Two Sisters

by Åsne Seierstad

  By “destroy them,” he had meant that he hoped the soldiers would suffer psychological problems upon returning home.

  * * *

  The type of guys Aisha admired were all on the PST watchlist, a list Islam Net did not want to be included on.

  The board discussed her case. Any greater focus on the niqab issue at the moment would only whet critics’ appetites; in the worst case, they feared, it could lead to a niqab ban. Then Aisha would be damaging both “the situation of the niqab and of Muslims.” The board voted not to publicly support Aisha.

  Later Fahad Qureshi took Aisha aside. “It’s sad you’re at the receiving end of so much criticism,” he told her. “May the man who pulled off your veil get his rightful punishment.” But Norway was not ready for the niqab, he explained, Norwegians did not accept people who were different. Inshallah their attitude would soon become more inclusive.

  At home, the trouble continued. The family lived in a small basement apartment in Bærum. Aisha and her sisters were at their wits’ end. One night, one of them was pleading, tearfully, with their parents to stop arguing; when her father pushed her aside and stormed out, she lost her temper. She swept everything on the table onto the floor, followed by everything on the shelves and on the worktops. “I’m only doing the same as Dad!” she shouted. She smashed the TV and her father’s cameras. She flung his laptop at the wall and then threw everything into a pile.

  When their father came home, all hell broke loose. He beat his daughter around the head several times, then pushed her mother onto the floor and kicked her. One of the sisters bit his hand to stop him from hitting them. Aisha took the three youngest sisters into another room, locked the door, and phoned the police. A patrol car arrived, arrested their father, and charged him with assault. It led to a fresh meeting at the Mediation Service. “He has promised not to lay his hands on his wife and children,” the report drily stated. The father moved out and the parents separated. Following one more violent episode, a restraining order was taken out against the father in the spring of 2012. Aisha vowed never to see him again.

  Beatings, intimidation, fear. She had switched off her emotions in order to survive. Once she was free of her father’s influence, she was eager to fill the void with something beautiful, something strong, something of her own.

  * * *

  Men wearing the clothing of the Prophet caught Aisha’s attention. Who could be more dependable and true than a man who followed Muhammad?

  The bearded men who had turned up at the Peace Conference did not have a solid hierarchical organization with positions and membership lists, but they nominated a leader—emir—and a ruling council—shura. They wanted Norway to become an Islamic state governed by sharia, but they disagreed on how best to achieve that goal. For the time being they made do with preaching on the streets and demonstrations.

  There was no ideological guiding light to decide on the matter in dispute, but there were several strong personalities who ruled along the same lines as in gang culture, employing bonds of loyalty. The group often bickered about theology, which the open discussions online testified to. The language could appear somewhat schizophrenic, neofundamentalism mixed with criminal code and gangster slang.

  Some immersed themselves in the Koran. Study circles were held at a mosque in Grønland until the religious leader there, fearing problems with the authorities, asked them to leave. They borrowed other premises or met at one another’s homes.

  When the videomaker Bastian Vasquez was released from custody, Arfan Bhatti was there to pick him up. The convert with the Catholic background was not an academic Islamist and reading frustrated him. “This isn’t the time to dust off old books, it’s the time for action,” he wrote in an e-mail to another in the group after having sneered his way through a meeting. It was the first and last study circle the convert would attend. With his video he had accomplished part of his goal—recognition from Arfan Bhatti. The two of them now hung out together almost every day.

  While some in the milieu attempted to be scholarly, others preferred to discuss the use of terror. Following the reprinting of the Muhammad cartoons in Norwegian newspapers and in protest against Norwegian military involvement in Afghanistan, the most militant believed that attacks against targets in Norway were legitimate. The killing of Muslims in other parts of the world had to be avenged.

  An eye for an eye, the principle of retributive justice, was central.

