“Why are you wearing all that stuff?” a boy asked.
“Because I want people to see my intellect, not my body,” Ayan answered.
“Why shouldn’t they see your body?” he asked.
“Because you should be interested in my brain.”
“In that case, you better start putting it to use, so there is something to get to know there!” the economics teacher quipped.
That was Ayan’s last day at Nesbru.
9
THIS OUTFIT
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
The quotation, wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, stood in black letters on the wall inside the door of Dønski Upper Secondary School. Beside it was a quote from Monty Python: Always look on the bright side of life.
“Welcome” was written in several languages with different characters and alphabets next to posters warning of the dangers of drug use. From the entry, a stairway led to the second floor, where there were classrooms and the library at one end and the principal’s office and staff rooms at the other. A glass door divided the corridor in between. It had previously been left open, until a pupil had helped himself to teachers’ handbags, mobile phones, and laptops, whereupon a lock with a key card and code had been fitted.
This was Ayan’s new school.
In early November 2011, Ayan had notified the counselor at Nesbru that she wanted to transfer to Dønski. All her friends were there, she said.
From the train station close to the school she could get into Oslo city center in just a half hour. She was quick to adjust. The academic standards at Dønski were lower, routines more lax. That freed up more time for Islam Net.
* * *
By late November the tasks assigned by Islam Net had piled up. “Ayan was to go around shops in Oslo to find sponsorships. Was this done as of the last meeting? If not a fine is imposed. If not done by today that means another fine. There is very little time left until the final date for funding and Ayan has not managed to put a single sponsor in place, has this been carried out? If not she is fined.”
On her own copy of the minutes, Ayan wrote: “Talk to Madia!!!” and “Get in touch with Madia! Ask Fahad!”
Under the heading Miscellaneous, the minutes read: “The deadline for payment of fines is one week after they have been issued. Fine and new deadline of tomorrow for those who have not sent in the reports from courses in which they have participated.” The minutes ended: “Have all of you paid each of your fines?”
* * *
On Sundays, Koran school in Bærum continued.
Mustafa’s worldview was similar to Islam Net’s. Living a pure life was impossible if you got caught up in Norwegian society, with all its decadence and immorality. A Western lifestyle meant nightclubs, drugs, and sex. It led straight to hell.
The leaders of Islam Net indulged in the same rhetoric. “Norwegians are bored from Monday to Friday, the weekend comes as a release and is filled with drunkenness and wild sex,” Fahad Qureshi told an audience of teenagers. Most Norwegians suffer from depression, he claimed, and “the more preoccupied we become with this world, the more depressed we get.”
In order to find salvation, you had to live according to the rules of Islam, as strictly interpreted by Sunni Islam. That meant women covering up, not shaking hands with men, avoiding eye contact, and never being alone with a man who was not a family member, because then the devil was always present.
The Koran lessons were sometimes held in the home of the Juma family; then Ismael found it difficult to skip them. The more his sisters got caught up in Mustafa’s outlook on life, the more repelled he became. He found the undertones of the Koran teacher’s tirades troubling. Mustafa was promoting terror groups, “sponsored by Mom and the other mothers,” Ismael said to Ayan. The Koran teacher paid tribute to the sacrifice of those involved. God would approve. Martyrdom is beautiful.
Ismael asked him straight out if he supported al-Qaida. Mustafa would not answer.
“What about the terrorist group al-Shabaab?” Ismael asked.
Mustafa offered a cryptic reply. “I have nothing bad to say about them.”
Ismael was appalled and told his mother that the teacher refused to condemn these terror organizations.
“You must have heard wrong,” was all Sara said. She shooed her son away, thinking he was only trying to wangle his way out of the Sunday lessons.
Sara did not care for al-Shabaab. But she had respect for authority and had made her mind up that she liked the Koran teacher.
Mustafa, in Ismael’s view, was pushing his pupils, the youngest of whom was around twelve years old, into the camp of hatred. He was creating an image of the enemy and reinforcing the idea of mistrust in their minds: The media were in league with security institutions in the West, which were in cahoots with those whose goal was to destroy Islam.
“I need to find out if I can trust you all,” the Koran teacher said one day. “Let’s say that I’ve done something against the West, and the CIA or FBI comes to get me. I’ve hidden in that closet over there and the agents enter the room fully armed and ask you, ‘Where is Mustafa? Where is he?’ Would you tell them where I am?”
The youngsters looked at him mutely, some of them shook their heads.
That did not suffice.
“Put up your hand! Put up your hand if you would tell them I was in the closet!”
No one raised a hand. Not even Ismael. He could not be bothered.
* * *
Aisha had become Norway’s first niqab-wearing celebrity, a voice worth listening to. Her contribution to the Uncovered anthology had attracted the interest of Association!Read, a state-funded organization whose aim was to promote reading and literacy among children and adolescents; they sent out texts from the anthology to secondary schools and offered to facilitate visits from the authors. Aisha accepted the invitations
