There was one that caught her eye. From Trysil, it said. It was made of black wool and had garlands of red and yellow flowers embroidered round the hem of the skirt and on the bodice. It came with a starched white blouse, a little brooch, a pair of cufflinks and a small embroidered bag to wear at the waist. The seller lived in the Skøyen district of Oslo.
Mustafa came with her. From the ferry they could see the silhouette of the whole city, from east to west. Cranes and scaffolding bore witness to the constant expansion of the city on the fjord. The whole side of the fjord was going to be linked together by a promenade several miles long, Bano had read. What a wonderful idea!
The ferry took them to Aker Brygge. From there they took the number 12 tram to Solli and changed to the number 13. They got off by Hoffsveien.
It was as if the costume had been made for her. Ten thousand kroner changed hands.
On the ferry home she sat with it on her lap. As usual, she couldn’t stop talking, and as usual, her father listened and nodded. She jabbered on about affording a bigger silver brooch after this year’s summer job, because this one was only child-sized. And then she’d want the special shoes with buckles.
Bano jogged up the steep slope to the housing area up by the edge of the forest. She went straight to her room on the ground floor, donned the traditional costume with its roots in Norway’s nineteenth-century National Romanticism and swept into the living room.
‘Mashalla ka joani, Bano!’ her mother exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘How lovely you look!’
From then until National Day, Bano repeatedly tried on her costume, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, before she would finally wear it for everyone to see. The teenager declared to her younger sister that it was the sexiest thing a woman could put on. She loved traditional festivals and celebrations. Norwegian National Day, with all its passion and fervour, was her favourite.
The day before, she polished her shoes and buckles, ironed her blouse and washed her hair. Her costume was hanging up, all ready to put on. She went to bed in a mood of exhilaration, but doubts came crowding in overnight.
‘I’ve no right to wear this,’ she said to her mother. She stood on the stairs, half-dressed, as the morning sun struggled to break through the clouds.
‘What nonsense! Now come and let me plait your hair,’ her mother said dismissively.
But Bano stood her ground. ‘A bunad is meant to be from the place you come from. Your history is meant to come from there, your family, you’re supposed to be from there. You can’t just buy it on the internet.’
Bano leant over the banisters. On the table in the living room stood a vase with some green birch leaves and a Norwegian flag stuck into it.
‘The bunad is yours,’ her father asserted, looking down at her. ‘You bought it.’
‘What if anyone asks?’ objected Bano. ‘Think if anyone asks where it’s from! And when I say Trysil, they’ll ask why I’m wearing a Trysil bunad. I don’t even know anyone in Trysil!’
Bano had explained to her parents all about folk costumes. There were lots of rules. You weren’t allowed to change them or jazz them up, or clutter them with jewellery. Ideally you would inherit the costume from your grandmother. The next best way was to be given it for your confirmation.
An inherited costume was precisely what Bano had bought. The woman selling it had been left costumes by both her grandmothers, and since she had no daughter of her own she thought she might as well sell one of them.
Bano’s maternal grandmother was from Kirkuk, her paternal grandmother from Erbil. Bano had always been proud of her Kurdish origins and took a keen interest in the Kurds’ struggle for their own culture and nation. She talked largely Kurdish to her parents, whereas her younger siblings tended to answer them in Norwegian. But here, now, on 17 May, it was Norway’s independence she wanted to celebrate.
Suddenly it had a hollow ring to it.
‘So I don’t know,’ she faltered. ‘I don’t really have the right to wear it.’
‘Now you just listen,’ said her father. ‘If anyone asks, then say that you had a great-great-great-great-great-grandmother who fell in love with a Norwegian Viking who was on a raid in Baghdad. To escape the honour killing that would be her fate for falling in love with a non-believer, she had to run away with him,’ he said. ‘To Trysil!’
Bano had to smile. She gave her father a hug and went back down to her room, and carefully finished getting dressed, before her mother plaited ribbons into the wavy, chestnut-brown hair that reached nearly to her waist. Bano drank her morning cup of tea carefully to keep her blouse clean. So did Lara, who was wearing a new white lacy dress from a popular chain store. It was a dress that her mother both disliked and liked. Disliked because it was so short. Liked because its neckline was not low cut.
The two sisters, so alike except that Lara had ended up with long legs and Bano with a big bust. They had the same eyes, the same long brown hair. Now they emerged onto the front steps of their terraced house, one in a proper traditional costume, the other in a revealing miniskirt. Little Ali was in a suit, as was Mustafa, and Bayan had put on a simple dress. They were all wearing national-day rosettes in the Norwegian colours – red, white and blue.
As the sisters walked side by side down the path to the main road they could already hear the brass bands. Bano gave her younger sister a serious look. ‘This bunad is going to be passed down,’ she said, stroking the beautiful embroidery, ‘to whichever of us has a daughter first. That girl is going to inherit it.’
Lara smiled. Typical of Bano to have it all planned out.
‘And you can borrow it when I’m a russ,’ promised Bano. In the last year at upper secondary you were known as a russ, from the Latin depositurus, ‘one who is going to deposit’ – in their case, exam papers.
Bano was thinking ahead to the school graduation celebrations the following year and had already started to save up with her gang of girlfriends for an old van to decorate. She had been put in charge of the finances and had opened a savings account for the group, so everything would be transparent and above board. There were already eight thousand kroner in it. In the course of the year she would take her driving test. How she was looking forward to putting on the red russ overalls and cap next year!
A russ van drove past them. There were two teenage girls on top, clinging on to the roof. Her mother stared at them open-mouthed, shaking her head of curls that were just starting to go grey, and gave her elder daughter a stern look.
‘Bano, you’re not to do that when you’re a russ! Those girls could fall and hurt themselves!’
‘Don’t worry Mum, I won’t,’ said Bano and smiled.
Her mother was not reassured and gave a heavy sigh.
‘You know that, Mum,’ said Bano. ‘By the time I’m a russ I’ll have my licence. So I’ll be at the wheel, not on the roof!’
Soon the whole peninsula would see her costume. The new silver brooch glistened on her breast. Its pin was stuck through the fine, white fabric of her blouse, level with her heart.