He hadn’t had any contact with them.
The rescue team was in the hospital.
Osman was attending funerals.
The tank truck had been dispatched on other assignments.
While the girls, those damned girls, were sitting in Raqqa unaware of everything.
* * *
After another week, orders came from PST headquarters: Pack and return!
Sadiq did not have the money to stay. Styrk had financed his travel and hotel. The whole thing was supposed to take a couple of days, and he had been in Hatay for two weeks fooling himself, fooling the film crew, the secret police, and the diplomats in Ankara. They had believed in a rescue operation; Sadiq had believed in a miracle.
At the airport in Oslo, the two policemen shook his hand. “See you.”
They walked off. Broad shouldered, straight backed, with long strides. They were headed home.
For them, the operation was finished.
Sadiq remained standing among the airport travelers. He looked around. People were waiting for their luggage. They were waiting for one another. They were buying beer and spirits. He went over to the self-service machine to buy a train ticket home. He keyed in his destination and his PIN. One way to Sandvika. The machine beeped. His card came back out. Rejected.
30
SHOOT THE GIRLS IF YOU WANT!
The days were long, the nights interminable.
“Let’s put an end to this tragedy once and for all!” Sadiq wrote to Osman when he was back in Norway.
Osman had other things to think about. The militias in Idlib were planning to strike Assad a major blow. Although rebel forces had controlled most of Idlib province since 2012, Idlib city, the provincial capital, situated not far from the main road between Aleppo and Damascus, was still in Assad’s hands. By late March the battle for the city raged for a fifth time. Seven factions, with Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham at their head, had joined to form a coalition called Fatah, conquest. The inhabitants who had not managed to flee barricaded themselves indoors while the army of conquest attacked the city from three sides.
Syrian state television reported that the government army was beating back the attempts of “terrorist groups to infiltrate Idlib.” But Assad’s soldiers were driven south of the city and despite attempts to regroup found themselves overwhelmed. The city was encircled by thousands of enemy fighters.
After five days of fighting, Osman wrote to Sadiq: “Idlib is free!”
“Brother, there will be a happy ending to our lives!” Sadiq responded.
The Nusra front celebrated on Twitter: “Thanks be to God, the city of Idlib has been liberated!”
Bearded men embraced, wept, held communal prayers in the park, tore down the flags of the regime, and chipped out the eyes on the enormous golden statue of Hafez al-Assad.
Assad loyalists were lynched. People shot and killed their own relatives to cleanse their names, so they would not be dragged into the undertow of revenge. Before long the Fatah army set up local sharia courts in the different parts of the city. Raqqa was the first provincial capital Assad had lost. Idlib became the second.
Osman wrote to Sadiq: “I’ve taken lots of pictures for you to sell to Norwegian journalists.”
One of the leaders of Assad’s hated people’s committees was beheaded, another was dragged alive behind a car, and a third was shot through the eyes. But that kind of wretchedness was already available to the Norwegian media from the news agencies. What they wanted were pictures of the Norwegians.
Osman sent several photographs of beheadings that fighters were circulating among themselves. One showed a thin older man in a gray tunic. His head was being held down on a chopping block. A burly man in brown ankle-length trousers and a khamiis stood over him. The executioner was masked and wore a black hat. The ax was resting on the back of the man’s neck when the picture was taken.
Sorely in need of money, Sadiq made up a story to go with the picture and then went to Dagbladet with the “scoop.” The man acting as executioner, he told them, was a Norwegian by the name of Abu Shahrazaad al-Narwegi and the victim was a sharia judge.
* * *
“I’m getting the car repaired now. Send the money,” Osman wrote on April 7.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of milk for my daughter for three days,” he wrote the following day.
“You can suckle from my breast!” Sadiq replied the next morning.
April 9: “We’re leaving for Raqqa in two days.”
April 10: “The tank truck will stop at Deir al-Zour on the way to Raqqa. I’m going along myself. If you don’t hear from me, read a blessing over my soul!”
April 11: “The tank truck left Deir al-Zour this morning.”
April 12: “Things are going according to plan.”
April 13: “We’re ready to make our move.”
April 14: “We’re standing by. They’re bombing the roads.”
April 15: “The tank truck is in Raqqa. But the girls aren’t here. We’re waiting for them to turn up.”
April 20: “We’re standing by to punch, punch, punch.”
April 21: “The plan is being put into action in one hour.”
April 22: “Raqqa here. Nothing to report. We’re waiting to strike.”
April 23: “My nerves are going to blow soon.”
The picture Sadiq had sold to Dagbladet covered the whole front page. “IS source tells Dagbladet—Norwegian executioner beheads his victims” went the headline. “Dagbladet can today
