‘I’ve seen death in this city, but nothing as sad as this’: how a ferry disaster exposed the corruption devastating Iraq
As protests against a rotten system continue, the families of 128 drowned civilians await justice.
Early in the morning on 21 March, in Mosul’s flat and dusty al-Baker neighbourhood, a school principal named Ustad Ahmad went to see his mother. It was the start of the new year holiday of Nowruz, and she asked if they could go to the cemetery to visit his father’s grave. Ahmad had other ideas. He was planning to take his wife and children to an amusement park, as a reward for the boys’ full marks in their recent exams. Besides, he told his mother, he didn’t want to be reminded of death on such a beautiful spring day.
Back home, after breakfast with the boys, Ahmad sat on a wooden chair in the bathroom for his weekly shave. Then, preparing to go out, he put on his new summer blazer, a pair of jeans and the wraparound sunglasses his wife had recently bought for him. Tall and burly, Ahmad was a very proud man – proud of his status among his colleagues, the comfort and neatness of his house, his smart and witty boys, his beautiful baby daughter and above all, his clever, outgoing wife, who loved to travel. At around 1pm, the family caught a taxi to the amusement park, and Ahmad gave the boys enough money to go on every ride. He even joined them for a round on the bumper cars.
Things hadn’t always been as comfortable for Ahmad as they were now. When Islamic State took over Mosul in 2014, he had been deemed “unreliable” and expelled from his teaching job. For three years he was unemployed and unable to provide for his family. He sold his wife’s gold and some of their furniture, borrowed money from his mother and brother, and became dependent on whatever his wife’s family could spare them. Friends and neighbours nagged him to go out and find work as a day labourer, or get himself a pushcart and work in the vegetable market. But how could he? A school principal can’t work in the market, he felt. He rarely left the house and sank into depression, arguing with his wife and children, who stopped going to school. Now, two years after the liberation of Mosul, he was proud to be a respectable principal once more, even if the city was still in ruins and his school barely functioning.
Mosul is a city broken by war and corruption. Today, the early euphoria of liberation from Islamic State is dissolving as the failure of reconstruction efforts becomes increasingly apparent. Pledges to rebuild the city remain unfulfilled, while the five bridges spanning the river Tigris have either collapsed or are strung together by military pontoons. Hundreds of thousands of people who were driven out of their homes during the fighting are still living in camps. The security situation is deteriorating and Islamic State cells are re-emerging. Across Iraq, anger against political elites is rising. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to demand a complete overhaul of the political system. After two months of demonstrations, in which 400 were killed and thousands injured, the prime minister resigned, but the crowds are still camping out in main squares across the country, waiting for the rest of their demands to be met.
At the same time, what endures is the tenacity and resilience of the people of Mosul, their love of life and entrepreneurial spirit. During the later stages of the war, as the city was being retaken block-by-block by the Iraqi army, liberated neighbourhoods would spring back to life quickly. Families returned to their homes and teams of young volunteers cleared rubble from their streets. Even as the fighting raged just a few blocks away, someone would start selling cigarettes, a grocer would reopen with a box of half-rotten tomatoes and canned beans, and refurbished shops and restaurants would spring up, albeit without water or electricity. Those who could raise a bit of money began rebuilding their homes, while still waiting for the compensation their government had promised them. People allowed themselves the small reward of a meal out with their families.
It was close to 2pm when Ahmad’s family settled down to have their lunch, but there were no shaded areas in the park. The boys suggested that they go to Umm Rabaen, a pleasure island on the Tigris River. It was cooler by the water and there was a picnic area, and another amusement park. Ahmad called another taxi and they headed to the island.
He didn’t want to be reminded of death on such a beautiful spring day
Umm Rabaen embodies the mixture of ruin and resurgence that defines Mosul. It was first turned into a pleasure island during the late 80s, when riverside cafes, restaurants, chalets and the pyramid-shaped Oberoi hotel were built as part of a grand development plan. The hotel is now a ruined shell, and most of the trees have been chopped down for firewood. But cafes and restaurants have been restored and reopened, and on weekends, the people of Mosul flock to the island to sit at white plastic tables, drinking tea or eating grilled kebabs. The familiar sight of the Tigris flowing beside them, fast and muddy, is a reminder of the endurance of their city, just as the view of the ruined buildings on the opposite bank brings back memories of the vicious war that they only just survived.
Like many businesses in Mosul, since the liberation of the city from Isis, the island was part-owned by a member of the economic wing of a powerful militia. Earlier this year, a parliamentary commission reported that armed groups, working through their economic wings, have secured public contracts for businesses, in return for large kickbacks. They control the multimillion-dollar scrap metal trade and oil smuggling operations, as well as imposing illegal tolls on commercial traffic. The businesses they own are unaccountable, their funding is untraceable and, through a combination of fear and corruption, there is almost no oversight. The result, for the people enjoying their new year holiday in Mosul, was disaster.
That same morning, in a different part of Mosul, a woman named Shahla woke up feeling cheerful and decided to take her mother to a new restaurant for brunch. Tomorrow would be her mother’s 72nd birthday and Shahla and her two sisters had bought gifts, ordered cakes and sweets, and stuffed aubergines, zucchini and vine leaves with meat and rice, arranging them in a large dolma pot for the family feast. Today, though, Shahla had her mother to herself.
The two women shared a particularly close bond after living as virtual prisoners under the rule of Islamic State. Their prison had been their two-storey house, which sat in a quiet neighbourhood, nestled among olive, tangerine and eucalyptus trees, not far from the eastern banks of the Tigris. Shortly after June 2014, when Isis officially declared its caliphate, the 13 Christian families that lived in the neighbourhood were expelled, their doors marked with the letter N (for Nazrites) and their houses redistributed to the organisation’s senior foreign fighters. A Chechen commander lived across the street, while a Russian woman moved in next door and shouted at Shahla and her mother to cover their eyes even in their own garden. She would also send over her Egyptian husband to demand some of Shahla’s mother’s food.
When the battle to liberate Mosul began in September 2016, the houses of the foreign fighters in the neighbourhood became a target. Three were levelled in airstrikes that shook Shahla’s home and shattered their windows. Russian snipers set up a base in a house across the street. Other fighters fired their rocket-propelled grenades at the approaching Iraqi armoured vehicles from barricades at the end of the road.
A street near Mosul University after fighting between the Iraqi counter-terrorism service and Islamic State, January 2017.
