“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
