Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad

by Åsne Seierstad

  Sadiq skimmed the text. Muslims had to unite under one caliph. That had to be fought for by the sword.

  Abdullah Azzam was the father of modern jihadism. He had become acquainted with Osama bin Laden while teaching in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s, and was a driving force behind the Saudi businessman’s financing of mujahideen—the holy warriors who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. There his friendship with bin Laden deepened and he set down a fatwa concerning the rules for when jihad was an individual obligation—fard al-ayn—and when you could let others fight for you—fard kifaya.

  “To offer prayer—as opposed to waging jihad on the battlefield—is like the trifling of children,” Azzam wrote in contempt for what he perceived as cowardice. “For every tear you have shed upon your cheek, we have shed in its place blood, on our chests. You are jesting with your worship; while you worshippers offer your worship, mujahideen offer their blood and person.”

  The Palestinian scholar wrote that if a piece of Muslim land, even the size of a hand span, was infringed upon, then jihad became fard al-ayn for all Muslims, male and female. “The child shall march forward without the permission of its parents and the wife without the permission of the husband.”

  This was what the girls wanted him to know from this book—that their obligations to the Muslim ummah meant they could depart without his consent, that the teachings of the learned supported them. Sadiq closed the document.

  Jihad.

  Caliphate.

  Martyrdom.

  Nonsense.

  Read the ENTIRE book before replying. And the part that hurt the most: We have planned and thought this through for almost an ENTIRE year.

  Sadiq did not sleep that night.

  The heavens had come crashing down.

  2

  VEILED

  A new day broke.

  As soon as he woke up, Ismael checked Viber, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp. Nothing.

  “Ayan, Leila, are you alive?” he wrote beneath the thread from the previous night.

  Sara was crying. “Someone must have tricked them into going!”

  “Brainwashed them,” Sadiq said.

  Although Ismael was no longer trembling as he had been the night before, the shock lingered in his body, like a punch he had been unprepared for. He blamed himself for not having seen this coming. The hours on YouTube listening to clerics and preachers. Their anger that he did not attend the mosque. The accusations. Their abhorrence of kuffar—unbelievers.

  “Don’t use that word!” their parents had admonished them. “It’s disrespectful.”

  The girls had refrained, for a while, but their contempt for infidels returned. It was as though they could not be pure enough when everything around them only grew dirtier.

  Leila had often spoken about the day of judgment, when only the true believers would be spared God’s wrath. This life was a test, she said. Real life came afterward, in paradise, but only if you followed God’s teachings. Then you would live in a garden where every kind of delicious fruit grew, by a river of milk, have everything you desired, and experience intense well-being. All your emotions would be beautiful and pure. You would never feel anger, sadness, pain, or regret. Only perfect harmony, happiness, and sheer joy. You would walk on floors of diamonds in houses with walls of gold. The angels would sing and you would sense the presence of God at all times.

  When Ismael expressed his doubts about all this, Leila grew annoyed.

  “What do you think happens when you die, then?” she had asked.

  “I think you die, you’re buried, and then … well, that’s it.”

  “No,” Leila corrected him. “Either you go to paradise or you’re cast into hell. Ismael, believe me, it’s not too late. Let me help you. I can show you the right path.”

  To question the word of God was blasphemy, she pointed out. And the rightful punishment for it was death.

  He realized how extreme they had become. How could he not have seen where they were headed?

  Ismael reread the long message Leila had sent the night before. She had written that being able to answer to God on judgment day was more important than worrying about hurting people in the here and now. “I’m not a particularly good daughter and I don’t give my parents what they really deserve, but this is my chance to make up for that by being of help to them in the afterlife.” By enlisting in holy war, she would save them all from hell. If you died as a martyr, you could choose seventy family members to join you in paradise. She had sacrificed herself for them.

  * * *

  Later that morning, Sadiq received a phone call from the district division of the PST, the Police Security Service, where somebody had finally read the message about the girls being in Turkey. The policeman asked several questions about the girls, places they frequented, whom they socialized with, if the parents could think of anyone who might know something, if they had any leads.

  In order for the police to issue a bulletin, they said, the family had to report the girls missing.

  Sadiq put down the phone. The two smaller boys came padding into the living room. Sara had not roused them from sleep this morning. Sadiq was not going to struggle to lace their shoes. There would be no arguments about who sat in the front seat because no one could summon the energy to take them to school.

  “Was it wrong of them to go?” Isaq asked.

  “Yes,” Sadiq answered.

  The boys looked at him, then sat down to play computer games.

