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

by Åsne Seierstad

  “What good is it to you to know these things when you neither believe in anything nor are looking for anything to believe in. I could understand if you were asking in order to get a better understanding of religion but it seems like you’re asking merely for the sake of debate.”

  “I just want to see if you share my values.”

  “I really don’t have the time or the inclination for a debate at the moment, starting with belief in God, because if you don’t believe in God none of the answers I give you will be of any use.”

  “Stop beating around the bush. Is IS for/against suicide bombers? It’s not a debate. Merely a simple question. I’m not asking why. Just yes/no.”

  After a few minutes the cursor began to move. It was one in the morning. An answer was on the way from Raqqa.

  “Hey, it’s Leila’s husband … finally, mate, we get to speak.”

  “Hey man. I asked my sister a question. Do you mind answering?”

  “Yeah, I know, she’s just feeling tired. Due to the pregnancy.”

  “My dad respects you a lot for asking to marry her. So do I.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Take good care of her, bro.”

  “Trust me, I will, Ismael. I wanted to speak with you for a long time coming. Aaww brotherly love, how cute.”

  “Back to my question though?”

  “I see you like fiqh. What madhab are you btw … don’t tell me Shafi like all Somalis. FYI, electricity might cut out any second.”

  Madhab is a school of thought within fiqh. There are four in Sunni Islam, including the Shafi in North and East Africa, while the Hanbali, the strictest, dominates in Saudi Arabia.

  “Lol … I’m not looking for reasoning around it, just give me a plain answer, yes or no?” Ismael persisted.

  “Dude, take it one step at a time. Lol.”

  “So that’s a yes. Right. I was not sure if the West were just shedding bad light on you guys or if you actually promote suicide bombing. So I would respect a simple answer from you. If that’s not too much to ask.”

  “We have just got to know each other, man, this topic needs a hot cup of tea. How about you come and I’ll make us nice Somali tea, discuss things, like the older generation?”

  “Haha, would I come back alive/in one piece?”

  Imran changed the subject, wanted to engage in small talk.

  But Ismael would not let up. “Just answer me first. Since I asked so nicely.”

  “Okay, this question is highly debatable. Some of the scholars in the Islamic State allow it and some don’t, calling it suicide. However, the majority agrees with it due to the great damage it causes the enemy. All those who do it do it at their own will and are never forced. Funny enough there is a looooooong list and this is what amazes many. Now my question to you is how is this benefiting you in any way?”

  “I am just curious how the ‘true’ religion can even be misinterpreted,” Ismael replied.

  * * *

  One Norwegian jihadist was sitting contemplating whether or not to carry out a suicide mission.

  Eventually some of Bastian’s compatriots in Syria had taken action and reported him to the sharia court in Raqqa. Following summary justice, Abu Safiyya was sentenced to death for the murder of his stepson, Salahuddin.

  Bastian was waiting for his life in this world to come to an end. Time dragged on and he remained in the cell. One day he was brought before the judge again and confronted with a choice: Face being beheaded or carry out a suicide attack for the Islamic State.

  Receive the punishment for treachery or die like a martyr.

  “Oh, Allah destroy them, and let it be painful!” Bastian had urged on his video. “Oh, Allah, take vengeance upon the transgressors,” he’d threatened the crown prince and the prime minister in Norway. “Oh, Greatest One, show them your wrath! Oh, Powerful One, show them hell!”

  When the border station that IS had just taken over exploded in a sea of flames, he had laughed.

  Now it was his life that could end in a sea of flames. In the cause of Allah. He could get into a truck, with armor plating fitted to prevent the tires being hit. He could sit behind a windshield covered with welded metal with only a peephole cut so no one could shoot him. He could start the car when given the signal. And drive toward the target. The infidels and the apostate. Or seen from another perspective—toward paradise.

  He could shout “Allahu Akbar” right before he triggered the device and the vehicle exploded.

  But he did not want to.

  He wanted to live.

  He had been up there. His videos had been viewed across the whole world. IS needed him for propaganda. He thought he would receive a reprieve.

