When we first met, Kira had told me that she wanted to get rid of Anna so she could have me all to herself. In a way, that turned me on. And with that, a long, tumultuous relationship with frequent intermissions had begun.
Kira’s entire family opposed our relationship from the beginning, and the subsequent years became one long battle between me and Kira’s parents. They had never had an immigrant in their home, but I suppose Kira thought it was exciting because I was a bad boy, and she was a nice, Danish girl. I could tell that her family didn’t like me, but she was persistent, and I respected that.
When I met her, Kira was a young, virtuous girl. Shortly afterward, she bleached her hair blonde, giving her a more provocative look. Not too long afterward, my friends began supplying me with salacious gossip about my new girlfriend.
“She’s a slut. She’s cheating on you with other guys,” they said.
Even though I wasn’t sure they were telling the truth, I slowly began to suspect her of infidelity. Kira was an accomplished ballroom dancer and participated in the national and European youth championship, and I could hardly control my jealousy when she left for competitions. I thought about all the men she was dancing with and how she exposed her body, looking all sexy and fit and tanned for everyone to see in her competition dresses. I also hated it when she went to the beach. Other guys could look at her well-toned dancer’s body in swimwear.
She started lying to me. She told me that she had to stay home with her family and that they didn’t want her to be with me, but she wasn’t at home. She was dancing at the national championship. I had to learn about it from other people. I think she did it to spare me a bit. She also had a hard time because she wanted to maintain a relationship with both me and her parents. I couldn’t trust her anymore, and that became a problem.
The Arab gossiping culture is even more bitchy among the men, and it’s worse because you actually believe them. They’re your brothers, your friends, and I didn’t question what they said about Kira. My friends knew how to pull me away from her. I don’t know why that was their plan, but they probably felt like I should be focusing my attention less on her and more on them.
The combination of jealousy, interference from friends, and hostility from her family resulted in a toxic and often abusive relationship. Sometimes, she would disappear for two months straight because her parents forbade her to see me, so I began to hate her family. Her parents had pinned their hopes on Kira giving them grandchildren, but there was no way in hell I was gonna be the father in their eyes.
Kira’s dad was a craftsman, and her mother was a personal care worker. Her mother was familiar with my reputation from her job at the municipality, and you could hardly blame them for disapproving of the relationship. No normal family would want me for a son-in-law, and they did what they could to protect their daughter against me. Kira was also aware of what was going on because we were together during the time of the shootings between Black Cobra and the Bekir Boys. Her best friend was dating my close friend Erion, who was just as involved in the criminal underworld.
Her parents’ disapproval of me was never more evident than it was on one unfortunate Saturday night. Kira and I met at the mall that day. We agreed to meet up later for dinner. She had just gotten off work at the drugstore and was going home to talk to her parents. After that, she would come back, and we would head to the restaurant.
At 7:00 p.m., there was still no sign of her. I called her several times, but there was no answer. I then called her parents’ house. Her mom told me that someone else had come to pick her up. “I think she went on a date,” she said.
I was furious. If they had only accepted Kira and I dating, then we would have figured out by ourselves if we were supposed to be together or not. Instead, we had to hide when we went grocery shopping so that we wouldn’t risk bumping into her parents. She had to bow her head in the car so that no one would see us out together. It made me hate them.
Driven by anger, I went over to Kira’s house with a hammer in my hand. I was determined to break down the door if her parents didn’t open it.
Her father was a hefty man of almost six feet five, and he wasn’t afraid of me. At the crux of everything, he was a Danish father who simply loved his daughter too much to have a man who was a Muslim, an immigrant, and a criminal for a possible son-in-law or father to his grandchild. When he opened the door, he said, “She’s not home. She’s on a date.”
“That can’t be true. Bjarne, let me talk to Kira.”
“She’s not home.”
“I’m sure she’s home. Let me talk to her!”
He slammed the door. There was my answer. I began making one of my trademarked bad decisions in the heat of anger and started beating on their door with the hammer.
“If you do that one more time, we’re calling the cops, Sleiman,” Kira’s father said when he opened the door again.
“I will do it again. I want Kira to come outside.”
“Kira’s not coming out!”
He closed the door again, and I went right back to knocking on their door with the hammer until Kira came running and opened the door. “Sleiman, please just go,” she told me.
