One of Us

by Åsne Seierstad

  The car was speeding along. It turned off the main road and up the steep driveway and pulled up on the open area outside the house. The door was thrust open. Kristine, football player and trainee teacher, Simon’s girlfriend all the way through his teens, almost part of the household these past few years, was standing there on the gravel, looking up at Gunnar and Tone on the veranda. The girl was in floods of tears. She came rushing up the steps with a cry of anguish.

  ‘Simon’s dead! Simon’s dead! Simon’s dead!’

  For a moment, everything went completely still in Heiaveien.

  Then Simon’s mother collapsed onto the veranda floor.

  * * *

  Kristine had been sitting at home, gradually getting more and more desperate at not making contact with Simon, and had rung all his friends. Ten times, twenty times, the same numbers over and over again. Brage Sollund finally answered. He had been hiding in the thicket he had thrown himself into after leaving the Troms camp to check what was happening. There he lay until the perpetrator was caught. He had not seen Simon himself, but he had heard what other people were saying.

  ‘Tell me what you know about Simon,’ said Kristine.

  The words stuck in Brage’s throat. He mumbled something while he wondered what he could say. He had to give her some sort of answer.

  ‘You won’t be seeing Simon again.’

  Kristine gave a shriek. ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

  ‘I didn’t see it happen, but Geir Kåre did…’

  That was all Kristine remembered before she leapt into the car and drove to the Sæbø house.

  Now she was sobbing. ‘We’ll never see Simon again,’ she cried.

  ‘He could have got it wrong,’ said Gunnar. ‘Maybe,’ he added.

  They had also heard reports that Simon was in hospital, that he had been rescued, that he had been shot in the foot. And after all, Brage had not seen Simon himself. Brage had been hiding somewhere else entirely.

  But Simon’s mother, the powerhouse of family love, had been drained of all her strength and dragged herself into the bedroom.

  Håvard had gone off into his room to be on his own. He sat there in bed with his laptop and went into his elder brother’s Facebook page, where he wrote a message.

  Simon! Come back home!!!!

  * * *

  Down at the water’s edge, Viljar had gone quiet.

  He was lying in the foetal position. Completely still. He had stopped telling stories.

  He had stopped singing, stopped cursing. His mumbling had also ceased.

  There was no more sound coming from Viljar. The hood of his sweatshirt was red with blood. There was something hanging from his eye socket.

  Margrethe Rosbach was huddled up on the ledge with her eyes fixed on a single spot. Down by the rocks.

  She could feel nothing, no grief, no fear. Simon is dead, and soon we all will be, she thought. The people who were shooting, who kept on shooting, would come back and kill them all. The shots were so regular, so loud. Margrethe had lost her will to live; she did not bother to sit out of sight, she had given up. She had gone numb, up there on the rock ledge. Her phone kept lighting up. Dad, said the display, but she did not take his call.

  It was over. This was the end.

  Her last conversation with her father had finished before Simon fell. Simon had taken the phone out of Margrethe’s hand and said, ‘We’ve got to be quiet. We’ve got to hide.’ Then he had put the phone down on the rock ledge. But he did not end the call. So her father in Stavanger had heard the two shots, two loud cracks, right in his ear. He had heard the screams. That was them being killed, he thought. One shot hitting Simon, the other Margrethe.

  He did not know that one of them had taken both bullets.

  A civilian boat with three heavily armed policemen in it came in towards the cliff.

  They’re going to shoot us now, thought Margrethe.

  ‘Police! Police!’ shouted the men.

  The teenagers lying wounded on the shoreline thought, either we’re saved now, or we’re done for. There was no panic, nobody trying to flee, because if this lot were in league with that first man the odds against them were too great, the firepower too immense.

  The men jumped ashore.

  ‘Is anyone hurt here?’ they called, and immediately set about bandaging those who could be saved.

  Margrethe rushed down to Simon.

  How cold he was!

