Arfan Bhatti left the country a short time later. He wrote online that he was taking part in action against the international forces in Afghanistan. From the tribal areas he sent a text that read: “Talaq. Talaq. Talaq.”
It was over. A nikah marriage could be dissolved by the man saying talaq—I divorce—three times.
But by then Aisha was already pregnant.
12
TARGET PRACTICE
“My reasons for leaving are not based on religious grounds,” Ayan wrote to Fahad Qureshi. She sent her letter of resignation at the end of August 2012, just after she began her final year in school.
“I feel I have given what I can for the moment. Perhaps in the future when I have more knowledge I will have something more to contribute, inshallah. Thank you for everything you have taught me and for allowing me this opportunity. I truly felt Islam Net allowed me to grow but then something changed, and I no longer feel needed. Yours sincerely, Ayan.”
In response, Qureshi wrote, “I hope one day inshallah you return, more skilled, motivated, disciplined and purposeful.”
Emira also had left the organization. The reason for her departure had been more clearly outlined.
“I have a different understanding of the faith,” she told Islam Net. The board was aware of the rumors of a secret affair between Emira and Ubaydullah Hussain and believed he had influenced her decision to leave. Talk, gossip, as well as people flowed back and forth between the two milieus. Islam Net regretted the loss of her computer skills.
Emira had repeatedly denounced the West to a member of the organization she was now leaving.
“You mean you support terrorism against civilian targets?” he had asked.
At first Emira would not answer.
“Like a café, for example?” the young man went on.
Emira had grinned.
Aisha had departed the organization in disappointment. Ayan had politely taken her leave. Emira had moved on, Dilal too. She had never felt particularly welcome in Islam Net in any case.
Besides, they all had new heroes.
* * *
At the end of September 2012, several hundred people gathered outside the American embassy in Oslo. They had come to demonstrate against the film Innocence of Muslims, which they believed was offensive to Muhammad. On the pavement between the Palace Park and the triangular embassy building, black flags with the Islamic creed inscribed contrasted sharply with the blue sky.
“Obama, Obama, we are all Osama!” was chanted loudly.
The police filmed the demonstrators, who included militant Islamists, convicted violent offenders, renegades from Islam Net, and twenty or so well-covered women. There had been an internal discussion about whether or not women could participate in the demonstrations and it was decided they could, as long as there was no “mixing with the opposite sex.” A young man calling himself Abu Muaz had put up the rules for demonstrations on a secret Facebook group page: “Brothers and sisters shall stand separately. Brothers in front and sisters behind, with some brothers forming a guard who will ensure compliance and that sisters/mothers are not exposed to scorn from the enemies of Islam.”
The group now had a name: the Prophet’s Ummah.
Ubaydullah Hussain addressed the crowd. “Nothing is more beloved to us Muslims than the Prophet! We thirst for revenge!” The punishment for slighting Islam is death, he said. “The world needs a new Osama bin Laden!”
Some of the people standing on Henrik Ibsens Gate that autumn day were occupied with thoughts of traveling to Syria to take part in jihad—a duty ordered by God when Muslims were under attack.
One of them was Hisham Hussain Ahmed, who had come alone from Eritrea to Norway as a minor, had been settled in the Juma family’s neighborhood and had manned the mission stand with Ayan on Oslo’s main street the previous year, too timid and polite to approach passersby.
Hisham had escaped from war when he was thirteen years old.
Now he had war on his mind once again.
His life had been without direction recently. He was working as a deliveryman for a crooked employee in a transport company, a midlevel manager taking on jobs off the books. Some of the money was winding up in Hisham’s pockets.
The good thing about a cash-in-hand job was that he could also receive unemployment benefits. It allowed him more time to do what he liked best, fishing. He was free to go to Sandvikselva, the premier trout river in the Oslo area, with a friend in the middle of the day and stay until midnight. Or he could get out of bed at three or four in the morning, the summer sun already up, grab his fishing equipment, find a nice spot, cast a line, and lose himself in a reverie.
He had never been in his element before. Barely literate when he arrived in Norway, he had struggled in many subjects at school. English, which he had not a word of, had proved particularly challenging. Compounding his failure was the fact that he refused to do any homework. He gave up easily when something bored him. The teachers were kind and awarded him a pass, often with the lowest grade. His gym teacher tipped him off about Wild X, a multicultural outdoor activity organization for immigrants and other “asphalt kids,” as the organizer, Tor Bach, called them. Hisham was invited along to canoe and fish. This was a relief from the interminable hours spent cross-country skiing in gym class. On skiing days, he did not complete the course until hours after the first finishers, since he had neither grown up skiing nor learned how. Toward the end of secondary school, his life began going downhill drastically. He started hanging around with the Kosovar bad boy Egzon Avdyli, smoking hash, drinking, and partying. Nonattendance was common.
In the company of Wild X, he could both relax
