Sadiq read the message aloud to Sara. They looked at each other in silence.
“That was written by Hisham,” Sadiq said.
Sara shook her head. “That’s how she talks now.”
Aqeeqah was a sacrifice. Two goats were slaughtered for the birth of a baby boy and one goat for a girl. Rizq meant gifts or provisions. Sadiq read the text aloud again to see if there was anything between the lines. The preparations for their granddaughter’s feast had been hectic. As though they came from an existence filled with parties.
A second part to the text message followed: “God has taken us from the heathens and led us to a Muslim country. A land where people love us and we love them for the sake of God. Keep in mind that God has ordained that our reward is here. Wallahi, fa wallahi, thumma wallahi, know by God, and again by God, and yet again by God that we are not brainless girls just running around aimlessly. God knows the number of books we read, the number of lectures we listened to, and the number of learned men we sought advice from prior to our departure.”
The last part, although similar in tone, was written in Somali. Which meant Hisham could not have written it after all. But he still might have dictated it, Sadiq insisted.
He had made his son-in-law out to be a monster that had captured, brainwashed, and gagged his daughters. Thus the girls were to be pitied, as were the parents.
He could not admit that what he wanted was not what his daughters wanted.
Sara opened the photographs of Asiyah in the freshly ironed baby clothes. So they were probably gifts, which Leila had written were so plentiful.
Self-satisfied, the seventeen-year-old had told them: Keep in mind that God has ordained our reward here.
The Islamic State’s version of: because I deserve it.
PART V
Hell is other people.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit, 1944
32
A DIFFERENT LIFE
Sadiq entered the apartment. The smell of old dust and unoccupied rooms hit him. Everything was just as he had left it, the dishes dirty and the place untidy. He stopped in the entranceway. Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the one with the sticker that read ALLAH SEES YOUR HEART AND YOUR DEEDS, everything was quiet.
If Allah looked into Sadiq’s heart, he would see a hard lump.
He wandered around the empty apartment, jet-lagged after the flight from Hargeisa, shivering in Norway’s late-summer temperature. He had to adjust his circadian rhythms after Ramadan, after all the irregular hours he had been keeping. He had to, he really did, he needed to sort out his life.
He made yet another plan. Or a life buoy. 1. Put the girls out of his mind. 2. Find a job. 3. Pay off his debts. 4. Everything else would fall into place. Sara would return home with the boys. Life would continue as before, only without the girls. They had made their choice. They had left. They were never coming back.
He had to adjust to a life without them.
A life without them.
A different life.
* * *
The mail had piled up over the summer. There were letters for him, for Sara, some final demands for Ayan and Leila. They would eventually be written off as bad debts by the creditors. He opened the letters to Sara. They were bills and a demand for reimbursement from NAV. She had failed to inform them about moving to Somaliland and had therefore continued to receive child benefits. When the school reported the boys’ nonattendance, the welfare office had investigated the matter and found that Sara had broken the rules. Taking the children out of Norway meant losing the right to child support. Bærum county was demanding that the incorrect payments be refunded.
Sadiq was informed his job seeker’s allowance was going to be stopped. Support was dependent upon his making use of follow-up assistance from NAV in order to “be in a position to gain or keep suitable employment.” The agency explained: “The recipient has to be active, is required to arrive at NAV when called in for appointments, and collaborate on a plan of activity as well as follow up on it.” The background for the warning was that “it has come to the attention of NAV that you have taken repeated trips abroad during the period when you were in receipt of job seeker’s allowance without having applied for these trips or having them approved.” The payments were dependent on “residency in Norway.”
He also received word from Bærum county that he would have to move. There was a waiting list for larger family apartments.
He was called in for an appointment the following week.
At the meeting, the caseworker told him he did not need the four-room apartment. He was the only one living there, after all, now that Ismael had left for college.
He nodded. What could they offer him?
A one-bedroom apartment.
* * *
He received notice of a date to move out. He had to get rid of what was left in the girls’ half-empty closets and drawers. Go through their papers. Pack Sara’s clothes. His own. The boys’. Sheets and bedding. Towels. Pots and pans, saucers and bowls, knives and forks, kitchen utensils. He had to take down the framed poster of Mecca. The notes in Arabic. The remnants of a family life.
Essay assignments. School reports. Science books. A whole box of unopened letters addressed to Ayan. He did not throw away any papers. He hardly threw anything out—that would require an estimation of value, is this important or not? He stuffed everything into a couple of boxes and fled. To bars and cafés. Played the drums, met friends. Sometimes Sara’s friends called him up to check if he was behaving himself. Now and then they dropped by. When people asked him how
