Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted

Masculinity in Danish Schools Anne

Hovgaard Jørgensen
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

Muslim Fathers and

Mistrusted Masculinity
in Danish Schools

Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life

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University of Edinburgh
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Lund University
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 Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Muslim Fathers and

Mistrusted Masculinity
in Danish Schools
Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen
Department of Sociology and Social Work
Aalborg University
Aalborg & Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2731-6440     ISSN 2731-6459 (electronic)

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
ISBN 978-3-031-21625-1    ISBN 978-3-031-21626-8 (eBook)
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Dedicated to Selma
 Acknowledgement

This book would not have been possible without the kindness and open-
ness of the pupils and teachers at Rosendal School,1 the fathers and fami-
lies connected with the school, and the project coordinators in the different
fathers’ groups who showed interest for my project and opened the door
to the fathers’ groups, where fathers showed me the world from their per-
spective. The fact that someone is willing to share his or her time and place
with someone is a necessity for fieldwork. I am grateful to all the fathers
who trusted me and shared their everyday paradoxes, aspirations, feelings
and vulnerabilities. Without you, this book would not have been possible.
I sincerely hope that I have been able to bring your voices forward in a fair
and wholesome way.
This book is a rework of my PhD thesis, and I wish to thank my previ-
ous advisors: Tekla Canger from Copenhagen University College who,
besides inspiring ideas and comments, has provided me with an important
insight into the teaching profession; Bodil Selmer from the Anthropology
department at Aarhus University who, besides being my co-advisor, has
been a great source of inspiration since I started studying the field of
migration as an undergraduate anthropology student. Moreover, an enor-
mous thanks to Laura Gilliam, my main advisor who has helped me make
my arguments sharper, for including me in her own research as well as
various research groups, seminars, etc. Following, thanks to all my

1
All personal, place and institutional names have been changed due to anonymity and all
interlocutors have agreed to participate in the study. At all times, I followed the ethical stan-
dards advised by the AAA (American Anthropologist Association 2012).

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

previous colleagues at the “anthropology corridor” at Department of

Education, Aarhus University. I am grateful to Marcia Inhorn for her
efforts and hospitality during my visit at the Department of Anthropology
at Yale University, as well as for encouraging me to write this book,
together with guiding me along the way of writing it. Thanks to my great
colleagues at Yale University, Lizzy Berk and Henry Llewellyn. I also own
my editor Linda Braus and project coordinator Chandralekha Mahamel
Raja from Palgrave Macmillan an enormous thank for their work regard-
ing the publication. Also, I want to thank Mia Esma Talarico for a thor-
ough proof-reading. Finally, I owe my family and friends an enormous
thanks for supporting me in the process of doing research for, as well as
writing, this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Social Alertness 41

3 Fathers and School 77

4 Struggling Along101

5 The Constraining Jobs  125

6 Construction of the “Dangerous Man”145

7 Mistrusted Masculinity165

8 Concerned Fatherhood201

9 Conclusion  219

References237

Index255

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“They think I’m violent (…) but I’m a good man; I’m a gardener!” These
are the words of the father Omar, who migrated from Morocco and now
lives with his family in Denmark. I met Omar on a warm June afternoon
in 2015, visiting the fathers’ group of Skovlunden. I had recently started
my research on migrant fathers’ relations to their children’s school, and at
that very moment I was not aware that the mistrust Omar told me about
would turn out to be the central theme of this book and lead me to the
concept of “mistrusted masculinity.” The fathers’ group was placed in the
neighbourhood of Skovlunden, more precisely, in the project-house in
one of the concrete blocks, which together with many similar blocks con-
stituted the housing estate. The fathers of the fathers’ group shared similar
social positions; being fathers with a migrant background and being
Muslim gave the fathers a common point of reference of holding a minor-
ity position in society. Omar, a forty-seven-year-old father of five, joined
the fathers’ group to strengthen the community of fathers in the area and
share and discuss his best advice on fatherly issues. Some of the fathers
needed guidance to successfully navigate the Danish child-institutions;
Omar told me, however, he saw a bigger problem—that the “Danish sys-
tem,” for many, many years, had taken the responsibility away from “the
immigrant man.” Omar thought that both the municipality, the school
and teachers did not show these fathers trust, and that they did not actively
include these fathers in the work concerning their children.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
A. H. Jørgensen, Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted Masculinity in
Danish Schools, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate
Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21626-8_1
2 A. H. JØRGENSEN

Omar underlined to me how important the father is for the child, how
the child had listened to its father’s voice since it started growing in the
mother’s womb and how psychologists stress the importance of the father
in a child’s life. However, a negative stereotype of a strict, controlling—
maybe even violent—immigrant man had led some teachers to exclude
fathers. “Some [immigrant] fathers shout at their teenagers, these are the
child-rearing tools they know, but it’s meant by love—they do not want to
be laissez-faire. They are not dangerous; they want to be clear parents, but
these fathers are being misunderstood.” Omar continued to tell that
sometimes the child would get the vibe from the teachers that they should
not listen to their father, and exemplified: “It is not your parents who
decide at home. It is not your father who decides. Come, we will support
you in a good and proper way,” reflecting how some teachers have a per-
ception of “the Muslim father” and “Muslim childrearing” as too con-
trolled and backward which conflicts with ideals about democratic
individualism as a key part in the idea of the civilising project of “Danish
child-rearing.” Omar emphasised that it was not all teachers or welfare-­
professionals who shared such prejudices, but some did, and when fathers
met such attitudes, they would withdraw, sometimes from anger and
despair, sometimes in fear of “the system.” Omar’s experiences are some
of many experiences of migrant school-fathers, which this book sheds light
on. Based on a fieldwork in a Danish public school, Rosendal School and
various groups of migrant fathers, this book explores the social lifeworlds
of Muslim migrant fathers and their experiences of encounters with teach-
ers and pedagogues.1 These fathers are engaged actors individually gov-
erning their own lives; they are complicit in their own fate and not simply
insignificant and impotent creatures of circumstances (Jackson 2013). Yet,
as we shall see, in addition to the fathers’ own intentions for self-­
representation and aspirations for fatherhood, there are complex forces at
work, which has consequences for their fatherhood practices, their involve-
ment in school and in some cases relation to their children.

1
In Danish pædagoger, which are specially trained social educators mainly working with
social aspects of schooling, the social well-being and development of children.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

A Dangerous Man
Omar’s story reveals many of the themes taken up in the chapters that fol-
low. First and foremost, Omar is a Muslim migrant living in Denmark, and
his narrative tell us how he feels mistrusted due to a certain negative ste-
reotype of “the immigrant man.” These are not-seldom feelings amongst
the Muslim migrant fathers of this book and has to do with rather harsh
political debates on Muslim migrants. For decades, Muslims in Denmark
have faced being othered due to an anti-Muslim-immigrant sentiment,
which was felt most vehemently in the anti-Muslim/Arab aftermath of
9/11 and has further intensified during the Danish cartoon crisis in 2005,
as well as the 2011 Middle Eastern uprisings and the subsequent growth
of ISIS. These events have entangled with terror attacks in bigger European
cities, for which Islamist terror-organisations have taken responsibility.
Such events and the following political debates, highlighting Islam in the
risk of terrorism, have resulted in a broad backlash against the growing
presence of Muslim immigrants and are part of a broader narrative of “us
versus them” which circulates widely in parts of Europe—a narrative which
has excluded huge segments of the Muslim population from feeling that
they are part of society (Bowen 2007, 2016). The problematisation of the
Muslim migrant has been reinforced by neo-nationalist streams in
Denmark as well as throughout Europe, entangled in the debates on mass-­
migration. Along these lines we have seen an increasing nation-state rhet-
oric and practice in the Danish welfare system, where a neo-nationalist
security and integration effort has gained ground as part of the war on
terror (Johansen 2013; Pedersen and Rytter 2011). Within this rhetoric,
Muslim men are associated with danger and constructed as a potential ter-
rorist, whereas female- and child-migrants are constructed as safe and “to
be saved” (Abu-Lughod 2013).
Contemporary integration-policy has caused many heated debates and
disputes between political actors on the issues of nationality, Islam/reli-
gion, democracy, “Danishness,” etc. Within these debates Muslim
migrants have been categorised in many ways including “Muslims,”
“Arabs,” “Middle Easterns” or different versions of the “ethnic other,”
for example, people with “another ethnic background” or “non-ethnic
Dane” (ikke etnisk dansk). These classifications are all constructed in oppo-
sition to “Danes” or “ethnic Danes,” leaving an impression of deeply
rooted ethnic differences, characterising how notions of culture and eth-
nicity work in essentialised ways to maintain the dichotomy between “us”
4 A. H. JØRGENSEN

and “them.” Although most immigrants in Denmark actually come from

European countries such as Poland, Germany, Norway and Sweden
(Danmarks Statistik 2017), these European immigrants are habitually not
included in the ethnic-other-categories mentioned above, due to a cultur-
ally constructed division between immigrants from the Global North and
South. In recent years, this tendency has been strengthened with the cat-
egory of “non-western immigrants, refugees and their descendants.” This
category has moved from statistical research into media, political debates
and law, and today, the term is frequently used in newspapers, such as in
the headline: “Non-western descendants perform badly in school”
(Wandrup 2017, my translation). The illustration accompanying this arti-
cle is a picture of a girl wearing a presumably Muslim headscarf reading a
book at a school-desk, exemplifying the constant entanglement between
the term “non-western” and Islam. Thus, although the countries within
the official definition of the category of “non-western” is very diverse
regarding religion,2 “non-western” is mostly used in relation to countries
with a Muslim majority, and Professor Christian Albrect Larsen has stated
that “the best, I can say about it [the category], is that it is a nicer category
than Muslim/non-Muslim and white/non-white. As such, it has a more
neutral sound to it” (Spillemose 2017, my translation).3 This book sheds
light on how the construction of the “non-western person” is embedded
in certain political and historical processes of Islamophobia with strands
back to Orientalism, where the West is constituted as the civilised nations
in opposition to “the rest,” the non-West (Said 1986; Asad 1995). This
Orientalist gaze on the “Middle Eastern alias Muslim man” has influenced
both popular and political discourses. One such example is the previously
run “Rights Campaign” (Rettighedskampagne) enacted by the former
Minister of Gender Equality. Although equality of gender is a general
Danish matter, the campaign exclusively focuses on “immigrants in
Denmark,” a category used interchangeably with “Muslims” and “ethnic
minorities” (see Graversen 2018). The campaign was framed as a means
for “immigrant women,” and their need to be informed about their rights

2
“Western countries” include all EU countries as well as Andorra, Iceland, Lichtenstein,
Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Great Britain, Vatican City, Canada, the US,
Australia and New Zealand. “Non-western countries” includes all other countries (Danmarks
Statistik 2020).
3
The article also exemplifies how the category of “non-western” is generally problema-
tised, as well as how it used to define children, who possibly were born in Denmark, and thus
prevent them from belonging to the category of “Danes.”
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

to make decisions regarding their own money, the right to an education

and the right to divorce. In relation to the campaign the former Minister
of Immigration pronounced: “It is completely unaccepted in a democratic
society as the Danish that there are ethnic-communities, where Danish
values and freedoms are not in compliance, where middle-age values are
dominant, and where women are suppressed and subjected to social con-
trol” (Udlændinge- og Integrationsministeriet 2018, my translation).
This framing makes the Muslim migrant man stand out as an “absent pres-
ent figure,” as this type of man is not directly mentioned yet figures as a
suppressor of both women and children. A type of “immigrant man” is
constructed here as the antithesis of the modern, progressive, “Danish
man,” and appears to practise an obsolescent, patriarchal and old-­fashioned
masculinity; and as the problem, and thus women and children as victims.4
This social construction needs to be understood in light of the majority-­
Danish self-understanding of “an exceptional community,” where gender
equality is an “essential feature in being Danish,” something to which
Muslim immigrant men have failed to accustom (Walle 2004). The Muslim
migrant fathers of this book tell us how they must navigate according to
this negative image of the “Muslim immigrant man,” and how this nega-
tive image, in unforeseen ways, entangles in meetings with the child-­
professionals of their children’s school. To grasp this gendered mistrust, I
suggest the term “mistrusted masculinity”—which is a term to capture the
mistrust that Muslim migrant fathers feel sticks to them and their mascu-
linity. In this book, I examine mistrusted masculinity as a social phenom-
enon present in both media and political discourse (Chap. 6) as well as in
micro-intersubjective interactions between teachers and fathers (Chap. 7).
We explore how mistrust is a social phenomenon difficult to grasp and
therefore also hard to counterwork; how it by its tacit, yet disturbing pres-
ence, affects the fathers’ relations in different ways.

Where They Came From?

