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

by Åsne Seierstad

  “You’re allowed to use five hundred kroner max.”

  “And if that isn’t enough?”

  “It will be.”

  He replayed the scene in his head. Ayan had given him a hug, Leila too. They returned that evening with several shopping bags.

  “We spent six hundred,” Ayan said, curtsying apologetically.

  He tried to adopt a stern demeanor. “Don’t do that again. We agreed on a sum, a deal is a deal.”

  They had gone to their room. A short time later, they came back out. Or rather, two figures in black tents reappeared in the living room.

  Sara’s reaction was immediate. “Get those off!”

  The girls merely laughed. The folds of their clothing shook.

  “Do as your mother says,” their father ordered. “You both look like devils!”

  Only their eyes were visible. They stared out in defiance. Their noses protruded like black beaks beneath the material.

  “Who put that idea in your heads?” Sadiq asked.

  “We did.”

  But they had returned obediently to their room, taken off the niqabs, folded them, and placed them in the wardrobe. When they came back out they were sulky. Islam required women to cover themselves.

  “The niqab has nothing to do with Islam,” Sadiq said. “It’s culture, not religion, and Arabic culture at that, not Somali.”

  “Women wore the niqab in the time of the Prophet,” the girls said. “God bade the Prophet tell his wives and daughters to cover themselves to guard their modesty from the gaze of strangers.”

  “Don’t lecture me on Muhammad,” Sadiq exclaimed. “I know the Koran better than you. I could recite the first sura by heart by the time I was eight years old!” The Prophet never told his wife or daughters to cover their faces, he went on, while the teenagers insisted that at the very least the Prophet’s favorite wife, young Aisha, had worn a niqab in the presence of strangers.

  “That still doesn’t mean that the two of you should do it!”

  “We saw lots of women in Somalia in the summer wearing it!”

  “Well, that’s nothing to do with us,” their father replied. “We’re not like that. Where did you buy them, anyway?”

  “At Hijab House. By Rabita Mosque. They have clothes for Muslim women there, niqabs, lots of nice stuff.”

  They thought they had gotten value for money; in addition to the niqabs, they had purchased two floor-length cloaks and several new hijabs.

  Some time would pass before Sadiq saw the niqabs again. But Sara had come across the veils in different places on the shelves of their wardrobe when putting away laundry.

  Not long after that, the girls had again broached the subject. Ayan was bothered by the looks men gave her. Leila agreed.

  “They stare at us,” they complained. “It’s haram. We want to cover ourselves.”

  “Of course the boys at school look at you. Small wonder when you’re both so beautiful,” Sadiq quipped.

  “No, it’s not them. It’s Somali men in Oslo, in the city, grown men in Grønland who stare at us when we’re on our way to the mosque. They try to flirt with us.”

  “Then you just tell them to mind their own business. Let them know you’re the daughters of Sadiq gabayaa—Sadiq the poet—that’ll soon shut them up!” In Somaliland, Sadiq had been a member of a circle of poets. They had met at cafés in Hargeisa, reciting poetry and engaging in discussion until the war broke out and they were scattered to the four winds. Years after the conflict, some of them had made contact on the net. Verses and thoughts flew online between Hargeisa, Naples, Gothenburg, and Bærum. Sadiq often took part in Somali cultural events in Oslo, reciting his own poetry or playing the drums. That gave him a certain status and position among the liberals within the group. The more religious types looked down upon the drummer. “Musician” was, for them, a term of abuse. Music, and everything that came with it, was sinful.

  Somalis in Oslo upheld a strict code of honor. People kept an eye on one another. Especially in the downtown neigborhood of Grønland in Oslo—coined “Little Somalia”—where most of Norway’s thirty-six thousand Somalis lived. The Somali community had just surpassed the Pakistani to become the country’s largest non-Western minority.

