She had begun to give her husband dribs and drabs of her own plan.
“They want to live in a Muslim country,” she said over the phone from Somaliland. “So when they leave, wouldn’t it be better for them to move here instead of to Norway? Then we could all start afresh here?”
“And what are we going to LIVE on in Somaliland?” Sadiq inquired.
“You can find a job.”
Finding a job in Somaliland to support a family of seven to the standard they were used to in Norway was close to impossible. This discussion generally concluded with them agreeing: “They need to get out first. We’ll deal with the rest afterward.”
Sara pictured a life in Hargeisa for the whole family. For Sadiq, his home was in Bærum, in a flat at the foot of the Kolsås ridge. That was where he dreamed of bringing his family together again.
He had not accompanied the others to Somaliland. He had told Sara he wanted to stay behind in Norway to look for work. The truth was that he wanted to make another attempt at getting the girls out. He could not tell his wife this because they disagreed on the best way to get them home.
If that dangerous group, as Sara referred to ISIS, got wind of them trying to get their girls back, they would only build higher walls around them and keep an even closer watch. It was better to allow some time to pass, give the girls the chance to realize that no, this life in the desert was not for them.
She had experience of war and had no doubt that the girls would not be able to persevere for long.
“They’re used to a European standard of living,” she said. “They’ll soon grow weary and are more likely to come home if we don’t nag.”
Whenever the girls called, their mother always pointed out that there were several paths to paradise. Jihad was not the only one, the Koran said. They could get there by helping others, by helping their mother, by being good daughters.
Sara accepted that they did not want to come home. That is, she accepted it as a fact. Sadiq did not.
He flew from Norway on the same day the caliphate was declared. At the airport in Hatay he met Mehmut, managed to cross the border, and moved back in with Osman. The situation had grown tense and the cost of bodyguards had risen to reflect that, as had the price of weapons and gasoline. The cost of everything had increased, because war is expensive.
He spent most of the time dozing in the backyard, because Osman said there were rumors that ISIS executioners had arrived in Atmeh to kill someone. Maybe he was the one they were looking for.
Sadiq fasted with Osman, and broke the fast with him, the two of them sometimes hiding like naughty boys to surreptitiously enjoy a bite to eat. He suffered a bout of illness, had stomach trouble, and spent days lying on his mattress. The pains came and went, followed by headaches. Then he ran out of money. He was not one step closer to anything, only more deeply in debt.
He wrote two identical notes, in Norwegian, which possible rescuers could hand to his daughters so the girls would understand their father had sent them: “This is Sadiq. Trust whoever gives you this. I love you.”
He gave them to Osman. The two notes were as far as they got.
* * *
On his return to Norway, life went on as before. His mind buzzed with constant thoughts of his daughters. He never found peace. When he awoke, the first thing to enter his mind was: I can’t take any more. The second was: I feel like shit.
The start of the new school year in Bærum was approaching. Sara enrolled the boys at a school in Hargeisa.
Ismael was angry with his father for allowing his mother to decide his younger brothers’ futures.
“The schooling they’ll get in Hargeisa is worth nothing. No country in the world recognizes a Somali education!”
Sadiq was well aware of that—he had been required to repeat subjects at both the primary and secondary levels in Norway.
“But what can I do?” Sadiq asked.
“You can bring them back.”
“Your mother is making the decisions. You have to remember, she’s a grief-stricken mother,” Sadiq told him.
Little by little, Sara had cleared the flat of the girls’ possessions and her own. Every time she had come across clothes they had left behind it had broken her that bit more.
The girls had already purged their wardrobe themselves, anything tight-fitting, short, or with a low neckline had been thrown out long ago, anything see-through or diaphanous was long gone. But there had been enough left behind.
Before leaving for Somaliland, Sara had picked up a roll of garbage bags along with the groceries. On returning home, she had gone to the girls’ room, gathered their clothes and shoes, and stuffed them into the bags. She tied the tops tightly and placed them at the front door. When Sadiq arrived home, she asked him to throw it all into the Salvation Army container in Sandvika.
Apart from a couple of beautiful hijabs and a white jacket she wanted to give to a niece in Somaliland, she had gotten rid of all their belongings. Toothbrushes, hair elastics, and underwear went into the rubbish.
“But the girls will be back!” a friend had protested.
“Right now there are others who need those clothes more than they do,” Sara had replied.
The wardrobe was empty. All that remained was a large plastic box on the top shelf. She had taken a look at its contents, unopened letters, of no interest to her.
The notes from the Arabic course hung on the walls. Happy. Sad. Young. Old. God is great. They were yellowed. The words had faded.
25
GOD IS NOT GREAT
“I wish I had a big sister I could look up to, whose footsteps I could follow in and