As mentioned above the category of “non-western immigrant and refugee”
is a social constructed category, influenced by means of Neo-­Orientalist
assumptions (Inhorn 2012) to categorise essentially Muslim migrants.
These migrants mainly originate from what have been glossed as “the

4
Hoel (2016, 8), Charsley and Liversage (2015, 2–3), Christensen et al. (2017) and Jaffe-­
Walter (2016).
6 A. H. JØRGENSEN

traditional immigrant and refugee countries of Denmark” (Als Research

2011, 19–20), which encompass very different migration histories. The
first so-called guest workers came to Denmark from Turkey in the late
1960s, where the fast growth of industry made the Danish government
invite workers to take employment in Denmark (Pedersen and Selmer
1991, 23). The Danish government offered work in unskilled, low-wage
jobs in labour-intensive, often precarious and unregulated manufacturing
industries. This invitation only lasted a few years, as the government in
1973, like most other EC countries, closed the borders to further immigra-
tion (ibid., 26). As the oil crises took effect in the 1970s, the Danish gov-
ernment expected the mainly Turkish, but also Pakistani, Moroccan and
Yugoslavian guest workers to leave Denmark. However, and despite an
increase in unemployment, many decided to stay and applied for family
reunification. In 1979, Denmark joined the UN agreement on a perma-
nent resettlement programme for refugees, hereafter commonly known as
“quota refugees.” From this time quota refugees have fled to Denmark
from different parts of the world. After 1980, refugees came to Denmark
on a large scale due to conflicts mainly in the Global South. Central con-
flicts that caused these flights include the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988) and
the Israeli–Palestinian war, where Palestinians were automatically granted
asylum until 1989, along with many stateless Palestinians who fled the civil
war in Lebanon during the 1980s. From 1988 onwards, Somalis fled the
civil war in Somalia. Furthermore, many Kurdish refugees came to Denmark
due to the war in Iraq in 1990–1991, as well as many ex-Yugoslavians, who
fled the civil war in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Since the
1990s, many other migrants and refugee-groups have sought a life in
Denmark, such as from Afghanistan and Syria. In 1999, the Danish gov-
ernment enacted the “Integration Act” as the first intensified political focus
on the notion of “culture.” Since then, numerous regulations and acts have
been implemented to create so-­ called successful integration (Johansen
2013, 53–56; Pedersen and Rytter 2011). Hereafter, many regulations
have reflected an obligation to assimilate into Danish norms rather than
establish a multicultural society (Rytter 2018).
When I use the term “migrant” I refer to fathers who at some point in
their lives have crossed international borders to live in Denmark (IMO
2019). It includes both immigrants and refugees, a difference that could
have a great impact on the fathers’ lives. The fathers navigate the school-­
home collaboration differently, depending on, amongst other factors,
their own individual school experiences—and in a broader perspective,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

their diverse horizons of experience. Some fathers came as children and

had attended Danish school. Overall, the Muslim migrant fathers in this
study are a heterogeneous “assembly of men,” in terms of origin, cultural
and national background, educational capacities, language, upbringing,
and so on. The diversity of the fathers is embraced by describing the
fathers’ characteristics and life-circumstances by the empirical examples,
which show both differences and similarities within this broad classifica-
tion. Thus, the classification of “Muslim migrant father” is highly com-
plex. Nevertheless, as we shall see, these fathers meet similar obstacles in
their lives in Denmark.

The New Role of the Father

Masculinity can be defined as “men as men” (Gutmann 1996), whereas
fatherhood can be understood as “men as fathers” (Jørgensen 2017).
Thus, being a father is related to ways of being a man within society. In
early feminist anthropological studies in the 1970s, the earliest approaches
to studying masculinity seemed to depict an overly dichotomised world in
which men were men and women were women, and women contributed
as little to “making” men as men did to “making” women (Isidoros and
Inhorn 2022). These early anthropological feminist studies of women
addressed women’s previous “invisibility” in anthropology studies, where
contrary men have never been invisible in ethnography or theories of
“mankind” (ibid.). Thus, anthropology has always involved men talking
to men about men; however, until around the mid-1990s, very few within
the discipline of the “study of man” had truly examined “men as men”
(Gutmann 1997). Although early feminist studies include some of the
most important theoretical and empirical work in the discipline of anthro-
pology, generally, gender studies or feminist studies have habitually been
equated with women’s studies, which has caused an awkward avoidance of
feminist theory on the part of many anthropologists who study manhood
(ibid.). Recently, however, we have seen a movement from early feminist
anthropology’s “writing women back in” to now new work on masculin-
ity, which also includes important studies on Muslim men (Isidoros and
Inhorn 2022; Inhorn 2012; Naguib 2015; Gustavo 2022; Elliot 2021;
Suerbaum 2020; Isidoros 2022). In accordance, this book is joining a new
body of anthropology of men and masculinity seeking to revisit the previ-
ous androcentric record of men, to now revise that and rethink/re-write
8 A. H. JØRGENSEN

men back into the new post-feminist era, where men are approached as
engendered and engendering subjects.
Most research within the field of migration and gender in Denmark
have investigated masculinities among youth,5 generally omitting adult
men and fatherhood. However, a recent study of migrant men living in a
multiethnic neighbourhood of Denmark (Christensen et al. 2017) con-
cludes that these men struggled with a low-class position in society due to
migration, along with experiences of othering and racism, which further
worked to block labour market opportunities, providing painful challenges
to their male identity. These factors are found to degrade and disqualify
these men as having a “marginalised masculinity” (ibid.) with reference to
gender scholar Raewyn Connell’s theory on “marginalised masculinity”
from 1995 (Connell 2012). Inspired by Marxist sociology, Connell defines
marginalised masculinity as constructed in contrast to the hegemonic,
“correct” superior and dominant masculinity. It is a social mechanism
through which various groups develop the “will to confirm” with a leading
group’s way of being, thereby facilitating class-based domination (Isidoros
and Inhorn 2022, 6). In the American context, this manifests as Afro-
American working-class masculinity being suppressed by the white “hege-
monic” middle-class masculinity, maintaining an institutional oppression
and physical distress that has framed the making of masculinities in black
communities. Although extremely important and ground-­ breaking,
Connell’s theory has the consequence that we focus on structural power,
with the danger of creating a dualistic and overly fixed picture of masculin-
ity as either hegemonic or marginalised, whereas subordinate men can
only aspire to elements of hegemonic masculinity as the ideal type—which
may not reflect men’s actual social realities and gender relations in practice
(Inhorn 2012). Consequently, I only use Connell’s concept to inform the
discourses around Muslim migrant men, that is, how the construction of
the “non-western man” in political rhetoric and documents reflects a mar-
ginalised form of masculinity, which ought to aspire (and assimilate with)
the hegemonic masculinity of the Danish man and father (Chap. 6). Yet,
Connell’s theory falls short when put to analyse the lived lives of the
migrant fathers of this book. Instead of seeing these fathers’ masculinities
as being “formed” by suppression, I argue for approaching both mascu-
linities and fatherhoods as emergent (Inhorn 2012). The concept of

5
Gilliam (2009, 2017, 2018), Jensen (2007, 2010), Mørck (2006), Soei (2011), Hviid
(2007), Gitz-Johansen (2006) and Staunæs (2004).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

“emergent masculinities” (Inhorn 2012, 300) is a concept produced to

encompass the emergence of new masculinities of Middle Eastern men in
present times—a term that attempts to capture the transformative aspects
of men’s embodied personhood, and how masculinity is affected by influ-
ences and life-circumstances beyond men’s individual control (ibid., 300).
By approaching masculinity as emergent, the analyses embrace resistance
and social change, as I faced fathers’ alertness and opposition against being
othered or marginalised. It also allows us to grasp the unpredictability and
dynamism of the ethnographic material, along with the diverse masculinity
practices of the interlocutors.
Despite a rising focus on men and masculinity, the role of fathers as a
separate site of research is still quite limited within the field of anthropol-
ogy, although anthropologists have started to focus more on this role
(Inhorn et al. 2015; Ingvarsdóttir 2014). Along these lines, anthropolo-
gists Haldis Haukanes and Tatjana Thelen (2010) argue that the cultural
construction of the “modern Western childhood” is intimately linked to
the historical development of motherhood. However, they find that there
has, in recent years, been an increased focus on fathers’ involvement in
child-rearing and child welfare services in both policymaking and research.
For example, recent studies have focused on how active fathering has been
found to be beneficial for psychological well-being, growth and develop-
ment of the child (Haukanes and Thelen 2010, 17; Lewis and Lamb 2003).
Fatherhood as a separate site of research within so-called western soci-
eties has to a greater extent been studied within the field of sociology and
social psychology, and here the focus on fatherhood has also grown.6
Sociological studies of mainly white middle-class men find how “the west-
ern father-role” has changed from the “moral overseer” in the 1930s to
“the distant breadwinner” in the 1950s. During the post-war period, the
father-role ventured into the role of the “playing dad,” and subsequently,
fathers became more involved in child-rearing (Dermott 2013). Back in
the 1990s, British and American studies of middle-class white men sug-
gested that the new social movements stemming from the industrial revo-
lution have resulted in the man no longer being the only breadwinner in
the family, which has worked to generate a new father-role that is more
involved in parenting practices (O’Brien 1992; Griswold 1993). Besides
the change of the labour market, the spread of the contraceptive pill, free
abortion and, not least, the education boom among younger women have

6
Featherstone (2003), Gupta and Featherstone (2015), Nielsen and Westerling (2016),
Miller (2011) and Madsen (2003, 2008).
10 A. H. JØRGENSEN

not only expanded the scope of opportunity for women but also changed
men’s lives. In the American context, Stuart Aitken (2009) examines how
Anglo-American fathers are “becoming-other”—other than their own
father and other than the dictates of patriarchy. This “becoming-other” is
related to what has been termed the “crisis of masculinity,” where the role
of the father as solely the breadwinner, supplier and potentially the patri-
arch is, in many contexts, no longer a culturally celebrated role (ibid.).
Such social and cultural changes have resulted in the phenomenon of
“new” or “modern” fathers: fathers are doing fathering differently com-
pared with just a generation ago, being more family and child-oriented
(Eydal and Rostgaard 2016, 6). Here the Nordic welfare model and the
ideal of gender equality have encouraged fathers to take a greater part in
childcare, and studies find tendencies for some Danish men to venture
into a field of intimate fathering. These “pioneering fathers” (Nielsen and
Westerling 2016, 189) are entering more intimate parts of child-rearing,
which was earlier seen as an area belonging to the mother. This generates
more opportunities for these fathers and a possible split and separation of
the dyadic mother–child relationship, which may result in new common
ground in families (ibid., 205). The studies above generally focus on rela-
tively highly educated, middle-class, majoritised fathers. Thus, “white
middle-class fathers” have dominated the research on fatherhood in
Northern Europe and Scandinavia, whereas migrant fathers’ experiences
of fathering are still a quite unexplored field.7 As a consequence, the afore-
mentioned “new roles of the father” is found to be a phenomenon in
white middle-class families, which may have the effect that such fathers
stand out as progressive and resource-strong, nearly as an ideal type, or
what could be termed as a “hegemonic fatherhood” living out the ide-
alised value of gender equality. One question that arises here is to what
extent this image is due to a lack of research on fathers who do not fit
these specific characteristics.8

7
Liversage (2016, 209), Inhorn et al. (2015, 3), Featherstone (2003), Gupta and
Featherstone (2015) and Hoel (2016).
8
Senior researcher Anika Liversage (2016) is one of the few Danish researchers who has
studied specifically fatherhood among so-called ethnic-minority men. Liversage finds that her
interlocutors, fathers who are first-generation immigrants from Turkey, are more inclined to
understand the roles of men and women in the family as complementary—the role of the
father is closer to the breadwinner’s role; yet it was difficult for some interlocutors to main-
tain this role after emigration, owing to the high rate of un-/underemployment of immi-
grants. Many of Liversage’s interviews were done with divorced fathers who were struggling
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

My approach to fatherhood is inspired by the concept of “emergent

fatherhood” (Inhorn et al. 2015, 7), which draws upon the aforemen-
tioned concept of emergent masculinities, where “emergent” should be
understood as new meaning and values, new practices, new relationships
of men and fathers, with a focus on the ongoing, relational and embodied
processes of change in the way that men enact being a father (ibid., 7–8).
In doing so, this book captures the creativity and transformations appar-
ent in the practices of fatherhoods amongst migrant fathers and how the
roles of fathers emerge due to migration and societal change in a trans-
forming globalised world; and furthermore, how such emergent ways of
practising fatherhood also implicate new forms of fatherly affect and care-
giving (ibid.). In Chap. 5, I demystify the so-called “father absence” by
examining how precarious, time-consuming, low-paid jobs constrain
migrant fathers from performing active “Danish” parenthood at school,
with the result that these fathers’ supportive parenting practices remain
invisible to teachers. Thus, as many Muslim fathers of this book embrace
affectionate and involved parenting styles, these might stay as “invisible
fatherhood” in the eyes of teachers.

