Two Sisters

by Åsne Seierstad

  “They could die down there!”

  “You’re worse than the infidels!” Ubaydullah complained.

  Sometimes she accompanied him when he went to offer travel advice. She remained in the car, watching them work out plans and decide on the best route to take. The boys were instructed to shave their beards and dress in Western clothes to avoid arousing suspicion. Their friends and acquaintances were often enthusiastic about the trips. There was competition to be the one driving the fighters-to-be to the airport, with cars often packed with well-wishers from the Prophet’s Ummah eager to see them off. When Egzon left, several of his friends accompanied him to Albania on the first leg of his journey. Traveling to Syria to fight would not be proscribed under any specific domestic terrorism law until June 2013.

  After a while Dilal listened with half an ear, brother such-and-such got in touch, Ubaydullah called up brother so-and-so, and there were code phrases: the bird has flown and the nest is ready.

  At times Dilal did have doubts about the whole thing, about them, their feelings for each other, the marriage, but Ubaydullah would talk her into coming around. “Remember! Your family will never take you back, and if they did, it would only be to kill you.” One night after an argument he disappeared and returned with a cat. “This is all you need,” he said. “What do you want with a family who want you dead when you have me?”

  When Ubaydullah began to talk about having children, the reality of her situation started to sink in. No, I can’t bring a child into this, she thought. It’s madness. I have to get out. Get away. I need to go home. Talk of a child made things seem so tangible, so final.

  But the trees turned green and she was still with him. She looked out at the street. They lived on the thirteenth floor. It was a long way down. The miniature people below went in and out of shops, got into cars, drove off. All she had to do was sneak out while he was asleep. But where would she go? She had no home any longer, she had broken contact with her family. She had nowhere to go. Oslo had become a scary place.

  So she stayed.

  * * *

  In early May 2013, the Akershus County Authority made their decision. Headwear covering the face was forbidden on school premises, both indoors and on the grounds.

  The principal informed Ayan of the resolution in an e-mail. “I can understand if you are disappointed, but we have to abide by the decisions made by our politicians. That applies to you and me both.”

  Ayan’s response was immediate. “This pathetic show of friendliness won’t do you any good at all. I have showed you ample respect and tolerance by contacting you in the first place and doing as you requested afterward. Do not expect the same friendliness or respect from me in the future.”

  Hanne Rud stared at the screen. The tone was harsh, the message uncompromising.

  She stood up and looked out the window. Some pupils ambled past. Others sat in groups on the grass. Exam time was just around the corner, summer after that. The e-mail had stirred her up. She sat back down. Then she forwarded it to the school’s liaison at the Asker and Bærum police station. The police sent it on to PST.

  * * *

  In a neighborhood on the east side of Oslo, Hisham’s wife was becoming increasingly unwell. She was spending more and more time in bed. She took no interest in life around her, hardly had anything to do with the baby, and was prone to sudden panic attacks.

  Her father believed that supernatural forces were at work, that she had been possessed by jinn—small demons. He got in touch with a man at the Rabita Mosque. The Algerian who sometimes called the faithful to prayer was known to be able to exorcise spirits. They agreed that he would recite some verses of the Koran over her. These verses were believed to have a blessed, healing effect.

  Several members of the mosque were inclined to explain illnesses by evil spirits taking control of a person’s body, especially if the illness was psychological. You read from the Koran, placed hands on the afflicted, sometimes holding the person down forcibly, and sometimes striking the individual, because the struggle the demons put up was powerful. But the devils would eventually be driven out by the words of the Koran. Because God was almighty.

  Rabita Mosque is one of the largest in Norway, with more than twenty-four hundred members. It is open from morning to night, and surveillance cameras are in place at all the entrances and exits. Some sections are reserved for women, others for men. The mosque spreads out over four floors. It also houses common areas and rooms that can be locked. It was to one such room that Hisham’s wife was brought in the middle of May 2013.

  She was instructed to sit on the floor. The Algerian began to read from the Koran. He thought he heard her call out in a deep, diabolical voice, far too low pitched to be that of a woman. He read. She groaned. He continued to read. She shouted something. As though the devil was talking through her, the Algerian believed. Then he began hitting her. The spirit fought. He struck her across the back. The spirit would not give in. He took off his plastic sandal and beat her. Eventually the girl was silent.

  Basim Ghozlan, the leader of the congregation, was at home when he received a telephone call that a girl at the mosque required help and that an ambulance had been called.

  The paramedics found that the patient had undergone cardiac arrest. The twenty-year-old woman was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

  Rumors began to circulate. Had she been beaten so hard that her heart had given out? Had he shaken her? Someone said he had held her down while she writhed like a snake. Violent spasms had given way to her suddenly going limp and her body landing with a thud on the floor, according to the rumors.

  The exorcist, for his part, had little doubt about what had killed her. The demon had seeped into her heart and body, had become desperate upon hearing the words of the Koran, and in its final death throes had coiled itself around the girl’s heart and cut off her blood circulation. She would have died sooner or later anyway, he told a friend. Better for her to die here in the mosque, the man who cast out devils maintained, than face further torment.

