A short time after Dilal asked to become a member of the group, she received a reply on Messenger. It was from Ubaydullah Hussain.
“You’re not wearing a hijab on your profile picture. Why?”
Dilal answered that she was not ready.
“Why do you want to join?”
“To learn. I’m curious.”
“You’re not a Shia, are you?”
“No.”
Silence. That was the end of the exchange.
Was it due to her not being covered up? The fact she was a Kurd? Who did this guy think he was?
A couple of days later her younger brother received an SMS and exclaimed, “What the…? Ubaydullah Hussain has sent me a text. He’s asking if I’m Shia. What does that terrorist want with me?”
Dilal pretended not to know but was secretly pleased. Ubaydullah must have looked through her profile and come across her brother. That meant he was taking her seriously. Her brother, who was in the same year as Ayan at Dønski, realized something was going on. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he warned her.
The next time she logged on to Facebook, she found a notification that she had been accepted into the private group. She began reading the posts and comments.
Ubaydullah got in touch again before too long. He wanted to act as her personal guide. Dilal was flattered. Although she disagreed with most of what he wrote, there was something about him she found appealing. They chatted online more and more often, in the daytime and evenings. At some point she let go of her own opinions. What he said had to be true. It must be right. He had read the whole Koran. He knew it by heart. How could she contradict him?
In no time, everything he said was the obvious, unadorned truth.
“Can we get to know each other?” he asked one day.
They arranged to go for a walk. Dilal was nervous. He was in a relationship, he told her, but was in the process of breaking up. They strolled for several hours. Along the way he halted abruptly and asked her, “What is it you want?”
She was silent, her eyes downcast, and then he asked, “Do you want to meet me again?”
Yes, she would like that.
After their first meeting she missed him all the time. Wanted only to be with him. He sent her a succession of messages. First she fell for the words. The beautiful, pure, logical way he put things. Or was it his power? Did his notoriety, his being in the public eye, lend him charisma? Ubaydullah and the other leaders in the Prophet’s Ummah had an almost magical power of attraction on the women in the milieu. There were many who wanted a man on the warpath. Jihad, whether waged physically or by the pen, made little difference, as long as it was for Allah.
“I miss you!” he wrote.
“I miss you too!” she replied.
Strange that a guy like that can be such a pussycat. To think I am the one who has brought out this soft side, Dilal marveled. The thought of him made her tingle. They met at his place by the horse race tracks at Bjerke and sometimes at Arfan Bhatti’s flat in the eastern suburb of Stovner. Eventually she was staying over more and more, telling her parents she was at a friend’s and spending the night with him.
“We have to get married,” he told her. “We’ve done this, that, and the other. You have to marry me.”
“I can’t. My family will never go along with it. My brothers would kill you.”
“If your family won’t accept me, then they must be infidels. They can’t deny you a Muslim husband. There’s no logical reason to refuse.”
No, no logical reason. They were bound together by invisible ties.
His flat in Bjerke began to define her world. Ubaydullah confiscated her mobile phone, wallet, bank card, ID cards, and laptop. He would not allow her to continue her college studies, get in touch with her family, or go outside without him.
The West was at war with Islam.
The West is against us.
Norway is a land of infidels.
Its people are going to hell.
They are the enemy.
They mean us harm.
They scorn us.
We need to fight back.
We have to stick together in our ummah.
We are brothers and sisters.
We are going to paradise!
After Arfan Bhatti left for Pakistan, Ubaydullah was chosen as the new emir of the Prophet’s Ummah.
* * *
Dilal was sent to the kitchen when the sheikh who was to wed them arrived. She sat on one of the three chairs there was space for and waited. The kitchen was spotless, Allah’s little slave kept things spick-and-span. He mopped the floor at the appearance of the slightest speck of dirt. Now he, the sheikh, two witnesses, and her wali sat in the living room. Dilal had not caught his name—Abu something or other. He was the same man who had acted as wali for Aisha. It was a role her father should have filled. Failing that, the eldest brother should act as guardian, and if he was unable, the next eldest, and if you had no brothers it fell upon a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, and so on through the extended family. But none of them had been asked.
She could hear the muffled sound of voices from the living room. The door handle moved. Abu something or other entered the kitchen. She looked up.
“Look down,” he ordered.
She lowered her gaze.
“Listen. You have two things to do,” he said. “Look down and say yes.” She sat in silence, staring down at her hands. He asked her if what Ubaydullah had said was correct, that her family was opposed to the marriage merely on the grounds that he was Pakistani. She answered yes. According to the Koran, a father could not refuse his daughter’s hand to a good man as long as he was a practicing