A “Race-Blind Ideology”
This volume is also about the role racism plays in Muslim migrant fathers’
lives. I explore how the fathers of this book, who had darker skin colour,
black hair, or other Middle Eastern, South Asian or African characteristics,
felt that these characteristics “meant something.” Their physical appear-
ance—especially in combination with a low command of Danish, an accent,
an Arab or Muslim name or other Muslim symbols—acquired salience in
their everyday lives. In recent years Nordic scholars have pointed out the
hegemony of Nordic whiteness, examining how assertions of anti-racism
and colour-blindness go hand in hand with the silencing and exclusion of
racialised minorities.9 One of these scholars is anthropologist Peter Hervik,

or failing to be present fathers. However, most of my interlocutors lived in a family, thus not
struggling to “hold on to” their father-role. Despite some of the fathers of this book experi-
enced that their fatherhood practices were circumscribed by challenges posed by their
minority-­status and lower-class position, this book tells a multifaceted story of fatherhood
practices, which includes stories of fathers’ aspirations for fatherhood, fatherly agencies and
love of their children, and brings in new nuances to the broad category of Muslim migrant
fathers.
9
Lapin ̧a (2017), Andreassen and Ahmed-Andresen (2014) and Hervik (2015).
12 A. H. JØRGENSEN

who argues for the existence of a “race-blind ideology” in Denmark,

encompassing the general idea that physical differences “do not mean any-
thing” (Hervik 2015, 31). In Scandinavian countries, the term “race” is
seen as referring to the racist German Nazi ideology, the oppression of
African-Americans in the US and the apartheid system of South Africa,
which Scandinavian countries do not see themselves as a part of (ibid., 31).
This underemphasising of racialisation is reinforced by the general egalitar-
ian philosophy of the Scandinavian welfare model and the core value of
equality in the Danish self-identity, which includes an implicit idea that
equality requires a certain degree of “sameness.” Thus, to be equal in
Danish society tends to imply to be similar (Gullestad 1992, 2002; Hervik
2015). This “equality as sameness” (Gullestad 1992) causes an interactional
style that emphasises similarity and under-communicates difference in order
to feel equal and to establish a sense of community, which “stabilises” the
tensions in the Danish ideological system between individuality and society,
independence and community, equality, and hierarchy (ibid., 2002). Besides
this under-communication of difference, the “colour blindness” is upheld
by the fact that until approximately fifty years ago, Denmark had no large
population that could be termed Black and could thus articulate Danish
“whiteness” as a racial characteristic rather than just the norm (Gilliam
2009). This stands in contrast to, for example, the American context, where
race and colour are much more openly discussed. Following the argument
of a race-blind ideology, racism is still an undercurrent in the strong nation-
alist discourse in which physical colour differences are not directly men-
tioned, but nevertheless are granted significance through essentialist notions
of specific ethnicities/cultures as incompatible with “Danish culture or
nationality.” In this book we explore how this race-blind ideology conceals
racism and how this creates inequality amongst parents, and furthermore,
how this colour-blind ideology is so immersive that even migrant fathers
find it difficult and uncomfortable to talk about everyday racism. The egali-
tarian philosophy of Danish culture (along with an underlying problemati-
sation of Islam) also made religious practices of the Muslim families
something rather concealed. The empirical data of this study is collected in
2015–16, and since then, the problem of racism has fortunately received
more attention in the public debate. I intend for this book to support and
encourage the growing awareness of racism regarding skin-colour yet also
regarding “Muslimness” in everyday lives of Muslim migrants in Denmark.
In Chap. 2 we explore how teachers’ general tabooing of “the foreign,” and
concurrent lower expectations towards migrant families, was a condition
difficult for the fathers to openly react towards, which resulted in a dormant
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

alertness regarding being (potentially) othered again. Here I suggest the

analytic concept of “social alertness” to draw attention to how Muslim
migrant fathers must be “on the alert” to detect subtle and not-so-subtle
signs of discrimination, both towards them as “foreigners” and Muslims,
and towards their children as “bilinguals.”

Parenting in the Welfare State

Throughout this volume, we follow Muslim migrant men on their quests
for their children’s well-being and education. However, within the com-
prehensive welfare state of Denmark, child-rearing is not only a matter of
the parents’ choices and conventions. Due to socio-historic dynamism, we
have witnessed an increasing institutionalisation of children’s life arenas,
with Danish toddlers spending the most time in institutions among
European countries (Rasmussen 2019). Consequently, children are to a
greater and greater extent being raised by child-professionals, which
requires a continuous dialogue between parents, teachers and other
welfare-­professionals. Migrant parents are expected to navigate this—at
times—ambivalent borderland between home and public institution, and
in this book, we explore such dynamics within home-school cooperation.
The public school (folkeskole) is dominant in the Danish context, as most
children (in 2019/2020 the number was 78.5 per cent) attend the Danish
public primary and lower secondary school.10 The public schools are seen
as ensuring that the new generations are cared for and civilised, and sub-
sequently the public school defines what such “civilised Danish behav-
iour” entails (Gilliam and Gulløv 2017). By analysing everyday interactions,
this book puts forward the negotiation of roles, authority and priorities in
relation to upbringings, which takes place in meetings between the private
and the school-sphere, in a culture where schools are seen as important
cultivating and integrating organs of the welfare state. In other words, the
school is a place where the Muslim migrant fathers’ ideals on child-rearing
meet “the civilising project” of Danish schools, revealing many of the tac-
tic assumptions about “how we do” in Denmark and how such

10
In 2017/2018, 542,534 pupils attended the ordinary public school, while 121,057
pupils attended private schools or private independent schools (friskoler)
(Undervisningsministeriet 2019). Regarding pupils with Danish versus migrant parents, the
division between public and private schools are almost even with ten per cent versus eleven
per cent (Friskolerne 2019).
14 A. H. JØRGENSEN

assumptions may entail discriminatory practices (ibid.). Although the ideal

of the Danish public school is to provide a free and equal education system
for all families, concerned with upholding pupils’ well-being and generally
equal opportunities, this book illuminates how certain practices of home-
school cooperation result in the problematisation of certain parents. This
is done to exemplify how parents’ and teachers’ efforts and struggles in
everyday life can be seen from new perspectives with the hope that these
will cause further reflection and new practices for the future (Whyte 1999).

Contesting Home-School Cooperation

Over the last few decades, expectations towards parents’ involvement in
their child’s schooling have intensified (Knudsen and Andersen 2013). In
the first Danish school law from 1814, the responsibility of the parents was
simply to send the children to school. Yet, starting from the 1950s, docu-
ments and school acts started to mention the expectation of parents to
support and have trust in the school. The “contact book” was introduced,
a small notebook, which contained small notes from parents to teachers or
vice versa. Along with the contact book, the parent-teacher conferences
were launched. In addition, a few educational experts began to publish
advice to parents about how to raise their children (ibid.), which con-
cerned how the child must be rested and revitalised when entering the
school, have proper nutrition, do homework in a peaceful environment,
etc. From the beginning of the 1970s, the responsibility of the parents
extended and became intertwined with a responsibility towards society in
general: teaching the child about democracy, equality of gender, environ-
mental issues, nature and health (Knudsen 2010). As such, the responsi-
bility of school-parents could potentially grow to the extent that some
parents were not able to meet these demands, and thus new ways of being
an “irresponsible school-parent” emerged. Simultaneously, child-rearing
around the 1970s started to be seen as a way to form children with their
own opinions towards their everyday life and this so-called authoritative
child-rearing was criticised (Gulløv 2018). Children were gradually seen as
a matter of the society, and for this reason, debates about child-rearing,
child-development and distribution of responsibilities between home and
state strengthened. In 1974 home-school cooperation was formalised, in
a government act of the public schools, whereby the public school was
required to cooperate with all parents.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, public schools have started to
insist that parents take on an undefined and infinite personal responsibility
for their children’s learning in school (Kryger 2015; Bach et al. 2018).
This responsibility can be experienced as diffuse since the definition of
responsibility is not only a question of formulating rules or providing
advice. For example, at Rosendal School teachers would send quite long
and concrete messages via the intranet platform “Parent Intranet,” con-
taining various exercises and preparation to the parents, which would “be
nice to practice a little at home.” Thus, parents were encouraged to act as
pseudo-teachers, optimising their children’s intelligence through a range
of extra-curricular activities (Faircloth 2014, 32), and in this way, the suc-
cess of the child was to a greater extent seen as equivalent to parents’ abili-
ties to guide, cultivate and stimulate their children (Ramaekers and Suissa
2012). Concurrently, parents are being described as a “resource” in edu-
cational politics, for example, in “The New School Reform” from 2013,11
where parents are described as a “resource which must contribute to the
schoolwork.” Such a shift of responsibility can be seen as reflecting neo-­
liberal tendencies, in which the responsibility for children’s learning to a
higher extent is placed on the individual parents. These neo-liberal ten-
dencies are intertwined in a market-logic about economic optimisation,
where parents are seen as resources in optimising the economic growth,
and part of a broader competition-state logic (Reay 2004). This was also
reflected in the vocabulary of teachers at Rosendal School, as teachers
were occupied with categorising the parents as either “resource-strong” or
“resource-weak.” In accordance, there has been an increasing focus on
academic learning and progress; thus, the intensified home-school coop-
eration has appeared in a time, where children are perceived as individuals,
who are to learn as much as possible and where all resources must be opti-
mised (Krejsler et al. 2012). The increase in parental responsibility corre-
lates with what has been termed as the third institutionalisation of the
childhood (Kryger 2015), encompassing how the border between the pri-
vate sphere and the institutional sphere has weakened. Hence, parents are
encouraged to turn home-based activities into learning activities by inte-
grating methods and techniques of the school in the home. One such
example is by integrating the learning-system of “dialogic reading,” in
book reading at home, potentially making the good night story a learning-­
site (ibid.).

11
Agreement about professional improvement of the public school 2013 (den nye folkes-
kolereform), 16, my translation and underlining.
16 A. H. JØRGENSEN

That school-parents are given a greater responsibility in home-school

cooperation reflects an overall tendency of “intensified parenting”
(Faircloth 2014), including how child-rearing over time has expanded to
encompass a long list of practices, which earlier was not perceived as a part
of parenting. This is related to how the perception of the child has changed,
where children today are perceived, to a much higher degree, as vulnera-
ble to risk-factors, and how being exposed to such risk-factors are per-
ceived as having an almost deterministic impact on the child’s further
physical and emotional development (ibid.). This construction of children
as vulnerable and fragile positions the patents in a role as someone to pro-
tect and shield the child, and consequently, parents may be held account-
able for all that happens (and may happen) to the child (Furedi 2002).
Home-school cooperation includes both formal and informal elements.
In this book, formal home-school cooperation encompasses biannual par-
ent meetings, to which all parents are invited and where the teacher
informs the parents of plans for the upcoming half year; biannual parent-­
teacher conferences, where at least one parent was expected to attend; as
well as the vast information flow from the intranet platform, “Parent
Intranet” (forældreintra).12 Parent Intranet is the public-school online
communication system, introduced in 2002. Today, this platform is used
as the primary channel of communication between school and home. It is
part of “School Intranet,” a communication system for teachers, pupils
and parents. Additionally, I also explore the more informal “casual” aspects
of home-school cooperation, such as volunteering breakfast arrangements,
Christmas lunches, parent volunteering-groups, etc., as well as more con-
versations and everyday contact between the teachers and the parents
regarding the child’s schooling and general well-being.
Over the years, the social practices of home-school cooperation have
taken the character of something “culturally given” (Dannesboe et al.
2012), encompassing the dogmatic character of such practices as “natu-
ral” and “necessary,” and in which the parents are expected to find their
position and role. Along these lines, it is often taken for granted by school
professionals that home-school cooperation is for everyone’s benefit.
However, parents are rarely asked how it feels to participate in this coop-
eration, and fathers with migrant background have especially been an
overlooked “type of parent” here.

12
After 2020 “Aula.”
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

Omar, from the opening of this introduction, mentions how more of

the fathers from the fathers’ group of Skovlunden needed help to navigate
the many tacit expectations of the child-institutions. In line, other fathers
of this book expressed how they struggled to meet the vast responsibility
the school places on them regarding their children’s academic progress.
While the responsibilities towards school-parents have increased, Omar
paradoxically mentioned how “the system” has taken the responsibility
away from the immigrant man. Here, Omar pictures a core contradiction
within the fathers’ stories of this volume: how these fathers do not feel
included in the home-school cooperation, while at the same time an omni-
present responsibility for their children’s learning lies on their and their
spouse’s shoulders.
In educational-political rhetoric on the “responsible parent,” immi-
grant and refugee parents have been problematised and portrayed as pas-
sive and disinterested in their children’s education.13 For example, the
Danish government in 2010 allocated fifty-six million Danish kroner
(approximately 7.5 million euro) to improve the collaboration between
public school and so-called ethnic-minority parents, as this specific type of
parent was thought to inadequately meet their responsibility as parents
(Dannesboe et al. 2012, 9). In this book, we meet such assumptions in
teachers’ urges for the migrant parents to “be on” (på) or to “get on the
ball” (komme på banen), as well as how teachers tended to term the
migrant parents as “resource-weak,” reflecting the broader idea that par-
ents ought to be a resource in their children’s schooling and learning. A
study finds (Johansen 2017) that vulnerable refugee families are often seen
as people who do not show the trust in the Danish welfare institutions that
is expected by welfare-professionals. The requirement for unconditional
trust in welfare institutions has become a core cultural concept and
national marker defining the relationship between the state and the good
citizen, as well as the relationship between the nation and “the foreigner.”
As such, the cultural construction of trust plays in a complex dynamic that
can function as exclusionary (ibid.). In this book we examine the trust
paradox that arises when Muslim migrant fathers are expected to show
trust in the school-project while they themselves are met with distrust.