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
Towards the end of the battle, as the fighting intensified and Iraqi troops got closer, Islamic State fighters came knocking at their door in the middle of the night. They ordered them to leave their house and go with them: they would be human shields for the retreating fighters. The women gathered their belongings in small bags, piled food into an old wheelchair and set out. Distant explosions shook the ground under their feet. At the end of the street they came across other neighbours who had slipped away from the Isis fighters, and together they hid in the basement of an abandoned house. Twenty-five women and children hid in that dark basement for three nights, while above, battle raged. When finally they heard on the radio that their neighbourhood was liberated, they remained trapped in their hiding place. They could hear fighters in the house, searching for civilian hostages to ensure their safe retreat. In the basement, the families crouched in darkness, holding their breath. Not until they heard the roars of army trucks and armoured vehicles had they dared to move.
After their brunch, Shahla was in the kitchen preparing a pot of sweet Turkish coffee, while her mother sat reading in the garden, when Umm Yussuf, a friend of her mother, called to invite them for tea at the pleasure island that afternoon. Shahla didn’t want to go out. She thought that on a sunny public holiday the island would be too crowded. But her mother wanted to go – the weather was beautiful, and she hadn’t seen Umm Yussuf for weeks, so Shahla eventually agreed. She prepared a basket of food and a flask of coffee and they set off.
It took Shahla and her mother 20 minutes to walk from their house to the river. Her mother was glad to be out, and her cheeks were flushed from the warm afternoon sun. When she saw the large crowd that had gathered at the river bank, Shahla thought the whole of Mosul must be here. She didn’t like crowds, and she was trying to ask her mother if they could leave, when Umm Yussuf found them. The two old women hugged and the three of them slowly headed towards the ferry to the island.
Umm Rabaen island is connected to the east bank of the Tigris, less than 100 metres across the water, by two cable-pulled flatbed ferries, which were owned and maintained as part of the amusement park and island. The ferry allegedly had no safety provisions, security staff were reportedly unskilled and inept, and the service was rarely, if ever, subject to inspection.
As the crowd waiting for the ferry swelled, a short man with alert, beady eyes watched with growing unease. Omar was sitting nearby in an old motorboat whose white fibreglass coating had turned yellowish-brown with age. He noticed that in the past couple of hours the water had risen quickly. The lower decks of the riverside cafes, where he had moored his boat, had been submerged, and plastic tables and chairs taken to higher decks.
The day before, the river police had told the ferry management that it would need to suspend operations because of the unusual quantity of water being released from the Mosul dam higher up the river, after heavy rainfall. Everyone who lived or worked along the river had been informed – boatmen, cafe owners, even the farmers who raised water buffalos on the southern edge of the city. But the ferry was running as normal.
The ferry allegedly had no safety provisions, security staff were reportedly unskilled and inept, and the service was rarely, if ever, subject to inspection
At 3pm, it docked at the jetty on the eastern bank, and a single line of people descended, squeezing their way through the families waiting to board. The two crowds intermingled in a sea of coloured headscarves, pushing, and moving slowly. Everyone was in their holiday clothes, young men and boys wore suits and bow ties, girls wore dresses with frills.
Shahla went down the steps on to the ferry carrying her bag, the food basket and her mother’s handbag. She noticed that the water level was very high. Her mother and Umm Yussuf walked behind her slowly, holding hands. Ahmad and his family climbed down the steps backwards with the pram, one step at a time. The back of the ferry was full, but more people pushed to enter. By the time it started moving, nearly 300 people were crammed onboard.
The ferry was a contraption made from two sections of an old pontoon bridge welded together and decorated with arches that rose high on either side. Steel wires stretched between the arches above a row of benches. Motors mounted on opposite sides of the river pulled cables connected to the front and back of the ferry. A third, guiding cable resisted the push of the currents and maintained the ferry on a straight course.
Guardian graphic.
Image: Google Earth, 2004
The ferry shook and shuddered as it moved. The strength of the current pushed it downstream before the cable pulling it corrected its path and it shifted slightly upstream. The operator, standing in the back, noticed the ferry was tilting and started walking to the front, telling people to move away from the listing right side. The back of the ferry was being dragged by the current, pulling the ferry off its line. As the ferry jerked and swayed, a few kids climbed over the right-side railing, trying to see what was going on.
A small wave gushed over the deck, covering Shahla’s feet. Growing scared, her mother said that the three of them should go back and sit in a cafe on the shore, as if they could still walk away. Shahla tried to reassure her, but she could see that people were frightened. Elsewhere on the ferry, where Ahmad was standing, women were crying. He stuck by the railing, assuring his wife and children that the ferry would right itself, while clutching the pram handles tightly.
A second, bigger wave surged in. The ferry began listing to the right. The boys hanging on the right side railings threw themselves into the frothing water. Just over a minute into the crossing, the ferry had tilted so far that one third of the deck was underwater, and most of the people were clambering on the other side, but the ferry couldn’t right itself. Ahmad, standing in water up to his neck, held on to the pram, trying to keep the baby above water. Then he heard a loud grinding noise and saw that the ferry was turning over and people were sliding down towards him. He gripped the handles of the pram tightly but it sank, pulling him underwater, his baby daughter disappearing into the darkness of the river.
At this point, the cable pulling the ferry snapped. The left side of the hull, standing almost vertical now, hit the cable pulling the second ferry back from the island, and started to turn over. People fell on top of each other. Shahla was pushed into the water. She was still holding her mother’s hand. She managed to get her head above the water, but a body fell on her, she sank again, and lost her mother’s hand. When she got back to the surface, a woman in a black robe grabbed her, desperate to stay afloat, and tried to climb on top of her, pushing Shahla down again. Shahla took a breath and sank underwater, allowing herself to be dragged downstream.
The hull stood vertical; people were trapped between the jaws of the arches and the rods connecting them. As it turned over, the arches closed like giant fangs on the people below. The ferry flipped, a green floating whale drifting downstream, chasing after dozens of bobbing heads.
Deep under the water, Ahmad lost the pram. He saw a boat nearby and swam to it, trying to grab on to the engine at the back. He shouted for help but no one heard him, or they were too absorbed in pulling people from the water. The owner of the boat came down to the stern, where Ahmad was still clinging desperately to the engine, and, ignoring the man hanging on to the propellor, pulled a cord to start the engine. It roared into life and the blades cut into Ahmad’s sides. He screamed as the propellor cut his flesh.
He let go. He knew he had lost his family. Better to die, he thought, as he sank into the water. But his body would not let him die, and involuntarily he kicked his way to the surface. He wept and mumbled thanks be to God, thanks be to God, his tears sinking into the water that carried him downstream, past riverside cafes where people stood, watching and filming.
He reached another boat, and clutching on to the reeds, stretched out his hand and asked for help. Two men grabbed him by his arms, and a third pulled him by his belt and swung him over the edge. The body of a woman lay in the bottom of the boat, next to two dead children. The men hauled in another woman and a child, and started the engine, setting off towards the island.
A ferry taking people to the Umm Rabaen island amusement park in Mosul, June 2018.
