Tea with a terrorist: my encounter with “American Jihadi”, Eric Harroun

Isa and the two Gypsies were crowding around the table in the lobby of the hostel. Capo was shuffling the cards furiously and Sylvia had lit up another cigarette and glanced over to me. Isa was sitting with one of those electric water heaters plugged to an adapter, warming water for tea. “Come sit down, my life”, Isa said to me kindly. She called everyone she knew love. A Latin trait, although she was technically Dutch, she was the least Dutch person I had met. Born to a French father and a Dutch mother, her dark black hair made a strong contrast with a her pale but tattooed face. I sat down and and asked in Spanish to Capo what he was playing. He mumbled something in Romanian and reached for a cigarette. Capo and Sylvia were a married couple from Romania originally, Roma Gypsies who’d befriended Isa while “working” in Norway. They were both of the Kalderash tribe, and to many of this stripe, working had a different meaning than it did to outsiders. Sylvia would beg on the streets and Capo was engaged in more creative endeavors, for which he’d served multiple prison sentences in Norway and Sweden for. He didn’t mind Norwegian prisons and said he was likely to go back one day. They had both lived in Italy for a time and would cross their Romanian with Italian, making sure I got the message.  <a href="https://medium.com/@BlueReports/tea-with-a-terrorist-my-run-in-with-american-jihadi-eric-harroun-3b4b1daf0a9e">Learn More</a>