  Even though Sadiq had studied in Saudi Arabia and was fluent in classical Arabic, making him more highly educated than most of his compatriots, many criticized him for not holding Islam and Islamic tradition in high enough regard. “He thinks he’s a Norwegian,” they said behind his back. Many of the young were more observant and stricter in their interpretation of the Koran than the previous generation.

  The girls had been so single-minded. They had always been good at arguing a case. Sadiq had given in: “Okay, fine, when you’re in Grønland, then, put them on if you want, but don’t wear them here in Bærum and never in school!”

  He knew that Norwegian society viewed covered women as oppressed. That was something the poet and musician was not going to be associated with.

  Not long after, he and Sara were called in to Leila’s school for a meeting. Sadiq was the one who went. The pupil was also to be present.

  “We’re having trouble recognizing her,” the teacher said. “We need to have eye contact, have to be able to make out facial expressions. That’s not easy when someone is wearing a niqab.”

  Sadiq looked at his daughter. “Didn’t we agree you wouldn’t wear the niqab at school?”

  Leila did not reply.

  “You have to conform to school rules. If the school doesn’t allow you to cover your face, then that’s how it is,” he continued, looking back and forth between her and the teacher.

  “Okay, Dad.”

  * * *

  Chicken or beef?

  Sadiq looked up at the Turkish Air flight attendant and then down at the tray. His stomach tensed as he chewed the first bite of chicken. He put down the plastic fork. Outside, the sky was blue and some downy clouds swept by. Thoughts drifted through his mind. Was it his fault? Had he not been strict enough? Had he let everything slide? Been too occupied with his own concerns? The drumming? The poetry?

  He took a cup of tea with sugar. It tasted metallic.

  How had he not seen this coming?!

  But who could imagine his little girls wanting to wage jihad?

  They dulled us with hugs. They milked my love.

  His little girls. The only ones.

  The plane entered Turkish airspace.

  * * *

  At home, Sara, too, was at a loss. She was trying to piece together whatever she could from memory.

  The girls had begun to live by strict rules sometime back. Prayer, attire, food, behavior—everything was to be right and pure. They stopped wearing makeup and jewelry. Perfume containing alcohol was thrown out, and then all perfume was disposed of. It was haram—it could attract men.

  The girls had downloaded lists of E numbers, the codes for food additives that appeared on food packaging in Europe, and examined packets and cans, checking the ingredients against the lists to see if the product was fit to be consumed by Muslims. Several household foodstuffs were deemed unacceptable. Eventually Sadiq had grown angry. “Where in the Koran does it say anything about E numbers?”

  One day Sara had opened the family photo album and found that several pictures had been ripped out. Some had been removed completely, while heads and bodies had been cut out of others. Ayan and Leila had been expunged from the album.

  Sara had been furious.

  “But we’re not covered, Mom! Imagine if someone outside the family saw us. It’s haram!”

  The memories were gone. She had mourned the loss of those photos.

  She went into the girls’ room. Stood looking around. No, it was too painful. She went out again. They had left. Without saying goodbye. “We love you both sooo much, would do anything for you, and would never do anything to purposely hurt you,” they had written. So come home, then!

  Years ago, she used to scold Ayan for having become
too Norwegian. Back then she had been afraid of losing her. Her elder daughter had begun going to parties, and one night Sadiq had seen a packet of snus fall out of her pocket.

  Ayan had dressed like her friends, in tight jeans and close-fitting T-shirts. One unusually hot summer evening, Ayan had invited some classmates over for samosa. They had entered the kitchen in low-cut tops, all bare midriffs and white thighs. “My God, they’re naked!” Sara had exclaimed in Somali.

  “Get over it, Mom, let people be how they want,” her teenage daughter had replied.

  “As long as you promise me never to walk around like that!” Sara said. Ayan had glared at her before turning to her friends and laughing.

  Only now did Sara try to recall the last time the girls from the class had visited. She could not remember. She herself had only Somali friends and did not consider it out of the ordinary for Ayan to lose touch with her classmates.

