hold of his mind.
He had met MI6 in Hatay, he said. Four agents had flown in from Dubai to meet him. They had outlined a plan on a grand scale for extracting his daughters, he revealed.
He said he had passed the taxi driver’s exam. Now all he needed was a written statement from the police stating he had no criminal record and a certificate of health from a doctor, and he could start applying for jobs. But he spent his days at the computer.
In the wake of the terror attacks on Paris in mid-November, the president of France, François Hollande, vowed vengeance on IS. Two days later, French fighters struck twenty targets, including command centers, recruitment bases, munitions depots, and training camps. But the problem for France, and for the coalition, was that there were still four hundred thousand civilians in Raqqa who were not allowed to leave. The hospitals were in danger of running out of blood.
As the situation for the girls, and their babies, seemed increasingly perilous and life in Bærum lacked direction, Sadiq became more focused on traveling again. The rescue operations he rehearsed in his head grew ever more spectacular. British and Somali intelligence services were involved, as well as French counterterrorist units. He also featured. “I have to go in myself to save my daughters. That’s just how it is,” he told friends. But he needed to get some money together.
He was broke. The refrigerator was empty. He sent the bulk of each welfare payment to Sara and the household in Somalia every month. He had already alienated friends by borrowing too much; he could not ask them for more.
The newspaper was his only option. His contacts in Raqqa had tipped him off about a big story, he told them, and promised photographs. Bingo, 3,000 kroner in his hand.
Dagbladet ran the story on December 18, 2015. “Exclusive—272 IS fighters lying low in Europe. 150 more terrorists on the way.” Sadiq’s inventions had again led to front-page news.
“Dagbladet can reveal details of two waves of IS terrorists specially trained to strike at targets in Europe. The first wave is reportedly in place. The second contingent remains for the moment with IS in Syria, having completed training at a camp situated between Sinjar and Mosul in Iraq.” Dagbladet wrote that the information had come from “a source with intimate knowledge of IS activities.”
The journalists could also relate, based on what Sadiq had told them, that the first wave had originally numbered 300 but 28 of these had lost their lives in Syria, in bombings, and other acts of war. This left 272, who were under “instructions to lie low.”
The journalists wrote that “PST confirm that the information was known to them prior to Dagbladet contacting them.”
This was incorrect. PST had denied any knowledge of the story. The journalist who had been in touch with them had been so doubtful about the veracity of the information that he revealed the source of the story to PST: the father from Bærum.
The newspaper decided to run the story all the same. The spread gave the impression of Dagbladet being well-informed, of almost being on the ground in Syria, and being privy to IS terror plans. And it sold newspapers, as playing on fear often does. Terrorism experts in Oslo shrugged. The details were too precise to be true. It was not uncommon in the Arab world to use precise, preferably irregular numbers, to grant a dubious news story credibility: 300 terrorists, minus 28 killed, 272 left. A photograph of a building and a large crater accompanied the text. The caption read: “A source, who has previously given reliable information, claims that planning related to the attack in Europe took place at this building in Raqqa. Photo: private.”
Sadiq and Osman had delivered to order: something about jihadists, preferably Norwegian, with pictures.
* * *
The third holiday season without the girls was drawing close.
Ismael returned home from Vestfold University College. He had changed his major midway through the semester. Nanotechnology was not the right fit after all. He was now aiming to become an automation engineer, designing, creating, developing, and managing automated systems, which the prospectus stated meant “systems collecting data from sensors, supervising, controlling, and regulating processes according to given rules and purposes.”
Concrete. Tangible. Verifiable. Ismael had found his niche.
Just before Christmas, after several months without a word, Leila got in touch. It took its customary form, as though nothing in particular was happening around her.
“Hi, Ismael, what’s happening, no more messages?”
She went on. “Can I ask you a question, and you promise to answer totally honestly? You say you don’t believe in Islam, right? Are you at least searching for something to believe in? Like, seriously, because if you don’t believe Islam is the truth then there must be a truth out there, right? Are you looking for it? Your niece is doing fine … thanks for asking, 4 months old now.”
“Can’t take more of this,” Ismael wrote back. “Whenever you get in touch I’m reminded of 2 sisters I’m never going to meet again. So congrats on the child but just stop contacting me. I believe I will revert to whatever I was BEFORE I was born when I die. That’s it.”
“Ismael … I never thought of you as a pessimist, what do you mean we’ll never see each other again? Never say never. I asked if you were searching for the truth because that’s what you told me last time (how you wanted to find something to believe in) because as people we need ‘something’ to believe in no matter what it may be. ‘I believe I will revert to whatever I was BEFORE I was born when I die.’ Do you mean to tell me that you’re living and have ambitions to become nothing?”
Ismael replied after an hour. “Yep. I think you misunderstand, nothingness is neither good nor bad, nothingness is perfect harmony. Think about how beautiful nothing actually is.”
Leila did not respond.
After an hour, Ismael asked, “Are you being bombed?”
A week later he wrote: “?”
Then he noticed Leila had deactivated her account.
There was nothing more after that.