  A number of the young men discussed possible targets and settled on the best location to attack: Aker Brygge, a high-end residential and retail area on the waterfront in Oslo. In the evenings, there would be no children or strict Muslims around, only financial employees in its restaurants and bars, along with bumpkins on a visit to the city.

  They also agreed that Parliament was not such a bad target either.

  However, after lengthy discussions, the shura decided that Norwegian civilians could not be targeted, even in a country where the population was responsible for its own leaders. After all, some of the victims of the terror attack might not have voted for the warmongers. It would be better to attack an army barracks.

  Perhaps they had too much to lose. Perhaps the little country they lived in was not bad enough. In any case, the most militant among them found a new arena to fight in, one with far more appeal than an attack on a domestic military base.

  “To offer prayer—as opposed to waging jihad on the battlefield—is like the trifling of children,” Abdullah Azzam had written. The mujahideen were to offer their blood when Muslim lands were attacked. In Syria they could fight for an Islamic state alongside real brothers, and then Islam could spread northward from there.

  Some were attracted by the adventure. Some by the camaraderie. Others by the promise of getting their sins washed away. One thing was certain—Syria gave them a direction in life, a feeling of doing the right thing. And if you were killed, you were guaranteed a place right beneath God’s throne.

  The methods used to stir people into action were familiar terrorist recruitment. Gruesome images of dead and wounded children in Afghanistan and Syria were contrasted directly with the Norwegian military effort. Selective quotations from the Koran, reinforcing the message that the West was at war with Islam, offered further backing. The myth that Europe wanted to wipe out Islam also proved effective propaganda. That Norwegians did not like Muslims was an established fact. Muslims were repressed and discriminated against. Supporting jihad was an act of self-defense.

  The milieu had a love-hate relationship with the media. They both sought publicity and shied away from the public eye, but were adept at getting their points of view across. At the same time as some journalists were being threatened—shots were even fired through the windows of one’s home—the suspect, the infamous Arfan Bhatti, was conducting a secret romance with a blond and blue-eyed TV reporter.

  * * *

  Aisha announced she wanted to get married.

  “To an emir,” she told Dilal.

  “Who?” Dilal asked in surprise.

  “His name is Ubaydullah Hussain.” Aisha showed her a picture of him online. He was smiling into the camera, looked cute with curly hair and a roundish face.

  Isn’t that the same guy Emira had a secret relationship with? Dilal wondered.

  That’s over, Aisha was quick to counter, and went on to tell her she had asked a go-between to propose for her.

  Dilal was astonished. “You proposed?”

  Aisha nodded. She had never spoken to the object of her affections but had seen him with a microphone in his hand while dressed like the Prophet and liked what she saw. The baby-faced Islamist was a good public speaker. Besides, he was hafiz, someone who knew the Koran by heart.

  The matchmaker, a Norwegian Iraqi from Larvik, was one of the foremost figures among the new wave of Islamists. Mohyeldeen Mohammad entered the public eye when he held a rally in Oslo against the Muhammad caricatures: “When will the Norwegian authorities and their media understand how serio
us this is?” he said. “Maybe not before it’s too late. Maybe not before there is a September 11th on Norwegian soil. This is not a threat but a warning.”

  The demonstration had led to Mohyeldeen’s expulsion from the Islamic University in Medina. The institution decided he was an agitator. He was placed under arrest by the Saudi Arabian security police upon his return to the country and deported back to Norway.

  The answer Aisha was waiting for was slow in coming. Every time she inquired, Mohyeldeen told her he had yet to hear anything.

  Dilal followed from the sidelines. To think that Aisha had proposed herself! Taking what had always been the man’s privilege as her own—it could be viewed as a feminist act. Breaking with convention in a radical way. Aisha was unconventional in a sense, seemingly unconcerned about what people said. When she wanted something, she went at it like a freight train. Now she wanted the spokesman for extremism in Norway, the man PST would in time suspect of being the central figure in the radicalization and recruitment of Norwegian Muslims to go fight in Syria.

