Two Sisters

by Åsne Seierstad

  Sadiq had been very clear about the girls’ wish to flee the Islamic State. Their situation was desperate. Now, the diplomats and the police were waiting. The paperwork was ready. Sadiq had signed papers saying he accepted the fine the girls would incur for illegally crossing the border. It was a formality, as the money would come from the embassy budget. He had also put his name to travel documents for Leila, who was under eighteen. The consular section had organized these documents, so-called laissez-passer, so that the girls could fly from Hatay to Oslo, and would not be arrested by the Turks.

  Like the diplomats and the policemen, Sadiq sat around, got to his feet, sat down in a different chair, shifted position in his seat. He went out to smoke. His smartphone lay on the table. Nothing demands more attention than a telephone that is silent.

  After much toing and froing, Styrk and Veslemøy had booked tickets on the earliest flight on Sunday morning; it was exactly a week since they had left Oslo. When they came down to the reception counter at dawn to check out, they were informed that Sadiq had left the hotel. They assumed he was arrested and settled his bill.

  On Monday morning, back in Oslo, Styrk went to PST headquarters. Sadiq was not responding to his texts. Was he being held in custody? Had they taken his phone from him? Was he under arrest? The film director was fuming about missing the opportunity to get footage of the girls crossing the border, furious that PST would be the ones waiting to meet them, not him and Veslemøy.

  At PST headquarters he was met with a wall of silence.

  Nobody told him that PST had traveled to Hatay at Sadiq’s request, that they had been cooperating on this for a long time, and that Sadiq had kept the film crew in the dark.

  * * *

  “Is he going to call soon?” Nils asked.

  “About time he got in touch, isn’t it?” Bjørn asked.

  “I never know when Osman will ring,” Sadiq answered.

  “Has he called?” they asked a little later. Sometimes one of them would go out and come back in again to hear if there was any news. “Any word? Didn’t he say he was going to ring this morning?”

  “An agreed time isn’t set in stone, not like in Norway,” Sadiq said. Everything was approximate, anything could happen, everything could change. Welcome to the real world.

  Finally, Monday afternoon, the mobile phone lit up. It was a text from Osman. Sadiq read the messages aloud.

  “Air strike. Today. They took out al-Nusra’s HQ. Where you were. My friends are dead.”

  “Oh … God!” Sadiq wrote in response. “What about the girls, and the ones who were to get them? Have they left? Tell me about the operation!”

  “I’m finding it hard to collect my thoughts, I’m talking to you but I’m not awake. It was a large strike. All the Nusra buildings were leveled. Thirty dead so far.”

  “May God receive them … But what happened to the men who were to drive the girls?”

  “Abu Ismael, we’re burying the martyrs. I’m at the grave site now.”

  Sadiq did not relent. “I need the last confirmed information about our operation. Is it proceeding as planned or has there been any change? Have they left Raqqa or not? If they have left Raqqa, where are they now?”

  “The father and brother of one of the drivers we sent to Raqqa have been martyred. I have not been able to reach the drivers.”

  So the girls would not be coming today.

  * * *

  “Leila,” Ismael wrote.

  “Yes?” she answered.

  Ismael was wondering how the rescuers would manage to get his sisters to come along. He knew that Leila and Ayan lived in their own apartments, each with her husband. Would they be picked up when the men were out, or would they be coming along too? He tried to sound things out.

  “How are things with Ayan?” he asked.

  “Alhamdulillah.”

  She was using Praise be to Allah as a sort of shorthand to refer to all being well with Ayan.

  During their last conversation around Christmas, Ayan had written that she wouldn’t talk to him until he stopped talking trash about Allah. But he had not believed she would make good on her threat and punish him, as if she had not ruined his life enough by going off to die. He had to fish for more information from Leila.

  “Do you have any news about Ayan? When did you talk to her last?”

  “Last week.”

  “Is she pregnant?”

  “Ask her.”

  “You’re lying. You met her last week?”

  “Don’t call me a liar, I chatted online with her last week.”

  Ismael was fed up with the shadow play, the affected airs, the arrogance. Rescue operation or not, he wrote down some points he called “Tutorial on how to get to Paradise”:

  FOR WOMEN:

  1. Marry a guy who is most likely to die in war

  2. Get pregnant

  3. Husband dies

  4. Profit

  5. Repeat until you die for max profit

  FOR MEN:

  1. Go to place where it is Jihad

  2. Get bitches pregnant cuz bitches love martyrs

  3. Die in war

  4. Profit

  5. You are dead so there is no step 5

  “Watch your blasphemy!” Leila replied. “Please watch your language when you’re talking to me. Do you really think it’s nonsense? Or are you trying (and failing btw) to be funny?”

  “It’s a joke. Borderline blasphemic.”

  “Well, drop it.”

  Ismael contented himself with sending a picture of the three wise monkeys holding their hands over their eyes, ears, mouth. And typed in “soon-to-be Uncle Ismael.”

  * * *

  The next morning Osman wrote to Sadiq.

  “I haven’t heard from the lads. I’m worried about them. I’m extremely anxious, and I’m dreading what to say to Hussam who lost both his father and brother. I want the girls, the men, and the vehicle back safely. In that order.”

