The fateful day five years ago began like any other for the family. A pot of black tea with cardamon seeds sat on the table as Sara roused her youngest children and prepared them for school. But there were tiny clues. Leila, just turned 16 and wearing a floor-length dress, unusually offered to help. Her older sister Ayan appeared from her bedroom with a suitcase, which she said was being lent to a friend. Before they left, Leila whispered to each of her parents that she loved them.
The pair did not return after school. Sara tried to call them, but their phones were switched off. She knew they were good girls, however; it was their brother, slipping away from his Somali heritage, that was her source of concern. But they were still not back when Sadiq, her husband, returned to their home near Oslo. Then shortly before 6 p.m. came the email that turned their lives upside down. ‘We have decided to travel to Syria,’ it said. ‘We want so much to help Muslims and the only way we can really do that is by being with them in both suffering and joy.’
Two Sisters is an attempt to analyse what made two intelligent girls from a loving family in a comfortable Western society embrace the medieval cult of Isis. Although names are changed and the book has a novelistic style, it is based on a true story, Asne Seierstad being a Norwegian journalist and the bestselling author of The Bookseller of Kabul. The results are readable and informative — but ultimately rather unsatisfying, largely due to the disappearance of the central characters that leaves too many unanswered questions.
Certainly Seierstad has done diligent research into the family history and how Isis emerged like a deadly phoenix from the devastation following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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