by Anne Holt
“Are you still here?” Silje exclaimed when she suddenly opened her eyes to stop herself from falling asleep.
“He’s fairly interesting,” Håkon Sand said, grabbing the remote control to increase the volume.
“I’ve been following it,” Silje mumbled.
That was nearly true.
From before, Silje knew some of what this professor of history had described. But not much. She always became confused about the different trends within Islam. Conflicts about interpretation and culture, religion and traditions, Euro-Islam and the Taliban.
She picked up a box of breath mints, tossed two mints into her mouth, and squinted at the TV screen.
The history professor was quite attractive. Good looking really, in a strong and masculine way.
“When I came to Norway in 1971, it was almost unthinkable to envisage an ethnic Norwegian becoming a Muslim,” he said, with a hint of a smile. “I think in fact the thought had never entered my head. Admittedly, I was only ten years old and had enough to do fitting into a dazzlingly white society with a new language and new rules, but all the same.”
“Isn’t that fucking early?” Håkon muttered. “Can children have come here as early as 1971?”
As if the professor had heard the question, he continued: “My father was one of the very first Pakistanis who made the huge leap and traveled to Norway. He came here in the autumn of 1969. Several European countries were on the verge of introducing a block on immigration. The Danes did so the following year, but by then my dad was already well established as the canteen manager at Ullevål Hospital. He loved Norway. Loved this country.”
The man smiled again, more broadly this time. Silje quickly calculated that he was fifty-three years old. He looked younger. His complexion was smooth, his beard close cropped, well tended, and still as black as coal. His large, round eyes were unusually close-set below eyebrows that were obviously groomed. He seemed to have stepped out of an old movie and was dressed as though he worked at Oxford. His tweed jacket even had leather patches on the elbows.
“My mother, three younger brothers, and myself came shortly afterward,” he added.
The interviewer had almost abdicated her role and merely nodded encouragement to continue.
“Mother died just after we arrived; she had been ill for a long time.”
At once the professor’s face took on a distant expression, marveling rather than grieving. The pause grew so long that the interviewer opened her mouth to say something. She did not get that far.
“It’s only in recent years that we’ve seen an exponential increase in the number of Norwegian converts,” Siddiqui said all of a sudden. “And as I said, we lack any substantial research to tell us how they exist. Moreover, we’re talking about a relatively varied group. A number of the women in this category have married Muslims and converted for that reason. In those cases, the basis isn’t necessarily a particularly strong or real religious conviction.”
He took a swig from his glass of water.
“Whereas the young men, on the other hand, have in general undergone a pretty radical religious journey. I’ve met some of them. Peaceful, showing insight, and with a deep faith, ethnic Norwegian Muslims who sincerely try to follow the straight and narrow path.”
He cleared his throat before continuing: “It is, of course, the case that converts can be radicalized and, for that matter, may be recruited into terrorist movements. Nevertheless, I believe there’s a greater problem with those who are born Muslim, both here in Norway and in other locations. In the first place . . .”
He bit his lower lip, making his short, trimmed beard project straight out.
“The news editors should use that guy more,” Håkon said and turned the volume up even higher.
“Hush,” Silje said.
“In the first place,” Siddiqui repeated, “there are far more of them, of course. It is estimated that there are between 120,000 and 150,000 Muslims in this country. In other words, there are quite simply more to choose from.”
The interviewer interjected a question: “Do we know anything about what triggers these processes?”
“Know?”
The professor raised his eyebrows and shook his head gently.
“We know precious little. Now, I’m not a behavioral researcher, a theologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a sociologist, or a social scientist . . .”
He interrupted himself with a smile.
“And I think the answers to your questions are to be found in a combination of all these specialist fields! But I have a different counterbalance, which may well be equally important.”
He paused for effect.
“Experience,” he said in the end.
“In what, though?” the interviewer probed.
“I was about to answer that. But first I think it’s useful to examine what sort of organization NCIN actually is.”
“In the course of the past twenty-four hours we’ve heard a great deal about—”
“Yes, indeed. You’ve had people here, more prestigious and important experts than myself, who have talked interminably about NCIN.”
Silje had taken in some of it. Experts on NCIN had been shown in heavy rotation on all channels for almost thirty-five hours now.
The National Council for Islam in Norway was in fact not based on partnership at all. Far from it—it was quite a controversial organization, at least in more conservative Muslim circles. Even the actual umbrella organization, the Islamic Council—which, in Silje’s opinion, used such slippery language that it was difficult to understand whether it had any firm views about anything at all—had on a number of occasions made critical comments about the relatively young and fast-growing organization.
“But there’s one aspect of NCIN on which sufficient light hasn’t been shed,” Iftikhar Siddiqui said, leaning forward across the table. “And that is that it’s a true child of Norway.”
“Of Norway?” the interviewer exclaimed, with emphasis on the last word.
She quickly composed herself.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“NCIN was, and is, strictly speaking, a secular organization—in the same way that many young Muslims in Norway are, strictly speaking, no more Muslim than the majority of Norwegians were Christian, in the true sense of the word, in, let’s say, the sixties.”
