Two Sisters

by Åsne Seierstad

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  A Note About the Author and Translator

  Copyright Page

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a documentary account.

  It is based on testimony. I constructed scenes on the basis of what those who were present related. Some scenes have several sources, others have only one.

  I based descriptions of a person’s thoughts upon what that person said he or she thought in a given situation.

  Some individuals chose not to contribute to this book. They are described according to their actions, written sources, and what others related about them.

  For Arabic words, I use a simplified version of the Journal of Middle Eastern Studies transcription system. I depart from this in the case of some proper nouns with established spellings in Western languages.

  For the most part I printed e-mails and texts without correction. In these I reproduce the sender’s spelling of Arabic words and names.

  A comprehensive review of working methods is provided in the afterword. A glossary of Islamic words and expressions and a list of published sources appear at the back of the book.

  PART I

  The Prophet said of the martyrs:

  Their souls reside in green birds, nesting in lanterns hung from the throne of the Almighty, roaming freely to eat the fruits of Paradise. Their Lord looked upon them and asked did they wish for anything. They said: What more shall we desire? We eat the fruit of Paradise from wherever we please. The Lord asked them again, and when He asked for the third time, they said: Lord, we wish that thou return our souls to our bodies so we may again offer our lives for your sake. When God saw that they were not in need of anything, He let them stay in Paradise.

  —Imparted by Abdallah ibn Masud, died c. 650

  We will all return to Allah when we die, but let us all strive to return to Allah while still alive.

  —Umm Hudayfah, aka Ayan, October 10, 2013

  1

  THE RUPTURE

  The bunk bed was in the center of the room. A white metal rail ensured that whoever lay on top did not roll off. The bed divided the room in two and was made up with colorful bedclothes. By the door there were a desk, a chair, and a wardrobe. On the other side, a chest of drawers and a window with a view of a reddish brick housing block, identical to their own. The window ledge was so low that you could easily swing your legs over it and drop down onto the grass. Notes were taped to the furniture, neatly written letters, first drafted in pencil, then gone over in blue marker: Bed. Window. Chair. Desk. Door. The wallpaper above the chest of drawers was covered in them. Big, small, high, low, warm, cold. The Arabic script was carefully rendered, although obviously the work of a beginner, as several of the letters were mixed up. The translations into Norwegian were spelled correctly but written sloppily in faint pencil.

  The younger sister, the one who slept in the top bunk, had put up the notes. They not only adorned the girls’ room but also hung around the rest of the apartment: Lamp. Sofa. Curtain. Shelf. The course in Arabic began with worldly things, but the purpose was spiritual—to read and understand the Koran as it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

  I. He. We. I am. He is. We are. Allahu Akbar. God is great. God is greater. Guide us to the straight path!

  * * *

  That October morning, Leila had climbed down from the top bunk earlier than usual. She put on a floor-length dress and joined her mother in the kitchen, which was adjacent to the girls’ room. Sara was the one in the family who woke first. She would steal out of bed, placing her feet carefully on the floor so she wouldn’t wake Sadiq. It was not until he missed her warmth, until the bed had cooled and he noticed he was freezing, that he would get up.

  Sara stood at the breakfast table, lost in her own thoughts. She looked up in surprise at her daughter, who had turned sixteen the week before. Leila resembled her father—slender, tall, and long-limbed.

  “I can help you get the boys ready,” she said.

  “Don’t you have school today?” her mother asked.

  “Yeah, I just thought you could use a hand…”

  “No, you get yourself organized, I can take care of the boys myself.”

  In contrast to her big sister, who had taken on several of the household duties, Leila did not usually offer to help out. “Her royal laziness,” her father often called her.

  Sara softly roused six-year-old Isaq and eleven-year-old Jibril. She helped Isaq get dressed and hurried the boys into the kitchen.

  Sadiq was already standing by the stove.

  The brown beans had been prepared the previous evening. Now he sautéed diced onion in oil, added a couple of crushed garlic cloves, a little more oil, then strips of red pepper and spices, until it all took on a darker color. He added the beans and simmered the mixture, then blended it all with a hand mixer. He poured the purée onto a large plate, drizzling olive oil to make golden circles in the brown.

  Isaq and Jibril were still drowsy as they plunked down on their chairs. They dipped pieces of bread into the bean stew and popped them in their mouths. Isaq made a mess as usual. Jibril hardly let a crumb fall outside his plate.

  Leila hovered around the table, where a pot of black tea with cardamom seeds had been placed.

  “Aren’t you going to sit down?” her father asked.

  “No, Ayan and I are fasting,” the sixteen-year-old replied.

  Her father did not pursue the topic. Leila and her big sister, Ayan, who was in the bathroom, were strict when it came to fasting. Women were not permitted to perform religious rituals while unclean, and the girls wanted to catch up on the days they had missed as soon as possible. Mondays and Thursdays were the best days, when the Prophet Muhammad fasted. Today was Thursday.