Photograph: Claire Thomas
By now, a handful of fishing boats had driven into the middle of the river to try to pull survivors out of the water. Omar, the boatman who had been anxiously watching the crowds waiting for the ferry earlier, steered towards the drowning crowd. Among the people hauled on to his boat was Aya, a young woman a few days short of her 20th birthday, who had gone to the island with her mother and sister, along with some of her aunts and cousins. Sitting in the boat, with the shock of air flowing back into her lungs, Aya recovered enough to scream. A large man, with his son hanging on his back, grabbed the side of the boat and it started teetering dangerously. Aya begged him to let go, in case he flipped the boat and drowned them all, but the man held on with all his might. A young man bent over and pulled the child hanging on the man’s back into the boat. They all tried to pull the man, but he was too heavy. Too tired to hang on, he was dragged away by the current.
In the water, Shahla was bumped and rammed by objects and bodies. She looked for her mother among the people screaming and struggling around her, but the water was pushing her fast. She saw white gulls, so loved by the people of Mosul, circling overhead. Oh lord, she thought, is it possible that they are feeding on the bodies of the dead? She had been in the water for half an hour by now. The water was cold, her winter clothes were getting heavy, her headscarf was choking her, but she hung on tightly to her mother’s green bag. She didn’t want her mother to lose her ID card and go through the hassle and the humiliation of long queues.
Her chest was contracting, and she couldn’t breathe, she knew that if she didn’t keep swimming, she would die. She managed to catch on to a boat. She hauled herself over the side and collapsed into the bottom of the boat.
From the safety of the boat, Shahla was able to see the extent of the disaster. Bodies floated all around them, many of them children. There was a tiny boy, three or four, dressed in a onesie and floating on his back: it reminded her of the game she played as a child, with her sisters, floating their dolls in the bathtub. To her relief, she saw that the gulls were not feasting on the dead bodies, but the food people had brought for their picnics.
The boat dropped Ahmad on the island, where he wandered along with other survivors, and watched families still enjoying their picnics. Someone gave him water, another offered him a chair. A neighbour and his wife spotted him; they took him to the island’s administration office, but it had been abandoned. When the ferry sank, most of the staff had run away, fearing they would be arrested and anticipating the anger of the victims’ families. The neighbours took off Ahmad’s jacket and shirt and cleaned the three long cuts in his side with a piece of cloth soaked in antiseptic. At that point, he started to cry.
An officer from the Mosul Swat police unit arrived on the island in a large civilian motorboat they had commandeered and arrested everyone who was still working there – including vendors selling coffee and burgers – but the owners and directors of the island were nowhere to be seen. The officer took pity on Ahmad and gave him a lift back to the eastern riverbank.
Meanwhile, Omar brought Aya to the jetty and went back with his motorboat to see if he could rescue more people. She stood there shivering, her hair soaked in mud and her dress dripping with water. She was surrounded by a crowd of spectators and policemen who had gathered to watch the disaster unfold, their phones pointed at her. When Aya spotted a young policeman standing nearby, she began screaming at him. “My family, where is my family?” The bewildered policeman looked at her as if she were mad.
“My family, where is my family?”
In front of Aya, the ineptitude and failure of the Iraqi state seemed to be laid bare. In oil-rich Iraq, the Mosul River police department had just one boat, which had sat broken for many months; they had no ropes, and no lifejackets to throw to the people drifting and drowning in front of them. While the chief of the river police had jumped in one of the civilian boats and went to help with the rescue, some of his men just stood there staring. They didn’t know what to do; most of them had never trained for such a crisis and some didn’t even know how to swim. In the highly corrupt Iraqi security services, many of those policemen had paid a bribe to be appointed to a comfortable job by the river, rather than one of the more dangerous posts outside the city.
Once Shahla had been deposited back on land, a policeman stopped a passing car and told the driver to take her to the hospital. When she arrived, she searched out her mother and Umm Yussuf – first among the survivors, and then, with trepidation, among the bodies in bags. She didn’t find them. She was wet, shivering and exhausted, but she didn’t want to be in the hospital, which was packed with crying women and children. She collapsed on the pavement outside. “There was chaos, and no one was in control,” she recalled. “The bodies were dumped in the back of ambulances and pick-up trucks like they were sacks of garbage, while the policemen and the crowds filmed with their mobile phones.”
Later in the day, Shahla spoke to her brother on the phone. He was weeping. Before he said anything, she knew that her mother was dead.
The most organised institution in Mosul is the morgue. Two years after the war, it continues to receive the black and festering remains of corpses buried under mounds of debris and destroyed houses. The staff, who are efficient and thorough, compare DNA samples with their records and try to identify the victims among the thousands still missing.
The short, stocky young director, Hassan Watheq, who has a pencil moustache and wears rimless glasses, was having his lunch when he received a phone call from a friend to tell him about the ferry. He could hear the sounds of screaming families on the phone. He hurried to the morgue, knowing that the bodies would quickly begin to disintegrate, making identification very difficult. He knew all too well the chaos that would ensue, with families pushing and shoving, trying to reclaim their dead relatives. He called for a police guard to be stationed around the morgue.
Soon the bodies started arriving. Within an hour, there were 65 bodies in the refrigerators and hundreds of families gathering outside, women wailing, men pleading with the policemen to be allowed in. The director went outside, flanked by policemen, and climbed on top of a police truck. In his calm voice, he pleaded with the people to give him time.
The most organised institution in Mosul is the morgue
The majority of the bodies that arrived from the ferry were women and children. Even the staff of the Mosul morgue, accustomed to the sight of death, were weeping. “I saw a woman clutching a five month-old child,” recalled the director. “Both were dead, and I thought of my own two girls and started crying, even though death had become normal for us.”
He began posting headshots of the victims on the morgue’s gate. Where ID had been found with the body, he was able to post the names of the dead. His other priority was preventing bodies from being stolen. “Iraqi law doesn’t recognise the missing as dead until five years have passed,” he explained to me, “and all this time they can’t get pensions or any rights. So a lot of people tried to register their missing as dead in the ferry disaster.”
Of the 128 confirmed dead, 57 were women, and 44 children. Another 69 are still missing. The latest body to be found was brought in on 11 September, almost six months after the ferry sank.
Even in a nation accustomed to fanatical militias, occupying armies and mad dictators, the ferry disaster was shocking. “I have seen death in this city,” the morgue director said, “but nothing as sad as this. People dressed for holidays lined up in body bags.” When the public discovered that the River Authority had issued a warning about the dangers of operating the ferry that day, grief turned to anger. People were enraged by the failure of the state and the apparent recklessness of the pleasure island’s owners.
