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

by Åsne Seierstad

  “That’s how it is, if you’re not directly involved in the fighting yourself. If you live in a peaceful area. By the way, how is Leila?”

  “Good, her wound is healing, it wasn’t that serious.”

  In the end Ayan summed up what she wanted to say in a series of numbered points: “1. We did not send anyone to kill Dad! 2. We did not come here to satisfy anyone other than ALLAH! 3. We are happy and well.”

  “Just don’t like the idea of you marrying again and again. I don’t have anything against you tying the knot with one person, but when you know he’s soon going to get killed in the war and you’re planning to move quickly on to the next one,” Ismael wrote back.

  “At the moment I’m married to a kind, wonderful man who I love dearly and inshallah he will be the only one I marry and grow old together with. Nobody knows when they will die. And I can’t imagine living without him so forget about the whole remarrying thing.”

  “I know he won’t live for long if he goes off to fight on a regular basis.”

  “It’s not like that haha, they don’t go off to fight that often, hehe.”

  23

  SPOILS OF WAR

  Leila sent a picture to Ismael.

  “Ha, I was shot first” was written beneath the photo of a foot in a cast.

  It made Ismael shiver. His sister was such an idiot! How could she joke about something like that?

  Later, over the phone, she told him that by the grace of Allah her foot had healed.

  “Come home!” Ismael said to her.

  “No, you come here,” his sister replied. “We have a lovely big house, our own backyard, a garden … We have a black and white rabbit. As well as a gray one and a white one. They create havoc in the kitchen and eat our bread.”

  “Dad risked his life for the two of you … and you accused him of being a spy and tried to have him killed.”

  “Well, if he is a spy he should be punished,” Leila responded curtly.

  “We want so much to help Muslims, and the only way we can really do that is by being with them in both suffering and joy,” the girls had written when they left. “With this in mind we have decided to travel to Syria and help out down there as best we can.”

  But they were not helping anybody. For a while Hisham had allowed the sisters to volunteer at a hospital. He would drive them there and pick them up.

  The Islamist hospital procedures had led to a large number of the employees leaving. Many had fled to Turkey. Doctors who had never taken prayer breaks were now obliged to pray five times a day. Nurses had to be fully covered while working, and male doctors were not to see their female patients’ faces.

  Ayan and Leila went around kind of helping out.

  Then Hisham changed his mind. The hospital was not a good place for them to be. They were better off at home.

  Because when a woman leaves the house, the devil always follows her.

  * * *

  A new thread had started up on the chat page of Leila’s school class. After the tabloid VG reported that the girls most likely traveled to Syria because of boyfriends, a boy asked if anyone knew more about this.

  Camilla: She always said that because of her religion she did not and would not have a boyfriend, but you never know

  Alexander: She was so unsociable. She probably didn’t tell anyone other than her sister

  Camilla: We don’t actually know if she was unsociable or not, given that we had no idea what she was doing in her free time

  Fridjof: hahahahahahahahahahaahahaha so true

  Alexander: She was unsociable in class, didn’t go on any school trips, didn’t turn up at graduation or at Ulrik’s party

  Joakim: I don’t think that had anything to do with how social she was, more to do with the religious aspect or whatever it’s called. It did take place in a church after all

  Fridjof: But HEY, massive respect for her daring to go down there

  Camilla: I agree completely, Fridjof, she really is a brave individual

  Alexander: Are you kidding me?

  Fridjof: About what? Listen … it might be a stupid thing to do but she did have the courage to do it. There’s jihad and shit down there

  Alexander: Yes, but she deserves ZERO respect. What good has she done??

  Fridjof: She does deserve respect, even though it’s a stupid thing to do, she did leave everything she had to go and help complete strangers

  Alexander: I get your point but I for one do not respect her

  Her former classmates often spoke of her.

  “The school actually treated her really well,” Emilie said to Sofie during a free period. They were now attending Nadderud, the most prestigious upper secondary school in Bærum. “She may have felt left out, but then again she wasn’t that easy to talk to either.”

  “Wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine,” Sofie said. “But neither was she a bitch.”

  They agreed that it would probably have been easier for her if she had gone to a school where there were more people like her there, more Muslims.

  The girls recalled what she had said about judgment day. “It’s like a crossroads,” she had told them. “One way goes to paradise, the other leads to hell.”

  “So where will I end up?” Emilie had asked.

  “Because of how you dress, not covering your hair and the like, and as you’re not Muslim, you’re going to hell,” Leila had replied.

  On seeing Emile’s shocked look, Leila had wavered slightly. “Maybe you’ll be all right. We will sacrifice ourselves for all of you as well.”

  Sofie contemplated those words. “Is that what she’s doing now, sacrificing herself for us?”

  Emilie looked at her. “Haven’t a clue. What’s she actually doing down there anyway?” She twiddled a strand of hair between her fingers and looked at Sofie. “Do you think she went there to be a sex slave?”

  * * *

  The first couple of months in Syria, the girls lived in different locations, depending on where Hisham was working. They stayed in al-Dana and Tabaqa in Idlib province, then in Aleppo province. At the beginning of 2014, Hisham and Ayan moved to Raqqa, where ISIS had recently taken control. As a suitable husband had yet to be found for Leila, who was still recovering from her bullet wound, she accompanied them.