  He did not.

  Sharia was carried out to the letter. Kill he who has killed. A soul for a soul. He who had sought paradise would instead end up in hell. That was the place for child killers.

  * * *

  Leila’s due date was June 10, Sara told Sadiq.

  “I’ve had an idea,” Osman wrote. “Let’s see if we can turn her visit to the hospital to our advantage. Let me chew on it.”

  “15 days left. Just so you know. The clock is ticking,” Sadiq wrote.

  “Three of the lads have been arrested!”

  “What?”

  “They were stopped at a Nusra checkpoint. The car was searched and their weapons were found. They were accused of passing information to the Kurds.”

  “14 days left.”

  “They’re being held at al-Nusra headquarters, four miles from al-Dana. My nerves are gone, I’m so upset, I’ve sent a sheikh…”

  “13 days left.”

  “We have managed to infiltrate the hospital. Have made a deal with the obstetrician. When your daughter comes in to give birth, he will make sure he’s the attending, and when the baby is delivered he will tell her the child is sick and needs follow-up. She will come to let him take a look at the baby every day. The more often she comes the better our chances of seizing her. The doctor will convince her that the baby needs to go to a special hospital in Turkey. The road goes through Atmeh. It’s a golden opportunity. The lads are with you until death.”

  “What about my elder daughter?”

  “We’ll need more money. We’re running low on cash. We need money to buy the three boys back. None of them have earned anything on the operation, and we owe the owner of the tank truck. He also needs money to live. The boys have not complained yet, they are very understanding. Tell your daughter that giving birth in the hospital is safest. But don’t make her suspicious. And find a way to send us more money!”

  “I have to be up early in the morning, so I need to get some sleep now,” Sadiq wrote. He tended to bow out of their conversations when the issue of money was raised.

  During the night he wrote, “Troubled, very troubled. Demons are toying with me.”

  Osman answered, “I know you are going through hell. As am I.”

  The Syrian smuggler had increasingly less room for maneuver. Kurdish militias were closing in on Atmeh and were now in control of several roads in the immediate vicinity. IS was on the offensive. Nusra was on the offensive. Assad was bombing.

  The area under Islamic State control was larger than ever. In mid-May 2015, IS fighters had seized control of the ancient city of Palmyra. They had executed regime soldiers who had not managed to flee, emptied the dreaded Tadmur prison of inmates whom they then recruited, and planted explosives around the ancient monuments in the city. In addition, IS won a strategic victory when Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in Iraq, fell.

  The coalition could not beat IS solely by bombing and it lacked partners on the ground. Several of the more moderate groups the West had attempted to ally with were swept aside by IS, or joined the Islamists’ ranks. There was also a lack of reliable intelligence. The coalition needed people to infiltrate, gather information, and indicate targets.

  A year had passed since Barack Obama unveiled a plan to train and eq
uip a five-thousand-man force to fight against IS. The plan, which had been budgeted at half a billion dollars, was quickly passed by Congress but was stranded from the start. The men, who were to undergo a six-week training course, were to be extracted from war zones in Iraq and Syria and trained in Jordan, and then reintroduced into the conflict and equipped with advanced weaponry. The Americans ended up preparing sixty men. A quarter of the weapons arsenal disappeared into the hands of other militias in exchange for access on the ground. In addition, there were divisions between the United States and some of the coalition partners. The main aim of Turkey and the Arab states was to depose Bashar al-Assad; the United States was focused on destroying IS.

  The Americans, British, and Russians, as well as the Arab states, tried to acquire assets on the ground in Syria. British intelligence had put a lot of resources into both infiltration and training. MI5 attempted to infiltrate mosques, Salafist organizations, and extremist groups to find people to act as informants on IS. Psychologists were used to find the right kind of individuals. Those enlisted underwent comprehensive personality tests to determine if they were the type who could easily slip over to the other side and in so doing become the most dangerous type of all—double agents with a stronger loyalty to IS than to the UK.

  The men on Osman’s rescue team complained that they felt they were under surveillance. Someone was watching them, they believed. The two Norwegian girls had become a heavy burden on the shoulders of many.