The prime minister arrived in Mosul on the evening of the disaster and announced three days of mourning. He also formed an investigation committee and declared all the victims as martyrs, to be added to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi martyrs killed in the war. The president came the following day, and was booed by a crowd protesting against political corruption. He was bundled into a police pick-up while crowds pressed around, banging on the car.
Iraqi civil defence workers recover the ferry that sank in the Tigris, 23 March 2019.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Within days, the media was reporting that there was a connection between the owner of the island, Ubaid al-Hadidi, and a notorious militia commander. Before the ferry disaster, people in Mosul had felt too scared to speak openly about the activities of the militias’ economic arms. Now there were protests and sit-ins. On 24 March, the governor of Mosul, Nufal Hammadi, already under investigation for embezzlement of public funds and international aid, was sacked. He was accused of involvement with the militias’ business enterprises, of raiding public funds and annexing public land. The governor told a press conference: “I deny that I received a single cent or dinar from any party.”
A member of Mosul city council, who was on the investigation committee, told me the ferry had been overcrowded and sailing in very fast waters. “The official regulations specified that the ferry was allowed to work in [river speeds] that do not exceed 700 metres per minute, preferably between 400-300 metres, with a maximum capacity of 80 people on board. On the day it sank, it was carrying 287 people, and the current speed was 1,400 metres per minute,” he said.
The councillor, who asked to remain nameless, said the owners and management of the island bore direct responsibility for the incident, having apparently ignored the safety warnings. “[The owner] was informed by the river police the night before, and he signed the memo. But he saw a vast crowd, and he wanted to load as many people as possible. The state institution that was supposed to monitor the work of the ferry failed in their responsibility.”
The fact that the island’s owners were backed by a leader of the economic wing of one of Iraq’s fiercest militias, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, would have made it less likely that the rules would be enforced against them. Shirwan Dubadani, MP for the city of Mosul, Shirwan Dubadani, who also sat on the parliamentary fact-finding mission last year, told me that during a meeting he attended between the former governor of Mosul, the president of Iraq and the speaker of parliament, the governor confirmed that one of the militia’s most powerful men, Hayder al-Sa’edy, was a partner in the island, and his men provided security. Since the liberation of Mosul, al-Sa’edy had been in charge of the lucrative scrap metal business, running companies as fronts for the militia and its political party that were awarded public contracts by the governor.
“I imagine all that happened as a dream; I talk about it as if it was a story that happened to someone else.”
The owner of the island, Ubaid al-Hadidi, was a mid-level contractor before the fall of Mosul. Under the Isis occupation, he made a fortune buying and selling residential and agricultural lands confiscated from Christian residents expelled from the city. In 2015, he bought the concession for the island and ran it for a year and a half before he was forced to close it because of the lack of electricity and the approaching war. After the liberation of Mosul, a warrant was issued for his arrest on terrorism charges. But after al-Sa’edy allegedly intervened, the charges against al-Hadidi were dropped. In return, according to MPs and intelligence officers who spoke to me about the disaster, al-Hadidi paid a “contribution” of 5bn Iraqi dinars and gave al-Sa’edy a 30% share in the island.
The day after the ferry sank, al-Hadidi claimed in a phone interview with an Iraqi TV station that he and his son had not been in Mosul when the disaster occurred. The reason, he said, was that an Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq security representative had threatened them and demanded a large payment. “We would always shut the island if the water level climbed, but we haven’t been in Mosul because of the threats we received,” he said. Three days later, al-Hadidi and his son were arrested in Erbil and taken to a prison in Mosul. In an interview with an Iraqi TV network, a representative of Asai’ib Ahl al-Haq’s political wing said: “Even if we accept that someone connected to the movement is a partner in the island, that does not mean that Asa’ib are responsible for what happened.”
When they brought the body of Ustad Ahmad’s wife to his house on the night of the accident, he refused to see her. He did not attend her funeral. The body of his eldest boy was found the day after the ferry sank, trapped under the capsized hull. His other son and baby girl will never be found.
After the disaster, Ahmad could not stand to see his boys’ toys and school bags. “I asked my mother to remove all their belongings and give them away,” he said. “I don’t want to remember them. I want to forget their memories.” As he spoke, his voice was breaking. “I imagine all that happened as a dream; I talk about it as if it was a story that happened to someone else.” He was sitting in his mother’s house, the confident pride of the school principal was gone. He looked old and tired, his back bent and face sagging.
Ustad Ahmad’s wife, sons and baby daughter.
Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
“You know, we had lost another baby girl two years ago, she was the same age, a mirror image of this one, same laughter, the same face,” he said. Two years earlier, when their house was struck by an Isis mortar, Ahmad had run into the street carrying the other daughter, his wife and boys following him. His brother and neighbours rushed to help them. His brother pulled the baby from his arms, while Ahmad and his wife went back to the house to collect their valuables. When the couple were back in the house, another mortar exploded. Ahmad ran outside to find his brother and 10 of the neighbours dead. His baby daughter was dead. “Maybe it was in our fate to die on that day, but we missed death, and it caught up with us on the ferry,” he told me.
Ahmad does not blame incompetence or corruption for the ferry disaster. “Yes,” he said, “there was negligence, but what can I do about the owner, how can I get my justice from him? Is he much worse than the people who stood watching while people were floating in front of them? No one came to save us; no one volunteered to come down into the water; people just stood watching. No one helped. When they took me back to the island, I saw people sitting eating their picnics. This unfeeling attitude – is it because of all the death the city had seen?”
In the autumn, I visited Aya at her aunt’s house. “What caused the ferry to sink was corruption and negligence; treating the people as if they are nothing,” she told me. She spoke forcefully, her grief mixed with the bitterness of being abandoned by the state. “My mother said after this war, the destruction, the savagery of the killings, nothing worse would happen to us. We were liberated in March 2017, and in March 2019 she died.”
“No one cares this happened here,” she said. “The ferry will be forgotten just like all these other deaths were forgotten.” In October, Aya started receiving phone calls from prominent tribal elders, pressuring her to accept an offer of blood money from the owner of the island. Al-Hadidi was offering bereaved families 10m Iraqi dinars and a plot of land on the outskirts of the city, if they would drop any charges against him and his son. The elders told her that all the other families had accepted and she was one of the last holding out. “I was refusing to sign, but all the families had signed, they tell me that they won’t get anything from the state and they need the money. I don’t know what to do,” said Aya.
I called the MP Shirwan Dobadani to ask him about the compensation offer. He told me that it was true – two prominent tribal sheikhs had intervened as intermediaries. “If the families wait for the judicial system to give them justice, they won’t get anything,” Dobadani said. “There are thousands of cases of murder and assassination that haven’t been solved. The worst disaster in Iraq is forgotten after 72 hours.”