“Why? What’s wrong? Why would they say you’re on a date when you’re right here?”
“Sleiman, please just go. I don’t want to be with you anymore,” she told me.
“You don’t mean that, Kira.”
Her father asked us to leave the house and talk outside. After we had talked for a while, he suddenly came outside, grabbed Kira by the hand, and told her that it was time to come inside. In the meantime, Kira’s mother called the cops, so while I was arguing with Kira’s dad over him reversing his previous position, the police showed up and asked him if he wanted to press charges against me.
Kira’s father said, “I don’t want to press charges. Just take him to the station so he can cool down.”
So, they arrested me for disorderly conduct and drove me to the station. Kira didn’t do anything. She just said that it was over between us.
You would think I would learn my lesson or that we would be over after that incident, but Kira came back time and again. Spiteful breakups were followed by joyful makeups, which once again clashed with her parents’ hopes for their daughter’s future.
I thought it was fine living the way I did, but then I realized that I would have to do something legal. Something that would earn me respect, something her parents wouldn’t sneer at. Something that would prove to them I was as good a boyfriend for their daughter as any man was. I didn’t want to be lower class. Why would I stay down there? Why were they middle class? I wanted to be better than they were. I wanted a house that was bigger and more expensive than theirs was.
Hedgehog and I had our eyes set on a sewing machine shop at the local mall, but I knew that they wouldn’t allow me to own a store in the very mall where I had stolen from and vandalized the shops for ten years. The shop cost about $15,000 USD. We decided that Hedgehog should call and pretend like he was the one who wanted to buy the store. But when we got to the rental company, the lady was surprised to see that I was the one who signed the lease. She didn’t say anything, so the store was ours.
This was the beginning of a success story. I redecorated the store and, through a company in Aalborg, obtained the rights to sell a French clothing brand. Financially, these were good times in Denmark, so it was easy for us to make arrangements for overdraft facilities at the bank. Hedgehog’s wealthy mother also put up a solid financial security, and I had some money saved up from an unnamed source.
I got a good deal from the guy who imported the brand. He was having a hard time selling the clothes and offered me advantageous terms for the deal. When I bought clothes on credit, I could turn around and sell them for over double what I paid for them, and we averaged about $25,000 a month in profit. It was a hip-hop brand that I’m not going to identify any further for legal reasons. In the end, the store earned a handsome profit during the first six months it was in operation.
The store was a legitimate success story, fully vetted by the police and local law enforcement. When the legal money started rolling in, Hedgehog encouraged me to invest in certain things, and I followed his advice. I had this dream about buying a house with a garden, so I bought a small house for $340,000 with a down payment of $65,000 (408,000 DKK). At the same time, I paid off all my debts to the state. Because I was making $25,000 a month, I was removed from the list of people with tarnished credit histories and bought a Jaguar with financing.
Everyone wasn’t thrilled about my success in business. At the clubhouse, my absence was felt, especially because my departure also meant the club lost its most valuable source of income. While I became richer, my friends and associates became poorer. While I always shared the money from my criminal activities with the group, I didn’t feel obligated to do the same with my legal income.
I became more and more dependent on my company, so I tried to stay away from crime and keep my distance from the crew. It wasn’t because I was suddenly against doing illegal stuff. I just didn’t have time for it. I was working day and night in that store, and many people started to hate me a bit, as well as people within my group.
Eventually, they started smashing up my cars—lit them on fire, keyed them, and poured brake fluid over them. I don’t know exactly who it was, but people tried to get to me that way. I went from bum to businessman in no time, and suddenly, I was driving fancy cars and owned a house. Some people couldn’t handle that.
I desperately wanted Kira to move in with me at my new house. I wanted to prove to her and her parents that I was just as good as they were. I was doing everything for all the wrong reasons. She wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t stable enough. Our relationship was on again, off again. We would be good to each other, then we would be cruel. It seemed like cruelty always won out in the end. It was the same with the battle raging inside of me.
She still had doubts about us, and she lied about her birth control. I wanted to have a child more than anything, and she told me she was off the pill. But I caught her taking them anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed in my life. She didn’t trust me. When I think about how I was living at the time, I honestly don’t blame her.