  Recently, numerous activists had been arrested and killed. They were paraded on video as traitors before being shot on camera. If IS could not find an activist, it took a relative in his place. One of the most prominent citizen journalists behind the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, who’d managed to flee to Turkey, had to watch his own father being tied to a tree and shot, the entire scene professionally lit and filmed by a camera crew from the terror state’s communications department.

  On June 1, Osman sent a picture of a snake and wrote: “IS is very close to Atmeh. Do you know what blood type your daughter has, A minus, A positive, B minus? Please try to put some pressure on the newspaper, we need money. People at the hospital need to be paid.”

  On June 2, he sent a picture of a beheading. “An engineer from Jabal al-Zawiya.”

  On June 5, he sent a reminder. “I need to pay the doctors at the hospital.”

  On June 7, he sent a fresh reminder: “Where are you? What’s happened? Save us!”

  Sadiq pleaded that he was trying. “I’m furious with the newspaper people. They haven’t sent me any money. They’re awaiting more information on the Norwegians, they’re particularly interested in a Norwegian sniper.”

  At four in the morning, two days before his daughter was due to give birth, Sadiq wrote: “My life is turned upside down since the girls left. From bad to worse. They’re still brainwashed. They still want to be there. They’re happy living life in a place like that. I have no job, can’t find any work, my wife has gone to Somalia, I live with Ismael. Those who have helped me cannot help me for all eternity. No one can help me forever. Norway has helped me. I am broken, I don’t know what to do, everyone is fleeing Raqqa, and my daughters want to stay! How can we help them if they don’t realize themselves the huge mistake they’ve made? That is the problem. My daughters are not awake.”

  The following night Osman responded: “ISIS has closed all the roads, everyone must stay in Raqqa.”

  On June 10, Sadiq replied: “I have decided to take more care of my son, Ismael.”

  June 12: “The roads are still blocked, the route out of Raqqa is closed, there are snipers everywhere. FSA has declared war on IS. They have ceased their attacks on Assad and have opened a front against IS. Oil is not coming out, gasoline costs a dollar per quart, prices have shot up, wages have been cut, aid organizations have stopped sending food supplies, the farmers can’t ship their produce, there are no vegetables. Raqqa is under siege. Patience is called for. Pray that the birth is delayed.”

  June 15: “My younger daughter called me. She has not had the baby yet.”

  Osman replied: “Things in Raqqa are turning worse for my boys. The chances of getting your girls out are worsening by the day. But we won’t give up. We’ll get to them before the birth.”

  But the child came first.

  On June 18, seventeen-year-old Leila became a mother. When the contractions became stronger, Imran had taken her to the hospital. Twelve hours after the birth, she had called her mother in Hargeisa to tell her everything had gone well. The baby was a girl, as she expected.

  Sara had been jittery prior to the birth. Leila was narrow-hipped, as she herself had been, a build that had proved fatal for Sara and Sadiq’s firstborn.

  Now they were grandparents.

  They could rejoice in that when everything was over.

  On June 20, Sadiq wrote to Osman: “My daughter has given birth to a daughter.”

  June 21: “I have become a grandfather.”

  June 22: Osman sent a video of a beheading he thought Sadiq might be able to sell.

  31

  RAMADAN

  “Dad is here! Aboo! Daddy!”

  The boys rushed to meet him. The sensation of their little bodies crashing into him, how he had missed it! They leaped into his arms, let him throw them in the air. A year had passed since he had seen them. Sara stood smiling at him. Beautiful, warm, happy.

  She was a different woman in Somalia from the one she had been in Norway, where, devastated by the loss of her daughters, she had become an old lady of thirty-eight years.

  She no longer cried every day. In Hargeisa she had two sisters, a younger brother and his wife, and children everywhere. Small nieces and nephews often came to the big house and stayed. Relations came before anything else. Sara had brought clothes from Norway that Isaq and Jibril had grown out of, and the daughter of her deceased sister, who was the same age as Ayan, had been given the one garment that had avoided the trash bags—the white jacket she had not been able to throw out.