34
LEGACY
The brain is built up of experiences. They start in the womb.
A newborn can recognize her mother’s voice. After a week she recognizes her smell, after a few more her face. At two months a child can raise her head when lying on her stomach. She can distinguish between herself and her surroundings. At three months a baby can signal when she wants to be cuddled. At four months she can interact visually. By five months she is able to interpret the feelings behind facial expressions. A six-month-old baby will begin to show interest in other babies. She will be able to sit by herself, in some cases will have begun to crawl.
At seven months she has formed a bond with her parents, if she has been given the opportunity. The world develops fast. The brain is quickly furnished. Experiences will figure into language, logic, and systems. At eight months old she will learn to be skeptical of strangers and to check with her parents to learn if the newcomer is one of us. Thoughts will begin to form, which in time will turn into beliefs and convictions. At nine months old she is able to stand.
That was when Leila called. “Asiyah just stood up on her feet!”
Sara cried, “Oh, how wonderful!”
When the girls called their mother, it was to update her about the babies’ progress. Asiyah had been through several bouts of illness, but Leila was now confident she had fully recovered. Little Sara did not have much of an appetite. But things were much improved.
In autumn 2016, the two sisters, their little girls, and their husbands were living together in a large collective, with Norwegian, Swedish, and British couples. Along with an increasing number of children.
“It’s so nice, Mom,” Leila told Sara. “We’re never alone.”
The women made food, watched each other’s children, ran errands or cleaned the house, while the men carried out the tasks the Islamic State ordered them to. The sense of sisterhood seemed strong. If one of them had a headache, another one did the dishes, if one of them had a toothache, another would fetch her painkillers, the girls told their mother. They cared for one another’s children, washing them, changing them, feeding them, and putting them to bed.
Cousins Asiyah and Sara lived a life like their mothers, indoors.
Their grandmother asked about the bombing.
“Mom, it’s not a problem. We live in a solid house, and we have a really good basement, a proper bomb shelter, don’t worry.”
When they heard the airplanes, they just went down, they assured her, plain and simple, an everyday occurrence.
On social media IS girls were preoccupied with appearing unafraid. The bombing was more an irritation than anything else. “Three bombs already in the space of an hour. What kind of animals bomb people at nine in the morning. I hate America,” wrote one British girl. Umm Jihad shrugged it off: “A bomb landed literally right behind me as I was walking home. Bombs are noisy is all I can say.”
* * *
Three winters, three springs. Without them.
The girls hardly got in touch throughout 2016. They called on Muslim holy days and that was it. Was that the only times they were allowed? Sara wondered. But she did not ask. She never asked anything that might annoy that dangerous group who were no doubt listening in.
Sadiq and Sara had been prepared for the worst for a long time. Readying themselves mentally for the day when the news came that their daughters were dead. Sometimes Sadiq thought it would be for the best. It would give them closure. They could then get on with their lives. Sara could return home.
When she rang from Hargeisa and said she missed him, he cut her off.
“You know where I am. If you miss me, then come home.” She was the one who had chosen to move, now she wanted sympathy and to be consoled for making that choice. She knew what he meant, that she should come home, enroll the boys in school.
Find the girls! That was what Sara had said from day one. Save them!
For Sadiq that had become the meaning of life.
/> He was diminished in Sara’s eyes, he knew that. He had failed as a father, as a man, as the head of the family. This was the punishment. They had left him. His daughters. His wife. His youngest sons. Ismael. He was alone.
“Your wife will soon return,” his friends said, to comfort him. “Your daughters too.”
There was little sign of that happening.
But his sons wanted to come home. In Hargeisa they spent most of their time in front of the PlayStation in the living room. Or they played football using a dented plastic bottle. Their parents had argued the previous summer about where they should live. Sadiq had been prepared to compromise. One more year, then they had to come home, in plenty of time for the next school year. Fine, Sara had said.
She kept her word. A month before school finished for the summer, she and the boys landed at Oslo airport. The very next day Isaq and Jibril were back at school in their old classes. They were given close follow-up from the school and Child Welfare. The goal was for them to continue at their age level.
Ismael returned from college and took a summer job at a local supermarket. The three boys shared the bedroom while Sara and Sadiq slept in the living room. Ismael whispered to his little brothers at night: “Norway is where we belong.” Isaq and Jibril nodded in the darkness.
Ismael had no contact with his sisters any longer. The last time he had heard from Leila was the message before New Year, when he had sent back a question mark. And received no response. From Ayan he hadn’t had any news for a year.
In August he took a break from his supermarket job. He had been picked as one of a hundred participants in Emax, an entrepreneurial program for young people organized by Innovation Norway. The program aimed to inspire and enable “young entrepreneurs to continue developing their dreams and striving to realize their goals and visions.” The course concluded with a weekend in Lillehammer, where the young people would get the “tools to develop themselves and create their own, and Norway’s, future.” The hundred who were picked out were divided into ten groups to undertake tasks set by different companies. Their ideas and their development would be evaluated and a winner chosen; previous winners had been invited to London, Silicon Valley, and Shanghai to “network and learn more about building and scaling a business.”