13
Matthiesen (2017), Timm and Bergthóra (2011) and Dannesboe et al. (2012, 9).
18 A. H. JØRGENSEN

Most studies of migrants’ relations to the school have focused on moth-

ers (e.g., Larsen 2006; Matthiesen 2014; Timm and Bergthóra 2011),
whereas fathers’ perspectives on schooling, and that of child-rearing in
general, have been overlooked (Hoel 2016; Gupta and Featherstone
2015). A study mostly focusing on “minority-mothers” (Timm and
Bergthóra 2011) found that teachers had a general lack of acknowledge-
ment of the migrant parents’ capacities and resources. Especially regarding
their mother tongue, some teachers considered this as a “problem lan-
guage,” and parents experienced that their linguistic and cultural distinc-
tion was perceived as lower and not as a resource. Further, a study of
mothers with Somali background (Matthiesen 2014) found that these
mothers were not heard or seen in meetings with teachers. Teachers merely
explained to the mothers how things were regarding their child and the
mothers stayed as “unheard voices.” These findings echo findings from
this study; however, no other ethnography has studied Muslim migrant
fathers’ relations to Danish child-institutions. Additionally, there is a ten-
dency in the public debates to blame certain fathers with a migrant back-
ground—often referred to as so-called non-western fathers, for being
absent and ignorant towards their children’s upbringing.14 In political
rhetoric, as well as in integration-strategies, these fathers are urged to “get
on the ball” (komme på banen) regarding child-rearing, framed as the
solution to various social issues—a belief I also occasionally overheard
from child-professionals during my fieldwork. By focusing on the life-
worlds of fathers, as well as the attitudes and practices of Danish teachers
as they attempt (or not) to establish a genuinely cooperative interaction
with these “foreign” fathers, this ethnography provides a needed focus on
Muslim migrant fathers’ meetings with “the system.” It involves Geertzian
“thick description” of the micro-interaction between fathers and teachers,
fathers and children, and children and teachers, exploring the complex
interplay of often-untested assumptions (e.g., Danish teachers’ “control-
ling image” of Muslim migrant men), misunderstandings (e.g., lack of
fathers’ facility in the Danish language and school-based digital interfaces)
and untoward effects (e.g., the distancing of fathers from schools, and
from their children, because of teachers’ interventions).

14
Harder (2012), DR/Ritzau (2018), Harder (2014), Omar (2012), Christensen (2013)
and Jakobsen (2012).
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

Theoretical Underpinnings
The ultimate goal of this book is to illuminate the everyday experiences of
home-school cooperation from the perspectives of Muslim migrant fathers.
To comprehend experience, I draw from phenomenological-inspired
anthropology,15 where the most important argument is that we must
understand experience from the subject’s position in the world (Jackson
1996, 1)—or in Heidegger’s words, through our “being-in-the-world”
(Heidegger 1962). Thus, I am concerned with the everyday acts, imagin-
ings, struggles, hopes and desires of migrant fathers as they navigate or
“wayfare” their lives across terrains stratified by larger historical, political,
social, and economic processes and forces.16 I approach this process of
wayfaring as “becoming.” As such, this book suggests this term of becom-
ing to see how the different Muslim migrant fathers have their own life-
line, with their own horizon of experience, navigating through the
different terrains they meet, thereby using and developing different skills
in their navigation towards a better future.17 Thus, I approach the social
position as (school-) father from a perspective where social identities are
never fully constituted—they are always in a state of becoming (Aitken
2009, 232; Biehl and Locke 2017, 7–8). Fathers become fathers when
their first child is born, yet being a father is an ongoing process, negotiated
in encounters with significant others. Thus, becoming reflects how social
identities are an ongoing process and how identities are shaped and
reshaped as people navigate the landscapes (Ingold 2018) or terrains
(Desjarlais 1996; Vigh 2003) they meet—terrains which are never fully
the same. Consequently, the encounters between fathers and school pro-
fessionals are sites where ideas and ideals on parental roles are entangled,
contested and countered. These encounters become strands of fathers’
horizon of experience, and thus something they carry with them towards
the future. Whatever the outcome of these encounters, school profession-
als’ guidance and interventions affect the becomings of fathers, and cer-
tainly as school-fathers.
When inspired by the notion of becoming, one effect is that we look at
a place or “part” of sociality where “things are (be)coming to be.” This

15
Jackson (1996, 2013, 2016), Ram and Houston (2015), Desjarlais (1996), Good
(2012a, b) and Ingold (2015).
16
Desjarlais (1996), Christensen et al. (2006), Ingold (2015) and Biehl and Locke (2017).
17
With Robert Desjarlai’s words: experience is a way of “moving along” in the terrain
organised through temporal, as well as spatial, lines (Desjarlais 1996, 75).
20 A. H. JØRGENSEN

also means looking at the constant process and drive of self-creation

(Sørensen 2015). This focus can help open up understandings of a certain
“social alertness,” recorded during the fieldwork, as an intersubjective
dynamic between teachers and pupils encircling the interlocutors’ tension
against potentially being othered and a drive for positive self-creation
(Chap. 2). When attuned to where things are (be)coming to be, we also
attune to what encounters do to us.
Experience is always coloured by our previous experience and hopes or
fears for the future, and we can here speak of a kind of horizon of experi-
ence, from where we can look back at the past and into the future (Stroller
2009; Christensen et al. 2006). Past experiences refer to those experiences
in the present, so that the past, in its own way, is constitutive of the given
perception (Ram and Houston 2015; Jackson 1996, 25). When some
fathers in this study felt ambiguity regarding meetings with school profes-
sionals, it could be due to previous feelings of being inadequate for a par-
ent meeting due to lack of language skills. Similarly, previous experiences
of being disregarded as a caring father coloured the present moment for
fathers of this book, making them “on the alert” to detect new subtle
signs of discrimination. Also, the concept of horizon of experience enables
us to incorporate the Muslim migrant fathers very diverse migration back-
grounds, together with how they, in Denmark, may experience being cat-
egorised into the same categories.
Not every experience or memory of our background makes its entry as
a totality or as some inert force bearing down on us. We call up, like con-
jurers, those elements that might support us in the given project and strat-
egy—our navigation of life. Only some elements may be supportive—others,
if inappropriate, will be non-supportive, and fall into disuse or simply hold
back either the individual or the collective agency of an entire social group.
We can, therefore, speak not only of a particularity of experiences and their
supportive qualities but also of less supportive horizons, backgrounds or
environments that hinder individuals’ or classes’ efficacy in accomplishing
tasks (Ram and Houston 2015). When, for example, the tacit expectations
of the Danish school-cultures made some migrant fathers “fail” the home-­
school cooperation, while other migrant fathers found ways to navigate
these expectations, it had to do with whether their previous school experi-
ences supported them or not. Thus, some backgrounds equip migrant
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

fathers to enjoy far greater agency, authority and power in the school con-
text, and others less. In this way, it is possible to approach and discuss
power in the very constitution of experience, without having to take
abstract theoretical structures as our starting point (ibid.).
The idea of intersubjectivity originates from phenomenological thoughts
on how the human, before anything else, is situated in an already existing
world, loaded with meaning shared in “inter-experiences” (Jackson 1996,
27). Our understandings of the world are structured in accordance with the
intersubjective handling over of pre-understandings and patterns into which
we are socialised, and which exist in an already-­shaped history (Rasmussen
2017, 67). Here, the anthropologist Tim Ingold has used the metaphor of
“lines of becoming” to argue that we are placed in—or inhabit—a world
which is already full of constituted lines interwoven with each other, and our
intersubjective encounters can be described by the metaphor of the mesh-
work of these lines’ entanglement (Ingold 2012, 49). My argument here is
that intersubjective encounters between migrant fathers and teachers can be
studied as meshworks. I use Ingold’s term in a broad sense, viewing these
lines as constituted by humans, things and discourses. As such, the lineal-
ogy-approach can be described as a way to “deconstruct the life-world”:
taking the perspective of the interlocutor’s being-in-the-world, the meta-
phor of lines works to grasp the various influences, which affect their becom-
ing, with the result that sociality becomes dynamic and complex processes
with no given closure. Minds and lives are not closed-in entities but open-
ended processes (Ingold 2015, 11; Ingvarsdóttir 2014, 10). The concept of
meshwork provides ways for understanding how encounters with school
professionals affect and model fathers’ further becoming, without omitting
these fathers’ agency and intentionality.
When I use lines in such a broad sense, I lean into anthropologists Joãn
Biehl’s and Peter Locke’s (2017) thoughts on becoming. Ingold’s “lines
of becoming” is inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s thoughts on human becom-
ing (Ingold 2012, 2015), but in my reading of Ingold (2012, 2015) and
as he is read by Biehl and Locke (2017), Ingold offers little attention to
Deleuze’s work on large-scale forces.18 Contrarily, Biehl and Locke pay
more attention to this part of experience. They argue that processes of

18
When I talk about lines of becoming, such lines become relevant, insofar as they are
relevant for understanding the interlocutors’ lived life, and do not work as having their, so to
speak, “ontology.” Thus, my motivation to include Deleuze is different from that of anthro-
pologists engaged in the so-called ontological turn, using Deleuze’s philosophy as inspira-
tion for theories on “radical alterity” (see a critic of this in Vigh and Sausdal 2014), but
instead, a way to understand how forces of different scales affect the interlocutor’s social
becoming simultaneously.
22 A. H. JØRGENSEN

human becoming, besides the small-scale forces of agents and materiality

in intersubjective processes, are also affected by greater large-scale forces,
such as political or historical processes, and how discourses constantly
entangling with human lives. That is, according to Biehl and Locke
(2017), human becoming is a process of entanglements of “lines of forces”
(similar to Ingold’s meshwork and his notion of “lines of becoming”);
however, such lines of forces also encompass large-scale forces, such as
discourses or categorical binaries working to segregate people. Yet, such
forceful segmentations can be challenged and pushed by lines of people in
intersubjective life: the small-scale forces. Having this focus, we see how
power and knowledge form bodies, identities and meanings, while refus-
ing to reduce people to the working of such forces (ibid., 5). Thus, life is
a way of “moving along” in a terrain organised through temporal as well
as spatial lines, and we cannot find a stable hierarchy between the strength
of large-scale lines compared to small-scale lines, but ought to focus on
how forceful lines on different scales are entangled in a somewhat “hori-
zontal manner” (ibid., xii). Therefore, there is a transformative potential
in human becoming, as lines (of forces) on a larger scale can be challenged
and “pushed” by lines on a smaller scale. In this ethnographic study we
shall see how fathers challenged the world around them in their intention
or struggle to reach acknowledgement and to “govern” their own becom-
ing—sometimes to escape the disapproval they had experienced in relation
to being categorised as, for example, “non-western immigrant men.” This
differs from the theories that take their point of departure in structural
dominance or hegemonic powers, and how they define the school’s field.
Instead, I aim to approach the meshwork between fathers, teachers and
political, historical forces in a dynamic way, as an attempt to understand
the differences and variations in play.
The concept of lines works to illustrate all the various influences which
entangle with the interlocutors’ life and affects their becoming, showing
how human life never fully aligns with such forces, yet never fully disen-
tangles from them either. I argue that it is possible to equate these differ-
ent types of lines, because the perspective is that of the individual father.
Thus, the lines and their meshwork are simply a metaphor, with the objec-
tive to grasp and investigate some of the many elements and social phe-
nomena, which characterise these fathers’ lifeworld, elements they
encounter while navigating in a world already full of influences. The
entanglements of persons and ideas, objects and words produce the shift-
ing matrix of relations through which one becomes a father (Biehl and
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

Locke 2017, 14). Hence, when we think of how we became the persons
we are today, both people on the intersubjective level and political and
historical formations on a larger-scale level have affected us. In our own
experience, these lines of becoming (forces cf. Biehl and Locke) are all part
of our being-in-the-world and have all made us whom we are today.
I describe the social arena of the school and home-school cooperation
as a “terrain.” Anthropologist Robert R. Desjarlais, who combines phe-
nomenologically inspired anthropology with Deleuze’s conceptual work
(Desjarlais 1996, 75), describes the terrain as a texture woven by lines of
forces,19 in motion. In Desjarlais’ fieldwork among the homeless in Boston,
this social texture was intensified by powerful forces of a certain politic of
displacement, which made his interlocutors “struggle along” (ibid., 70).
In the coming analyses, I argue the terrain of the school, exposed to
numerous political regulations, in some regards made teachers and parents
struggle along as well. The terrain is an illustration of all the different
forces and variables, in which the interlocutors are “moving along” (ibid.,
1996), or “wayfaring” (Ingold 2007, 79–80; 2011, 148), describing
humans’ intentional manoeuvring in life towards hopes and dreams for
the future.