  The girl’s parents were devastated. Her father had been the one who engaged the exorcist and thought the fault lay in his inexperience. He claimed his daughter would still be alive and rid of demonic influence if only they had entrusted the task to someone who knew what he was doing.

  Hisham received word of his wife’s death in Syria. Several members of the Prophet’s Ummah attended the funeral in his absence. Later, when a dispute arose between his Eritrean uncles and the parents of Hisham’s deceased wife about who should raise the six-month-old baby, his relatives appealed to him to return home. According to Muslim tradition, a child followed his father. With the mother now dead, it was in their opinion only right and proper that the uncles acting on his behalf took custody.

  The jihadist asked a friend to investigate the possibility of flying back, but under what name would he travel? On what passport? He was wanted by the police in Norway and would have to travel incognito to be safe from PST.

  There was no going back. Hisham had rejected a normal life, a wife, and his responsibilities as a father. He fought for Allah. Everything else paled in significance.

  A plain gravestone stood in Oslo’s Høybråten cemetery.

  A tiny infant would never know her mother. She had never had a father.

  * * *

  “Here,” Ubaydullah said to Dilal one day, returning her mobile phone.

  It took her time to gather courage.

  She mulled it over at length. Breaking out of the prison she was living in, a prison she herself had helped construct. She hadn’t dared to call either her brothers or her parents. But she could not go on living like this, she had to take her chances.

  Early one morning at the end of May, Dilal lay in bed looking over at the man sleeping next to her.

  I’m leaving you today, she said to herself. Just so you know, today’s the day. She waited until he left the apartment before calling her sister-in-law.

  “Can I
come home?” she asked meekly.

  Her sister-in-law gasped, then began to cry.

  “Please!” Dilal implored.

  “Yes! Come, come now!”

  Immediately afterward a text message ticked in from her brother: “The door is open.”

  Dilal did not waste any time. She packed a little bag, put the cat in a cage, placed it under her arm, and left. The heavy front door banged shut behind her and she began to hurry down the street before realizing she needed to calm down, had to avoid attracting any attention. Just as she hailed a taxi, she remembered Ubaydullah had a large number of taxi drivers in his social circle. But by then it was too late.

  The driver turned to her, and her heart pounded when she saw he was Pakistani.

  “Oslo Central Station, the seafront entrance,” she said. That was where her brother and sister-in-law had arranged to pick her up.

  The driver asked her questions along the way.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I’m Kurdish,” she replied. “And you?”

  “Pakistani. I thought you were Pakistani too,” he said, turning his head slightly to look at her. “A foreigner in any case!” He chuckled.

  They began talking about how it was to live as a foreigner in Norway. The taxi driver told her how much he liked it, how well his children were doing, how nice everything was.

  “Norway offers us a lot of opportunities,” he said, turning off by the opera house and toward the station.

  “Yes,” she mumbled.

  Looking out the car window, she saw her brother already waiting. She gathered her bag and the cat and ran toward him.

  They drove west. Ensconced in the backseat, Dilal dried her tears and opened her handbag. She held up a pocket mirror and did her makeup as they sped along the highway. She could not go home to her parents looking like she did, could not turn up looking the way she felt, so she put on concealer, rouge, powder, and eye shadow. Using a kohl pencil, she lined her eyes, then applied mascara and finished with lipstick. She brushed her hair and styled it with a thin layer of mousse. She turned to look out the window with her chin raised.

  Soon they arrived at the family home in Bærum.

  Her mother flung open the door. Then flung her arms wide.

  Her father stood behind her. They pulled her in, held her close, swayed from side to side, not wanting to let go, tears running down their faces. Their only daughter was home again. The nightmare was over.

  “Our princess,” her father sniffled.

  “Our child,” her mother wept.

  Before long her mobile phone buzzed with a text.

  “Where are you???!”

  “I’ve gone home. I’m never coming back.”

  A half hour later, uniformed police arrived at the Kurdish family’s front door. Several patrol cars stood parked outside. They said they were acting on a tip-off they had received about a planned honor killing and were treating the information very seriously.

  Her father was apoplectic. Her eldest brother felt so humiliated he began to cry. “How could we harm our own sister?”

  Patrol cars turned up several times over the following days, the police acting on tips from Ubaydullah Hussain. Finally Dilal was called in to the Sandvika police station. Following a lengthy interview, the inspector in charge declared the case closed. “That’s the last time the police will be around to your house,” he said.

  But Ubaydullah would not give up. He called, sent texts, and left messages. She never responded. Then his mother rang. “Dilal, take him back, he can’t live without you! He loves you!” Still, she gets it, Dilal thought. She remembered her mother-in-law once saying she could not understand how Dilal could put up with her son.

  There were no formalities to be taken care of. They had been married in a Muslim ceremony, a union not recognized by the Norwegian authorities.

  He had almost completely brainwashed her and filled up her mind afresh. Dilal had managed to escape from a prison constructed in her own head. The Kurdish girl made up her mind never to allow herself to be manipulated again. She was going to resume her training as a nurse, continue where she left off. Life was here and now.

