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

by Åsne Seierstad

“That’s great!”

  “But my father won’t accept him.”

  “Who is he?” Dilal asked.

  “His name is Abdi. A relation, from Canada, he’s gorgeous, but my parents won’t allow us to marry. He’s gone now, but I want so much to go after him, get married, live in Somaliland, in a country where I feel at home, a Muslim country. I can’t take much more of Norway.”

  After buying some jewelry in aid of Syrian children and widows, they sat down to draw up a plan. Dilal had several ideas about how Ayan could persuade her father. If she just persevered, he would eventually see it was true love and give in.

  “Love is greater than anything. Where love is concerned, anything is possible,” Dilal said.

  “Maybe you could ask Ubaydullah to talk to my dad? Perhaps he’d listen to him? After all, you chose someone your family was opposed to and have shown it can work…”

  They discussed at length what Ubaydullah could say to convince her father.

  Being in love. Having things your way. This was what they tossed around the entire evening.

  “I don’t have time to sit around and wait. I want to get married now! I want to get away from here,” Ayan groaned.

  Dilal said she would see what she could do, but she did not think Ubaydullah was the best person to talk Ayan’s father into coming around. He had not even managed to convince her father of their marriage. On the other hand, she had never let him try. She had just left and never gone back. Broken off contact with her family. Maybe Ayan could do the same?

  “Maybe,” Ayan mumbled.

  Unhappy love was the theme that Ayan chose to write about for her special report in Norwegian, which was to be inspired by art and literature.

  “Many in modern society do not believe there is one true love out there for them even though so much of contemporary culture is dedicated to that very thing,” she wrote in the introduction.

  “I too have my doubts, because we do not see much of it these days. Is no one willing to struggle valiantly for their beloved, or for a moment beneath the moonlight? For a Somali brought up in Norway, this is a difficult subject. The topic of love is practically taboo and the romantic love between a man and a woman is certainly not talked about. You seldom hear the words ‘I love you’ exchanged between a Somali man and wife. Although parents say it to their children, their children would be shocked if they heard their parents say it to one another. In spite of this I adore love and unhappy love in particular, as it seems so genuine to me, so realistic. After all, not everything can have a happy ending.”

  To shed light on unhappy love she chose Edvard Munch’s Separation from 1896. The painting, which she included on the front of her assignment, showed a gloomy-looking man in a dark suit stooped over with eyes downcast while holding a hand over his bleeding heart. A blond woman in a white dress stood turned away, looking out to sea.

  “I thought it was such an intense painting that I began to read up on it and then came across a text by the painter about the subject of the picture.” Ayan quoted Munch: “So she left. I do not know why. She moved slowly away, toward the sea, farther and farther away. Then a strange thing happened. I felt as though there were invisible threads between us. As though invisible threads of her hair were still twined around me. And even though she completely disappeared across the sea I felt the pain where my heart was bleeding, because the threads could not be severed.”

  In order to understand why unhappy love has such an effect on us, we need to understand the part love plays and how significant it is, she explained. “Knut Hamsun actually opens the novel Victoria with an explanation of love. I have chosen to leave it out as I consider it blasphemous,” she continued. “As human beings we are always striving for what we cannot have. Our hearts suffer in the pursuit but we suffer even more if we give up and leave. Those fleeting moments where we breathe easily and look our beloved in the eyes without fate coming between us, are the ones that keep us alive and almost drive us crazy. I think such ardent passion is a wonderful thing. It gives us hope in spite of hopelessness.” She ended by saying that the obstacles standing in the way of love “were all too evident in many societies nowadays but you can choose to break with convention and go your own way.”

  The consequences could be many, she wrote in conclusion, “from honor killing to a cold shoulder.”

  17

  FRAUD IN THE NAME OF GOD

  “Once the Muslims were a people who loved death just as much as you love life,” Ayan wrote on Twitter. It was something Osama bin Laden had said, and it had become the refrain of jihadist bloggers the world over. A martyr’s death was what was longed for, the acceptable way to salvation. This was intended to scare the infidels, those who denied God, because an enemy who does not fear death is a dangerous one.