Methodology
The data for this book was collected during fifteen months of ethnographic
fieldwork (May 2015 to August 2016) at Rosendal School and in different
fathers’ groups. Rosendal School is placed in Copenhagen, the capital of
Denmark, more precisely in a neighbourhood, here termed as
“Elmekvarteret.” Elmekvarteret is an area previously known for its low-­
income residents. However, the area was undergoing change due to gen-
trification: when conducting fieldwork, it was a mix of low-income and
middle-class-income families, where hip coffee shops and art shops have
popped up. The neighbourhood was generally known as being very left-­
wing, embracing diversity. Approximately one-fourth of the inhabitants
living in Elmekvarteret were immigrants, refugees or their descendants
from countries with the largest number of emigrants, including Lebanon,
Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Somalia and Morocco. Elmekvarteret had become
a more attractive neighbourhood for middle-class families; however, the

19
In this book I use “lines of becoming” and “lines of forces” synonymously. For a further
discussion of this see Jørgensen (2019, 46–49).
24 A. H. JØRGENSEN

area still had one of the highest scores among neighbourhoods in

Copenhagen regarding citizens on social welfare, early retirement and
integration benefits.20 There is a tendency of families with migrant back-
grounds to be overrepresented in the social housing complexes (alment
boligbyggeri), whereas citizens with Danish background are overrepre-
sented with regard to owning the apartment they live in. The combination
of socio-economic circumstances and citizens with a migrant background
has led to class-related limitations of the economic scope being misunder-
stood as expressing cultural or “ethnic” choices and actions, for example,
how and where to live. Thus, the high representation of Muslim migrants
in social housing estates has, in the general political debate, been prob-
lematised as a sign of “parallel societies,” understood as “ethnic clustering”
and lack of will to integrate into Danish society and adjust to Danish norms.
The fieldwork at Rosendal School was conducted in two classes at the
kindergarten grade level21 (0C and 0B),22 where the pupils were between
five and seven years old, and one seventh grade class (7X), where the
pupils were between twelve and fourteen years old. Over a five-month
period (from August 2015 to December 2015), I participated in everyday
life at the school; observed fifty parent-teacher conferences and three par-
ents’ meetings; participated in other parent events, such as breakfast
events, “first school day ceremony,” orientation meetings for parents, etc.;
visited families in their homes to conduct interviews; and did participant
observation in the nearby community-house of Elmehaven, which some
of the pupils and their families frequented. Elmehaven was a social hous-
ing complex built in the 1970s, with a squared and functional architec-
ture, consisted of blocks with many floors. The neighbourhood was
labelled as a “challenged neighborhood,” where almost twenty per cent of
the residents lived below the Danish poverty-level. At Rosendal School, I
observed the practices and dynamics of home-school cooperation from
multiple angles, working to contextualise the Muslim migrant fathers’
experiences hereof. Doing fieldwork in the school brought insight into
teachers’ expectations towards school-parents, what the teachers noticed

20
“Integration benefit” is a special unemployment benefit given to persons who have
resided in Denmark for less than 7 years. This is a relatively small benefit compared to other
forms of social benefits.
21
Students in the Danish Grade 0 are generally six years old. The class takes place in school
and the pupils learn, among other things, the alphabet and basic math. It is equivalent to first
grade in many countries.
22
Each individual class was, as common practice in Danish schools, named by a letter.
Thus, 0C is one of the two grade 0-classes I followed.
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

and what actualised different practices. Participating in the everyday life

provided me with an insight into how the fathers were spoken (or not
spoken) about, how fathers were actualised in the children’s lives and
teachers’ considerations, and how teachers and fathers could have quite
different experiences of the same encounters. After the five months of
intensive fieldwork at the school, I continued being a volunteer in the
community-house of Elmehaven and periodically travelled to visit fathers’
groups and hereto-related events to do participant observation and con-
duct interviews.23 To understand Muslim migrant fathers’ experiences, I
had to investigate which aspects of being a migrant father had to do with
being a father more generally and how much of this is something most
fathers experience in school, in contrast to the mother. Therefore, I also,
especially in Chap. 3, include the perspectives of fathers with a Danish
background. In short, the breadth of the empirical data has been carried
out to be able to contextualise Muslim migrant fathers’ experiences with
other “types” of parents.
As argued by social geographer Stuart C. Aitken (2009), some social
spaces are especially significant “coming communities” for fathers
(231–232), as certain communities are exclusively occupied with negotiat-
ing expectations towards parent-roles. Inspired by Aitken, I aim to, in
dialogue with the fathers’ narratives, life stories and aspirations for father-
ing, approach the school-site as a coming community, which influenced
fathers’ becoming as fathers. Thus, I approach meetings at the school as
having a special influence on how fathers experienced themselves in the
role “as a father.” With the focus on fathers’ becomings, Aitken argues for
framing fatherhood as an ongoing process, with new practices and new
potentialities, which are in constant conversation with father’s individual
aspirations for fathering and, importantly, their own childhood experi-
ences, as men mainly know how to practise fatherhood from their own
fathers (Aitken 2009, 11–13).
The fathers’ groups, which I visited to do participant observation as
well as interviews, were placed in different locations, mostly on Zealand
and one in Aarhus, the largest city in Jutland. These fathers’ groups had
different structures, but all, except for a Somali parent association, and the
self-organised fathers’ group of “Elmehaven,” were part of a community
regeneration master plan initiative, which were nationwide social

23
I have slightly changed the wordings of some interviews to make them more fluid, due
to some interlocutors’ non-fluent Danish abilities.
26 A. H. JØRGENSEN

intervention projects located in different politically defined “exposed

social housing estates” (Andersen et al. 2014). With the goal to create
positive developments through initiatives focused on empowerment,
counselling and crime-prevention to improve living conditions for resi-
dents and the quality of life on the estates (ibid.). The fathers in these
fathers’ groups mainly had a migrant background, and the men repre-
sented with a Danish background were, in some way or another, profes-
sionals who had a professional agenda in taking part in these groups
(except one father in the fathers’ group of Skovlunden). The fathers’
groups were all different, some taking the form of a kind of “self-develop-
ment course,” others much more unstructured, creating an opportunity
to hang out with neighbouring fathers. Overall, the groups were (also) a
casual place for fathers and neighbours to meet, chat, have dinner together
and talk about child-­rearing—or unruly teenagers. It was also a place for
discussing politics and various aspects of being a migrant in Denmark,
subjects which I also discussed with these fathers. The institutionalised
father-groups were mixed in terms of which country the fathers had
migrated from, as it was not seen as appropriate in the context of social
master plans to form (or “encourage”) groups of one specific national
origin. To do so would conflict with politicalised ideals on “integration”
and perceived as strengthening the politically defined and problematised
“parallel-societies” (see Regeringen 2018). In this way, such fathers’
groups can be seen as part of a system, producing such phenomena as “the
ethnic minority man,” which in the father’s own vocabulary turned into
“us foreigners” or “us immigrants.” Contrarily, the two self-organised
father’s/parent’s groups were homogeneous regarding national or pan-
ethnic origin (Somali descent and Arab descent). These two informal
groups were established before they were formed into an official associa-
tion. Formal associations have a positive status in Denmark, as one can
seek official funds and meeting rooms through them. The Somali parent
group was a place where parents could help, guide and support each other.
However, it was also a place where the children were taught, for example,
Somali, English and old folklore from the regions the parents had fled from.
In total, I have conducted semi-structured in-depth ethnographic
interviews with twenty-seven fathers with migrant backgrounds, of which
five of these interviews were group interviews: four with two fathers and
one with three. The fathers were fathers of pupils at Rosendal School
(eight), fathers from the aforementioned fathers’ groups in social housing
complexes and one Somali parent association. Additionally, I conducted
 1 INTRODUCTION 27

interviews with seven teachers, an Arab interpreter, the school integration-­

consultant, ten fathers and one mother with a Danish background, and
three single mothers with a migrant background. I also conducted five
group interviews with pupils from 7X and did a drawing exercise with a
follow-up short individual informal interview with all pupils in 0C, where
they told me about their drawings (illustrating something they did with
their father).

Gendered Potentialities
Studying fathers as a female researcher calls for reflections on gendered
positions of the fieldwork. In anthropology the fieldwork has an intersub-
jective character, which means that the different aspects of “the mascu-
line” that are put forward depend on the specific situation. A man might
perform or narrate his masculinity differently to a female researcher than
to a male researcher, as well as together with his old friends, or on the job,
in his relationship, with his children, etc. Thus, sharing gender or not will
assumedly affect our interlocutors’ “doing of gender,” but none of these
ways are more “real” or “true” than the other, but takes part in the inter-
subjective dynamics between the anthropologist and the interlocutors (see
also Sjørslev 2015). Advantages and disadvantages of studying the oppo-
site gender relate to how gender and gender differences are constructed
and contested in different social settings or cultures. Although anthro-
pologists are not searching for “the Truth,” it can be fruitful to compare
research done by men and women respectively, and I have done so by
including findings from fatherhood research done by male researchers.24 It
is also important to bear in mind how gender is only one of many subject
positions, as there are many other identity traits such as generation, age,
being a migrant, racialised characteristics, style, etc., which can articulate a
“we.” A migrant father at my age, for example, said, “We are another gen-
eration,” which was a “we” that he included me in, yet when topics related
to having a migrant background or stories of having grown up in another
culture than the Danish, I was no longer included in the “we.” Thus,
depending on the topic, situation, etc., various identity traits can be artic-
ulated or concealed (Nordberg 1999, 71). Here especially, what did it
mean that I did not have a migrant background, and my racialised

24
Aitken (2009), Bouakaz (2007), Bouakaz and Persson (2007), Madsen (2008), Nielsen
and Westerling (2016), Reinicke (2006) and Nuur (2015).
28 A. H. JØRGENSEN

characteristics are white, and as such could be seen as “traditionally

Danish”? During my visits in the fathers’ groups, I appeared different,
being a tall, blond, relatively young female student, without children.
Also, as a visitor, I was not involved in the fathers’ everyday life; I did basi-
cally not even know which school their children went to, and I was not a
part of the fathers’ network or community. My differences inevitably influ-
enced the narratives the fathers told me, which I will discuss further in
Chap. 7. However, my “distance” from the fathers’ everyday life seemed
to disarm potential hesitations about sharing their inner feelings or uncom-
fortable marginalising experiences with me. I experienced fathers opening
up and telling me about vulnerable episodes of their lives, feelings of sad-
ness, frustrations, and feelings or suspicions of child-professionals mis-
trusting them. Thus, the interviews became a kind of pressure valve or
“safe space” to let go of suppressed or difficult feelings, and at the same
time an opportunity to tell “the world” about the injustice the father felt.
Thus, difference can work as an advantage in some contexts (see also
Inhorn 2012, 16). This contrasted with my position at Rosendal School,
where fathers knew that I had been attending the school for months, and
as such, potentially, associated with the teachers of their child. One mother,
Yasmin, explained it as: “you don’t hang up your dirty clothes outside” to
describe to me how she did not feel like involving the teacher in all her
distresses. These circumstances made some parents hesitate to tell me
openly about their struggles until we had established a trustful relation.
Such dynamisms gave me an understanding of that some parents did not
perceive the teacher as an “allied.” It helped that some of their children,
after many hours of hanging out in their class, declared that “Anne, she is
ok, she is one of us,” and thus not an “allied” with the teachers and
the school.

Anonymity
All personal names, institutional names and place names have been
changed to protect privacy, and I have slightly changed interlocutors’ per-
sonal information to protect anonymity. All interlocutors have agreed to
participate in the study. At all times, I followed the ethical standards
advised by the AAA (American Anthropologist Association 2012), main-
tained a respectful and ethical professional relationship, protected and pre-
served all records, and was open and honest about my work. The
anthropologist must not agree to conditions, which inappropriately
 1 INTRODUCTION 29

change the purpose, focus or intended outcomes of their research, while

carefully weighing the potential consequences and inadvertent impacts of
their work (ibid., 2012). Therefore, I have, in a few cases, further ano-
nymised interlocutors, for example, families or fathers from the fathers’
groups by changing years of living in Denmark, details about the family or
switching which fathers’ group specific fathers belonged, when having no
effect on the analysis. In a few cases, I have split one interlocutor into two
different characters in order to blur recognisability (see, e.g., Tjørnhøj-­
Thomsen and Hansen 2009; Jacobsen and Johansen 2009). Such further
anonymisation has been more difficult regarding the teachers at Rosendal
School, since I only did fieldwork at one school and followed specific
classes. Although years have passed between the fieldwork and publica-
tion, some parents, pupils or teachers might recognise some of the teach-
ers, which is problematic, since some of the cases presented might stand
out as unprofessional or discriminatory. I have come about this by blur-
ring teacher’s identity in few cases where it did not affect the analytic
points, so there cannot, in all presented cases, be drawn a direct line
between the specific teachers and the verbal statements. In this way, a
given teacher cannot, in principle, be held accountable for a specific state-
ment (see also Tjørnhøj-Thomsen and Hansen 2009).