  * * *

  June arrived, the sun shone from early morning to late at night and the school year was drawing to an end. The sixteen-year-olds at Gjettum had applied to different upper secondary schools. Which one was actually the best? Would their grades be good enough for the school of their choice? Leila, at least to her classmates, seemed like she could not have cared less, maybe she didn’t want to continue with school at all, they thought. After all, she had made clear her hatred of everything about it. However, right before the deadline, she applied for a place in the health and social curriculum at Rud Upper Secondary, a school not far from Dønski.

  The spring before the end of school was warm and sunny, with the girls displaying thighs and cleavage, the boys their arms and chests.

  “Isn’t it hot underneath all that?” a classmate asked Leila as the two of them walked out the school gates. Leila was busy putting on her niqab, like she always did upon leaving the grounds of the school.

  “It’s hotter in hell,” Leila retorted.

  The summer holidays were approaching, and tests and exams were over. During a break, a few girls sat on the grass talking about their plans for the holidays. Sofie asked if Leila was going to visit her family in Somaliland as she usually did. She was not. She was going to teach Islamic history and give Koran lessons to children at the mosque in Sandvika. Leila wore a black jilbab and white trainers. Since they were on school property, she had removed her veil. The others sat around in sandals, shorts, and sleeveless tops.

  “Would they give you dirty looks in Somalia if you wore shorts?” a classmate asked.

  “They’d kill you,” Leila replied matter-of-factly.

  The girls rolled their eyes when she left. “She’s really starting to creep me out…”

  Then they turned their attention back to tanning.

  Just before school ended, Bintu Sadiq updated her profile picture on Facebook. She changed it to a black flag with the Islamic creed in Arabic. She also changed her background picture to a black-and-white photograph of a fighter in a turban. Only his eyes were visible, his body was in shadow. He held a Kalashnikov, raised and ready to fire.

  Graduation was approaching. The only venue large enough to accommodate the entire year was the local church, and the school leadership discussed at length whether this might prove objectionable to Muslim pupils. It was decided that if all the religious symbols—the altarpiece, baptismal font, pulpit, and representations of Jesus—were covered, it should be all right.

  By the time the church was ready for the presentation of academic transcripts and the pupils filed in for the ceremony, there was not a crucifix in sight.

  Leila was conspicuous by her absence.

  “Just mail it,” she had said on the last day of school.

  Her friend Amal, on the other hand, had chosen to collect her diploma in person as well as attend the celebration afterward. Following the ceremony, the whole student body was invited to a party at Ulrik’s house. Amal, unlike Leila, had kept Norwegian friends all through school, ensuring she had a foothold in the country she grew up in. As far as her mother was concerned, this was where her daughter’s future lay. “Norway lets you live your life how you want to,” she would say, before repeating her mantra: “If you don’t bother Norway, then Norway won’t bother you!”

  Amal had begun to distance herself from Leila. Her interpretation of Islam was too dark, too strict and narrow. In the end, a trivial argument had led to a final parting of the ways. Trivial matters had become existential ones.

  Right before summer holiday, Amal was planning to see a romantic comedy. Leila had grimaced in disgust when the word “movie” came up.

  “That’s sinful.”

  “Why is it sinful?”

  “It’s haram.”

  “That depends on the film…”

>   “Why sully yourself and pay for the privilege to boot? Why watch someone kiss or have sex when you could spend the time reading hadith?”

  “Leila, you’re one to talk! You sit watching people getting their heads chopped off and being stoned to death on YouTube. Is that not haram?”

  “It’s God’s punishment. And fitting.”

  Amal had had enough. She couldn’t take any more of Leila’s yearnings for death, her talk of martyrdom.

  “Death is at hand,” Leila often said.

  It’s waving to you. Death is near. Accept it.

  Amal did not wave back.

  * * *

  Ayan had kept away from upper secondary during the end of the school year. She showed up again for the exams, as usual taking off her niqab as she entered the school gate. After the written tests, she went to see if she had been selected to do an oral exam. She had, in Norwegian.

  At nine o’clock in the morning they were informed of the topic. “Explain the concept of modernism. Set modernism in a historic context. Specify the characteristics of modernism.” They were to analyze five examples, including Angst by Edvard Munch and an extract from Kafka’s The Trial.

  The pupils had two days to prepare. They were to give an oral presentation before answering questions posed by an examiner. Ayan went home to read. She made notes, studied, memorized, and ticked off each text as she went through it. Two days later she answered the examiner’s questions correctly and without hesitation. Modernism emphasized new and transgressive ideas, broke with traditional forms, and was characterized by experimentation, artistic liberation, and belief in progress.

  She received top marks. In Norwegian. Allah had been merciful.

  A few days later she ran into her Norwegian teacher on the street in Sandvika.

  “Congratulations, Ayan!” the teacher said, smiling. “Make sure you put those grades to good use now!”

  Ayan nodded beneath her niqab.

  Graduation took place shortly afterward. Each class was invited to take its place on the stage, where a teacher waited with an armful of roses. As their names were called out and they stepped forward, the headmaster presented each pupil with a rose, wishing them “Good luck in the future!” and telling them to “have a great summer!”