  Meanwhile, the diplomats and the PST men sat in Hatay waiting. Sadiq assured them that the girls were on their way and would soon reach the border.

  As the week progressed, the texts from Osman grew gloomier.

  “The lads have had an accident on the way to the girls,” he wrote. “Hussam was driving. His wife was accompanying him to make it look like a family trip, they were both injured. They’re in the hospital in Gaziantep.”

  “I’ll pray for them. How are you planning to proceed?” Sadiq asked.

  A Kurdish soldier had come across Hussam and his wife and given them first aid, stopping the bleeding and thus saving their lives. He had taken their valuables and given them to the local Kurdish militia, the YPG. Their mobile phones had contained photos of the girls in Raqqa, taken from a distance, and the pictures Sadiq had sent so the kidnappers would recognize them, in addition to telephone numbers of people high up in Nusra. When Osman paid the Kurds a visit to reclaim the items, he learned that it was now they who wanted a favor in return.

  “They wanted Hussam, they think he’s a central figure in Jabhat al-Nusra,” Osman wrote. “When I refused they demanded payment before they would hand over the belongings. Again I refused. Then they asked me for something that could land me in deep trouble. They wanted ammunition. If I get hold of it for them, and it comes to light, I’ll be judged a traitor. Then I’m finished. Oh these Kurds, they’ve got me over a barrel!”

  “Any other news?” Sadiq asked.

  “The driver’s brother died in the attack on al-Nusra’s headquarters. His other brother is in a coma. My head feels like it’s going to explode. I took five headache pills today.”

  “Have a sixth!”

  “At the moment it feels like I need Viagra to stand upright, my friend!”

  In Hatay, Sadiq and the cops sat twiddling their thumbs. How long would the embassy keep their people there? How long would the police wait?

  “Hussam is in a really bad state, both his father and brother were killed. I’m trying to find a ne
w driver. But the repairs to the car are going to be costly. I don’t know why all this misfortune and all these mishaps have befallen us! I really want to help you,” Osman assured him. “But I’m terribly afraid of Daesh. They have spies everywhere. Believe me. Every time I solve one problem another one crops up.”

  The tank truck had left Raqqa without the girls. They were going to make a fresh attempt, Osman informed him. “But everything is changing all the time, first the road is open, then it’s closed, only to be re-opened. We draw up a plan deciding what route to take and when the day dawns they have just set up roadblocks and diversions. We were in Manbij today, then without warning they closed the road, and although we wanted to head east we found ourselves going west. It’s complicating everything. We constantly have to fine-tune the plan, examine every detail and look at it from different angles. Believe me, if I had my way I would take your daughters on my shoulders and carry them all the way to Norway. What have you heard from the girls?”

  He hadn’t had any contact with them.

  The rescue team was in the hospital.

  Osman was attending funerals.

  The tank truck had been dispatched on other assignments.

  While the girls, those damned girls, were sitting in Raqqa unaware of everything.

  * * *

  After another week, orders came from PST headquarters: Pack and return!

  Sadiq did not have the money to stay. Styrk had financed his travel and hotel. The whole thing was supposed to take a couple of days, and he had been in Hatay for two weeks fooling himself, fooling the film crew, the secret police, and the diplomats in Ankara. They had believed in a rescue operation; Sadiq had believed in a miracle.

  At the airport in Oslo, the two policemen shook his hand. “See you.”

  They walked off. Broad shouldered, straight backed, with long strides. They were headed home.

  For them, the operation was finished.

  Sadiq remained standing among the airport travelers. He looked around. People were waiting for their luggage. They were waiting for one another. They were buying beer and spirits. He went over to the self-service machine to buy a train ticket home. He keyed in his destination and his PIN. One way to Sandvika. The machine beeped. His card came back out. Rejected.

  30

  SHOOT THE GIRLS IF YOU WANT!

  The days were long, the nights interminable.

  “Let’s put an end to this tragedy once and for all!” Sadiq wrote to Osman when he was back in Norway.

  Osman had other things to think about. The militias in Idlib were planning to strike Assad a major blow. Although rebel forces had controlled most of Idlib province since 2012, Idlib city, the provincial capital, situated not far from the main road between Aleppo and Damascus, was still in Assad’s hands. By late March the battle for the city raged for a fifth time. Seven factions, with Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham at their head, had joined to form a coalition called Fatah, conquest. The inhabitants who had not managed to flee barricaded themselves indoors while the army of conquest attacked the city from three sides.

  Syrian state television reported that the government army was beating back the attempts of “terrorist groups to infiltrate Idlib.” But Assad’s soldiers were driven south of the city and despite attempts to regroup found themselves overwhelmed. The city was encircled by thousands of enemy fighters.

  After five days of fighting, Osman wrote to Sadiq: “Idlib is free!”

  “Brother, there will be a happy ending to our lives!” Sadiq responded.

  The Nusra front celebrated on Twitter: “Thanks be to God, the city of Idlib has been liberated!”

  Bearded men embraced, wept, held communal prayers in the park, tore down the flags of the regime, and chipped out the eyes on the enormous golden statue of Hafez al-Assad.