  Ayan had found a better world. A higher heaven. She listened to Koran readings recited by beautiful male voices. She watched videos on Peace TV, Talk Islam, and Quran Weekly. This was not the real life, the next one was. Death was only a transition to it.

  At school she spent most of her time in the library. She often disappeared into the small book depository at the back. The room was without windows. By the door, class sets of Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men lay stacked. There were plastic boxes on the floor containing Bibles with pale yellow covers. German dictionaries for advanced learners lined a shelf.

  Sometimes she went there alone, other times in the company of a couple of friends. Once, when the librarian had entered by chance, she saw the girls lying on green mats and praying. So that was what they were using the room for. She went back out quietly. On occasion the librarian saw Ayan’s head disappear behind the sofa in the corner and then reemerge when she was finished praying. The librarian had bought the sofa at a jumble sale. The material had struck her as Middle Eastern looking and she thought it would liven up the featureless library.

  Ayan’s routine of practicing her faith in the middle of the chaos of the lunch break fascinated the middle-aged librarian. Youngsters sat in groups all around, eating and talking, but Ayan did not pay the least bit of attention. She sat calmly on the sofa with a book. Her ability to shut out the rest of the world was impressive.

  Abdi was a distant memory.

  After he left, Ayan had found several shortcomings with him. He was not really a proper Muslim.

  She had devised a new plan. There was no reason to hang around waiting.

  * * *

  Ayan smiled scornfully when al-Qaida came up in a debate during a class on politics and human rights. The topic was the attacks on September 11. She had begun to reject discussions instead of participating in them, and this time she kept her input to a few comments and some condescending looks. Her classmate Ole Martin asked her afterward why she had scoffed at the victims, and she replied, “The Americans got what they deserved.”

  She held a similar view about the capture of Western vessels by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. “The West has dumped toxic waste off the coast of Somalia to break us, forcing us to engage in piracy to defend our country.”

  She was happy about soldiers being killed in Afghanistan, she said. NATO forces were subduing the population and were guilty of mass murder. In Iraq, it was the Americans who were the real terrorists.

  The teacher of politics and human rights had once considered Ayan a credit to the class. Yes, her views were extreme, but that promoted discussion because they were also consistent, and rational to a degree, even though he thought she had a penchant for conspiracy theories. Throughout the spring of 2013 the tone became harder.

  Ayan was of the opinion that sharia should be introduced in Norway. It would put a stop to problems like criminality, drug abuse, and social distinctions, she argued. Changing the school rules would be a step on the way. She launched a petition.

  “Give me the opportunity to prove that the niqab does not create problems for communication between people! Give me the opportunity to express myself!” the heading read, and then in a slightly thicke
r font: “Is that too much to ask?”

  “Yes, Ayan!” one person replied, alongside a drawing of a reconciliatory heart.

  Ayan collected almost 150 signatures.

  Part of her wanted to change the rules to suit her, another part did not give a damn. From January in her final year, she consistently broke another social contract: paying your bills.

  It began with some clothes she ordered at the start of the year, items to wear beneath her niqab. On the receipt it said Seductive Comfort Bra. Femme Lace Top. Davida Deep Plunge. Frib Top. Lea Slipper. The alluring names were reprinted again and again, on every payment reminder.

  In addition to the lace underwear, she ordered a waterproof first aid kit from the Red Cross and creams and soaps from Yves Rocher. The products came as ordered, and the invoices were all tossed aside.

  Reminders. Final demands. Notices of debt collection. The charges quickly stacked up.

  They haunted her only slightly.

  * * *

  Ayan had taken on the status of leader for a group of Somali girls. They met regularly at a room above the Gunerius shopping center in Storgata. The room was leased by a Somali association. They ate halal pizza, chatted, and schooled one another. One of them introduced the word “whoreway” about Norway, and thereafter they referred to it as that.

