Summer, still

The other day I felt it. For maybe the first time in Norway this year, that special summer feeling. The day before I had spent a very nice evening at a friend's summer house in Moss, we had taken a swim in the lovely ocean water, and eaten shrimps with white bread, lemon and mayonnaise, a traditional summer dish in Norway. When the night got cooler we gathered around an outside fireplace and drank red wine under wool blankets. A wonderful evening. But the next day I was just walking along the street on my way to a little shop, waiting for my friend to pick me up in her car and taking me to the train station. The sun was warming me, I heard a car going by somewhere far away, and there were hardly any other people around. I felt a remarkable calm, and the biggest concern I had on my mind, was whether or not I would have time to buy an ice cream in the shop before my friend arrived.

It struck me that this is the true wonder of the summer holiday, when you are able to be so blank, to have so few concerns, and just enjoy the moment. This was very easy when I was a child, but has become more difficult the older I have gotten. Not that I'm always super worried about things, but I can rarely say that I don't have any concerns at all. Especially not this summer, which has been a sad one for Norway.

Cambodia now seems very far away. The streets, the restaurants, my apartment. Sitting on my friend Dar's motor bike. I wasn't that impressed by the book "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", which I tried reading a few months back, but I liked how he talked about riding a motor cycle:

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

Just before leaving Cambodia, I got the sweetest Facebook message from my friend:

"Hey, are you still in Cambodia? I'm in the Phillippines, alone and crying! No, just kidding. No, not really. Maybe I can come visit you?"

I sent her my warmest invitation to The Kingdom of Wonder (or the kingdom of water, as my friend calls it in the rainy season), but she didn't end up having the time to come. It still made me think of how lucky I am to have friends in different parts of the world. The cost of the plane ticket will always be an obstacle, but when you have a friend on the other side of the journey, travelling becomes so much easier. Almost as if they were just on the other side of a fence in a field. Jump over, and come see my world.

I saw this photo that Alisa took of me and Indre, the day Indre left Cambodia.

We're not far from the Monument of Indepence.  Im not sure why I like this photo so much. It's crooked and colourful, just like Phnom Penh. Maybe because it already looks a bit old. It's as if I can imagine myself many years from now, looking at this photograph and remembering the day. This is the person I was, May 24th 2011. This was my face, my arms, my legs. The worn-out shoes that I had used every day for five months, when I wasn't barefoot in white sand. The bag I bought at the Tuoltompuong market. These were the clouds, the light, the scorching sun. This was the tan girl I worked with and laughed with and ate with in our gloomy little office. These were the streets, the bikes, the puddles that made up Phnom Penh.

The disaster July 22nd

July 22nd I had been home from Cambodia a bit more than a week. I was walking in the center of Oslo with my good friend Mari, who was a bit annoyed with me because I had been late to meet her. We were passing the National Theatre, headed up to Egertorget, when the bomb went off.

The biggest bang we had ever heard, we held our ears and were very startled. It sounded like it came from exactly where we were headed. Some people around us just stood and stared towards where the sound came from, others laughed it off and continued on their way, some people looked scared and started running. My friend thought it had been a gas explosion or some sort of accident, but we decided to go home to her parents' house not far from the town center. Mari read the news on her iPhone, and we soon learned that the explosion had been next to the government's head office. It didn't seem likely that it could have been an accident. The destruction was huge, it said, and we could only imagine how many people could have died. We were welcomed by Mari's parents, who were just as shocked and sad as we were. Still I was very happy to be able to be there, seeing that my own family was on vacation in France. They were so sweet to us, preparing a nice lunch and not constantly watching the news. I didn't want to see it or hear it. I felt like my country was breaking in front of my eyes. And then the news about the shooting came.