  Who could know something? Who had known? Sadiq attempted to unearth some clue, some trace, anything. During the night he had racked his brain, trying to understand. By early morning he realized he had no idea what his daughters had been doing or whom they had spent their time with over the past year. Sometimes he had driven them to the Tawfiiq Mosque in Oslo city center, Norway’s biggest Somali mosque. They had gone in the women’s entrance, that was all he knew. He had also driven them to meetings of Islam Net, as well as to a mosque in Sandvika. But whom had they met there? The Koran teacher, had he encouraged them? Hadn’t he been a holy warrior in Mauritania? Sadiq could not quite remember, was perhaps mixing him up with somebody else. He had not been paying attention, he understood that now. He had to go to the mosques and find out. He had to ask Aisha if she knew anything. Didn’t Ayan say that the suitcase was for her? He needed to drive over there and investigate.

  But he did not. He continued mulling things over.

  Sadiq and Sara had been so satisfied, even self-satisfied, when it came to their daughters. He remembered the first time the girls talked about attending an evening meeting. “It starts at eight o’clock,” they had said. He and Sara had laughed when they realized they actually were going to a meeting at the mosque; it was not a ploy to go out in the city on a Friday night. And yet here he was, unable to remember one single name, call to mind one single face, of any of the people they had mixed with in the past year.

  The day before they had left, Ayan had asked him to help her run some errands.

  “Can we take the car?” she had inquired. Of course they could, he was on sick leave, after all, and had no plans for the day. He was actually glad to be asked; she had been so distant lately, avoided contact, almost stopped speaking to him. It had bothered him, because of everyone in the family, Ayan was the one most like him. He often had problems understanding Leila, but Ayan was a kindred spirit, someone who enjoyed discussions, figuring things out. She had always asked his advice, but as time had gone on, she had formed her own opinions, and they had begun to disagree. Eventually their discussions had ceased altogether.

  Ayan wanted to go to a few shops by the Rabita Mosque in Oslo. Aisha was going on a trip, she had said, and needed help buying things. He had not asked any more; he was simply happy his daughter wanted to have him along.

  For most of the drive, they had sat in silence. He had tried to initiate a conversation, but something hung in the air between them. Upon arriving in the city center, he had gone to a café by the
Gunerius shopping center while Ayan went shopping.

  Now it cut him to the very core. He had driven her around so she could buy what she needed for the girls’ trip. It must have been Ayan who had planned it. Of the two sisters, she was the boss, the one who led the way. The second-in-command, Sadiq used to call her. After Sara.

  When they got home with all the bags, she had hugged him and said, “Thank you so much, Dad!”

  They dulled us with hugs, Sadiq thought. They had milked his love, they had blinded him.

  Later that night, Ayan had come out of her room and asked to borrow his Visa card. Hers had expired, she said, and she needed to make a purchase online. “I’ve hardly any money on my card,” he had replied, less than 1,000 kroner. She had seemed stressed. “Can you drive me to the bank in Sandvika? Then I can put the money into your account. I have cash.”

  “The bank closed ages ago, can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  Ayan had insisted on driving there with him to see, but he was right, the bank was shut. What had she intended to buy? Tickets? No, they must have already had them. Who had in fact organized the tickets, the whole trip? Who had encouraged them to travel at all?

  Leila had stayed in the bedroom nearly the entire evening.

  “Are you sick?” he had asked. Leila had just shaken her head. Then she’d given him a playful dig in the stomach, like in the old days. “I’ll knock all that fat off you, Dad,” she had said, smiling. And when Ismael came home from the gym, she had thrown her arms around him.

  After the shopping and the trip to the bank, Ayan had gone into her room. She had logged on to Twitter and written: “Kindness is the language which even the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” On the previous day she had tweeted: “Shaytan is the virus & Islam is the cure.” Shaytan was Arabic for Satan.

  Her profile picture was a bird with shiny green feathers. The Prophet had said that if you died in jihad, Allah would allow your soul to reside in the body of a green bird that would fly to paradise. There it would build a nest in the lanterns hanging from the throne of the Almighty.

  * * *

  The police received the report of missing persons at 12:30 p.m. Only then was an international bulletin sent out via Interpol. According to the official log, the following measures were taken: “Invocation of the legal principle of necessity and appeals for information sent out to banks, telecommunications companies, airlines, and border stations.”

  At the Asker and Bærum station, the local police had put a man from the missing persons unit on the case. He made contact with Sadiq.

  “Are you sending people down to find them?” Sadiq asked.

  “We have informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the embassy in Ankara is on the case. We’re also cooperating with the Turkish police.”

  “So what are they doing?”

  “We’ll keep you informed,” the policeman promised.

  “But how could you let them leave the country? Why weren’t they stopped at the airport? Leila is a minor … and…”

  Sadiq was given no answer. Instead he was told a car would be sent to pick up the family and bring them to the station.

  “If it had been Norwegian children who had been reported missing, they would have reacted differently,” Sara said. “It’s because we’re Somalis! The police don’t take us seriously.”

  Sara felt that a part of her had been torn away. The loss left a lump in her stomach.

  They were shown into an office at the police station. First Sadiq, then Sara.

  “What will I tell them?” she asked Sadiq.

  “Just answer their questions. Leila has just turned sixteen. Ayan is scarcely an adult. They’re Norwegian citizens. The police will do everything in their power to track them down,” he assured her.