  The jersey she had borrowed the night before had ridden up over his back, as had his waterproof jacket, which was almost over his head. She pulled down the fleecy top and tucked his jacket more tightly round him, turning the hood down carefully so his face could be seen.

  It was completely white. All the colour was gone. There was no blood. Nothing to indicate he had been shot. In the jacket and jersey there was just a small hole where the rifle shot had entered, and then a wound on his leg. It was as if he were asleep, and freezing.

  Margrethe stroked his back, patted his shoulder. Put her arms round him. Clutched him.

  Reality tore into her like a claw.

  He was dead. And she was saved.

  He was dead, and she would live.

  The policemen had quickly identified the dead. A boy floating in the water, with four shots to his back and stomach. Dead. Simon, hanging lifeless over a rock. Dead. Viljar, lying at the water’s edge with parts of his brain outside his skull. Dead.

  Higher up the cliff, the three girls Breivik shot first. Dead. One had celebrated her fourteenth birthday five days earlier. The second, who was fifteen, had just been chosen as a confirmation course leader at her local church, where she also sang in the choir. The third, a sixteen-year-old, had come with Margrethe from Stavanger and the two had shared a tent. The three girls all bled to death before the rescue team got to them.

  The policemen worked quickly and efficiently, concentrating on the youngsters they could save. Ylva, Eirin and Cathrine, their bodies riddled with bullets and splinters of bone and rock, were carried into boats. All three with severe internal bleeding.

  * * *

  ‘No!’ Tonje Brenna cried as the police determined who was dead.

  ‘He was talking just now! He isn’t dead!’ The AUF secretary-general pointed at Viljar. ‘He was singing, not long ago.’

  One of the rescuers squatted down by Viljar on the shoreline.

  ‘He can’t be dead!’ cried Tonje.

  Viljar was lying limply in the water. The policeman detected something.

  A weak pulse.

  And then a sound, an almost imperceptible sound.

  ‘Here!’ he shouted. ‘There’s life!’

  The man had specialist training in first aid and battlefield medical treatment; he had served in Afghanistan and had many years’ experience. He produced a triangular scarf, which he worked under Viljar’s head. He carefully put parts of Viljar’s brain back into his head. He pieced together the bits of skull, paying meticulous attention so that no sharp corners went into the soft mass. He gently packed up Viljar’s head and knotted the scarf around it. With his brain in its proper place, Viljar was carried to a waiting boat by some of the survivors.

  Viljar came round with his head in someone’s lap in the middle of the Tyrifjord. He looked at those with him and asked faintly:

  ‘Where’s Torje?’

  * * *

  They called out to her. The other teenagers were already in the boat. It was the last one taking survivors from the cliff.

  A policeman came over to Margrethe.

  ‘You’ve got to come now.’

  ‘We can’t just leave him here.’

  ‘He’ll be looked after,’ said the policeman.

  An armed officer had been positioned there to guard the place.

  ‘We have to take Simon with us!’

  ‘The dead will be picked up later.’

  Simon was so cold.

  ‘I’m not going without Simon!’

  ‘The island hasn’t been secured yet
. None of the living are allowed to stay here.’

  In the end, the policeman dragged her away. Simon was left hanging, as he had fallen, on the rock by the water. He had three dead girls above him, a dead boy at the water’s edge below him, and a policeman to look after him.

  * * *

  ‘The injured first! The injured first!’

  Lara, icy cold, sat on the shore between the steep slope and the pumping station. She was shivering after so long in the water. In her cavity in the limestone she’d grown indifferent to everything, her head had drooped onto her chest and she was convinced she was going to be shot. She was too cold to care. But now … now they were saved.

  Oh, how she needed Bano now. She wanted to be rocked, to be held, to be comforted. She needed to talk to her elder sister. Bano, who laughed at everything, who always found something good in even the worst things, who transformed the ordinary into a fairytale. And fairytales always have a happy ending.

  Suddenly she could not stop screaming.

  She howled, she yelled, louder than everyone around her. All the strength she had left was channelled into sound.

  She gasped for breath, and collapsed in exhaustion.