  Ramadan had been an ordeal. This year the fasting month had fallen in July, when the sun did not go down until after ten o’clock at night and rose just a few hours later. It was long to go without food and drink. Now, during Dhu al-Hijjah—the month of the pilgrimage—the girls were fasting again and had intensified their daily prayer. It was the most sacred period in the Islamic calendar, the best time for the hajj, to travel as a pilgrim to Mecca. Good deeds counted for more now than at other times of the year.

  * * *

  Ismael, the third brother, who was between Ayan and Leila in age, entered the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was on his way to the bathroom, where Ayan had just finished. If he encountered his sisters when strutting around half-naked, he usually lurched into them for fun. “Don’t!” they would shout. “Mom, he’s annoying us!”

  The three teenagers—Ayan, who was nineteen years old; Ismael, eighteen; and Leila, sixteen—had drifted apart. The sisters complained that their brother was only interested in working out, hanging around with friends, and playing computer games. His lack of attendance at the mosque did not go unnoticed. It was embarrassing. “You’re not a Muslim!” Ayan had recently shouted at him, and had gone on to urge her mother
to throw him out. She could not live with someone who did not pray.

  “He’s just confused!” their mother had said in his defense.

  “Kick him out!”

  “In the summer,” their mother said, trying to mollify her, “I will take him to a sheikh in Hargeisa, ask him to pray over him, talk to him…”

  Ayan had been vociferous in these arguments; Leila had merely followed her lead. The previous evening, when Ismael came home from training, Leila had rushed over and thrown her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, Ismael! I’ve missed you!”

  “Huh? I’ve only been gone a couple of hours…”

  “Where were you?”

  “At the gym.”

  “How was the workout?”

  “Eh … I was working on my upper body. Chest and arms.”

  Girls. Seriously. Leila had been mad at him for ages, and then suddenly she was all sweetness and light.

  Ismael put on jeans and a shirt and joined the others for breakfast. He opened the refrigerator door, where alongside the note bearing the word thallaja—refrigerator in Arabic—the girls had stuck up words of wisdom from the Islamic Cultural Centre of Norway. On a green sticker, torn at the edges as though someone had tried to peel it off, was written, Allah does not see your wealth and property, He sees your heart and your actions. A purple sticker read, Let he who believes in Allah and the Last Day treat his neighbor with kindness, be generous to his guests and speak the truth, which is good, or remain silent (e.g., refrain from improper and impure talk, slander, lies, spreading rumors etc.).

  Ismael stood at the counter spreading mackerel in tomato sauce on three slices of wholemeal bread. The eighteen-year-old was particular about his protein intake and thought his parents used too much oil in their cooking, as well as boiling food too long and frying things to a crisp. He wanted pure, healthy, simple food and disliked Somali seasonings and spices.

  He joined the others at the table, bumping playfully into his little brothers as he sat down. Isaq responded by punching him on the arm; Jibril merely squirmed and asked him to stop.

  “Let the boys eat,” Sara said.

  * * *

  The day was slow to break; it would still be a while before the sun appeared over the roofs of the apartment blocks in the east.

  Sadiq was on sick leave. He had injured his shoulder when a crate fell on him at the Coca-Cola warehouse. Next week he was going to a physiotherapist he had been referred to by NAV, the Norwegian welfare authority. Thoughts flew through his mind. It was a long time since he had heard from his mother in Somaliland. Was she sick? He would make sure to call her later today.

  From the girls’ room he heard a wardrobe door slam and something heavy being moved. Ayan had left secondary school in the spring and was working as an on-call employee for an agency offering personal assistants to elderly people who, as it stated in her contract, required practical assistance in everyday life. It was a sort of gap year before she went to college.

  She came out of the bedroom with a suitcase.

  “What are you doing with that?” Sadiq asked.

  “Aisha is borrowing it,” Ayan replied. “She’s taking a trip.”

  The girls and their friend often borrowed things from one another. Aisha lived a few streets away. The sisters sometimes asked their father to drive them over. On one such trip he had asked what they carried in the plastic bags they had taken back and forth. Aisha’s washing machine was broken, they explained, and they were doing her laundry. Aisha was a couple of years older than Ayan; when her husband left her, she had moved back in with her mother and sisters, along with her baby.

  Ayan dragged the suitcase behind her down the hall. At the front door she stopped by the mirror and wrapped her curly hair in a hijab.

  The elder daughter had inherited her mother’s features: a curved forehead, soft, round cheeks, and deep-set eyes. She tightened the hijab until there was not a single strand of hair showing, pulled a jilbab, a sort of hooded tunic, over it, and finally added a loose cloak. The hallway was filling up; Jibril was standing ready to go, while Isaq was trying to get his foot into a shoe.

  “You have to unlace it,” Sadiq told him.

  “I can’t,” the boy moaned.

  The same rule goes for everything in life, his father said: “Use your brain, not your brawn!”