Now he was not smiling. On the contrary: a frown became noticeable above the bridge of his nose, and he was still leaning forward with his eyes fixed on the interviewer.
“We live in a country that’s quite full of extremely well-adjusted immigrants,” he said. “Among those either born here in Norway or who came here as children, we find doctors and lawyers, teachers and students, and, for that matter, shop workers and kindergarten aides. We have Muslims in Parliament. We’ve even had a cabinet minister with a Muslim background. But are they Muslims in the strictest meaning of the word?”
“Now I don’t entirely understand . . .”
The interviewer’s cheeks were flushed under her TV makeup, and she began to leaf aimlessly through the papers in front of her.
“Bloody hell,” Håkon muttered. “Where on earth is he heading now? What we don’t need right now is a Norwegian Pakistani to start dividing Muslims up into authentic and inauthentic—”
“Shh!” Silje waved both hands angrily.
“Of course I can’t answer that,” the professor said, and the interviewer was obviously breathing more easily. “Religious conviction is a deeply personal affair, and we certainly don’t want to stick labels on one another or sit in judgment over one another’s sincerity. But if we regard the question more as a matter of principle, then some interesting perspectives open up. And I’ll take myself as an example, to avoid raising impertinent questions about other people’s beliefs. You see, I was born in Pakistan of Pakistani parents. As a ten-year-old, my world was turned upside down. Until then, I’d had what I might call a . . . natural faith. Islam was part of my life. Of every
thing that was me. I was torn up by the roots and replanted in a . . .”
Now he looked down and, with that, an unfamiliar, almost shy expression came over his figure, until now so self-assured.
“. . . to put it mildly, a foreign environment. Not hostile, far from it. I was an early arrival and regarded as exotic and exciting. Together with my brothers, I was almost alone in being dark skinned. Of course, it wasn’t exactly pleasant but certainly something we could live with. However, the greatest change . . . What do you think that was?”
His gaze was almost teasing now as he raised his brows and stared at the interviewer.
“That religion played such a small part.” He answered his own question before she had managed to react. “From living in a society where religion formed a close weave of everything I did and everything I was, I entered a life in which questions of faith were placed on the reserve bench and did not come to the park unless there was a great deal at stake. Norway is not a Christian country. It’s a long time since it was. Norway is a country with a Christian history and, as far as it goes, often-appealing remnants of Christian culture. That’s how things are going with us as well.”
“To whom . . . are you referring?”
“To us. The so-called Muslims. We who have a Muslim background, who turn to our God when the going gets rough but who are becoming increasingly secularized. We who celebrate festivals, but first and foremost because they are enjoyable opportunities to see friends and family. We who even now hesitate to call ourselves atheists or agnostics, because our family still has a greater price to pay if we do so than yours, for instance.”
He pointed a prominent forefinger at the woman in the pale blue outfit. Her blond hair had begun to curl under the strong studio lights.
“Consequences for our parents,” he clarified. “First and foremost, our parents, whom we have no wish to offend. But are we really Muslims? For how long will we be? Is ‘Muslim,’ ” his fingers drew enormous quotation marks, “a description that is actually more practical for you than for us? Is it a tool to make us . . .”
His voice had risen several notches. The interviewer’s hair was turning to frizz, and it seemed as if she took a little step back from the high table between them.
“. . . know our place? To feel that we’ll never become totally Norwegian?”
A pause ensued. A lengthy pause. The producer tried to minimize the awkwardness of the situation by cutting between all four studio cameras. It hardly helped.
“That is what NCIN basically deals with,” Iftikhar Siddiqui said, suddenly speaking in a soft voice. “With Norwegian Muslims’ desire to be more Norwegian than Muslim. That’s why they were attacked. NCIN is the only organization we have that grapples with this . . .”
He hesitated.
“Damn and blast,” Silje said. “I thought I was tired. But these are thoughts I’ve never—”
“Shh!” Håkon was spitting snuff.
“. . . this sense of being outsiders,” the professor on TV said.
“Outsiders?”
The interviewer appeared relieved and repeated the word with a quizzical smile.
“Yes. Feminists have their glass ceiling. We of Muslim background have our sense of being outsiders. It’s there. All the time. Always. Regardless. Even I feel it. I’ve lived here for forty-three years. I’m a professor at Oslo University. I’m married to an architect called Astrid. My children’s names are Karianne and Fredrik. All the same . . .”
He placed the palms of both hands flat on the table in front of him and swallowed. The producer cut from a shot of both figures to a close-up of the professor’s face.
“All the same, I feel this sense of being an outsider,” he said softly. “It makes me different. And it’s this feeling—this experience of never quite, never completely belonging and being totally Norwegian, no matter how successful we become—that provides the best breeding ground for radicalization. NCIN has appreciated that. It was upon acknowledgment of this that NCIN was founded. That is where our greatest challenge lies. In that sense of being outsiders.”
“Of being outsiders?”
“Yes.”