Structure of this Book

The second chapter provides an understanding of culturally constructed
school-norms of Danish public schools and how the field of home-school
relations is embedded in tacit assumptions, norms and expectations. By
means of ethnographic observations from the school, the chapter develops
the analytic concept of social alertness to explore why Muslim migrant
fathers must be “on the alert” to detect subtle and not-so-subtle signs of
discrimination, both towards them as “foreigners” and towards their chil-
dren as “bilinguals.” Teachers’ general tabooing of “the foreign,” concur-
rent lower expectations towards migrant families, as well as notions of
unmarked whiteness, was a condition difficult for the fathers to openly
react towards, which resulted in a dormant alertness regarding being
(potentially) othered again. The chapter also demonstrates how a certain
“language logic” functions to make multilingual homes problematic and
thus legitimises various interventions in the homes of migrant families.
This is exemplified by the story of the father Yonis and his daughter Leyla
and how a teacher problematises that Yonis and Leyla speak Somali at
30 A. H. JØRGENSEN

home, which is thought to weaken Leyla’s Danish skills. Consequently,

the teacher demands Leyla to spend more time in the after-school care.
This and other examples show how the language-logic devaluates the
homes of migrant families (being a place of “language confusion”), and
how this adds to a rhetoric of migrant parents as problematic—maybe
even a break on their children’s academic progress. The chapter also illus-
trates how “Danish” becomes synonymous with “language” which dis-
plays the nationalistic aspect of the Danish school system, as well as how
teachers fail to notice that literacy plays out and develops in numerous
ways in the lifeworld of migrant children.
The third chapter conceptualises the “gender givens” of Danish schools,
whereby teachers prefer to interact with the pupils’ mothers, making
fathers feel redundant. By extinction, the chapter shows how fathers expe-
rience some settings in school as “awkward spaces of fathering,” since the
mood and atmosphere are felt to be more “feminine.” Hereafter, the
chapter narrows the lens to experiences that are more specific for migrant
fathers and shows (?) how Muslim migrant fathers are more inclined to
feel redundant in school, as feelings of awkwardness intensify due to expe-
riences of being disregarded and undervalued. This can lead to migrant
fathers’ distancing from schools. The chapter also includes stories of
Muslim migrant fathers explaining how they grew up in cultures where
school-related tasks belonged to the “realm of the father” instead of the
mother, making the lack of acknowledgement by Danish schoolteachers
even more remarkable.
The fourth chapter investigates post-reform flexibility and digital inter-
faces for home-school cooperation. We see how increased flexibility has
influenced the position of being a teacher, making teachers “struggle
along” in an uncertain terrain. The chapter includes stories of Muslim
migrant fathers and elucidates how constraints in these fathers’ lives hin-
der them from performing as visible, online engaged and active school-­
parents—performances that teachers at the school appreciated. Failing to
live up to such standards caused some migrant fathers to be classified as
“resource-weak,” in the worst case being “counter-players,” yet with
teachers having very limited insight into these fathers’ extended lifeworlds
and assets. The chapter puts forward fathers’ aspirations for their chil-
dren’s successful education, yet also shows how such hopes and fatherly
practices have become invisible to teachers, leading to terming such
fatherly practices as “invisible fatherhood.”
The fifth chapter analyses the so-called ethnification of the Danish
underclass neo-nationalistic process foregrounded where class-related
 1 INTRODUCTION 31

constraints have been blurred with ideas of “ethnic/cultural choices.” The

chapter examines several migrant fathers’ everyday lives, which clarify limi-
tations within the fathers’ life-situations to perform their fatherly practices
including the level of performance at school. By extension, the chapter
suggests the concept of “constraining jobs” to label precarious jobs
demanding the fathers’ physical presence at a fixed place and time, and
their attention towards a concrete physical task. The chapter goes on to
demystify so-called father absence by examining how such low-wage and
time-consuming labour is constraining migrant fathers from living up to
post-reform flexibility in Danish schools’ curricula and digital interfaces
for communication. As such, the constraining jobs shaped these migrant
fathers’ everyday rhythms in a different way than the jobs of middle-class
fathers with (online) office jobs, fitting the rhythm of the online home-­
school cooperation better. The chapter continues to uncover a home-­
blindness of school professionals and shows how the school professionals’
interpretations are based on very little knowledge of the everyday life of
parents/families in general, and fathers with migrant backgrounds in par-
ticular. The chapter includes the stories of divorced Muslim migrant
fathers struggling to achieve a role within the home-school cooperation,
and how they by certain dynamics in school may end up on a side-track,
being mystified by their absence.
Having analysed fathers’ navigation of the terrain of school-home col-
laboration, the sixth chapter and onwards shift the focus towards the phe-
nomenon of mistrust, which was a recurring social phenomenon that arose
in the ethnographic material. The sixth chapter explores the public debates
surrounding “foreigners” in Denmark, and hence the mistrusted mascu-
linity of Muslim men. From time to time these men are portrait as oppres-
sive patriarchs and a hindrance to both positive integration into Danish
society and gender equality goals. The chapter explores the intersecting
lines of oppression based on factors such as racialisation, economic exploi-
tation and gender performances and how these forms of oppression are
supported by negative “controlling images” that stereotype migrant
fathers of colour. These men are seen as being the most “other” to Danish
men. If Danish men are upheld as gender egalitarians, the controlling
image of Muslim men portrays these man as radicalised oppressors, who
might constitute a danger to their wives and children. The chapter
32 A. H. JØRGENSEN

describes this state of affairs as “neo-Orientalism,” where the vilification of

Islam is constant and palpable.
The seventh chapter explores how home-school dynamics play out in
the lives of Muslim migrant fathers in contemporary Denmark. The chap-
ter focuses particularly on how a tacit suspicion towards the Muslim
migrant father influences the relation between fathers and teachers and
suggests the concept of mistrusted masculinity to label this suspicion. The
chapter goes on to argue that the social phenomenon of mistrusted mas-
culinity is embedded in processes related to interlocutors’ (i.e., school
professionals’) racialised interpretations of bodily signs, which are clus-
tered with certain anticipated traits. In this seventh chapter, migrant
fathers express how they must relate and navigate according to being mis-
trusted by school professionals, which leads to analysing these fathers’
subjective experiences and strategies to handle the mistrust. Such experi-
ences of being mistrusted are manifold and illuminate how the negative
controlling image of “the Muslim migrant man” may play out in intersub-
jectivity and hinder a fruitful cooperation between Muslim migrant fathers
and school professionals. The chapter explores Muslim men’s subjectivi-
ties in light of this vilification; namely that by knowing they are “mis-
trusted,” they may end up experiencing mistrust as a way of being-in-the
world. School professionals’ potential suspicion could also entangle in
concerns regarding lack of freedom within “Muslim childrearing.”
The eight chapter provides an antidote to this negative portrayal in its
exploration of how concerned Muslim fathers do what they can to guide
their children along the uncertain path of childhood in Denmark. The
chapter shows how “fatherhoods of migrant men are emergent, for exam-
ple by telling the stories of various fathers who practice and embrace a
more affectionate and involved parenting style than their own fathers did.
Due to difficulties in preforming “Danish” parenthood at school, these
fathers’ supportive parenting practices may remain invisible to teachers.
Various shades of mistrust lead some migrant fathers to practise “con-
cerned fatherhood,” where the potentiality of being mistrusted and oth-
ered leads to Muslim migrant fathers’ concerns regarding how to raise and
guide their children. Although many migrant fathers expressed such con-
cerns regarding raising their children with reference to this mistrust, which
they had experienced as directed towards them and their religion, this
aspect of fathering represented an incomplete view of their overall
 1 INTRODUCTION 33

fatherhood practices. The study finds that aspirations for a closer emo-
tional relationship to one’s children than one experienced from one’s own
father were a recurrent theme among the migrant fathers. Thus, the book
argues how the aforementioned “new role of the father,” found in socio-
logical studies of white, middle-class fathers, is also noticeable among the
Muslim migrant fathers of this study.

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Another random document with
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weiten Weg vor uns. »Gottes gütige, unerforschliche Vorsehung«
hatte die Steppe in wunderbare Schönheit gekleidet; die aufgehende
Sonne, der wir entgegenritten, umgab jeden Stein mit einem
goldenen Schein, in klaren, scharfgeschnittenen Linien zeichnete
sich die ostwärts liegende Vulkanreihe vom wolkenlosen Himmel ab,
und im Nordwesten erglänzten die Schneegipfel des Antilibanon und
Hermon in blendender Weiße und bildeten einen scharfen Kontrast
zu dem funkelnden Schwarz des Vordergrundes. Einer der Araber
hatte sich uns als Führer zugesellt; 'Awād war sein Name. Er ritt ein
Kamel und unterhielt sich von diesem erhabenen Standpunkt aus
durch ein lautes Schreien mit uns, als wolle er damit den
unendlichen Abstand zwischen rākib und fāris, Kamelreiter und zu
Pferde Sitzenden, überbrücken. Wir zitterten alle vor Frost, als wir
durch den kühlen Morgen dahinzogen, 'Awād aber machte einen
Scherz aus diesem Übel, indem er von seinem Tier herunterrief:
»Meine Dame, meine Dame, wissen Sie, warum ich so friere? Weil
ich zu Hause vier Frauen habe!« Die anderen lachten, denn er stand
im Rufe, ein wenig Don Juan zu sein, und die Kapitalien, die ihm zu
Gebote standen, kamen seinem Harem mehr als seinem
Kleiderschrank zugute.
Schnell erreichten wir wieder den Ghādir el Gharz. Nach einem
zweistündigen Ritt kreuzten wir eine Erhebung südwestlich der Tulūl
es Safa, der Vulkanlinie, und sprengten über eine beträchtliche
Strecke steinlosen, gelben Sandes Beida, bis wir das Südende des
Lavastromes erreichten. Die Lava lag zu unsrer Linken wie ein
schrecklicher, gespenstischer See, der nicht sowohl gefroren, als
vielmehr plötzlich erstarrt schien, als hätte ihn irgend ein großer
Schreck mitten im Laufe aufgehalten und den Ausdruck der
zurückschreckenden Furcht auf seiner Oberfläche versteinert. Aber
das war lange, lange her, daß eine mächtige Hand den Wogen des
Tulūl es Safa das Gorgonenhaupt vorhielt. Sonne, Frost und
Jahrtausende hatten das ursprüngliche Aussehen der Vulkane
inzwischen verändert, hatten die Lavaströme zerrissen, die
Abgründe zugeschüttet und die charakteristischen Züge der Hügel
verwischt. Ein oder zwei Terpentinbäumchen hatten sich in den
Spalten angesiedelt, aber als wir vorübergingen, waren sie noch kahl
und grau, und trugen nicht dazu bei, den allgemeinen Eindruck der
Öde und Leblosigkeit zu beheben.
Während wir diese Grenzen des Todes umritten, wurde ich
gewahr, daß wir einen Pfad verfolgten, der fast ebenso alt sein
mußte wie die Berge selbst; ein kleiner Zeuge der Weltgeschichte
führte uns mitten durch dieses verödete Stück Land. 'Awād sprach
wiederholt von einem Stein, den er El 'Ablā nannte, ein Wort, das
einen weithin sichtbaren, weißen Felsen bezeichnet, aber ich war so
sehr an Namen gewöhnt, deren Bedeutung nicht zutraf, daß ich
'Awāds Worten keine Aufmerksamkeit schenkte, bis er plötzlich sein
Kamel anhielt und ausrief:
»O meine Dame, das ist er! Bei Gottes Angesicht, das ist El
'Ablā!«
Es war nicht mehr und nicht weniger als ein Brunnenstein. Wo
das Seil gelaufen war, befand sich ein mehrere Zoll tiefer Einschnitt,
ein Beweis, daß der Brunnen lange Zeit gedient haben mußte, denn
dieser schwarze Stein ist sehr hart. Dicht daneben stand ein großer
Steinhaufen und noch zwei weitere, und so zwei bis drei in jeder
Viertelmeile Wegs. Näheres Hinschauen überzeugte mich, daß sie
erbaut, nicht aufeinandergehäuft waren. Schätzesuchende Araber
hatten einige geöffnet; nach Entfernung der oberen Steinschichten
zeigte sich ein flacher, viereckiger, aus halbzugehauenen Steinen
erbauter Raum. 'Awād sagte, daß man seines Wissens nie etwas
darin gefunden, und daß ihm unbekannt, was sie früher enthielten.
Vermutlich waren die Steinhaufen als Wegzeichen der alten, durch
dieses Steinmeer führenden Wüstenstraße errichtet worden. Einige
Hundert Meter weiter hielt 'Awād wieder an einigen, kaum über die
Oberfläche hervorragenden schwarzen Felsen. Sie glichen den
offenen Seiten eines Buches, in das alle vorüberziehenden
Nationalitäten ihre Namen eingetragen, sei es in der griechischen,
cufischen, arabischen oder auch in jener seltsamen Sprache, die die
Gelehrten Safaitisch nennen. Als die letzten hatten auch die
ungelehrten Beduinen ihre Namenszeichen eingekritzelt.
‚Schureik, Sohn des Naghafat, Sohn des Nafis, Sohn des
Numan,’ lautete die eine Inschrift, und eine andere: ‚Buchalih, Sohn
des Thann, Sohn des An'am, Sohn des Rawak, Sohn des Buhhalih.
Er fand die Inschrift seines Onkels und sehnte sich, ihn zu sehen.’
Eine weitere auf einer Deckplatte befindliche habe ich nicht genau
genug kopiert, um ihre Bedeutung mit Sicherheit angeben zu
können. Sie enthält wahrscheinlich zwei durch ibn verbundene
Namen, ‚Sohn des’. Über den Namen befinden sich sieben gerade
Linien, die nach Dussauds geistreicher Auslegung die sieben
Planeten darstellen sollen[6]. Die griechischen Schriftzeichen
ergaben das Wort Hanelos, das heißt Johannes; es ist ein
semitischer Name, den sein Inhaber wahrscheinlich deshalb in
dieser fremden Sprache eingezeichnet, weil er sie während seines
Dienstes unter den römischen Adlern erlernt hatte. Die kufischen
Worte sind fromme Wünsche, die den Segen des Himmels auf den
Reisenden herabflehen, der hier innegehalten, um sie einzugraben.
So hat jeder einen seiner Art entsprechenden Bericht hinter sich
gelassen, um dann im grauen Nebel der Zeit zu verschwinden, und
außer diesen wenigen Strichen auf den schwarzen Felsen wissen
wir nichts von seinem Volk und seiner Lebensgeschichte, nichts von
dem Vorhaben, das ihn in das unwirtliche Ghādir el Gharz geführt
hat. Die Sätze, die ich niederschrieb, kamen mir vor wie feine
Stimmen aus einer längstvergessenen Vergangenheit; selbst
Orpheus mit seiner Laute hätte den Steinen kein deutlicheres
Zeugnis über die toten Generationen entlocken können. In der
ganzen Safa raunt und flüstert es; geisterartig flattern diese Namen
in der flimmernden Luft über den Steinen und rufen in den
verschiedensten Zungen ihren Gott an.
[6] D u s s a u d, wissenschaftliche Mission, S. 64. Die
Übersetzungen der Inschriften verdanke ich Dr. L i t t m a n n, der
meine ersten Kopien der Originale in seinem Werk »Semitische
Inschriften« veröffentlichen wird.
In Eile nur konnte ich die Inschriften niederschreiben, denn wir
hatten an dem Tage keine Zeit zu verlieren. Ungeduldig umstanden
mich die Drusen, und 'Awād rief: »Jallah, jallah! ya sitt!« was so viel
heißt wie: »Mach' schnell!« Weiter zogen wir bis an die Ostgrenze
der Safa, umritten das Ende des Lavastromes und sahen die weite,
gelbe Ebene der Ruhbeh vor uns. Vom Djebel Druz aus hatte ich
gesehen, daß diese Steppe sich sehr weit nach Osten hin erstreckt,
jetzt aber erschien sie uns nicht mehr als ungefähr eine halbe Meile
breit und wurde von einem herrlichen blauen, in duftigem Nebel
liegenden See begrenzt. Inseln gleich erhoben sich die fernen
kleinen Vulkane aus dem Wasser, in dem ihr Spiegelbild zitterte; je
mehr wir uns aber dieser lockenden Flut inmitten der Wüste
näherten, um so mehr wichen ihre Gestade zurück, denn es war nur
ein visionäres Meer, dem wir zueilten, in dem höchstens die
visionären Besucher der Wüste ihren Durst löschen können. Endlich
erblickten wir am Fuße der Lavahügel einen grauen Turm, und in der
Ebene davor einen weißen, mit einer Kuppel versehenen Tempel,
die Chirbet (Ruine) el Beida und den Mazār (Tempel) des Scheich
Serāk. Der letztere hat sein Amt als Hüter der Ruhbeh von Zeus
Saphatenos geerbt, der seinerzeit der direkte Nachfolger des Gottes
El, der ersten Gottheit der Safa, war. Er hat über die Saaten zu
wachen, die die Araber in guten Jahren um die Wohnung seiner
Seele säen; er wird von den Moslemiten sowie auch von den Drusen
angebetet, die ihm zu Ehren ein wohlbesuchtes jährliches Fest
veranstalten, das ungefähr 14 Tage vor meiner Ankunft abgehalten
worden war. Der Tempel selbst ist ein Gebäude im haurānischen Stil,
sein Steindach wird von Querbalken getragen. Über dem Tor
befindet sich ein mit Steinmeißeleien verzierter Querpfosten aus den
Ruinen der Weißen Burg.
 Kal'at el Beida.