I don't know how common this is in other countries, but in Norway all the big political parties have youth organizations. These organizations work to involve youth in politics, and to influence their "mother party" and decisions made in the parliament. They all have camps during the summer. The biggest party in government now is the Labour Party, and their youth organization is AUF. When I was in high school I was a member of SU, the youth organization of the Socialistic Left Party, and we would bump into AUF-people on different occasions in the political scene. We always saw them as a bit too far to the right, but they were cool people and good to discuss politics with. July 22nd AUF had their summer camp on the island Utøya, and SU was supposed to have their camp a few days after.

The strange message came from the news, that there were some shots being fired at Utøya. We tried to stay calm, thinking that it was nothing serious. But unfortunately, the news just became worse every minute. Kids as young as 14 years old had swum across the freezing waters from Utøya, where the currents are very strong, and talked about a massacre happening on the island. Maybe as many as 20-30 kids had been shot, they said. There were about 600 people on the island, and some were swimming for their lives, others were rescued in boats, a lot tried to hide in the woods.

At first there were two different jihadist groups who claimed responsibility for what had happened. My friend and I had problems believing this. Jihadists targeting AUF, youth politicians? It didn't make sense for a second. What later turned out to have happened was that an ethnically Norwegian man, with blond hair and blue eyes and the whole Norwegian package, stood behind everything. First he drove the car bomb into town, then he went to Utøya dressed as a police man, with an automatic rifle. When he came to the island he said that he had important messages to give in regards to the bomb in Oslo, and asked the kids to gather around him. Then he started shooting people.

AUF had hired a police man in plain clothing as security. His son was with him, so he threw him behind a rock to protect him, and then tried to stop the murder. He was shot dead, but his son survived. All together 69 people were killed on the island, mostly teenagers, the youngest ones 14 years old. Many are still badly hurt, some will have permanent physical injuries, and many will be psychologically traumatized. 8 people died in the explosion in Oslo.

When the news first broke about Utøya, I went on Facebook to see what people wrote. Hoping that no one I knew was at the island. Two friends of mine had younger siblings there, but they fortunately came home safe. Then I saw the status update of Håvard, who I had studied economics with. He said "We're alive and hiding." And that's the last thing we heard from him. 21 years old. I didn't know Håvard well, just through the studies and a student trip to Vietnam. But he was a very nice guy, passionate about everything he talked about, socially inclusive, very insightful when it came to politics, had a laughter that made you want to smile as well.

My first impression of him I got when he walked around in a blue t-shirt encouraging people to vote at the church elections in 2009, meaning the elected boards of the parishes. I later found out that he was openly gay, and wanted a church that had room for everyone. A very noble cause that takes a lot of courage and patience to fight for. He was the leader of Oslo AUF, and he thought inclusion of all groups in society was very important. He for instance wanted religious signs such as hijabs to be legal to wear if you're a judge in court, to prevent exclusion of ethnic minorities in our legal system.

To be honest, I haven't wanted to read so much about the killer. I don't even want to write his name here, it's all over the internet anyway. But he is a 32 year old guy from more or less the same part of Oslo as I am, raised in a seemingly normal family and social setting. As far as I've understood he is deeply Christian, and his political stand is extreme right. He was against the multicultural society (very hostile towards Islam), and wanted to punish the biggest ruling political party for making Norway into one. By going after the youth party, he also wanted to kill tomorrow's young leaders. The most tolerant and open minded of them all, people like Håvard.

There was recently an article about Håvard in the paper, where his friends told how brave he had been during the shooting. First he had gone in to a building to warn a group of people that there was a killer outside. Then a girl jumped out of the window and broken her ankle, and he carried her to some bushes where she could safely hide. He then found another group of people who were scared and hiding, and he held them and comforted them and calmed them down. Then he left them, and lost his life. No one can expect people to react rationally and selflessly to such dramatic events, and I hope the people who survived won't feel like they did something wrong by prioritizing saving their own lives. But it also makes me tear up to think about Håvard's actions, that he saved a girl's life even though he must have been terrified himself. I hope this can be a small consolation for his family, in the middle of all the grief.