  Dilal was aware of the lack of a father and a safe base in Aisha’s life, and it seemed to her that what her friend now sought was status and respect rather than love. She wanted to be the wife of one of the leaders in the Islamist milieu, which had become her new home. Here she found a sense of belonging, support, and sentiments she identified with: We are different, they are oppressing us, we must retaliate.

  The proposal eventually reached the ears of the recipient. Ubaydullah asked around to find out more about the young woman behind the straightforward offer. What he heard led him to reject it. She wasn’t very pretty, he was told. A bit chubby, someone whispered in his ear. In short, no deal.

  Rejection proved no hindrance to Aisha; she merely set her sights higher, on an even more prominent figure. She could not use Mohyeldeen again, though, and taking matters into her own hands, she set up an e-mail account under an alias and made contact with the new target—a man fifteen years her senior, who had spent more of his adult years inside a prison than outside, and who, among other charges, was convicted of shooting at the synagogue in Oslo, but acquitted on terrorism charges—Arfan Bhatti himself.

  He was already married, but that was no impediment.

  There were several parts to her plan.

  “I’m contacting you on behalf of a friend,” Aisha wrote. “She is very religious and wishes to know if you would be interested in marriage. She is willing to become your second wife.”

  Yes, indeed, Bhatti was interested in marriage.

  What to do next? Aisha wondered. She asked Dilal.

  “I suppose you have to show up as that friend on your own e-mail address,” Dilal suggested. “But are you sure he is the one you want?”

  Aisha had never been so sure of anything.

  Arfan Bhatti’s criminal career had begun at the age of thirteen, when he joined the gang Young Guns. When he was fifteen, he stabbed a shop owner in central Oslo with a kitchen knife after having hit him over the head with a bottle. For that, he received his first conviction. His boyhood years were spent between primary school in Norway and stays with his extended family in Pakistan. Child Welfare took increasing care of him and he was placed in an institution. His teenage years were characterized by gang criminality and time spent in and out of prison. He acquired a reputation in Oslo for violent extortion, and at twenty-one he was placed under preventative detention for having shot a person during debt collection. The court-appointed psychiatrist, Berthold Grünfeld, determined that he had “insufficiently developed mental capacities,” and in two later court cases the experts diagnosed an “antisocial personality disorder.” He demonstrated “deficiency in his sense of responsibility and respect for social norms and obligations, apathy toward the feelings of others and the absence of an ability to feel guilt.”

  Aisha pretended she’d been contacted by her fictitious alter ego and got back in touch with Arfan as herself. They began chatting on Facebook. They exchanged messages and talked on the telephone. She had seen him at the demonstration in January, which he had attended with his little sons in tow. He had never seen her and she offered to send him a picture. He refused. He wanted things to proceed in the proper way, in the Islamic way.

  Dilal gave her friend some well-intentioned advice to facilitate Arfan falling for her.

  “You have to do yourself up, Aisha. Put on some makeup. Fix your hair. Buy some nicer clothes!”

  Beneath all the layers of veils, Aisha usually wore sweaters and loose-fitting jogging pants. Dilal felt obliged to offer some instruction: “Remember, you are going to remove your niqab when the two of you are alone together!”

  “Allah doesn’t see the exterior, only what is within,” Aisha replied.

  “But you aren’t marrying Allah!”

  “Don’t blaspheme!”

  “Some deodorant, or perfume even, and you should—”

  “That is haram,” Aisha responded.

  * * *

  Aisha came in through the women’s door. Arfan strode in the main entrance. He was dressed in traditional Pakistani garb. She wore a niqab. He had procured a man to conduct the marriage ceremony, as well as two witnesses and a guardian—a wali—for her, a well-known Islamist belonging to the old guard.

  It was a nikah marriage, one conducted according to Muslim law.

  A couple of minutes later they were husband and wife.