  Ayan was quick to criticize those who were not as strict in their beliefs as she was, and some, even like-minded people, perceived her to be a bit of a bully. She had gone from being open and approachable to sarcastic, patronizing, and loud. She was persuasive, was good at organizing, and liked to be in charge. Now and again the girls gave talks to the group. Ayan wanted to talk about Norwegians’ views of Islam. Her premise was that Norwegians hated Muslims. She demonstrated her theory with selected quotations from critics of Islam. Norway wanted to destroy Islam, she explained, and read aloud extracts from Islam critics’ blogs. How could the girls live in a country that did not respect them?

  The parents had little idea what their daughters were up to. The mothers stayed at home for the most part, looking after large broods, and had seldom been out in working life; their fathers were often absent.

  One of the girls inspired by Ayan was Samira, a Somali from one of the inner-city areas of Oslo. She had, like Ayan, been a rebel in lower secondary school and an advocate for women’s liberation and rights. The writer Camilla Collett, who had described the aimless existence of bourgeois women in the nineteenth century, had been a particular heroine of hers.

  Samira’s mother, one of the people behind the initiative for Muslim primary schools in Oslo, had believed her daughter was becoming too Norwegian, and following the summer holidays after Samira’s first year in secondary school she had left Samira behind with some relatives in Hargeisa while the rest of the family returned to Oslo. Samira had cried and begged to go back home to Norway with them, but to no avail; her mother had taken her passport and left. She received no schooling in Hargeisa other than intensive Koran studies, and there was nowhere to run away to. When, after two years in Somaliland, she was allowed to return to Oslo, she was neatly gathered into the fold. Her mother breathed a sigh of relief. Now it was time to marry her off.

  The voice of Camilla Collett, from a time that was not yet over, echoed: Our destiny is to be married, not to be happy.

  * * *

  “Come on, Samira,” Ayan urged.

  The one who had inspired her to put a foot forward was the Koran teacher. He was said to have close ties to al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization that had carried out a series of attacks in Somalia and other parts of Africa. In 2012 the group had pledged allegiance to al-Qaida. Mustafa knew many of the Norwegians who had gone to Syria, and he was rumored to help those who wanted to travel there. People said he was discreet; the initiative had to come from the other party, never from him. He hinted at things, avoided being explicit, but the people he met and the students he taught understood that if they wished to approach him, they would not be rejected.

  The notion of Syria had grown in Ayan’s mind. That was where they were going to create a caliphate—an ideal Islamic state. That was where she could live freely.

  She wanted the lot of them to travel there. They would help Syrian children, she said. And they would live their lives exactly as Allah wanted, in the proper Muslim way. But there was a war going on there, was Ayan not worried about that? a girl asked.

  No, they were in God’s hands. Besides, the day they would die had been preordained from the time they were in the womb.

  Several girls wanted to go. Samira was warming to the idea. Ayan was fired up. “And we have to get married there. All of us,” she insisted. “I can fix us up with Norwegian husbands.” She said she knew of many single Norwegian fighters who were there at the moment and listed them. Him and him and him. She told them they would all get lovely houses, much nicer than the local authority housing they were living in now.

  “I really want to go, Ayan, but I’d like to see what it’s like to live there for a year first,” Samira said, after a time.

  Ayan looked at her. “A year?!”

  Her friend nodded.

  Ayan shook her head. “If you travel to Syria, you’re going there to die.”

  Samira swallowed. That was out of the question. Never to see her little brothers and sisters again? Her mother? Or her big sister? At the same time, she really did want to help Syrian children, do what was right.

  Ayan would not let up. They would just have to talk about it again later. She drummed into Samira the instructions the organizers of the Syria journeys had given her. They must never talk about this online, not on Facebook, over e-mail, or on chat. Only face-to-face, in places that were not bugged.

  “Samira, it’s high time we got engaged anyway. Isn’t it?”

