Their parents allowed me access to the papers the sisters left behind. From these I selected essays, report cards, and class photographs, as well as notes from Koran lessons and evening courses at Islam Net, in addition to the minutes of the committee meetings, the missionary instructions, the niqab petition, and printouts of e-mails. Ayan’s orderliness was a benefit to me—she made lengthy lists of volunteers she had recruited to Islam Net, complete with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. I was consequently able to contact a wide number of people who knew her. Similarly, I got in touch with all her friends on Facebook, all her followers on Twitter, some of those following her friend Aisha, and several of the people featured in the class photographs.
I went to meetings at mosques in Oslo, of Islam Net, and of other religious youth organizations, looking for traces of the girls. I got in touch with Somali associations and approached Muslim Facebook groups seeking information about the sisters.
In this way, a network of friends and acquaintances slowly emerged. Together with the parents, and written sources, it provided the most important basis for information.
Because the sisters did not contribute directly to the book, e-mail exchanges and written conversations they participated in proved invaluable. Not least, the logs of conversations between them and their brother on Messenger, Viber, and WhatsApp gave important insight into how the girls think and what judgments they made along the way. What they communicated was an echo of IS propaganda, but the sisters do not seem to have felt they were individually supervised. Had they thought they were being monitored, a number of things they told their brother in confidence, which I have not put in the book, would not have been said. I view their words as the picture the sisters wished to paint of the caliphate.
I sent several requests to the girls asking them to provide background of their own on their decision to journey to Syria and to present how life is there. I received no answer. I also attempted to reach them via other parties with contacts in Raqqa. The sisters responded with silence.
There may be any number of reasons for this. One is purely procedural: IS members were not allowed to be interviewed unless they cleared it with the communications department of the Islamic State. IS conveyed information either through spokesmen or by controlled interviews with representatives of the leadership. Interviews with rank-and-file members not approved by the leadership were carried out only anonymously. The sisters could not utilize anonymity; they were completely identifiable to IS.
When their father came to take his daughters home in November 2013, the sisters made a clear choice: They decided to remain in the Islamic State. They said they believed in the project and have since said, written, and demonstrated that they stand by that point of view.
Apart from their father’s first rescue attempt, which they refused to join, they did not know of or participate in his plans. This is clearly evident from the log of communications between Sadiq and Osman. Kidnapping the daughters against their will was always the intention. On the logs with Ismael, the sisters also appear to stand completely behind the caliphate. They have never, either verbally or in writing, expressed any negative views of the Islamic State. They have, as is patently obvious from this book, broken with their father politically and religiously. His remarks about them or the Islamic State should therefore in no way be a burden for them in IS-controlled Syria.
* * *
How should you portray people you have never met, who do not want to tell you their side of a story?
One guiding rule is to begin with actions: What did they do? When? What do we know from written sources? What do people around them say they said, wrote, or did?
A book within the genre of literary journalism is composed of scenes that build upon one another. These scenes are reconstructions. The better the sources, the more accurate the scenes will be. Where I describe a person’s thoughts, they are based on what that person said he or she was thinking in a given situation, or what people in the book told others that the individual was thinking.
I did my best to find as much information as I could about the lead-up to the sisters’ departure and about life in Raqqa. But only they know their thoughts and motivations.
The names of the sisters have not appeared in the media and so I gave them fictitious ones. If they return to Norway, wishing to live a life here, they will have their names intact. I also changed the names of their brothers, while their parents, in accordance with their wishes, retained their true names.
Sadiq chose to reveal his name and picture to the media, in addition to openly relating his family’s story at talks and in interviews.
Several friends of the sisters who contributed did not want their real names to appear and themselves chose the names they are known by in the book. It became clear to me at an early stage that the sisters’ decision to travel to Syria was a vulnerable subject for many of them. A number of the girls were also concerned they would be identified as holding extremist views or of having ties to a terror organization, which the Islamic State is defined as by Norwegian law.
With regard to the employees of the schools the sisters attended, some wished to appear under their full names, while others are simply referred to as “the Norwegian teacher” or “the math teacher.”
I made copies of their interviews available to all the individuals to allow them the opportunity to correct any
