Bayan obliged her and when Women for Nina was set up, a campaign to elect Nina Sandberg – the woman on the bus – as mayor, Bano, Lara and Bayan all joined.
The commitment Bano had shown on the handball court now transferred itself to the AUF. She eventually became leader of the little local group on Nesodden.
When she was seventeen, she had her first piece published in the daily Aftenposten. In it, she expressed her concern about the Progress Party and its leader Siv Jensen’s use of the term ‘Islamisation by stealth’.
‘I know full well that Siv Jensen only came up with this term as a scare tactic. She is well aware that we have had immigration here for thousands of years and it all worked out fine,’ she began, adding that the vast majority of people who move to a country adapt to its culture and way of life. ‘It just takes a little time. If Jensen really is afraid of Muslims, she should look at the birthrate among Muslim women in Norway. It has fallen significantly. This is an example of the way people who live in Norway adapt to Norway.’
She asked people to see immigrants as a strength instead, and make full use of their resources. ‘Oslo would doubtless grind to a halt if anyone opted for an immigrant-free day,’ she wrote.
‘The second-largest party in the country not only discriminates against me. The Progress Party also allows itself to discriminate against employees, women, the long-term sick and gays. Most people fall into one of those categories. Do most people really think that as long as the price of petrol comes down a bit, they can put up with a bit of discrimination?’
The signature Bano Rashid (17), Nesodden AUF was to feature several times on the youth pages of Aftenposten. ‘Put pictures into people’s heads as you write,’ Hadia Tajik, a talented young politician of Pakistani descent, had taught her in an AUF course. Bano tried to.
There was another matter close to her heart.
‘No one in the whole world has been able to convince me women are the weaker sex,’ Bano wrote. ‘It is no coincidence that 80 per cent of Norway’s top leaders are men and that Norwegian women only earn eighty-five kroner for every hundred earned by men. This despite the fact that 60 per cent of Norwegian students are women. These are figures that we find hard to swallow, living in the best country in the world.’
She also had some advice to offer her sisters. ‘Unlike traditional feminists I do not think it is a question of we girls sticking together. We girls must divide up! It is not actually a great tactical move to gang together. It only makes us fearful of everything and everybody outside the gang. We must move forward on our own. We must have the confidence to look up to the woman at the top, and allow ourselves to think we are amazing.’
Towards the end of the summer, Bano was invited to go to Alvdal by her friend Erle and her mother Rikke Lind. They took the train into the mountains and then walked for hours over the fells to the old hunting cabin. There, life was simple. They fetched water from the creek and cooked at a wood-burning stove. Bano was overjoyed, always keen to do the longest treks, reach the highest summits. In the evenings, which had started drawing in now midsummer was behind them, Rikke let the girls have a small glass of red wine each. They sat talking late into the night. Bano kept turning the conversation toward politics, to Erle’s annoyance. Her mother held a post as under-secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. She was the one who had suggested Bano and Erle join the AUF. But whereas Erle soon lost interest, Bano became local leader.
‘The fact that we no longer have a woman Prime Minister is making itself felt nowadays,’ said Rikke. ‘Gro did things much more consciously. She was good at inspiring us, her younger colleagues.’
She told Bano and Erle about the times she had met Gro, and how good the older feminist had been at seeing other women and pulling them up with her.
This made Bano thoughtful.
‘Rikke, how can I get your life?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it’s hard work, you know!’
‘I’m not joking. How can I be like you? I want a house as big as yours, a good job like yours, friends as interesting as yours,’ Bano went on. Rikke and her husband gave wonderful parties at their big house by the sea on Nesodden. And Bano was never shy about asking things she wondered about, like how much they earned and what their house cost.
‘Well then Bano, I’ll tell you,’ answered Rikke. ‘A good education, that’s the most important thing.’
‘What should I study, then?’
‘Law or political science. Take all the courses you can, make the most of learning for free. Take debating technique, leadership of meetings, rhetoric.’
That summer evening they made plans for Bano’s life. She should get herself nominated to stand in the local elections in Nesodden in 2011, Rikke suggested.
‘Do you really mean it?’ Bano could not contain her enthusiasm.
Rikke nodded. Her own mother had made a class journey, leaving a strict Christian home behind and moving alone to Oslo, where she became a radical lawyer, the first one in the family to go through higher education.
‘But Bano, why do you keep going on about being like Mum? You’d never be satisfied with being an under-secretary!’ declared Erle.
They smiled.
Bano wanted everything, Lara often said. Not enough, but everything.
‘Who’s the most important person in the country?’ Bano asked. ‘Who gets to decide most?’
‘The Prime Minister,’ responded Rikke.
‘Perhaps it’s not realistic to try to be Prime Minister,’ pondered Bano. ‘But it would be realistic to be Minister of Equality. Then I can liberate women from oppression!’
The August night felt as soft as velvet. Dark wine lingered in the glasses. Bano was growing up.
Don’t Make Friends with Anyone Before You Get There!
The community liaison officer in Salangen looked through her lists.
The minors among the asylum seekers were placed in reception classes at Sjøvegan School. Many of them made poor progress. They struggled with several subjects, particularly Norwegian, as they had little contact with the local population. The centre for asylum seekers was virtually a separate world up on the hill, way up by the skiing trails.
It was not that the asylum seekers were unwelcome. Attitudes to the refugees had steadily improved after a shaky start.
When the stream of refugees into Norway suddenly increased in the second half of the 1980s, the authorities were quite unprepared. Accommodation was suddenly required for several thousand individuals. Efforts were made to identify disused buildings. Ski resorts and tourist centres that had fallen out of favour were considered suitable, and the mountains filled with people from Africa and Asia.
If any of the refugees felt like prisoners in remote isolation and ran away from these hotels, the Norwegians reacted in a variety of ways. Some shrugged and said hah, so that’s how they thank us! ‘We take our holidays there, but it’s not good enough for them, oh no!’ Others were more understanding: ‘They’ve fled from war zones, after all, so they might be traumatised and panicked by the wide open spaces.’
A centre for asylum seekers opened in Salangen in 1989. It was not long before the first refugees ran away and headed south, refusing to come back. The Somalis set little store by the northern lights or the wonderful opportunities for skiing among the willows in the forests above the centre.
No, they stayed in their rooms, hung about in the corridors or sat on the stairs smoking. Soon there was trouble. First between the Tamils and Somalis. Then between the Iranians and Kosovo Albanians. Arguments, pushing and shoving escalated into stabbings and threats to set fire to the centre.