One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad Page A

Anders lived, theboundary ran along the tram line. It was wisest to stay on the right side of it. Skøyen, Hoff, Majorstua, Marienlyst and Tåsen were all controlled by different gangs, most of them based on ethnicity, and if any of them needed help they would call in their relations from the East End.
    A new term entered the Norwegian vocabulary in the 1990s: child robbery. Gangs would board the underground inthe east, cross the city centre and emerge in the west. It was boys against boys, kids against kids. And the kids of Ris had lots of things the kids from the satellite towns wanted. The worst thing was when the gangs decided you were ‘indebted’. There was nothing for it but to pay up. A debt often arose out of thin air, or on spurious grounds like ‘You looked at me. Now you owe me.’ One of the gangmight give you a shove and say you were in the way, and as a punishment you would have to pay.
    Nobody squealed to the police. You didn’t dare.
    It was best to cross to the other side of the street when you saw certain Pakistanis or Somalis in a bunch, or get off the underground at the next stop if they were patrolling through the carriages.
    The Norwegians got called potatoes.
    Fucking darkies,they shouted back.
    Yogurtface!
    Bloody Pakis!
    Anders felt most at home with the brownies.
    *   *   *
    One day, Morg tagged the windows of the headmaster’s office at Ris with spaghetti stripes. Knut Egeland, who demanded almost military discipline of his pupils and often came to school in uniform, was determined to reprimand him. The headmaster came into the classroom where Anders was sittingat his desk before a lesson and punched him in the chest. It was a blow with some force to it. Anders got to his feet and asked if he shouldn’t return the punch.
    ‘Hit me if you dare,’ replied Egeland. It took a little while, as if Anders were thinking it over, and then he punched the headmaster in the chest, right on his pacemaker. Egeland rocked backwards while the teacher and the other pupilslooked on in shock. The old man recovered and hissed, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ before walking out of the room.
    Respect, that was what that punch gave Anders.
    The little kids in Skøyen looked up to Morg; they knew that ‘last night Morg was here, and here, and there’. He had style, he had attitude. His letters were pointed at the top, rounded at the bottom and had forward-slopingshadows. Great shapes, the younger boys thought. Morg used loads of colour, often lots of different ones, at least three or four, and he favoured soft, pastel shades.
    The colours varied, depending on the spray cans available. Among the taggers, the rule was that the paint had to be stolen. They stole it from petrol stations and building suppliers, especially from the big chains, not from thelittle shops – that was seen as uncool. The boys crept into the stores like thin, hooded shadows, prowled along the shelves and made sure a can or two fell into their rucksacks before coolly going to the counter to buy a cola, or they might simply grab a couple of aerosols and run. The spray cans were expensive, about a hundred kroner each. You needed at least three to four to create a decent piece,not even a particularly big one. Some walls took more paint than others: old stone walls soaked up the spray paint like mad, but for smoother surfaces like buses and trams you didn’t need as much.
    Anders didn’t want to steal. He wanted to buy. Go to the checkout and pay.
    In Denmark the spray cans were a quarter of the price. Morg, Spok and Wick made a plan to catch the ferry over to Copenhagen;they would only need to be away for two nights and they told their parents they were staying over at each other’s. Altogether they bought almost three hundred cans, lugging heavy bags home with them on the ferry. As the ship pulled out of the harbour, the fourteen-year-olds’ names were called over the loudspeaker system. There was nothing for it but to