All at once, the woman in pale blue touched her ear. When the professor made to continue, she raised her hand abruptly.
“A report has just come in,” she said, pressing her fingers even more tightly on the invisible plug in her ear. “According to unconfirmed reports, the police . . .”
She stared at the open laptop in front of her and began to read.
“. . . the police have found the person who uttered the threats on the terrorist videos from the Prophet’s True Ummah. The person in question is apparently a twenty-two-year-old Norwegian convert from Lørenskog, and he was found dead in Nordmarka this afternoon. We’re crossing over to . . .”
“Goddamn it! Hellfire!”
Håkon struck the wall so hard that it left a mark on the new, cloudy-gray wallpaper in the Police Chief’s office.
“Can’t this bloody police force keep its mouth shut about any fucking thing? Couldn’t we have managed just a couple of hours without a leak? Is that too much to ask?”
Silje Sørensen did not answer. She switched off the TV, leaned back in her chair, and stared at a Håkon Bleken painting on the wall above the seating unit.
“Being outsiders,” she reiterated so quietly that Håkon Sand could not possibly hear her.
He knew he was not like everyone else. Not the way he had once been. He had been at high school then, even though it was difficult to remember much about it.
Gunnar Ranvik found it quite difficult to remember very much at all. It was as if what he heard and experienced did not attach itself properly to what he knew was a pretty badly damaged brain. The doctor, a woman, had explained that to him years ago, and she had used a plastic brain that she pointed at with a pen.
That brain was horrible.
There was one thing he always remembered, and that was to look after his pigeons.
The pigeon loft was clean and tidy. He took pride in that. He had built it himself. Peder had helped him. Peder was two years older than he was and a good brother to have. He often visited and always wanted to come down into the garden to look at Gunnar’s pigeons.
Now there were only fifteen of them.
The Colonel had never come back.
Gunnar had cried over the Colonel. He had sobbed for a long time. The Colonel was the finest bird he had ever owned. He lived in the nesting box at the far end of the loft. He had chosen it himself, the way all pigeons marked their nests and kept them until someone stronger took it from them.
No one had attempted that with the Colonel.
Now Winnie the Pooh was the oldest of his birds. He had returned in the course of the morning and had sat close to his mate, puffing out his feathers. Poor Ingelill sat lonely and silent on her eggs. Gunnar did not want to look at her, for it would only make him cry again. Mom had grown tired of all his crying, especially since it was his birthday. He almost couldn’t bring himself to eat any cake, even though it was decorated with expensive strawberries from Belgium. He liked the Norwegian ones best. They wouldn’t be ready until June. Or maybe it was July.
In summer, he thought, and began to sweep the floor.
He would go swimming in summer.
Keeping pigeons was exciting. Gunnar liked the races. It demanded a great deal of preparatory work to produce a good racing bird. It had to be trained, exactly like an athlete. Food was also important. He spent a lot of money on good feed, nuts and seeds, and delicacies. Mineral supplements were important. And vitamins. Some people thought the birds would fly better if you separated the boys from the girls during the competition season. They only let them be together for twenty-four hours or so before each race in order to intensify their longing for home. Gunnar did not have the heart to do that. He flew naturally, as they called it, and let them snuggle up to each another as much as they wanted.
They looked so sweet together, his pigeons.
Normally his mom drove him to the release locations.
Or Peder. Peder was kind.
Gunnar liked to race his birds, but the season had not started yet. The weather was too cold. Maybe that was why the Colonel had not pulled through.
Even though he liked to compete and knew that the birds needed to be trained, Gunnar was not too happy to lend them out. He had said no at first. But then his mom had lost her temper. She didn’t do that very often, and it scared him a little when her eyes grew dark and her voice became high-pitched and shrill.
Poor Ingelill. She was sitting so rumpled and alone. Gunnar put his brush aside and lifted her up carefully, even though it actually pained him to look at her. Her eyes were the most beautiful of them all. Brownish-red, almost like fire, with a soft, even, and completely gray ring around the outer edge.
He liked the smell of pigeons. Gunnar liked the smell of animals. He liked byres and stables and wet dogs. Most of all he loved the dry, light scent of contented pigeons. One of his competitors had once said that racing pigeons smelled of hope and love. He did not understand that because love had no smell.
Ingelill was missing the Colonel. He was sure of that.
Once Gunnar had had a girlfriend too. No one knew that. Sometimes he wondered whether he was fooling himself a little. That they had not been boyfriend and girlfriend at all.
But she was one of the things he was most certain about.
“Ingelill,” he whispered into the soft feathers of her plumage.
She was gray, with lighter wings. Her head was dark, and the feathers on her head shone almost blue in the light that spilled in through the open netting that covered the ventilation shafts at the top of the wall.
His girlfriend had been just as beautiful.
Her hair had been blue as well, Gunnar thought, and he smiled.
Karina had blue hair, and she was such a secret that no one must find out they were a couple. Not then, and not now, and he had no idea what had become of her.
It was such a terribly, terribly long time ago.