  Assad loyalists were lynched. People shot and killed their own relatives to cleanse their names, so they would not be dragged into the undertow of revenge. Before long the Fatah army set up local sharia courts in the different parts of the city. Raqqa was the first provincial capital Assad had lost. Idlib became the second.

  Osman wrote to Sadiq: “I’ve taken lots of pictures for you to sell to Norwegian journalists.”

  One of the leaders of Assad’s hated people’s committees was beheaded, another was dragged alive behind a car, and a third was shot through the eyes. But that kind of wretchedness was already available to the Norwegian media from the news agencies. What they wanted were pictures of the Norwegians.

  Osman sent several photographs of beheadings that fighters were circulating among themselves. One showed a thin older man in a gray tunic. His head was being held down on a chopping block. A burly man in brown ankle-length trousers and a khamiis stood over him. The executioner was masked and wore a black hat. The ax was resting on the back of the man’s neck when the picture was taken.

  Sorely in need of money, Sadiq made up a story to go with the picture and then went to Dagbladet with the “scoop.” The man acting as executioner, he told them, was a Norwegian by the name of Abu Shahrazaad al-Narwegi and the victim was a sharia judge.

  * * *

  “I’m getting the car repaired now. Send the money,” Osman wrote on April 7.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of milk for my daughter for three days,” he wrote the following day.

  “You can suckle from my breast!” Sadiq replied the next morning.

  April 9: “We’re leaving for Raqqa in two days.”

  April 10: “The tank truck will stop at Deir al-Zour on the way to Raqqa. I’m going along myself. If you don’t hear from me, read a blessing over my soul!”

  April 11: “The tank truck left Deir al-Zour this morning.”

  April 12: “Things are going according to plan.”

  April 13: “We’re ready to make our move.”

  April 14: “We’re standing by. They’re bombing the roads.”

  April 15: “The tank truck is in Raqqa. But the girls aren’t here. We’re waiting for them to turn up.”

  April 20: “We’re standing by to punch, punch, punch.”

  April 21: “The plan is being put into action in one hour.”

  April 22: “Raqqa here. Nothing to report. We’re waiting to strike.”

  April 23: “My nerves are going to blow soon.”

  The picture Sadiq had sold to Dagbladet covered the whole front page. “IS source tells Dagbladet—Norwegian executioner beheads his victims” went the headline. “Dagbladet can today reveal the first picture of what sources say is a Norwegian involved in an execution in Syria. The executioner, said to be a Norwegian national, has resided in Syria for some time fighting for the terror group Islamic State.” The article went on to say that the man was born and raised in Norway and that the journalists were aware of Abu Shahrazaad al-Narwegi’s Norwegian identity and that he was still “listed in the National Registry under his Christian birth name.” Consequently, the man in question had to be a convert, reasoned those who followed the Islamist crowd. That narrowed the list of whom he could be. There was only a handful of Norwegian converts in Syria, none of whom resembled the man in the photograph, apart from Bastian Vasquez, who was in jail, something the journalists were not aware of. The newspaper also presented information about the victim: “He had already got his wife and children safely out of the country and to Qatar. The plan was for the family to start a new life in the wealthy emirate in the Persian Gulf. But the alleged deserter was exposed before managing to make it out of Syria. He was arrested and a short time later executed in front of a large crowd. The sharia judge was condemned to death—because his former friends in the Islamic State believed him to be a traitor.” The two journalists who had bylines on the story added that they had the information from “several sources”—which meant Sadiq and Osman.

  If the journalists had done a quick search online, they would have learned that the picture had been released by IS, and that the story of the execution had been picked up by the activist group
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. The man was no sharia judge but a villager accused of dabbling in black magic. The story of the sorcerer had two months earlier been reported by several media outlets from newspapers in the UK to television stations in the United States.

  The accused sorcerer had become a sharia judge. The executioner had become Norwegian. Courtesy of Sadiq gabayaa—Sadiq the poet.

  * * *

  “Are we talking hours, weeks, or months before this happens?” Sadiq wrote to Osman in the wake of the front-page spread.

  “Days,” Osman answered. “The problem is your girls are well-guarded. They must be highly prized by their husbands. My lads have been on the cusp of going in four times, but there are always armed men outside the gate.”

  One of Osman’s men sent his wife in to check. They agreed beforehand that if she did not come back out within a half hour, they would make their move. The minutes ticked by, the men readied themselves. Just a few minutes before the half hour was up, she emerged.

  “The girls were there but there was also seven IS soldiers and nine other women in the house. An attack was out of the question!” Osman wrote.

  Ayan and Leila now lived with a group of girls in an old mansion. When Hisham or Imran was sent to the front, the sisters moved in with each other. No women could live alone in the caliphate.

  “The girls are behind solid fortifications, a living fortress of IS soldiers,” Osman wrote.

  “That’s exactly what bothers me and makes me lose hope,” Sadiq replied.

  “Your daughters never go out alone. They are always in a group,” Osman complained. “One of the lads attempted to sneak in between them, but it was no good, there were too many of them, it was impossible. By the way, looks like Assad is on his last legs.”

  “What about IS?”