Kaum vermochte ich so lange an dem Tempel zu verweilen, bis

alle meine Leute zusammengekommen waren, so sehr zog es mich
nach der Kal'at el Beida hin. Chirbeh oder Kal'at, Ruine oder Burg,
beide Namen werden ohne Unterschied von den Arabern gebraucht.
Ich verließ die Drusen — mochten sie dem Zeus Saphatenos, oder
wer es sonst war, die ihm gebührende Verehrung bezeigen — und
sprengte hinüber nach dem Rande der Lavafläche. Ein tiefer Graben
trennte mich von ihr, der so tief mit Wasser gefüllt war, daß ich nur
mit Hilfe einer leichten Bretterbrücke hinüberkonnte; ich vertraute
mein Pferd Habīb an, der hier sein Maultier tränkte, dieses
wunderbare Maultier, das es an Schnelligkeit den Pferden gleichtat,
und eilte über die rissige Lava in den Festungshof. Einige Araber
schlenderten darin umher, schenkten mir aber ebensowenig
Beachtung, wie ich ihnen. Das war es also, das berühmte Kastell,
das ein erstorbenes Land vor einem unbevölkerten schützt, die Safa
vor der Hamad. Wie der gespenstische Zufluchtsort einer ganzen
Welt von Geistern erscheinen mir diese Mauern aus sorgfältig
behauenen Steinen, die sich grauweiß schimmernd auf der weißen
Plattform erhoben. Wessen Hand sie errichtete, wessen Kunst die
Arabeskengewinde auf den Türpfosten und Querbalken bildete,
wessen Auge wachehaltend vom Turm herabblickte, kann noch nicht
mit Gewißheit festgestellt werden. Hanelos und Schuraik und
Buchalih haben vielleicht nach dem Kastell ausgeschaut, als sie aus
dem Wādi el Gharz heraustraten; vielleicht hat Gott El es unter
seinen Schutz genommen, vielleicht sind die Gebete des Wächters
auf dem Turme irgend einem fernen Tempel zugeeilt und den
Göttern der Griechen oder Römer dargebracht worden. Tausend
unbeantwortete, unbeantwortbare Fragen fliegen dir beim
Überschreiten der Schwelle blitzartig durch den Sinn.
 Kal'at el Beida.

De Vogüé sowohl als auch Oppenheim und Dussaud haben die

Ruine el Beida beschrieben, und wen es interessiert, der mag
wissen, daß sie aus einer rechtwinkeligen Umfriedigung besteht, die
in jeder Ecke einen runden Turm trägt. Zwischen den Türmen
befindet sich eine runde Bastion und ein viereckiges, inneres
Gefängnisgebäude an der Südmauer. In die Türpfosten sind
prächtige Muster in Schlangenlinien eingemeißelt: Arabesken,
Blumen und Blätter mit schreitenden Tieren dazwischen. Die
obengenannten Forscher halten die Ruine für eine Grenzfestung der
Römer, die aus der Zeit vom 2. bis 4. Jahrhundert stammt. Mit
absoluter Sicherheit aber können wir nichts über die Entstehung
behaupten, ebensowenig wie über die unweit davon liegenden
Ruinen im Djebel Sēs, oder über Mschitta oder über irgend ein
Gebäude der westlichen Wüste. Sie alle ähneln einander und zeigen
doch wieder bedeutende Unterschiede, wie ja auch die Kal'at el
Beida und die Architektur des Haurān Gemeinsames haben.
Welcher Bildhauer des Gebirges aber würde seine Phantasie so von
allen klassischen Regeln haben abweichen lassen, wie der Mann,
der Abbildungen von Wüstentieren über die Tore der Weißen Burg
setzte? Ein Etwas, das der benachbarten Kunst fremd ist, geht durch
diese Architektur, ein wilderer, freierer Zug, der weniger geschult,
roher, wahrscheinlich auch älter ist als der Geist, der die
Steinmeißelungen von Mschitta schuf. Vorläufig sind alles
Vermutungen; mag auch die Wüste uns ihre Geheimnisse ausliefern,
mag man auch die Geschichte der Safa und der Ruhbeh aus den
beschriebenen Felsen zusammensetzen, noch müssen viele Reisen,
noch viele Ausgrabungen an den syrischen Grenzen, vielleicht auch
in Hiran oder Jemen vorgenommen werden. Nur bemerken will ich
noch, daß die Gebäude der Kal'at el Beida, so wie sie jetzt sind,
unmöglich ein und derselben Periode angehören können. Das
Gefängnis ist sicher jüngeren Datums als die Zwischenwände im
Kastell. Während zu den letzteren Mörtel verwendet worden ist, wie
zu dem römischen Fort in Kastal und der Festung in Muwaggar,
besteht das Gefängnis aus trocknem Mauerwerk, wie es im Haurān
üblich ist, und zeigt bildergeschmückte Steine eingefügt, die
sicherlich nicht für den Zweck, dem sie jetzt dienen, hergestellt
wurden. Selbst die Verzierungen am Haupttore des Gefängnisses
bestehen aus entliehenen Steinen; die beiden
übereinanderliegenden Steine des oberen Querbalkens passen
weder zueinander noch zu dem Türrahmen. Jedoch wage ich daraus
keinen weiteren Schluß zu ziehen, als daß beide Vermutungen der
Archäologen über den Ursprung der Ruine richtig sein können, daß
sie ein römisches Lager und zugleich eine Ghassanidenfestung
gewesen ist.
 Gefängnistür, Kal'at el Beida.

Der Rand des Lavaplateaus ragt einige Fuß über die Ebene
hinaus. Längs dieser natürlichen Schanze befinden sich noch
andere Gebäude, aber keins kommt an architektonischem Interesse
der Weißen Burg gleich. Ihre Mauern bestehen aus sorglos
aufgeschichteten, viereckigen Lavablöcken ohne Mörtel, während
die Burg aus einem grauweißen Gestein hergestellt wurde, das
teilweise mit Mörtel verbunden ist. Das einzige bedeutendere
Gebäude, das ich besichtigte, lag etwas nördlich; sein Dach hatte
nach haurānischer Art aus Steinplatten bestanden, die auf
querlaufenden Bogen ruhten. In Zwischenräumen standen längs der
Lava auch kleine Türme wie Schilderhäuschen, die den Zugang zu
der Burg schützten und ebenfalls aus trocknem Mauerwerk
bestanden, das heißt, ohne Mörtel geschichtet waren.
 Simse aus der Kal'at el Beida und aus Palmyra.
Der aufrechtstehende Steinblock stammt aus dem Kal'at el Beida.
 Eine Rast von wenigen Stunden war alles, was wir uns gestatten
konnten, denn wollten wir die Nacht nicht in der offnen Safa
verbringen, mußte uns vor Einbruch der Dämmerung unser
Ghiāthlager wieder in Sicht sein. Rasch verzehrten wir die Reste der
fünf von Umm Ruweik mitgebrachten Hühner — sie waren mit den
Röhren der wilden Zwiebel gewürzt, die 'Awād in der Lava gefunden
hatte — und traten dann den Heimweg an. Wir legten die
4¾stündige Wegstrecke gerade in der richtigen Zeit zurück, das
heißt, wir sahen den Rauch der Lagerfeuer, noch ehe es dunkelte,
und richteten uns danach. Über eine Anzahl freier Plätze gelangten
wir schließlich zu den Zelten. Diese gesäuberten Stellen in der
Wüste sind die Marāh (frühere Lagerplätze) der 'Anazeh, die ihre
Zelte in der Safa aufzuschlagen pflegten, ehe die Drusen sich vor
mehr als hundert Jahren im Gebirge niederließen. Wenigstens ein
Jahrhundert lang sind also diese Marāh sichtbar geblieben und
werden es noch viele Jahrhunderte lang sein. Es blies ein kalter
Wind an diesem Abend, und obgleich die Hauptwand des Zeltes so
gedreht war, daß sie uns schützte, verbrachten wir doch eine recht
ungemütliche Nacht. Mehrere Male weckte mich die Kälte und
brachte mich dadurch zum Bewußtsein eines Gefühles, als hätte ich
mich auf einen Ameisenhaufen schlafen gelegt. Wie es die Araber
ermöglichen, in ihren Habseligkeiten so viele Flöhe zu beherbergen,
ist mir ein unlösbares Rätsel. Außer den Zeltwänden bleibt den
Tierchen wirklich kein passender Zufluchtsort, und wenn diese
Wände herabgenommen werden, so müssen sie tatsächlich eine
weit über die gewöhnliche Flohgeschicklichkeit und -behendigkeit
hinausgehende Kunstfertigkeit zeigen, um sich mit
zusammenpacken und an den nächsten Lagerplatz bringen zu
lassen, aber daß sie dieser Aufgabe gewachsen sind, weiß jeder, der
eine Nacht in solchem Haarhause zugebracht hat. Nach den zwei
Nächten bei den Ghiāth erschienen unsre Zelte, die wir am nächsten
Nachmittag wieder erreichten, ein wahres Paradies von Luxus, und
ein Bad der Gipfel eines sybaritischen Lebens, selbst wenn man es
bei einer Temperatur von mehreren Grad unter dem Gefrierpunkt
nehmen mußte.
 Tor, Schakka.