  The walls resounded with laughter and there was a smell of perfume in the hall. It was Sara’s house. She ruled the roost. All she needed from Sadiq was $300 a month in rent and money for a household of sixteen.

  In the kitchen, there was a brick bench with two holes where the women placed charcoal and lit a fire every morning. Pots and pans were placed directly on the embers. Early in the day the aroma of sweet tea with cardamom seeds filled the air, later on the smell of bean stew, porridge, or pancakes. During the course of the day they mixed dough for samosas, then kneaded and rolled it. Spices were rinsed of pebbles, straw, and soil, the amount needed was transferred to two trays, and a small girl was tasked with picking out everything not going in the mortar. The women chopped the filling, sautéed it, put it in the dough packets, sealed them, and deep-fried them in oil.

  Feeding the large household took most of the day, there was always someone in the kitchen. Sara was never alone. That was how she wanted it. She had lost her family twice and brought it together again. Now she had lost it for a third time. All she wanted was to have them all gathered under one roof. Preferably here, under the sun.

  Sadiq had been ordered to Hargeisa by his mother. “My son, you must gather your family,” she had told him over the telephone. She’d had mixed feelings about Sara moving from Norway. Married couples should not be apart. No, either he had to move to Hargeisa, or Sara had to return to Norway, said the matriarch.

  * * *

  His head was thumping. His thoughts emptied of meaning. His mouth dry. His body drained of energy. Ramadan enforced its own rhythm. A month to feel the pain of the poor. A month of pure suffering. A month to come closer to God.

  It was more than 100° in the shade. The air was still. Neither food nor drink was to pass their lips from before the sun came up until it went down—from around four in the morning until seven in the evening. At midday everyone was knocked out, even the children calmed down.

  Sadiq solved some of
the unpleasantness by turning the days around. He stayed up at night and slept during the day, usually from around noon until the early evening, getting up an hour or so before dinner.

  There were obligations to attend to in Hargeisa that did not exist in Bærum. They were called relatives. All members of the extended family had to be paid a visit. Everyone requiring help had to receive it. Everyone who wanted to talk had to be listened to. Sadiq shifted into another mode. He dispensed with trousers and tied a macawiis, a sarong, around his waist. He swapped his shoes for sandals. He even dispensed with his phone at times, when he had no credit and could not be reached anyway.

  Life ran its course. There were flies, cockroaches, and scorpions indoors. Donkeys, camels, and goats outside. No word from the girls.

  A calm of sorts descended upon the family. Sadiq’s mother was bedridden and he spent a lot of time at her place. Her granddaughters’ hijra had affected her deeply and she could not refrain from talking about it while other relatives preferred not to. After almost two years, it was as if the girls had ceased to exist. As though the relatives did not want to stir a bad memory. The previous year the wound had been open, and everyone wanted to know all the facts, discuss them, wonder, and express hope. Now a heavy stone lay over the girls, a stone no one could face rolling off.

  * * *

  “She never leaves the house!”

  Osman was frustrated.

  “Your granddaughter is fifteen days old.”

  Pretending the infant had an illness had not worked. Leila and Imran had left the hospital before the doctor Osman had made a deal with even knew they had been there.

  Asiyah—pronounced with a long a and an aspirated last syllable—was named after the pharaoh’s wife who found baby Moses in a basket in the bulrushes. She, as opposed to her husband, believed in the existence of one God, and he ended her life, torturing her to death. A true heroine revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

  Sara received three pictures of the little girl. She looked like Leila when she was a baby, with lots of dark hair and full lips. Pink cheeks shone in the pale brown face, which would soon darken. Her eyes were closed in all the photographs. In one she was lying on her side, curved into an S shape, as she had been in the womb. She was lying on a green blanket with Arab writing on it that was impossible to make out. Sara recognized Leila’s glasses, narrow with plain black frames, nearby on the blanket. They had gone to the optician in Sandvika together to get them. Leila had wanted as discreet a pair as possible.