  One militia after another had been defeated. The black flag was raised all across the city.

  ISIS arrested whomever they pleased.

  Whenever.

  Wherever.

  Charges were manifold.

  Jeans were forbidden. Ornaments on women’s clothing likewise. Smoking meant running the risk of losing the fingers you held the cigarette between. Long hair on men was prohibited, growth of beards was compulsory. Most of those harboring aspirations for freedom had either been killed or had fled.

  The three youngsters from Bærum had taken possession of such a family’s house. It was empty, insofar as it was without occupants, but was filled with everything one could need: bedclothes, towels, pots and pans, appliances, and electronics.

  Those who did not support ISIS lay low and kept quiet, except one small group calling itself Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which posted photographs online and reported what ISIS did not want the wider world to know. The leaders of Raqqa’s most prominent tribes saw which way the wind was blowing and swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The new force occupying the city replaced Assad’s reign of terror with its own.

  Everything had gone according to Haji Bakr’s plan.

  Hisham was one of the pawns. The pike angler had risen through the ranks and now commanded a squad of soldiers. He had arrived early in Syria, in autumn 2012, and was thus regarded as having seniority. Initially, he had joined al-Nusra but later defected to ISIS when the opportunity arose. Serving ISIS, on sacred soil, your thoughts required adjustment if you were to become a proper Muslim. If you hailed from a land of infidels, you were regarded as an infidel, no matter how well-read you were. Everyone began at the same level, as though hear
ing about Islam for the first time. For some it was familiar material; for others there was a lot that was new. Hisham did not understand much, as the lessons were held in Arabic and English. Prior to the religious instruction, the aspiring fighters had been subjected to a series of trials of patience, like being placed in a room with other newcomers to sit and stew. They could be left to themselves for days without any knowledge of what might happen or when. Some freaked out. It was an important grounding in life as a soldier, which in addition to going on the offensive involved staying calm, lying in wait, keeping your head down, and awaiting orders. A good fighter had ice water in his veins.

  Only after weeks of patience training and religion classes did the new recruits begin weapons instruction.

  * * *

  The highest positions in ISIS were assigned to carefully chosen men. Like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, most of the top military leaders were Iraqi—ISIS was above all an Iraqi organization. Saudi Arabians held the uppermost positions in the courts, with Tunisians below them, and Arabians from the Gulf often worked in the intelligence services. Many Chechens, with their valuable guerrilla war experience, held midlevel ranks in the military.

  There were opportunities for advancement, however, despite this consciously imposed hierarchy. Young men who had no experience of having people answer to them and had never so much as held jobs in the West could find themselves in command positions. Men like Hisham.

  Young Muslim males had enlisted in holy war before. In Afghanistan. Iraq. Bosnia. Somalia. In that respect Hisham was part of a tradition. What was new was the speed at which it was happening and the flow of females, many in their teens. By autumn 2013, the number of Western migrants in Syria numbered around three thousand, several hundred of whom were women.

  What made young women renounce their families, friends, and studies to travel to a war zone?

  A group of researchers at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue attempted to find an answer to this online, on Twitter, on blogs. These were the places the girls themselves chose to explain why they went. Three main reasons were offered.

  The first was that the ummah was under attack. The West wanted to eliminate Islam and drive out Muslims.

  The conflict was presented as a part of a larger war against Islam. The girls shared images of dead or wounded children from Palestine, Syria, and Afghanistan. A black-and-white perspective was typical. “Either you are in the camp of iman—belief—or you are in the camp of kufr—unbelief, no in between,” declared Umm Khattab, one of the most active on Twitter in 2014. She, in common with the others, wrote under a nom de guerre, and many of the women used the prefix umm, “mother” in Arabic. She held the view that Muslims could not live in the West.

  The second reason was the desire to establish the caliphate. Few women traveled with the purpose of fighting themselves. Those who did were disappointed. ISIS did not allow women near the front line, the privilege of the men. Only those charged with control of their sisters’ morals in the female police brigade—al-Khansa—were given weapons training. They patrolled the streets of Raqqa with Kalashnikovs over their shoulders.

  Female migrants traveled with the idea of building a new society based on the laws of Allah. An ideologically pure state. A paradise for fundamentalists. Some mentioned a call to help others, some wanted to be mothers and wives. Many of those who went there to marry had never had a boyfriend before.

  The third main reason was individual duty and identity. Carrying out your religious duty while on earth secured you a place, perhaps even a good place, in paradise. Some wrote that they had no wish to live in this world at all and yearned for the hereafter. Umm Khattab, like Ayan, quoted the mantra of Jihadists the world over: We love death more than you love life.

  The search for a sense of belonging went like a red thread through the Twitter messages. Many wrote about the sisterhood they felt in Syria, as opposed to the false, superficial friendships they had in the West.

  Umm Irhab—Mother of Terror—wrote that seeking a better life had not been her intention. Her journey was rather a lesson in patience and hardship. The meaning of paradise would become clear through the trials she underwent and lead her to discover if she was worthy of entering. But it was not only in paradise that you reaped the rewards of following the way of God; you could also get what you wanted in this life—for example, being provided with a brave, noble husband. If Allah was willing, you might even be rewarded by becoming the wife of a martyr.