Auf unsrer Heimreise ereignete sich ein Zwischenfall, der des

Erzählens wert ist, da er die drusischen Sitten charakterisiert. Dieses
Volk wird, wie schon früher erwähnt, in Eingeweihte und
Uneingeweihte eingeteilt. Für den Fremden besteht der
Hauptunterschied zwischen beiden darin, daß die Eingeweihten sich
des Tabakgenusses enthalten; so hatte ich an dem in Sāleh
verbrachten Abend bemerkt, daß kein Glied von Mohammed en
Nassārs Familie rauchte. Ich war daher nicht wenig erstaunt, als
Fāiz, sobald er sich mit Michaïl und mir allein befand, den ersteren
um eine Zigarette bat. Auf meine Entschuldigung, ihm nicht schon
früher eine angeboten zu haben, weil ich geglaubt, daß ihm das
Rauchen verboten sei, blinzelte Fāiz mit seinen schiefen Augen und
erwiderte, daß es wohl an dem sei, und daß er auch in Gegenwart
eines anderen Drusen keine Zigarette annehmen würde, da aber
keiner seiner Religionsgenossen anwesend, fühle er sich frei zu tun,
was ihm beliebe. Er bat mich jedoch, seinem Bruder gegenüber
dieses seines Sprunges vom Pfade der Tugend nicht zu erwähnen.
In dieser Nacht schmiedete ich im Mak'ad von Umm Ruweik mit den
drei Scheichs noch manchen Plan zur weiteren Erforschung der
Safa; wir setzten die Zahl der mitzunehmenden Kamele fest, ja
bestimmten sogar die Geschenke, mit denen ich am Ende der Reise
meine Begleiter belohnen sollte. Wenn mir die Wahl bleibt, sollen
Fāiz und 'Ahmed und Chittāb jedenfalls an der Expedition
teilnehmen.
Am nächsten Tag, früh 9½ Uhr, begannen wir unsern dreitägigen
Ritt nach Damaskus.
Von Umm Ruweik habe ich nur noch hinzuzufügen, daß gerade
vier Tage dazu nötig waren, bei den Einwohnern Geld genug zum
Wechseln eines Goldstückes zusammenzubringen. Wir hatten zwar
einen Sack voll Silber und Kupfermünzen aus Jerusalem
mitgebracht, aber als dieser Vorrat erschöpft war, bereitete uns das
Bezahlen unsrer Schulden die größte Schwierigkeit — es ist dies
ebenfalls einer der »Winke für Reisende«, die Michaïl mich bat,
meinem Buche einzuverleiben. Wir ritten an den herrlichen Hängen
hin, die überall da, wo kein Schnee mehr lag, mit der himmelblauen
Iris Histrio bedeckt waren, und verbrachten dann einige Stunden in
Schakka, dem Hauptzentrum von de Vogüés archäologischer Arbeit.
Die Basilika, die er in seinem Werke noch als fast vollständig
erhalten hinstellt, ist inzwischen gänzlich verfallen, nur die Fassade
ist verblieben; aber die Kaisariēh steht noch, ebenso das Kloster,
welches er für eins der ältesten noch existierenden Klostergebäude
hält. Wir kamen über Hīt, ein interessantes Dorf mit einem schönen
vorarabischen Hause, in dem der Scheich wohnt, und übernachteten
in Bathaniyyeh bei so starkem Frost, daß ich zitternd ins Bett kroch.
Um einige von meiner früheren Reise her gebliebenen Lücken
auszufüllen und zu sehen, was für Gebäude an der Nordabdachung
des Gebirges zu finden sind, machte ich am nächsten Tage einen
Umweg nach Hayat, dessen schöne Kalybeh (Ruine) von de Vogüé
beschrieben worden ist. Die altertümlichen Dörfer bevölkern sich
jetzt schnell, und in wenigen Jahren wird keine Spur ihrer
Baudenkmäler mehr vorhanden sein. Allmählich gelangten wir in die
Ebene und stießen bei Lahiteh auf die von Schaba nach Damaskus
führende Ledschastraße, der wir bis nach Brāk, dem letzten Dorfe
des Haurān, folgten. Hier befindet sich ein aus ungefähr 20 Soldaten
bestehender Militärposten. Knapp vor dem Orte kauerte ein kleines
Drusenmädchen am Wege und weinte bei unserm Anblicke vor
Furcht. »Ich bin ein Mädchen!« rief sie, »ich bin ein Mädchen!« Ihre
Worte warfen einen bedenklichen Schatten auf das türkische
Regiment, unter dem wir uns wieder befanden. In der Nähe des
Forts begegneten wir zwei aus Damaskus zurückkehrenden Drusen.
Sie grüßten freundlich, und ich fragte:
»Geht's dem Gebirge zu?«
Sie erwiderten: »Bei Gott! Gott schütze dich!«
Darauf fügte ich noch hinzu: »Ich komme von dort — grüßt es
von mir!« worauf sie antworteten:
»Gott grüße dich! Gehe in Frieden!«
Nie wird der Reisende das Drusenland ohne ein Gefühl des
Schmerzes verlassen, nie auch ohne das ernste Gelübde, sobald als
möglich dorthin zurückzukehren.
 Haus des Scheich, Hayāt.

Nachdem wir unter dem schützenden Auge des Sultans

vorübergezogen waren, stellte es sich heraus, daß mir für den
nächsten Tag ein Weg durch ein recht gefährliches Stück Land
bevorstand. Die Zirkassier und Türken von Brāk (die Türken waren
liebenswürdige Leute aus dem nördlichen Kleinasien) redeten mir
ernstlich ab, den kürzeren Weg über die Berge nach Damaskus zu
wählen, so ernstlich, daß ich den Gedanken beinahe aufgegeben
hätte. Die Hügel sollten von Räubern wimmeln, in der jetzigen
Jahreszeit aber von arabischen Lagern gänzlich verlassen sein, so
daß die Wegelagerer schalten und walten konnten, wie sie wollten.
Glücklicherweise hörten wir am andern Morgen, daß eine
Kompagnie Soldaten über die Berge nach Damaskus reiten würde,
und dieses Gerücht ermutigte uns, in ihrem Schutz desselben Wegs
zu ziehen. Sie kamen uns nicht zu Gesicht; ich glaube auch gar nicht
an ihr wirkliches Vorhandensein. Dagegen sahen wir gerade auf dem
schlimmsten Stück des Weges ein paar schwarze Zelte zum Trost,
die Räuber aber müssen anderweitig beschäftigt gewesen sein,
denn sie erschienen nicht. Zweierlei war mir interessant zu
beobachten, erstens nämlich, daß das Wüstenleben sich bis auf
wenige Meilen vor Damaskus erstreckt, eine Tatsache, die mir
früher, als ich auf der Hauptstraße reiste, entgangen war, und
zweitens, daß der Friede des Sultans, wenn man es überhaupt
Friede nennen kann, fast an den Mauern der syrischen Hauptstadt
aufhört. Wir kreuzten den Nahr el 'Awadj, den alten Pharpar, und
erreichten kurz nach Mittag das zirkassische Dorf Nedja. Hier
machte ich Halt, um mein Frühstück unter einigen Pappeln
einzunehmen, der ersten Baumgruppe, die ich seit meiner Abreise
von Salt gesehen.
Wie man auch nach Damaskus kommt, ob auf einem Richtweg
oder auf der Chaussee, ob vom Haurān oder von Palmyra — immer
scheint die Entfernung weiter als nach irgend einem anderen
bekannten Ort. Vielleicht liegt es daran, daß der Reisende so
begierig ist, die große, prächtige Araberstadt zu erreichen, die in
einen Kranz von Obstbäumen eingebettet liegt und von dem
Geriesel rinnenden Wassers erfüllt ist. Aber bei Geduld nimmt auch
der längste Weg endlich ein Ende, und so erreichten auch wir
endlich die Aprikosengärten und das Bawābet Ullah, die Tore Gottes,
und schritten hinein in das Meidān, das große Viertel voll Läden und
Karawansereien, das sich wie der Stiel eines großen Löffels bis in
die Schüssel hinein erstreckt, in der die Minarets und Kuppeln der
vornehmen Stadtteile liegen. Um 4 Uhr war ich im Hotel Viktoria
einquartiert und hielt die Briefe und Zeitungen eines ganzen
Monates in Händen.
 Siebentes Kapitel.
Als ich Damaskus vor fünf Jahren besuchte, war Lütticke, Chef
des Bankhauses gleiches Namens und deutscher Honorarkonsul,
mein Ratgeber und bester Freund, ein Freund, dessen Tod gewiß
von manchem Besucher Syriens beklagt wird. Durch eine ganz
zufällige Bemerkung klärte er mich darüber auf, welche Rolle die
Stadt in der arabischen Geschichte gespielt hat und noch spielt. »Ich
bin überzeugt,« sagte er, »daß Sie in und um Damaskus die edelste
arabische Bevölkerung finden, die es überhaupt gibt. Es sind dies
die Nachkommen der ursprünglichen Einwanderer, die bei der
Eroberung des Landes von der ersten großen Kriegswoge
hierhergeschwemmt wurden, und die ihr Blut fast ganz rein erhalten
haben.«
Mehr als alle anderen großen Städte muß Damaskus die
Hauptstadt der Wüste genannt werden. Bis an die Tore erstreckt sich
die Wüste, jeder Windstoß trägt ihren Atem über die Mauern, mit
jedem Kameltreiber dringt ihr Geist durch die östlichen Tore herein.
In Damaskus haben die Scheichs der reicheren Stämme ihre
Stadtwohnungen. Sie können Mohammed von den Haseneh oder
Bassān von den Beni Raschid sehen, wie er an einem schönen
Freitag im goldgestickten Mantel an den Bazars hinabstolziert. Die
purpur- und silberfarbenen Tücher, die seine Stirn schmücken, sind
mit golddurchflochtenen Kamelshaarschnuren umwunden. Sie
tragen ihre Häupter hoch, diese Herren der Wildnis, wenn sie durch
die festtägliche Menge schreiten, die sich öffnet, um ihnen Raum zu
geben, als wäre ganz Damaskus ihr eigen. Und das ist es ja
eigentlich auch, denn es war die erste Hauptstadt aller der
außerhalb der Provinz Hedschas wohnenden Beduinenkalifen und
ist der Schauplatz und die Bewahrerin der heiligsten Traditionen
Arabiens. Als eine der ersten der weltbekannten Städte fiel
Damaskus der unwiderstehlichen Tapferkeit der Wüste zum Opfer,
die Mohammed zu den Waffen gerufen, der er ein Ziel gesteckt und
einen Schlachtruf gegeben hatte, und es war die einzige, die unter
der Herrschaft des Islam ebenso bedeutend blieb, wie sie während
des römischen Kaiserreichs gewesen. Mu'āwiyah machte es zu
seiner Hauptstadt, und es verblieb in dieser Würde, bis etwa neunzig
Jahre später das Haus Ummayah gestürzt wurde. Es war die letzte
mohammedanische Hauptstadt, die in Übereinstimmung mit den
Traditionen der Wüste herrschte. Persische Generale setzten die
Beni Abbās auf ihren Thron in Mesopotamien, persischer und
türkischer Einfluß begann in Bagdad vorzuherrschen, und mit ihm
schlich sich der so verhängnisvolle Luxus ein, den die Wüste nie
gekannt, und dem auch die früheren Kalifen nicht gehuldigt haben,
die ihre Ziegen noch selbst melkten und ihre Siegesbeute unter die
Gläubigen verteilten. Schien doch selbst der Boden von
Mesopotamien eine Luft auszuströmen, die keine Mannhaftigkeit
aufkommen ließ. Die alten Geister der babylonischen und
assyrischen Palastintrige entstiegen ihren schmutzigen Gräbern
wieder und versuchten, mächtig im Bösen, den Soldatenkalifen zu
stürzen, ihn seiner Rüstung zu entkleiden und ihm Hände und Füße
mit Fesseln von Gold und Seide zu binden. Damaskus, das von dem
frischen, reinigenden Wüstenwind durchfegte, kannte das alles nicht,
es hatte das Reich des Propheten mit dem an spartanische Strenge
gemahnenden Geist der früheren Tage regiert. Kein Parvenü, wie die
Hauptstädte am Tigris, hatte es Könige und Kaiser in seinen Mauern
gesehen, den Unterschied zwischen Kraft und Schwäche kennen
gelernt und erprobt, welcher Weg zur Herrschaft und welcher zur
Sklaverei führt.
 In der palmyrischen Wüste.

Bei meiner Ankunft wurde ich mit der Nachricht begrüßt, daß Se.
Exzellenz, Nāzim Pascha, der Generalgouverneur von Syrien, sich
in großer Erregung über meine Reise in den Haurān befinde, ja
gerüchtweise verlautete sogar, daß der vielbeschäftigte und sich in
schwieriger Stellung befindende Herr über mein plötzliches
Erscheinen in Salchad ungewöhnlich ärgerlich gewesen und sich ins
Bett verfügt habe, sobald ich den Bereich von Jūsef Effendis
wachsamen Augen verlassen. Andere freilich vermuteten den
wahren Grund von Sr. Exzellenz plötzlichem Unwohlsein in dem
Wunsch, nicht an der Trauerfeier für den Großfürsten Sergius
teilnehmen zu müssen. Sei dem, wie ihm wolle, am Tage meiner
Ankunft schickte mir der Vāli einen sehr höflichen Brief, in dem er die
Hoffnung ausdrückte, daß ich ihm das Vergnügen meiner
Bekanntschaft zuteil werden lasse.