One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad Page A
Authors: Åsne Seierstad
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granddaughter of the prophet Muhammad. According to the Shia Muslims she was buried in Damascus, while the Sunnis claimed she was laid to rest in Cairo. Three summers after the fatal rocket hit their neighbours’ house and burnt the eldest daughterto death, the local authorities approved their application to make the pilgrimage.
The parents didn’t tell the girls they would not be coming back. Their daughters could give the game away, as zealous intelligence officers at the border could be expected to question the children. They would only take a small amount of luggage with them, so as not to give away their plan to escape.
* * *
On the Thursday before their departure, Bano was chosen as pupil of the week at school. She received a little plaque, which she put up on the wall above her bed, and couldn’t make out why her grandmother was in such floods of tears. She was delighted with the award and hung her school uniform neatly in the wardrobe, ready for when they got back from the pilgrimage.
The morning they were due toleave, there was a total solar eclipse. They had heard you could go blind if you looked at the sun before it disappeared, so the family stayed inside all day.
The following night, Mustafa could not sleep. For decades, the nights had been the worst. Nights were the time when the Ba’ath party militias came for people, consigning them to torture and never-ending darkness in the dungeons of SaddamHussein. The soldiers would turn the house upside down in their search for weapons or banned manifestos and writings. They would smash down doors or sneak in over the flat roofs where families dried clothes, stored junk or kept hens. No windows were secure, no doors, reinforcements or locks could keep out the forces of the state. The neighbourhood was sometimes awoken by the sound of men howling.They knew it was all over when the Ba’ath Party arrived.
During the worst spells of political terror – the bomb attacks and street fighting – Mustafa would toss and turn, waiting for dawn. The days were safer than the nights. He lay there listening in the darkness. You didn’t need to open your eyes to know daylight was on its way. Daylight, even before the sun had risen, meant the sound of Primusstoves being lit, the smell of fresh bread, the first shuffle of footsteps down below, the click of the door handle as someone went out to get some flatbread before it ran out. Daylight meant the first call to prayer, while it was still dark. Only when the muezzin’s holy words had died away, when the real morning arrived with farmers offering freshly strained yogurt, white cheese with salt, teaand bread, only then could he relax and sleep.
If you didn’t hear the lighting of the stoves or smell the fresh bread it was a signal that the city was under attack, or that there had been warning of an attack, and there was a state of Maneh al-Tajawel – a curfew.
* * *
That August morning they got up before daylight, before the heat arrived. They all squashed into a car, so tightly packedthat none of them could turn and look back at the house with the flat roof where the line of clothes would soon dry in the sun.
They drove out into the desert. Out here on the sandy plains, Abbasid, Moguls, Turkmens, Mongols, Persians and Ottomans had built their civilisations. They had all fought fiercely for Erbil – the four gods – as the city’s name means. Here Alexander did battle with thePersian king Darius, here the first soldiers of Islam fought for their faith, and this land was the original home of the Kurdish warrior hero Saladin, who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
Over the centuries, the city had become increasingly difficult to seize, situated as it was behind high walls on a flat-topped mountain reaching ever closer to the sky. It was a man-made mountain, createdby people rebuilding on the ruins of those they had conquered. Now only the old town still lay behind the walls; the settlement had
The parents didn’t tell the girls they would not be coming back. Their daughters could give the game away, as zealous intelligence officers at the border could be expected to question the children. They would only take a small amount of luggage with them, so as not to give away their plan to escape.
* * *
On the Thursday before their departure, Bano was chosen as pupil of the week at school. She received a little plaque, which she put up on the wall above her bed, and couldn’t make out why her grandmother was in such floods of tears. She was delighted with the award and hung her school uniform neatly in the wardrobe, ready for when they got back from the pilgrimage.
The morning they were due toleave, there was a total solar eclipse. They had heard you could go blind if you looked at the sun before it disappeared, so the family stayed inside all day.
The following night, Mustafa could not sleep. For decades, the nights had been the worst. Nights were the time when the Ba’ath party militias came for people, consigning them to torture and never-ending darkness in the dungeons of SaddamHussein. The soldiers would turn the house upside down in their search for weapons or banned manifestos and writings. They would smash down doors or sneak in over the flat roofs where families dried clothes, stored junk or kept hens. No windows were secure, no doors, reinforcements or locks could keep out the forces of the state. The neighbourhood was sometimes awoken by the sound of men howling.They knew it was all over when the Ba’ath Party arrived.
During the worst spells of political terror – the bomb attacks and street fighting – Mustafa would toss and turn, waiting for dawn. The days were safer than the nights. He lay there listening in the darkness. You didn’t need to open your eyes to know daylight was on its way. Daylight, even before the sun had risen, meant the sound of Primusstoves being lit, the smell of fresh bread, the first shuffle of footsteps down below, the click of the door handle as someone went out to get some flatbread before it ran out. Daylight meant the first call to prayer, while it was still dark. Only when the muezzin’s holy words had died away, when the real morning arrived with farmers offering freshly strained yogurt, white cheese with salt, teaand bread, only then could he relax and sleep.
If you didn’t hear the lighting of the stoves or smell the fresh bread it was a signal that the city was under attack, or that there had been warning of an attack, and there was a state of Maneh al-Tajawel – a curfew.
* * *
That August morning they got up before daylight, before the heat arrived. They all squashed into a car, so tightly packedthat none of them could turn and look back at the house with the flat roof where the line of clothes would soon dry in the sun.
They drove out into the desert. Out here on the sandy plains, Abbasid, Moguls, Turkmens, Mongols, Persians and Ottomans had built their civilisations. They had all fought fiercely for Erbil – the four gods – as the city’s name means. Here Alexander did battle with thePersian king Darius, here the first soldiers of Islam fought for their faith, and this land was the original home of the Kurdish warrior hero Saladin, who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
Over the centuries, the city had become increasingly difficult to seize, situated as it was behind high walls on a flat-topped mountain reaching ever closer to the sky. It was a man-made mountain, createdby people rebuilding on the ruins of those they had conquered. Now only the old town still lay behind the walls; the settlement had
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