  When she and the children came to Norway, Ayan was six, Ismael five, and Leila three years old. They should never have come! They should never have left home! Then this would not have happened and she would have had her daughters with her. She had never actually wanted to leave Somaliland; it was Sadiq who was convinced they would get a better life in the West.

  While she had been pregnant with Leila, Sadiq had bought a passport, got a tourist visa to Denmark, and flown from Addis Ababa to Copenhagen. A friend there told him he should go to Norway, that it was the best place for Somalis. Sadiq traveled on to Oslo, where he went to the police and told them that if he returned home he would be killed, as both his father and his brother had been. He related that when he was fourteen years old, all the men in his neighborhood had been rounded up. Those who had supported the rebellion against the dictator Siad Barre were to be put to death. He had been taken along with the men, but his mother had come screaming: “He’s only a child! He’s only a child!”

  That was what saved him, he told the asylum authorities. While all the others, including his father, were killed in front of his eyes. “Avenge him!” his mother had later said. He had taken a weapon from a body in the street, he told the authorities, and had joined the rebel forces.

  The rebellion was successful but peace was short-lived. The victors began fighting among themselves for control. Two clans, formerly part of the opposition army, from opposite sides of the river running through Hargeisa, both wanted to rule and again took up arms. This was not a war worth dying for, so he left.

  Sadiq was sent to the Tanum reception center for asylum seekers in Bærum, after which he was transferred some 350 miles north to Levanger, spending six months there before being sent south again, to Klemetsrud reception center in Oslo. He told them he had been arrested and held prisoner aboard the family’s small cargo boat, together with his brother and the rest of the crew, while it was used to transport weapons. His brother had been killed but Sadiq had been released.

  “I’m a dangerous man,” he had told the police upon arrival. The reception center arranged for him to see a psychologist to treat his war trauma. As time went on, his anger lessened, and he calmed down. It was time to bring over his family. But first he needed to be granted asylum. Time dragged on. In May 1998, after two years in Norway, he received an answer.

  “The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) is not of the view that the statements of the applicant justify his belief in persecution, in respect of pertinent laws and conventions, upon return to his home country. The civil war and the overall difficulty of the situation in Somalia do not in themselves form a basis for asylum.”

  UDI’s opinion was that the capture of the family boat bore the hallmarks of a random criminal act. In addition, the incident had occurred some considerable time ago, yet the applicant had resided in his home country without problems since then. Neither did the authorities attach much importance to the applicant’s claims of belonging to a small clan without influence. “The applicant is nevertheless granted permission to seek and engage in employment,” the letter went on. This work permit was valid “throughout the country” for one year and could be renewed. The most important part came at the end: “This permission can form the basis for permanent residence.”

  Sadiq immediately applied for family reunification. He filled out forms, wrote letters, and chased up responses. It dragged on. Two years after he had been granted the residence permit, he faxed a handwritten letter to the Norwegian embassy in Ethiopia, where Sara and the children were waiting to emigrate. “My family has no relatives in Addis Ababa and no means of support so it is a hell there.” He added that his wife and children were sick. “I ask therefore you will give my family priority first before you go on holiday.”

  That same autumn, Sara and the children were flown to Norway as part of a UN family reunification program and settled in Bærum, the Norwegian municipality with the highest percentage of millionaires and the greatest divide between rich and poor. Ismael and Leila were enrolled in the kindergarten, and Ayan entered a class where newly arrived refugee children were given a year to learn Norwegian prior to being placed in regular schools. From her first day of school, Ayan wore a head scarf, which her classmates learned was called a hijab. She had different ones, with lace, with trimming, in various colors and patterns. The first time she got into a fight over the head scarf it was the bully, a fair-haired boy, who wound up in tears. If someone said something she did not like, she let fly. Physically at first, in time with words. No one was a match for Ayan’s verbal attacks. As soon as the language barrier was broken, the teachers at Evje Primary School began to notice how clever she was. She knew about things her classmates had no knowledge of, and she loved telling stories. The only pupil from Africa in the class was simply pretty impressive.