Inger’s Last Wish
PREMEDITATED: On September 8. 2018, Dagbladet’s opinions section received an email from Arne Svalastog. The chronicle he supplied was written by his wife – who was dead. Inger Staff-Poulsen had performed euthanasia – as she called it herself. In the chronicle she explained why.
Photo: Arne Svalastog
During the autumn of 2018 a chronicle arrived in the mailbox of Dagbladet’s opinion department. The chronicle was written by Inger Staff-Poulsen (57) who was ill with cancer. She argued that patients who suffered greatly should have the right to receive help with ending their lives.
“When animals get acutely ill, loving owners are informed that the most humane act is to put the animal to sleep,” she wrote. “However, human beings are to be tormented, suffer pain and to be tortured until their last breath in an enclosed sick room.”
It was her husband who had sent the chronicle. By then, Inger herself had been dead for four months.
Euthanasia is forbidden in Norway. If you assist someone in taking their own life, you can be sentenced to 8 to 21 years in prison. This is also the case when whoever wishes to commit suicide is terminally ill, with no higher wish than to die.
Inger Staff-Poulsen was in her last stages of ovarian cancer. She had passed any hopes of recovery and was suffering greatly. Despite this, she was fully committed to complete her chronicle before she died. “I feel that my view on euthanasia is an important contribution to the debate,” she wrote.
Euthanasia is a controversial issue which raises many ethical questions. Can we, as a society, accept that someone with full awareness deliberately helps shorten another person’s life? Who should have the right to decide whether a life is too painful to live or not? Inger Staff-Poulsen’s opinion was that this decision should remain with the dying person, and not with politicians and lawyers.
“We have the freedom to choose what life we wish to live, in the same way we should have the liberty to die in a way that suits us best,” Inger wrote. She herself dreamed about what she called “the perfect death:” To sit on a gold embroidered bed spread from Marrakesh and toast her nearest and dearest in champagne, before getting as merciful and professional help as possible to fall asleep.
She never lived to see such a death. Instead she chose to take matters in her own hands, leaving on her own to end her suffering. But the most brutal chapter of her life, was still ahead of her.
This is Inger’s story.
CABIN LIFE: Quality – not quantity – of life, became important for Inger after she got ill. Together with Arne she enjoyed good meals, drank prosecco and went for regular trips – among other destinations to their beloved cabin in Gvarv, in the mountainous region of Telemark.
Photo: Agnete Brun
Should a dying person be able to receive help with ending one’s own life? Inger Staff-Poulsen’s opinion was, yes. But for her, the end turned out to be even more brutal.
“Now I have finished my chronicle,” Inger said. “Now I can’t delay it any longer.”
The calendar showed April 23rd, 2018. Spring had properly begun to thaw the Telemark region and the ground around the farm at Gvarv. Inger said to her husband Arne: “Tomorrow I have to leave. If you think you can manage it, I want you to drive me to the station. If not, I can take a taxi.”
She had planned in detail how she wanted the morning to pass, from the moment she said goodbye to her home for the last time, until she boarded the train. “The dog cannot come with us,” she said. “And I have not got the strength to say goodbye to you. You have to stay in the car.”
Arne did not know where his wife was going. All he knew was that the next time he saw her, she would be dead.
Inger had been given the diagnosis five years earlier. For a long time, she had felt that something was wrong. She felt shortness of breath, being worn out, and during walks in the forest, she was breathing and puffing so heavily that Arne finally asked her: “But Inger, what is wrong with you?”
Her ovarian cancer had reached the fourth and final stage when it was finally discovered. The doctors told her that the chemotherapy could extend her life somewhat, but, regardless of that, the illness would drastically shorten her life.
Inger started to read everything she could find about the illness, treatment procedures, side effects, loss of hair, chemotherapy and radiation. During consultations at the hospital she knew to a large extent what their messages meant. Meanwhile she felt how the cancer progressed; she was always a step ahead.
Inger’s mother had also suffered from cancer. The doctors could not do anything for her either. Inger had seen her mother spend the last weeks of her life in a morphine induced slumber in the palliative ward of the hospital. She did not wish this for herself. More than anything, she feared lying helpless in a hospital bed and just exist.
Very soon Inger was not only reading about ovarian cancer, but also about a possible way out of this life.
Arne did not know where his wife was going. All he knew was that the next time he saw her, she would be dead.
– She wanted to decide for herself. She was determined not to enter the final stages of the illness, Arne Svalastog (58) tells Magasinet.
He and Inger found each other late in life, they had 14 years together as a couple. After the illness knocked on their door, they had four surprisingly good years – and one very painful. Now Arne has been a widower for nine months.
– Inger had never believed that her final days in a hospital would be dignified. When she was given the death sentence, she saw her life quality as preferable to life quantity.
Arne is sitting by his dining room table. He is looking at the CD-shelf, which Inger herself had designed and built. She was always occupied with several ongoing projects, these could be making her own furniture, sewing a “bunad” (Norwegian national outfit) to her niece, or making warm clothes to the beige puddle Rask. Now she also made her own death into a project.
– Rather early she started to talk about Switzerland and euthanasia, Arne says.
– But I did not want to hear anything about it.
Inger had read about the organisation Dignitas outside Zurich. Since its foundation in 1998, Dignitas has offered assisted suicide. Contrary to Norway and most other European countries, Switzerland has legalised assisted suicide. By the end of 2018, around 40 Norwegians were members of Dignitas. In total they have over 9000 members, and approximately 200 persons end their lives there every year.
At Dignitas the patients receive a ready mixed poison, which they then have to drink themselves.
Within a short period of time, the patient falls asleep without any pain. A similar organisation is Life Circle, also in Switzerland. There the patient is given the poison intravenously and the dying person must undo the last screw for the liquid to pour through. Last year two Norwegians ended their lives there.
Dignitas’ motto is: “To live with dignity – and die with dignity”. Inger liked that idea.
– To begin with I tried to remain positive about travelling to Switzerland. But I believe it was impossible not to hear that I found it unbearably tough, Arne says.
He’s cried too many tears for his eyes to contain them. They begin falling down his cheeks.
– In retrospect, I realise how much better that would have been. Then I could have held her hand.
OPENED THE DOOR: When Inger first began talking about finishing her life at a clinic in Switzerland, Arne was skeptical. Now his doubts have disappeared, and he’s become a member of the Norwegian euthanasia lobby organization.
Photo: Agnete Brun
Inger and Arne went to the same high school. He was a farmer’s son, she was a banker’s daughter from Nesodden, who attended a boarding school in Telemark. Once they danced together at a Christmas ball. Otherwise they were not too much in contact during their time at school. Inger moved back to Oslo when she had finished school while Arne gradually followed in his mother’s footsteps and took over the farm. They lived half their lives separately before they met again at a school reunion 25 years later. They were seated opposite each other at the table.