  The youngest boy was built like Sara and Ayan, compact and stout. Sadiq crouched to loosen the tangle of laces.

  Ayan was the first to leave. “Bye!” she said, smiling to them.

  The door slammed behind her. There was more space in the hallway once she and the suitcase disappeared. Leila took her turn in front of the mirror and copied her sister’s movements. When the garments were on, she remained standing, her schoolbag on her back.

  “Do you want a lift?” her father asked. He was still struggling with Isaq’s laces.

  On days Leila started class at the same time as her younger siblings, she usually joined them in the car, even though her school lay just a short walk away.

  “No thanks,” she replied.

  Her father looked up in surprise.

  “I need to lose some weight, get more exercise,” she explained.

  “You? You’ve no fat on you! You’re a stick!” Sara said, rolling her eyes.

  Leila just smiled and gave both her parents a hug.

  “I love you, Dad,” she whispered in her father’s ear. “I love you, Mom,” she whispered to her mother.

  The declarations of love were in Somali. The siblings always spoke Somali to their mother. With their father it varied, and between themselves Norwegian was most common.

  “Will we walk together?” Ismael asked.

  They both attended Rud Upper Secondary School. Leila was in the first year of the health and social curriculum; he was in his third year, studying electronics. They rarely accompanied each other in the morning, but since she had been “her old self” the previous evening, it seemed strange not to go to school together, as they had always done in childhood.

  “No, I’ve got to…” Leila replied.

  Her brother did not catch her answer, just noticed her disappearing out the door with her rucksack.

  Finally the rest of the family was all set. The smaller boys ran up the steps, Jibril first, followed by Isaq. The terraced block of flats was built on a steep slope. In order to exit the upper side of the building, they had to ascend three flights of stairs.

  Kolsås ridge, rising up like a dark wall behind the housing estate, was shrouded in a layer of fog. Sadiq unlocked the car while the boys argued about who would sit in front.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” their father chided them. “How was it last time? Jibril was in the passenger seat; now it’s Isaq’s turn.”

  They waited for the car to warm up, then Sadiq swung out from the parking lot, much too sharply, much too fast, as usual.

  At Bryn School, Jibril, who was in his sixth year, wanted his father to leave right away; being seen with Daddy was embarrassing. But Isaq, who had just started school two months before, asked their father to walk him into the schoolyard.

  When the bell rang, Sadiq drove home to collect Sara and take her to a doctor’s appointment. Lately she had been suffering from headaches, pains in her neck, fingers, wrists, legs, and feet. She was often tired and run-down, felt cold and clammy. Were there any remedies? Maybe iron supplements would help? Calcium? Vitamin D? She had begun taking fish oil capsules, but they had not helped. “What I need is hot camel milk,” she used to say. That would make the pains go away. She was living in a country at a time of year when the sun did not warm her up, scarcely gave off light. She was not made for this.

  They drove to the local shopping center and found a spot with free parking for three hours, then they walked to the Bærum Health Clinic. When the family came to Norway, they were settled in Bærum, an affluent neighborhood nine miles southwest of Oslo. At the clinic, their family GP listened to Sadiq’s translation of his wife’s problems, posed a
few questions, examined her, and came to the conclusion that what she needed was not more pills but a change in lifestyle. Sara had to exercise more and start walking, and she should lose a considerable amount of weight.

  After the appointment, Sadiq drove his wife back home. She lay down to rest, as she often did during the day.

  The boys were finished with school at half past one. Leila usually got home shortly after them. She would take off her hijab and floor-length cloak, wash, pray, and eat a little something before going into the room she shared with Ayan. There, she would turn on her PC to do homework or listen to sermons and Koran recitals. The girls spent a lot of time in their room. “Don’t come in!” they called out, irritated, if anyone tried the door handle.

  While other mothers fretted about their daughters having boyfriends or dressing indecently, Sara had nothing to worry about. Her daughters always did as she told them. They asked permission for everything, even to knock on the neighbors’ doors, she boasted to her friends. It was gratifying that they did not melt too much into Norwegian ways. Ismael, on the other hand, was a source of concern. He was slipping away from his Somali background, she felt, and was in danger of becoming too Norwegian.

  * * *

  The minute hand on the clock passed three. Ismael had come home early from school, having promised to help his little brothers with their homework. They were lagging behind in a number of subjects. The three of them were sitting around the kitchen table. Strange that Leila was not home yet.

  Sara tried calling her. Her mobile phone was turned off. Ayan did not pick up either. Maybe the girls had something scheduled for the afternoon that she had not been aware of.

  She waited awhile before phoning again. First Leila. Then Ayan. Finally Sadiq. None of them took the call. She asked Ismael to send a text message. Something must have happened. Why else would Leila be late?

  Sara was prone to thinking the worst. Perhaps somebody had assaulted her daughter? She knew there were Norwegians who did not like those with darker skin, or Muslims, at any rate, and Leila had said she’d been harassed by a gang of boys once.