  A year after they arrived in Norway, Sara became pregnant, and in 2002 Jibril was born. Isaq came along five years later. As the family grew in size, the Bærum authorities allocated them larger apartments. For a long time they lived in Hamangskogen, a development of high-rises with lots of space between them. The area was crowded with children. The girls jumped rope, ran around in the playground, went to the beach, and learned how to swim at the pool. Leila’s chief desire was to follow her big sister no matter what she did or where she went. Sometimes she was allowed; more often she wasn’t.

  Ismael played football every chance he got. Football was the last thing he thought about before going to sleep and the first thing on his mind when he woke up, and he asked his father to put his name down for a team. He dreamed of having a kit with BÆRUM SPORTSKLUBB across the front, dreamed about playing in matches, going to cup competitions, telling people about the goals he scored, and of having a coach. He pestered his father. To no avail. Busy with his own life, Sadiq would say “next year” every new season, while Ismael went on playing ball between the blocks.

  From the day she arrived, Sara felt lonely and yearned for her family in Hargeisa. She pushed little Isaq around in the buggy and complained that people criticized her no matter what she did. She never knew what she was doing wrong because she didn’t understand what the elderly in the neighborhood were saying to her. Did she go to the wrong places? Did they not like the color of her skin, her wearing a head scarf, or her covered-up body?

  Even after thirteen years in Norway, her soul was still in Somaliland.

  Now it was torn apart.

  Sara went into the bedroom and lay down on her unmade bed. Her mobile phone lay beside her with the ring volume on full. In case.

  She and the girls had their share of quarrels, of course, but they used to be able to talk about things. And the girls always asked permission … even if it was only to knock on the neighbors’ doors.

  * * *

  Sadiq wandered around Atatürk Airport at a loss, struggling to find his way out of the international terminal. When he eventually reached passport control, he was denied entry because he didn’t have a visa. He joined a new line in front of a cashier’s window, where he bought one and then rejoined the passport queue. Final
ly he made it out of the enormous terminal and walked over to the run-down hall where the domestic flights departed from.

  He bought a ticket to Adana, the place Ayan had inadvertently given as the girls’ location when she sent her message about the “last meal in Europe.”

  He would catch up with them.

  While he flew south, larger machinery was being set in motion. A direct line of communication had been established between the leaders of the investigation, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Kripos, the criminal investigation service of the Norwegian police, which were in touch with Interpol. The Norwegian embassy in Ankara had contacted local police and border stations in the south of Turkey requesting that the girls, if they were identified, be taken into custody.

  As Sadiq landed in Adana, a message from the police appeared on his phone. The girls had most likely traveled to Antakya in the south. This was a presumption, because there had not been any activity on their mobile phones in the past twenty-four hours.

  Antakya? Where was that?

  “You can get there by bus,” he was told at the information desk.

  * * *

  That Saturday night, rumors started flying. From Sandvika in the west to Grønland in the heart of Oslo, via the valley in the east and along the fjord back again to Bærum. Have you heard? Surely not? Is it really true?

  Word reached the newspaper street of Akersgata, and by Sunday morning, the same day Sadiq had left, reporters from VG, the country’s biggest tabloid, rang the doorbell. Ismael opened the door and told them that yes, my sisters said they were going to Syria. No, they are not picking up when we call, but my dad has gone after them. We hope they have not crossed the border into Syria. No, our family is not particularly religious but my sisters have become more radical lately. Among other things, they have both started wearing a niqab. Mom was very opposed to that and they argued about it.

  Ismael told all this to the journalists but appealed to them not to reveal their names or where they lived.

  That night, VG was the first newspaper to break the story: “Sixteen-year-old travels with big sister to help Muslims in Syria.” Below the headline, in slightly smaller print, it read: “International search” and “Police Security Service raise alarm.”