No, the money first.
I have a large family, I can’t throw away money.
No payment, no girls.
The middleman said, Okay, just give us one thousand now, then a thousand afterward.
The next day he was told: Your daughters arrived here last Friday.
They stayed in an apartment, along with several other girls, never stepping outside, until they all traveled over together.
They had been here a week. At the same time as him.
They crossed the border yesterday.
4
IN
Mehmut whispered, “Good luck…”
Sadiq got ready.
He sprinted toward the barbed wire. It tore into skin and flesh. Searchlights swept slowly across no-man’s-land, leaving pitch darkness behind. He forced his way through the hole in the fence. Do not get caught. Do not stumble. Do not fall.
He ran.
Beyond the border lay a two-mile-wide unoccupied zone. Parts of this stretch were dug up, as though defensive trenches had been planned. On either side of the ditches lay fields and flatland.
He heard shots. His body tensed, an acrid taste of blood in his mouth. Do not fall now, do not fall.
In places the terrain was flat, and it was like running along a straight road. In others there was gravel and sand, and you could stumble on a loose stone, run into a barrier, get entangled in barbed wire.
A man panted alongside him, another was gaining ground behind. Do not lose control. Do not panic.
Somebody groaned in the darkness.
Allahu Akbar!
A fresh burst of gunfire. Was he running in the right direction?
Had the girls run through here too?
* * *
When he’d heard that the girls had crossed into Syria, he had broken down.
He had dragged himself back to the hotel, hauled himself past the receptionist behind the glass, and trudged up the stairs to his room on the third floor. Then he had lain down on the bed.
His mind was whirling. Everything seemed hazy. It grew dark. The sun came up. Then night fell once more.
He had not called Sara. What would he say?
He stayed in bed, getting up now and again only to gulp water from the tap. He had failed as a father and as a man.
When the sun came up for the second time, he began to pull himself together. He talked to himself, an old habit.
I am not a father if I don’t keep on searching.
I am not Sadiq if I return home now.
Then he had called Sara.
“Don’t go over, yes, go over, no, come home,” she said. And eventually: “Find them.”
He had then called up Asker and Bærum Police Station.
“We would strongly advise against that,” was the message.
Sadiq called Mehmut. “Can you drive me to the border?”
* * *
They left at sunset. Thistle and stiff grass grew along the roadside, with fields beyond. It was the end of October. The crops had already been harvested. The earth looked like hard-packed sand.
The landscape was illuminated in a final glimmer of pink before fading into dim hues of brown and gray. Then darkness fell.
Mehmut had initially asked him to reconsider.
“I have to know what’s happened to my daughters. I have to.”
“Okay. I’ll help you. I have friends there.”
He rang back and told Sadiq to be ready that same afternoon.
“I have a friend called Osman,” Mehmut said, when they were in the car. He placed emphasis on the name. “Osman can help you. When he gives his word, you can count on him to the bitter end. Don’t trust anybody else. Remember that.”
They stopped outside a village by the border.
There were others skulking around the area. They had arrived by car, by moped, and on buses. Bearded types with Gulf accents. North Africans. Brits. Clean-shaven Turks. And him. The Norwegian. The Somali.
Hundreds of people crossed no-man’s-land illegally every day. The frontier was fenced, but there were many holes in the fence. Mehmut had driven several jihadists to this spot, including, only recently, three Norwegians, he told Sadiq. Two had traveled together, one was on his own. Sometimes he picked people up at the airport and drove them directly here. Often these tasks would come from Osman. Once again he stressed: “Don’t trust anyone but him. Not there, not here. Osman is expecting you on the other side. He’ll be waiting there, in an olive grove.”
You could be driven through the border station at Bab al-Hawa and be in Syria in a matter of minutes. But it was expensive—the smuggler wanted money, the driver needed to be paid, the border guard had to be bribed.
The other option was to run.
That alternative cost $200. You paid half on the Turkish side and, if you got over, the rest in Syria.
* * *
He heard sand being kicked up, voices. Someone was running in the opposite direction, toward him. Out. Away from the war.
Suddenly he was surrounded by people, flashlights, shadows. He came to a halt, panting, gasping for breath, sweat pouring off him.
From the light of a beam he could discern trees: crooked, dark branches, the gleam of leaves. There were a group of men in front of him. He could hear and feel their proximity. They had Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders and were wearing flak jackets and balaclavas. Sadiq peered around, at a loss. A flashlight was pointed at him. A hefty man approached.
Then something was being pulled over his head. He raised his hands to resist and lost his glasses. Someone clutched him by the throat.
“Calm down!” a voice said. “It’s only a hood!”
“Keep away from me!” Sadiq shouted.
“All newcomers have to have one on. I’m Osman,” the voice said calmly. Peering through the hole in his hood, Sadiq could see a broad man in the semidarkness.
The foreign fighters wore hoods so they would not be identified. They were often smuggled over the border in groups by the same network, so if one were seen and recognized, the others could be found. Sadiq had taken the same route as the jihadists and had to abide by the same rules. He picked up his glasses and squinted through the eyeholes. The man speaking was in his thirties. He was tall, heavyset,