  The missed calls from her mother had accumulated on her telephone. She knew that her mother would never have gone along with her marrying Bhatti. She had confided only in her closest friends. Eventually, while sitting beside one of Norway’s most feared men in the passenger seat of the car en route to her honeymoon, she called her mother back and informed her she was on the way up the mountains with her husband.

  She did not bother to tell her father. He later heard about the marriage via an acquaintance.

  The honeymoon was to be spent in Hafjell, a posh ski resort a few hours’ drive north of Oslo where downhill skiing events had been held during the Winter Olympics of 1994. Arfan had rented a cabin. The newlyweds stopped along the way to buy food. They were really going to have a fine time of it.

  When they got to the cabin, Aisha took off her veils.

  * * *

  The honeymoon was a disaster. In the car on the way home they scarcely exchanged a word.

  The Islamist had tired of her almost immediately. Back in Oslo, Aisha lay on the sofa in their apartment in Stovner in the eastern suburbs and cried. Arfan had told her he regretted the marriage, he was not attracted to her. “You’re not how I thought you’d be,” was all he said.

  “What will I do?” she sobbed over the telephone.

  Dilal was at a loss for ideas, searching her repertoire.

  “What about dolling yourself up a little?”

  Aisha’s reply was inaudible.

  “Have you got anything other than jogging bottoms?”

  She had a pretty Pakistani dress, Aisha replied meekly.

  “Put that on, apply some makeup, prepare some good food, and greet him at the front door with a kiss!”

  It was to no avail. He walked straight past her when he came home. They already slept in separate rooms.

  Arfan had neglected to inform his first wife of his new bride. She heard the news from someone else after a couple of weeks. It resulted in a row where she threw a clothes iron at him and he hit her. He was later convicted of domestic violence. He termed it “smacking,” akin to what he did to his sons when they failed do their Koran lessons properly. The charges cited blows to the face, head, and back.

  In the summer of 2012, he relinquished custody of his children and began making plans to travel to the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He had “so much damned hate” in his heart, he told a journalist, the very thought of the authorities made him so angry that he could cry. Living in the West was no longer an option. He had to go ahead and blaze a trail so his children would not grow up being too influenced
by Norwegian culture.

  “When I get back, I want you gone from here,” he told Aisha before leaving. But he ended up throwing her out in the middle of the night prior to his departure.

  In the early hours, Aisha called the man regarded as the kindest among the Islamists—the Kosovo Albanian Egzon Avdyli, a former troublemaker from Dønski. Sitting in the stairwell outside Arfan’s apartment, she asked him to come and collect her. He brought along his mother and drove Aisha home to Bærum.

  Arfan Bhatti left the country a short time later. He wrote online that he was taking part in action against the international forces in Afghanistan. From the tribal areas he sent a text that read: “Talaq. Talaq. Talaq.”

  It was over. A nikah marriage could be dissolved by the man saying talaq—I divorce—three times.

  But by then Aisha was already pregnant.

  12

  TARGET PRACTICE

  “My reasons for leaving are not based on religious grounds,” Ayan wrote to Fahad Qureshi. She sent her letter of resignation at the end of August 2012, just after she began her final year in school.

  “I feel I have given what I can for the moment. Perhaps in the future when I have more knowledge I will have something more to contribute, inshallah. Thank you for everything you have taught me and for allowing me this opportunity. I truly felt Islam Net allowed me to grow but then something changed, and I no longer feel needed. Yours sincerely, Ayan.”

  In response, Qureshi wrote, “I hope one day inshallah you return, more skilled, motivated, disciplined and purposeful.”

  Emira also had left the organization. The reason for her departure had been more clearly outlined.

  “I have a different understanding of the faith,” she told Islam Net. The board was aware of the rumors of a secret affair between Emira and Ubaydullah Hussain and believed he had influenced her decision to leave. Talk, gossip, as well as people flowed back and forth between the two milieus. Islam Net regretted the loss of her computer skills.