WHILE her friends saved for iPads, Bano Rashid worked at
an amusement park last summer to buy a bunad, Norway's ornate and
expensive national costume. Though she was an Iraqi Kurd who came to
Norway as a child, Rashid wanted to stretch the limits of the country's
blond and blue-eyed identity, to help redefine what it means to be
Norwegian.
It was a mission that an anti-immigrant terrorist sought
to thwart when he killed Rashid, 18, and at least 76 others a week ago
in attacks that were meant to turn Norway upon itself.
But the challenge from the terrorist, Anders Behring
Breivik, has been met with defiance, nowhere more so than at Rashid's
funeral on Friday, where mourners channelled their grief into a powerful
display of unity.
An imam and a Christian minister presided over a ceremony that drew
hundreds of mourners to a small 12th-century church in Rashid's home
town, Nesodden, about 40 kilometres from Oslo, the capital. Her coffin
was draped with the red, white and green Kurdish flag alongside Norway's
red, white and blue.
On a hill overlooking the waters of the Oslo fjord,
Norwegians, Kurds and others vowed to honour her life by defying the man
responsible for her death.
''We would rather strengthen our trust and love rather
than fall victim to his degeneration,'' said Roland Goksoyr, 18, a
friend of Rashid's. ''We will punish him, not by killing him or
torturing him, but by defying his every wish.''
Even so, mourners said, it will be some time before
Norway can come to terms with the scope of the tragedy. Not since the
Second World War has Norway suffered such losses from violence.
That many victims were young has compounded the anguish.
Breivik, a self-described Christian crusader, has
admitted bombing the government headquarters in Oslo on July 22 and then
carrying out a massacre at a youth camp on the island of Utoeya.
In a 1500-page manifesto, Breivik wrote that the attacks
were necessary to spark a war that would cleanse Europe of its Muslim
immigrants.
Though most Europeans consider his methods abominable,
his anti-immigrant ideas, while extreme, are in tune with a growing
current of xenophobia in Europe.
Rashid spent much of her brief life fighting such
sentiments. She was the leader of the Nesodden branch of the Labour
Party's youth wing. Members of the wing often go on to high-ranking
government positions.
In articles and speeches, she denounced racism and
discrimination against immigrants, whose integration into society she
contended was both possible and vital.
''There is no doubt that Oslo would grind to a halt if it
went one day without the work of immigrants,'' Rashid wrote last year
in the newspaper
Aftenposten. ''Let Norway use the resources of its immigrants. Give us time to integrate, preferably without discrimination.''
Rashid's family came to Norway in 1996 after fleeing Iraq
amid violence against Kurds by the government of Saddam Hussein. She
dreamed of becoming Norway's prime minister one day. She was planning to
run in her first election for a seat on Nesodden's city council in
September.
''She was a light in my life,'' said Nina Sandberg, a Labour Party politician who intends to run for mayor.
For some, the shock has been too great to comprehend.
Harald Evjan, 16, who last saw Rashid just before the shooting, said he
had not yet figured out how to grieve. ''I can't feel anything,
anything at all,'' he said. ''I just can't put the last bit into
reality. I feel terrible because I can't feel anything.''
Kurdish-born Bano Rashid, 18, was aiming for a new
Norway: 'Let Norway use the resources of its immigrants. Give us time to
integrate, preferably without discrimination.' Photo: Reuters
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