  There were two men present during the questioning, one from the missing persons unit and another from the local PST.

  Finally it was Ismael’s turn.

  “How are things with you?” they asked. “Have you gone to the Koran school as well?”

  “Do you attend the mosque?”

  “What are you going to do next year? Do you have plans?”

  “Have you applied for college, or are you going traveling?”

  “Did you know what your sisters were planning?”

  “Were they forced to travel?”

  “What did your parents know?”

  “Are you also a radical?”

  The questions annoyed the eighteen-year-old. It seemed that the interviewers’ aim was to determine if he was ideologically close to his sisters and might follow them, and if they formed part of a larger network. For Ismael, however, stopping his sisters was the priority. As he spoke, he established one point for the investigators that Sadiq had not made clear: The sisters had traveled of their own free will.

  In the car on the way home, Sadiq was dejected.

  “They see us as a danger,” he said, “not as a family who’ve reported two daughters missing. We asked them for help and they’re treating us like criminals!”

  At around five o’clock that day, the doorbell rang.

  There were three policemen standing outside, two in uniform and one in plain clothes.

  “We have a search warrant,” one of the officers said.

  First they searched the girls’ room. The men in uniform opened wardrobes and drawers while the plainclothes officer took notes. They gathered papers, notebooks, and everything computer related, then moved on to the other rooms. They looked through closets, shelves, and boxes.

  Isaq was clinging to Sadiq again. “Daddy, give me your hand,” he softly pleaded, while looking at the men.

  The family was asked to remain in the living room, and when Sadiq got up to see what the police were doing, he was bluntly instructed to keep his distance.

  “Are we terrorists?!” Sara exclaimed in Somali, pacing the living room. “Are you going to terrorize us instead of helping us?”

  “Sit down, calm yourself. It’s their job,” Sadiq told her.

  “God help me! God help me!” Sara cried out.

  Distressed after all the questioning at the station and now the ransacking of her home, she phoned a friend. But she did not find much solace.

  “What! You got in touch with the police? That was a big mistake! They’re not going to do anything for Somalis! Find the girls yourself; don’t expect the Norwegian police to help you.”

  Ismael couldn’t take any more of his mother’s crying and his father’s agitation. He went to his room and shut the door. He had not received any answer to the message he’d sent that morning.

  At seven o’clock he sent a new text: “Hello. Answer pls.”

  Eight o’clock: “Hello.”

  Nine o’clock: “Ayan?”

  * * *

  That same morning, the girls had checked out of the Grand Hotel in Adana. They retrieved the passports they had handed in at reception. Then they headed south, toward the Syrian border. In the afternoon, they no longer appeared on the Turkish telecom network.

  Sadiq was frantic, afraid of what might happen to them. There was something else: The girls had humiliated him, the police had trampled over him, he had lost face; he had not been in control.

  Now, Sadiq, show what you are made of, a voice in his head said.

  I am Sadiq, a man in charge of my family.

  According to the Viber message about their “last meal in Europe,” the girls’ last known stop had been Adana. He could not sit around waiting for them to show up, for them to change their minds, or for the police to track them down. He had to stop them before it was too late.

  Sara made the decision for him. “Go find them!” she commanded from the sofa.

  He was suddenly in a hurry. He had found a direction. Now all he needed to do was plot a course.

  Turkish Airlines operated daily departures from Oslo to Istanbul. He booked a ticket for the next day, threw some clothes in a bag, and borrowed money from a friend. At the airport he changed ever
ything into dollars, taking a couple of thousand. His flight left just after noon.

  * * *

  Three days after his daughters left, he was traveling the same route.

  Please turn off all electronic devices. For three hours he would not be checking his telephone every minute. He found himself alone with his thoughts.

  It was just after the summer holidays that he had noticed Ayan change, become quieter, reticent, but it had occurred gradually. He had attributed her behavior to boy trouble.

  Sara had brushed it aside. “She’s a teenager, it’ll pass. Leave her be.” Sara was usually the strict one. She had put her foot down when Ayan developed a crush on a boy she had met at Islam Net a couple of years ago. He was Somali like her, and one day Ayan had announced that she wanted to get engaged. Sara had reluctantly agreed for them to meet but still maintained they were way too young to marry.

  “I don’t care, I’ll do what I want,” Ayan had responded. Ismael had been impressed. He would never have dared take that tone with his mother. Once Ayan was granted permission to spend time with the boy, the fantasy shattered and she lost interest.

  Could it have been some new flame who had gotten his daughter mixed up in this?

  * * *

  The first time he had seen the girls dabble in fundamentalism had been about two years earlier. Leila was fourteen years old and Ayan was seventeen.

  “We’re going into Oslo with some friends, but we’re broke,” Ayan had said.

  Sadiq usually gave them some money for a kebab, an ice cream, or something small. That day he had no cash, so handed over his Visa card and gave them the PIN.