  Then she got a place in a boat.

  ‘Don’t look towards the island,’ said the boat driver. ‘Look straight ahead, don’t turn round!’

  Some looked anyway, and screamed.

  All along the shore lay young people, some halfway out of the water, others on the rocks. In some places, the rock was stained red. Bloody clothes lay abandoned. There were so many clothes, so many shoes. Left by those who swam for it.

  ‘I will never play Call of Duty again,’ said a boy in Lara’s boat.

  They landed at Utvika Camping. On the beach, people met them with blankets and quilts.

  They know what has happened out there! Lara was abruptly returned to the real world. It had actually happened!

  She asked everybody she saw if they had seen Bano. ‘Yes, she’s alive,’ one boy said. ‘I think somebody said they’d spoken to her.’ Another person thought they had seen her in a tent.

  There were anguished cries, tears and panic. Some were in shock, moving mechanically, their gaze empty. Some had to be lifted ashore, and lay apathetically where they were put down. Others were terrified of everyone; their eyes said, ‘Are you going to try to kill me, too?’

  Up on the road, a line of cars stood ready, volunteers who drove the youngsters to the assembly point and then came back for more. But Lara did not want to leave until Bano was safely ashore. She knew her sister could not have arrived yet, because Bano would have waited for her if she had got here first.

  Finally, three of Lara’s friends made her come in a car with them. ‘Everyone’s supposed to assemble at Sundvolden Hotel,’ they said. ‘Bano’s probably there.’

  The car radio was on, and there was a report that the perpetrator was Norwegian.

  In the car, somebody lent Lara a phone. She rang her father.

  ‘We’re on our way to fetch you,’ he cried.

  When news started to come through of the shooting on Utøya, all the neighbours had gathered at the Rashids’. They, too, tried ringing the numbers on the TV screen, but failed to get though. One of the neighbours had found out that a centre for next of kin had been set up at the Thon Hotel in Sandvika. Now they were in a taxi on their way there, because Mustafa was under too much nervous strain to drive himself. He and Bayan picked up Ali from the little field near by, where the fourteen-year-old had been playing football with some friends. They could look after him, the friends’ parents said, but no, Ali wanted to come along to fetch his sisters.

  ‘How are you?’ Lara’s father asked her.

  Lara went quiet. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Dad … I don’t know where Bano is.’

  ‘Aren’t you with her?’

  Lara wept.

  They agreed that the first to hear anything from Bano would ring the other.

  Ali was sitting in the back seat with Bayan. He tried to reassure his mother. ‘You know how smart Bano is. She’s the best at finding good places to hide. That’s why nobody’s found her yet!’

  Their taxi driver was from Morocco and had a copy of the Qur’an in the dashboard. Bayan read the holy scripture and asked God to look after their elder daughter, their firstborn.

  Mustafa sat in the front, muttering to himself.

  God, there is no god but He, Living and Everlasting. Neither slumber overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs what is in the heavens and what is on earth.

  It was the same prayer, Ayat al-Kursi, that he had prayed in the boat on the Khabur river between Iraq and Syria, the prayer he had turned to as he lay sleepless during the civil war.

  He knows their present affairs and their past. And they do not grasp of His knowledge except what He wills. His throne encompasses the heavens and the earth; Preserving them is no burden to him. He is the Exalted, the Majestic.

  It was a long time since he had needed that prayer.

  In Sandvika they had a long wait before they were informed that everyone from Utøya had been sent to Sundvolden Hotel by the Tyrifjord. Bano did not ring. Bayan wept and groaned. ‘My child, my child!’ she sobbed.

  One of the other mothers took care of her. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said the slender woman, putting her arm round her. Her name was Kirsten and she also had a child on the island, she said. His name was Håvard, and he was the leader of the Oslo AUF. They had not heard anything from their son for some hours now, either. He had sent them the last message just after six, from his hiding place by the pumping station. Kirsten offered them a lift in their family’s car to Sundvolden. But with Ali they were too many, so they took a taxi.