  Ayan had the plan all ready: Flee. Marry. Die.

  * * *

  Most of the foreign fighters raised money for a little travel fund before setting out. Ayan had been given a pointer by those who had gone, or were about to go, about how to make some money. She needed to keep her eyes out for offers along the lines of “get a mobile phone for 1 krone” and sign up for a fixed-period subscription where you paid later. She could then sell the telephone and the subscription. The bill would be sent to her but was to be left unpaid. Whoever bought the phone would be sure to make as many foreign calls as possible before the service was disconnected and the SIM card could be tossed.

  Beginning in February and throughout spring, Ayan signed up for subscriptions with seven mobile operators: Netcom, Tele2, OneCall, Lycamobile, Chess, Talkmore, and Chilimobil. She sold the SIM cards and telephones she received in each package, making several thousand kroner in cash.

  “Failure to pay may result in extra costs and legal action,” warned the letter from the debt collection agency acting on behalf of Talkmore. The biggest charge was for international calls. On the Netcom bill, a couple of hundred minutes had been logged as zone World in March, and by April the figure had risen to six hundred. “OneCall wishes you a happy national day on the 17th and a wonderful month of May,” was written on one payment reminder. Principal. Late fee. Interest. Extrajudicial costs. Legal remuneration. Court costs.

  She was issued three credit cards. One from Bank Norwegian, one MasterCard for students, and one from an online clothing retailer. It was important everything happened at more or less the same time, as it would not take long before her credit rating was affected. She cashed out where she could. Her credit card debt increased, in step with the notices of debt collection. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty, fifty, sixty. One hundred thousand kroner. More than half of the amount was for overseas calls. The window envelopes piled up. She tossed them, unopened, into a plastic storage box at the top of the wardrobe.

  The fraud was easy to justify. It was God’s will that she travel to Syria. She needed money to get there. God had offered this opportunity to her. Not settling up with companies that had their base of operations in a state t
hat attacked Muslims could be regarded as a form of economic jihad.

  Ayan continued to go to school so as to avoid complications while she planned her journey. But her attendance was poor. Sometimes she just took the bus into the city instead. Rules governing the maximum permissible absenteeism in secondary schools had recently been scrapped, so she was free to come and go as she pleased, without fear of losing her place. The only communication she had received was a letter warning her she was in danger of receiving lower grades for orderliness due to all her absences.

  Ayan no longer wrote on social media. She had been advised to stay clear of the net. PST was monitoring it. All communications with those helping her to organize her journey were to be by handwritten letter, delivered face-to-face, or over Skype.

  How to raise money. The travel route. Possible husbands. She could not live in Syria as a single woman. There, in the ideal Islamic state, it was a woman’s purpose to marry.

  Time was running out. Ayan had to leave the country before the creditors turned up at the door, before her swindle came to light, before her parents found out anything. She met up with her friends. Samira was not ready. Neither for Syria nor marriage. She wanted to hold off on deciding for as long as she could.

  * * *

  Aisha gave birth to a son. She named him Salahuddin. Ayan and Leila went to visit her in the basement apartment she shared with her mother.

  Dilal also came, together with Ubaydullah.

  “He looks like Arfan!” the spokesman for the Prophet’s Ummah exclaimed, taking the boy in his arms and cradling him. “The eyes, the smile, the whole face, in fact,” he said, chuckling.

  The child’s father was in prison in Pakistan and had not seen his son. Ubaydullah, now the main recruiter to Syria, was not able to travel and fight himself. He had Crohn’s disease, an intestinal illness requiring regular injections.

  Ubaydullah operated like a travel agent. People who wanted to journey to Syria would call and he would arrange a meeting in a place where no one could eavesdrop, whether a parking lot, a gas station, or a rest stop. Dilal witnessed boys go from being mildly curious to thoroughly convinced, devoted Islamists. At times she quarreled with him about whether these young men actually understood what they were getting themselves into.