Inger was experienced in the ways of the world, and had lived in New York, Paris, and Hamburg. She had studied to be a graphic designer Westerdals School of Art, and a clothes designer at Esmod Fashion School. Arne had always thought of her as being “in a different league” than himself. But after they met again, at the school reunion party, it did not take long before they became an item.
Inger handed in her notice in Oslo and moved out of her flat in Frogner. She enrolled in a teachers’ college, and moved, with her cats, to Arne’s farm. From there she commuted weekly to Røyken and her job as a teacher, while Arne made sure the blackcurrants they grew on the farm got properly big and juicy. They travelled together to Japan and Italy, went for walks in the woods, bathed, enjoyed good meals and drank prosecco.
When Inger became ill, she was determined to spend her time carefully. The couple spent one winter in Berlin, while her condition stilled allowed it. If they were going out and Arne had to finish off something first, she went ahead and let him catch up. Inger did not want to waste any time waiting.
She told him: “Arne you have to take pictures of me while I still have my hair, so that we can remember what I actually look like.”
Arne built a studio. The arts photographer changed from taking landscape motives to taking images of Inger. Today Arne has her standing in a framed photo on the kitchen table. Inger is smiling at the camera. She has big earrings, and her hair is in a bun at the back of her head.
– She never reached the point where cancer made her look really ill. She was never marked by death in that sense. In the end she was fed up with being told how well she looked, says Arne.
For a long time, it was mainly the laboratory test results which indicated how far the illness had progressed. In the spring of last year, Inger began feeling shaky.
– For Inger it was only a matter of time until she was so far gone that she could no longer control her own death, says Arne.
– This is what she was most afraid of – to lose control. She could not take that risk.
NOT VISIBLY ILL: They went to the same high school, and became a couple in 2004, after celebrating the 25th anniversary of their high school graduation. Here Arne and Inger are celebrating Inger’sbirthday, at the Villa Malla residence at Filtvedt, Norway. – She never reached the stage where she was visibly ill with cancer. She was never stained by death in that way, Arne says.
Photo: Private
The cancer specialists who examined Inger, found that she had inherited a gene malfunction tied to the gene BRCA1. According to the “Big Norwegian Encyclopedia” the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are connected to a rather high risk of breast and ovarian cancer if they are altered. A mutation of BRCA1 gives around 70 percent risk of developing breast cancer, and approximately 45 percent risk of ovarian cancer.
When Inger found out she was a part of that statistic, she suggested a large-scale family gene test. This showed that Inger’s younger sister Madeleine and nephew Marius had the same genetic disorder. Madeleine chose to remove her breasts and ovaries to avoid being hit by the disease.
– I have been through four operations and I’m about to have one more, explains Madeleine Beck (54).
– It is a bit strange to wear prostheses. But I have had the children I wanted; therefore it was a simple choice.
Madeleine knew about her sister’s thoughts of going to Switzerland the whole time. She respected Inger’s wishes.
– But I was wondering who was to go with her. I thought it must be Arne, as I, who cries so easily, could not go with her.
Inger’s travel plans never materialised. Arne relates that she gradually put away the thought of going to Switzerland to have someone help her end her life. She felt the cost of one hundred thousand Norwegian Kroner, which was the fee Dignitas demanded, was too high. And she was uncertain both of the waiting time and the journey itself. Joyous of life as she was, she could also not take the risk of having an appointment in Zurich before the cancer really had taken a firm grip.
– If she had gone, she would have had to say to people: – Now, Arne and I are going to Switzerland so I can die, says Arne.
But even if she had let go of the thought of going to Switzerland, Arne knew that his wife had not given up on the thought of ending her life before the final stage of her illness.
– After a while I understood that she was planning to do it herself, he says.
“After a while I understood that she was planning to do it herself”
At Gvarv in Sauherad the temperature has crept below zero. A thin white layer of frost is covering the farm. On a heap of cushions in the kitchen, the poodle Rask is resting his head on his front paws. His snuggle bed is below a kitchen cupboard Inger once made from some old cupboard doors.
“Remember to transfer Rask’s insurance from my DNB-bank to your DNB-bank”, it says on a green post-it sticker on the fridge. The whole cupboard is covered with messages, invitations and memorabilia. A bit above the neon-green sticker hangs an invitation to the spreading of Inger’s ashes. On the door is also a map over Las Palmas with a red paper heart placed over a park. This marks the place where Arne fell on his knees and proposed to Inger.
Inger had for many years dreamt of getting married, but Arne had not felt like it. He wasn’t too fond of marriages – possibly because his own parents divorced when he was a little boy. Around Christmas time 2017, the illness had also started to wear and tear on the relationship between Inger and Arne. There were no more treatments available. They both knew that their life together was nearing its end and that this was their last Christmas together.
Arne describes that Christmas as “terrible”. He and Inger could not manage a single conversation without squabbling, for instance about Rask. When were his claws to be cut, and when to give him a shower? They argued about things that seemed important to Inger and unimportant to Arne, or the other way around. Finally they both realised they could not spend their last couple of months together bickering.
– Inger called Radiumhospitalet and explained: “I am about to die and need to talk to a marital therapist. Can I have one tomorrow?” A couple of days later we sat in a consultancy room at the hospital. “After having listened to you,” said the therapist, “I have one advice: compromise! You will never agree about the dog, but can it really be so difficult?”
Arne says that the conversation with the therapist changed everything.
They booked a trip to Spain. In secret, Arne visited a goldsmith before they departed. In the park in Gran Canaria he put the ring on her finger and asked if she would marry him. Inger’s first answer was “no”, as she thought he only did it to make her happy. She soon realised his question was genuine.
– When we returned to the therapist one month later, he asked how things had been. “Great”, we replied, “we are getting married in two days.”
QUIET: Arne built the cabin, and Inger decorated it. They often came here. After she was diagnosed with cancer, they borrowed a neighbor’s ATV to access the property. Inger’s swimsuit and hat still hangs there.
Photo: Agnete Brun
The marriage was planned in no time. Inger made her own wedding dress. For a while she had rented an office in Bø and went there every morning. The skirt and jacket was of the same subdued flower pattern material, in addition she made a black hat. She was so exhausted from her illness that she had to lie down on the floor to sew. Work half an hour, then rest, then work again.
The big day dawned. The wedding had to be in front of a registrar, as Inger was an atheist and Arne had left his religious believes in his youth. The couple brought their own witnesses and Madeleine took the wedding pictures. In the Munch room (After the artist Edvard Munch/transl.) in Oslo’s City Hall they gave each other their ‘Yes’. Afterwards they had a seven course meal at the restaurant Annen Etage. Arne believes that the sun was shining, but he cannot say for sure. What he does remember, though, is that he felt an entirely new kind of joy.