  It was starting to get dark as they set off on the long circuit of the Tyrifjord.

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ Bayan said to Ali as they got into another back seat. ‘We’ll soon have both the girls with us.’

  The taxi turned out of Sandvika, and Bayan looked at her son and smiled. ‘You’ll see, Bano will ring soon and say: “I’m fine!”’

  * * *

  At Sundvolden Hotel, Lara could not share in the scenes of joy as people were reunited. She went out into the rain in her already sodden clothes. She had no more tears left, no more screams.

  She waited in the car park outside for the buses and cars bringing young people from Utøya. She scrutinised the vehicles, her eyes surveying windows and doors and fixing on every figure to climb out in front of her, then moving on.

  There was a pale, red-headed boy with freckles standing at a slight distance. He was soaked through. Torje had stayed hidden in the hole in the rock at the waterline for a long time. When a boat came to rescue youngsters from the water, he swam towards it. He was almost there when shots began to whistle overhead. The boat beat a rapid retreat. Torje was left alone in the water. He swam back to the island and went ashore. He was too cold to swim out again to the hiding place. On several occasions, Torje was close to the gunman, but he always managed to get away or hide.

  The fourteen-year-old rang his parents once the bus had brought him from the jetty. They were on their way. They had waited three hours at Sollihøgda and then they had decided to drive almost all the way round the Tyrifjord. They had rung, rung off, and rung again. Torje and Viljar grew younger and younger in their mother’s mind as they drove. By the time they came into Sundvolden, she was seeing them as two tiny tots.

  Torje was waiting for Viljar and Johannes. His big brother and his best friend.

  Then someone told him no more buses would be coming.

  * * *

  ‘When Bano Rashid arrives, can you tell her this is our room number?’

  Lara was exhausted with waiting, and since there were no more buses coming she’d gone in and asked for a room. They gave her a key. ‘Bano’s got long dark hair and, well, she looks like me. She’s my older sister.’

  She dragged herself over to the lift.

  She’s alive, thought Lara as
she got up to the room. She had borrowed a computer at reception and had put a heart on Bano’s Facebook page.

  She must be alive, because if she were dead, I would feel it. And I don’t feel as if she’s dead, she said to herself.

  * * *

  In a room in the same wing of the hotel, Margrethe looked at the king-size bed.

  This posh room! How she hated this posh room! It was all wrong.

  ‘We’ll get in the car and come for you,’ her parents in Stavanger had said when she finally rang home to tell them she was alive.

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ she had answered in a flat voice. ‘I’ll get myself home.’

  Everything in the room was smooth and shiny. It was all ironed and pressed and polished. She pulled aside the cover, threw out the scatter cushions and lay down under the quilt. A soft, clean, warm quilt. That was when she broke down. She simply could not bear it.

  To lie under the lovely quilt, while Simon was left lying out there, alone in the rain.

  * * *

  ‘There is only me,’ he had said.

  That was while Håvard Gåsbakk was still sitting astride him. It was a little after half past six in the evening. His body was pressed against the damp ground. His nose was in the wet grass, in fresh leaves, earth and moss. With his head bent to one side, he carried on talking.

  ‘The third cell has still not been activated This is the start of hell! It’s going to get worse.’

  His voice was hard, militant.

  Worse than this? Gåsbakk shivered. He reported over the radio that a nationwide alert should be issued, warning of a further attack.

  Breivik looked up at Gåsbakk. ‘I can tell you ninety-eight per cent, but I want to negotiate about the last two per cent.’

  ‘You’ve said enough. Head down!’ said Gåsbakk. He could hear the others in the team calling for medical packs and giving details of the dead and wounded.

  ‘This is a coup d’état,’ said the man lying beneath him, bound hand and foot.

  Gåsbakk had to keep the man down and quiet, that was his task, not to negotiate with him.

  He heard a thin voice, painful cries.

  A little boy emerged through the trees. A dark-skinned teenager with blood on his chest held him by the hand. The child was sobbing. ‘I want my dad, I want my dad!’