Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Read Free Book Online

isolated from the values that underlie success in Britain. Most of her fellow students will come from homes where English is a second language. Some of her teachers will have been selected more for their piety than their ability as educators, others for their willingness to cooperate with the norms of the Muslim school. Some teachers will have applied out of a strong sense of idealism; others will have been motivated by a combination of some or all of these factors. Education will be by rote learning and submission, not inquiry and an open mind.
    Or Sagal may be sent to one of the local state schools. Given the ethnic mix of her immigrant neighborhood, these schools are likely to be made up of children from immigrant families, often polygamous or single-parent families, where English is unlikely to be spoken at home. These schools are often in areas that are unsafe for children, with drug dealers and menacing teenage boys on street corners, random and frightening violence. In such neighborhoods you see teenage girls tattooed and pierced, in clothing so scanty you sometimes wonder if they forgot their skirt or pants, and cheek by jowl with them, girls shrouded in black
burka
s that conceal their faces and eyes so that they look like a cross between Darth Vader and the TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles. If any sort of school can be worse than a Muslim school it is these schools in deprived inner-city areas. Teachers are beaten down into exhaustion and indifference by the discipline problems they face. Kids are either bullies or they are bullied; they take the initiative to be violent, or they suffer. Graffiti is the art, hip-hop the music, zealotry the faith. Kids who grow up in this environment are likely to have permanent language problems; they may be regarded as unemployable because they do not have a middle-class work ethic.
    It is no wonder, therefore, that the immigrant community looks to religious schools in such areas; disgusted by state schools, where their kids drop out after receiving a substandard education, they seek an alternative and comfortable system of beliefs and morals that they understand. Yet the Muslim schools are easily as bad, for there the kids are brainwashed into a way of life that diminishes their chances of success even further. Such children will be altogether cut off from the society in which their parents have chosen to live.
    It may be that Sahra and Sagal will manage to inch their way into the ranks of the British middle classes. A temporary job, a helpful friend, a scholarship—these things are possible. I think I could help. But I know that my offers of help will be rejected as un-Islamic, infidel and heinous. For is it not true that Allah will reward those who suffer in his name, those who endure pain and shame and mocking because they choose to serve him?
    After all, entering the middle class of Britain or any other Western democracy is such a lowly goal compared with entering heaven, with its rivers, springs, and cascading brooks, and fruits and wines that are a thousand times better than those made on earth. Wrapped in her shroud-like
jilbab
, Sahra believes staunchly, just as my father did, that her suffering in this life will be richly rewarded in the hereafter. Her daughter may have to pay the price on earth. I only hope she finds a little window of escape, as I did.

CHAPTER 3
My Mother
    My father died a week after I went to see him at the hospital. Just before he died, he slipped back into unconsciousness. The machines kept him alive until the doctors pulled the plug. I knew it was going to happen, and yet when I found out I still felt a pain that was primeval in its intensity.
    I would have to stay away from the funeral. All day long I imagined the scene in his apartment: all the women of the clan coming by, sitting on the floor, drinking tea, telling stories, consoling each other, wailing, and waiting for the men to return from the cemetery where they buried him.
    I found myself