– I am one who usually worries about all formal gatherings, but as from the moment I arose that morning, I was only happy. It was a dream day.
Arne also remembers that the wedding ceremony was more solemn than he had anticipated.
– It was a very special setting. All of those present knew it would not be a long marriage.
He proposed in early March, they married on the 21st of March and managed a short honeymoon to Prague. By then Inger’s condition had deteriorated to the extent that she had to rest several times a day.
Then came April.
Arne relates how for several years, small hints had been uttered which made him realise what she was thinking. She talked about methods and he told her she should not risk hurting herself or anybody else.
She said to Arne, “You will have a totally horrible day and completely terrible 24 hours. For that I am sorry. But the advantage is that when those 24 hours are over, it is all over. You will then receive a telephone call, and by then it is all over.”
Inger wrote her last will and testament. She wrote letters to her nearest family. Agreed with Arne he was to have Rask and came with suggestions on who should take over the care for the dog if Arne was to pass away. She wrote the wording that her husband was to publish on her Facebook profile. There she told her friends that when they read this, she would be dead and that she had performed euthanasia. She gave instructions on who should have what piece of her jewelry and decided what she was to wear when she was to be cremated: the silk kimono from Tokyo. She issued the invitation to the spreading of her own ashes; it only remained for Arne to fill in the date. She instructed him and Madeleine on who should be invited and where the ceremony was to take place. It was to be by the Steilene (Islands in the Oslo Fjord/transl.) outside Nesodden, a stone’s throw away from where she grew up. Those invited were to have a meal of pasta with pesto sauce at Madeleine’s home, and they were to toast Inger in prosecco, the Italian sparkling wine, which Arne calls her elixir of life.
Arne and Madeleine were not to know anything further, because if they knew the details on where, how and in what way Inger planned to end her life, they could risk being prosecuted as responsible.
The specialists at the hospital had told Inger that the type of cancer she was suffering from only on rare occasions could spread to the brain. Still, they performed an MRI-scan of her brain when she began to feel shaky.
The images showed that she had several tumours on the cerebellum and both cerebral hemispheres.
– She then called me and said: “Arne, this is it. This is the end.”
SURPRISED: Inger loved surprises. Following a demanding winter, Arne surprised her with asking her to marry him in March 2018, in a park in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. No, Inger replied – before she understood that he actually meant what he said.
Photo: Agnete Brun
Inger had decided to leave already the next day. She began writing her chronicle, but wasn’t able to finish it on the first day. She decided to remain at home another day to finalise the text. That is the way the next day passed and the following one as well. Inger wrote, polished and made tiny adjustments. Arne read the proof. He was happy for every extra hour he had with his wife, at the same time as the fact she was soon to leave was hanging over him. They went for a short walk every day, always on an even ground as Inger had no more strength to walk along hilly paths.
A week passed, and then finally the chronicle was completed.
CREATIVE: Inger always had projects running. She loved sewing, often her own designs. This picture was taken two years ago. The outfit she’s wearing on this picture, is one of her own creations.
Photo: Agnete Brun
It takes ten minutes to drive from the farm at Gvarv to the railway station in Bø. None of them said anything as Arne started the car, nor when they drove down the hill. They sat in complete silence while the white Swiss style house became smaller and smaller in the rear window. Silence reigned also for the next minutes while the car drove along the river Bø and when they left the main road for the railway station, their final stop.
– I could not wait for the train to leave, this I had promised Inger, so I parked in a way that the car could not be seen from the train, Arne says.
When he saw the train with his wife leave the station, he was unable to keep his promise. He followed in the car across Akkerhaugen and Sauarelva. With his eyes fixed on the train and its engine while passing kilometre after kilometre. Blinded by tears he suddenly saw the headlights of a meeting car, he had to pull his car back into the correct lane.
– For nine months I have been thinking about how terrible it was, her embarking on that train. But imagine how it must have been for her, to sit there and know that now I’m putting everything behind me, everything that has made me happy.
The train takes 13 minutes from Bø to reach the first stop at Nordagutu. With a car it takes 22. That station is a white building with green bordering which greets the travellers welcome, 112 metres above sea level, but Inger was to get closer to the sea. Arne did not know that, but the plan was for her to leave the train five stops later, at Oslo S, 3.7 metres over the sea level, just a few hundred metres from Bjørvika and the inner Oslo fjord, a few nautical miles from the place where she wanted her ashes to be spread.
As the train continued after its stop at Nordagutu, Arne turned the car around and drove back home to Rask.
WROTE A LETTER: Inger planned the ending of her life to every minor detail. She wrote a letter to all who were close to her, also her doctor, where she explained her decision. At Inger and Arne’s cabin it looks as if she was still alive.
Photo: Agnete Brun
The rest of the day passed better than Arne had feared. He worked a bit around the farm and went for a few kilometres run with Rask. Watched TV, and read a little. At dusk he took a short walk with his camera taking images of the moon and some tree branches.
Once during the afternoon he sent her an SMS.
– I thought I should be able to do at least that. She will either answer or I will hear nothing back, so I sent her a heart, says Arne.
Shortly afterwards Inger called.
She did not want to tell him where she was or enter into precise details about the next few hours, but she said she sat in a bed, looking through old pictures and memories.
– We had a conversation, 20 – 25 minutes long. It did not include anything on what was about to happen, we only talked about nice things. Then we hung up.
Later a few messages came in from Inger on Arne’s phone:
– Some very nice, short SMS-es, as a kind of thank you for the journey. A declaration of love. It was obvious that she had found peace, Arne continues.
Remarkably, he slept very well that night.
“It was obvious that she had found peace”
The next morning Arne woke up very early. He was overwhelmed with anxiety. Questions were roaming around in his head. Where is she? How have things developed? Is she alive? What if Madeleine calls, what do I say? He was afraid that Madeleine would call. Even though she knew that Inger was planning to take her own life, she did not know where and when that was to take place.
Arne thought Inger would check in at a hotel to end her life. That she would be found around noon by a maid. Then, he would receive a phone call.
Arne waited and waited for the telephone to ring. The hours were unbearable. He tried to get some work done on that day as well but was unable to concentrate. He had an overwhelming sense of loneliness. He was unable to leave the farm. His phone could ring at any moment; he didn’t want to be standing in line by the till in a shop.
He called a friend, one who lived far away, too far away to be able to stop Inger. His friend listened and tried to comfort him, but could not give Arne any advice on what to do.
Finally, Arne couldn’t bear it any longer. He called a hotel that he and Inger once had visited and from which they had pleasant memories. He thought she might be there, but nobody by that name was registered at the hotel.