  The unmarried women were known as muhajirat—migrants—and were first placed in a maqqar, a sort of hostel. They were not allowed outside without permission, and then only if it was strictly necessary, in which case they had to be chaperoned. If they needed something, they were to approach the administrator. Those who had already arrived explained the system to those who were planning to come. It was important to come with the right intentions, wrote Umm Layth—Mother of the Lion—one of the most active on social media. “The reality is that to stay without a man here is really difficult.” She elaborated: “I have stressed this before on Twitter but I really need sisters to stop dreaming about coming to Syria and not getting married. Wallahi, life is very difficult here for the muhajirat, and we depend heavily on the brothers for a lot of support. It is not like the West where you can casually go out to Walmart and drive home…”

  When they married, which as a rule they quickly did, often immediately after arriving, they were given a place to live commensurate with the husband’s status.

  A Malaysian woman calling herself Bird of Paradise married a Moroccan she had never met prior to her wedding day and described life in the caliphate in terms of cost: “1. We don’t pay rent here. Houses are given for free. 2. We pay neither electric nor water bills. 3. We are given monthly groceries. Spaghetti, pasta, canned foods, rice, eggs, etc. 4. Monthly allowances are given not only to husbands but also to wives and also for each child. 5. Medical check-up and medication are free—the Islamic State pays on your behalf.”

  Mother of the Lion felt she deserved these benefits: “In these lands we are rewarded for our sacrifice in migrating here, and receive ghanimah—war booty. Honestly there is something so pleasurable in knowing that what you have has been taken from the kuffar and handed to you personally by Allah as a gift. Some of the many things include kitchen appliances like fridges, cookers, ovens, microwaves, milkshake machines, vacuum cleaners, cleaning products, fans and most important—a house with free electricity and water provided to you by the caliphate and no rent, included.”

  Umm Ubaydah shared her attitude: “Alhamdulillah, God be praised, and they give food and clothes, mostly ghanimah, and today we received fresh bread.”

  The electricity may have been free, but supply was intermittent, and as one woman explained, you could not always count on being able to charge your phone. It was important to have candles and flashlights available, and you had to learn how to wash your clothes by hand “since you really cannot depend on a washing machine here.”

  * * *

  Leila and Ayan also were occupied with conveying a good impression of the caliphate. While Syrians fled their homes, Ayan wrote to Ismael, “We get money without working here btw. Tee hee. The house costs nothing, electricity costs nothing, and water costs nothing.”

  What, then, was expected from women in return for all this?

  Umm Ubaydah could clarify: “The best thing for a woman is to be a righteous wife and to raise righteous children.”

  For some the whole experience was a disappointment. Even in one of the world’s most infamous cities, where beheadings had become public entertainment, domestic life could be boring. But few admitted they had expected more of the caliphate than housework, and those who expressed criticism were swiftly put in their place by the sisters.

  Umm Layth wrote: “As mundane as some of the day-to-day tasks may get, still you truly value every minute here for the sake of Allah—wallahi, I swear to God I have come across such beautiful sisters who will spe
nd mornings and nights in happiness because they are cooking the mujahideen food.”

  Quite a few of the bloggers’ texts were more akin to cooking blogs than war journals. One woman celebrated a cake she had baked, posting a photo of it with a grenade carefully positioned beside it: “Oreo cheesecake à la @UmmMujahid 93 and me.” Daily life was described under the hashtag #SimplePleasures in #IS. Their references, which might include Disney movies, celebrities, and food products, revealed that many of the girls had, not long ago, lived ordinary teenage lives. For a while Nutella was all the rage—husbands posted pictures of the jar along with Kalashnikovs and grenades. Many of the young fighters had a sweet tooth and posted pictures of well-stocked shelves in the pastry shops of Raqqa.

  Some websites specialized in recipes and snack tips for jihadistas. They were often basic and accompanied by simple illustrations. A recipe on the site of the al-Zorah women’s group showed a sequence of photos: an egg in a bowl, sugar in a bowl, the egg and sugar being mixed, a spoonful of salt, a glass of milk, a glass of flour, a larger bowl with everything whisked together, and finally a frying pan. “Sisters, you can make these pancakes and put them in the pockets of your fighter’s fatigues when they’re on their way into battle. We pray to God that this recipe is beneficial to our mujahid heroes!”

  The pancakes could be served with honey, syrup, sugar, butter, jam, or—Nutella.

  * * *

  The women rarely expressed regret online for the choice they had made, although quite a few wrote about missing their families back home and displayed awareness of the worry they had caused. Fear of hurting their parents, particularly their mothers, was what had occasioned the most doubt when they were considering whether or not it was right to leave. One girl felt anguish for leaving her mother alone, since her siblings had already flown the nest: “I ask myself if it was the right thing to do, but tell myself I would probably get married and leave her anyway.”

  Umm Layth concludes: “The family you get in exchange for the one left behind are like the pearl in comparison to the shell you throw away.”