– In a way I was relieved she did not stay there, for what would I have done if I had been connected to her room and nobody answered? It became obvious to me that I could not do this, that I would break the agreement I had with Inger, Arne says.
He said to himself that if he had not heard anything before 5 o’clock that afternoon, he was to call the police and report her as missing.
A quarter to five the telephone rang. It was from the Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo.
Arne listened quietly to the voice at the other end. At first he understood nothing. After he at last had somewhat pulled himself together to say something, he uttered three words:
– Is she alive?
MEMORIES: Inger made her mark on the farm where they lived together. The cabinet behind Arne, which was made by her, is just one example. On April 30, 2018, she left her last note to her husband on the kitchen table. He was not to go out to the barn – he should only call for an ambulance.
Photo: Agnete Brun
She had signed herself in at the patient hotel of the Radium Hospital. She had calculated on that the staff there were used to seeing dead people and that the shock to the unfortunate person finding her, would not be so great. In the room she had left her personal life testament, which she had gotten from the lobby organisation “Foreningen retten til en verdig død” (The Association for the right to a dignified death/transl.) which stated that she did not want to be resuscitated. She had also left behind a letter she had written, one in Norwegian, another in English, in case the finder was a foreigner. In the letter she stated why she wished to leave this life and as she was irretrievably sick, would die very soon anyway.
Inger had been found immediately after she had given up breathing. According to the Paragraph 287 of the Penal Code, it is the duty of every person to assist “a person who is in obvious risk of losing ones life (…)” Any person abstaining from helping, regardless of what the danger is, can be liable to a fine or up to 6 months imprisonment.
Inger was resuscitated by medical staff. As soon as she began breathing again, she was admitted into the Diakonhjemmet Hospital.
Arne got into the car and drove to Oslo. When he was admitted into Inger’s room, he saw that she was scratched and had obviously fallen over and hurt herself. She was heartbreakingly distraught over having failed.
– I have never seen anything like what I saw in her eyes, Arne says. – Just black emptiness.
On the following day, Madeleine visited her sister in hospital.
– The first thing she said when I entered was “mom”, as if to say she was now lying there just like our mother had done towards the end, says Madeleine.
– She then waved her arm towards the window, as if to ask on what floor she was. We had to explain to her that she was on the first floor and that there was no point in jumping.
“I have never seen anything like what I saw in her eyes. Just black emptiness.”
Inger was now so desperate and depressed that she was given a guard in her room. She wanted to sign herself out from the hospital, but Arne and Madeleine wanted her to remain as admitted until her next check-up at Radiumhospitalet. They understood what she was planning and knew she would make another try. They feared the way she would do it, could perhaps be even more brutal.
On Sunday the 29th Inger was released anyway. She and Arne got into the car and drove back to the farm. Rask was extremely happy to see her, but the sparkle in Inger had been extinguished.
Thoughts were spinning around in Arne’s head. He was glad that his wife was alive, but what was he to do now? What did Inger want to do? Were they to go to Switzerland? Or was she to die in a morphine slumber, as she absolutely did not want?
On Monday Arne went for a run, he needed to clear his head. He ran across the farm yard towards the forest and up the hill to a small lake to which he and his wife had walked so many times. He was away for about one hour.
In retrospect, he can’t imagine what he was thinking, how he could ever have left her alone.
As he got inside again, there was a piece of paper from Inger on the kitchen table. It said he was not to go into the barn but just call for an ambulance.
– In total despair I ran out into the barn with the hope of saving her, but saw immediately that she was dead, says Arne.
The emergency service arrived. Inger was confirmed dead less than 24 hours after having been released from the Diakonhjemmet Hospital.
SAID GOODBYE: On June 12, 2018, 19 of Inger’s closest relatives and friends bade farewell to her. From the Alværn jetty at Nesodden, a peninsula outside of Oslo, they said goodbye. Her nephew, Marius Beck, and sister, Madeleine Beck, returned to the jetty on Christmas day. Together with Arne they threw flowers into the sea. – Auntie was very important to my sister Mathilde and myself. Marius says. – She always had good advice for us, and for the most part, she knew best.
Photo: Agnete Brun
By the small lake above the farm, there is a tiny cabin. Arne himself had built it, Inger had done the interior. 12 square metres with a big window facing the water. A bed along one side and a wood burning stove along the other, with a jetty right in front. Arne and Inger used to go for walks here. Here it was only the two of them, the silence, and of course, Rask.
There are still two tooth brushes in the glass. Inger’s bikini is still hanging on a peg and her sun hat on the wall.
– Considering how Inger was as a person, this exit was probably right for her, says Arne.
He declares that he was previously sceptical about euthanasia. He no longer is. He means that Inger felt she was forced to go out in the barn. The law is such that Inger had to do this on her own.
– The price we pay for euthanasia being illegal in Norway, is that people must lay and suffer. It is easy to say now, but had I known what I know today, now when I have the answer, I wish I told Inger: “Let us apply for a place in Switzerland, then wait and accept fact when the time comes”. I wish the answer had been different.
DIFFICULT TIME: After Inger died, Rask was uneasy. He barked, and looked for Inger. Now he’s finally got accustomed to his new master, and Arne makes sure his fur and nails are regularly taken care of – just as Inger would.
Photo: Agnete Brun
“June 12”, Arne wrote in the open slot on the invitations to the spreading of Inger’s ashes.
It was one of those endless summer days, with blue sky and tiny white clouds. A group of 19 persons, and the dog Rask, drove down to Alværn jetty at Nesodden. Seven years earlier they had said farewell to Inger’s and Madeleine’s mother at the same place. The urn they had brought with them, was the same as they had used for their mother’s ashes.
In two boats, the group drove out between the tiny, oblong islands called Steilene. Only a small ripple fluttered on the surface of the glittering fjord. Outside the islands the boats stopped. The urn with Inger’s ashes was carefully opened. The content was poured into the water, dust and particles of sand swirled down as sucked into the deep, while the ashes sank slowly down to the bottom.
-We thought that now Inger and Mom can swim together to some warmer waters and bathe with the dolphins, says Madeleine.
They had chosen white, pink and red roses. While the flowers remained like a carpet on the surface of the water, Inger’s nearest family listened to the sound of the soft guitar music of “Cavatina”, the well-known tune from the movie “The Deer Hunter”.
Afterwards they toasted Inger in prosecco.
– It turned into a very nice day, says Arne.
– There was only one person missing, and that was Inger herself.
“For confidentiality reasons, the Diakonhjemmet Hospital can’t comment on her dismissal from our hospital. However, we underline that we are following existing health legislation and national professional guidelines in all our judgements. This is also the case when facing patients with serious somatic conditions who wish to end their lives”, deputy managing director Torkil Clementsen writes in an email to Magasinet.