Somewhere in the Unknown World

by Kao Kalia Yang

  All the adults around me are crying, eyes trained to the base of the tree. All of a sudden, I hear their sniffles, wails, hiccups, blowing noses, swallowed cries. I shift around in the arms holding me. I can feel the stiffness of her hold, then hesitance, and then give. I see the rectangle of dug earth in the ground, the pile of the red and yellow dirt of Mogadishu by its side. I see the open coffin, the rigid body of my uncle inside it, his eyes closed to the brightness of the day, his face as gray as the remnants of last night’s fire in the dawn.

  Night after night, Awo wakes up from this dream. Her fear of the dogs is not enough to wake her but the sorrow evoked by the still figure of her uncle does.

  She sits up in her single bed by the wall. She can hear the steady breathing of her sisters in their full bed by the other wall. Between the two beds, there’s a small space of carpet, big enough for a slim body to walk through. Awo calms her racing heart by mirroring the breaths of her sleeping sisters, in then out, in then out. Her stiff body softens once she is conscious of the even rise and fall of her chest. She lies back down.

  The room is dark and full of sleep. Her sisters’ breathing is rhythmic and deep. Awo knows she will have to get up and prepare for the day soon. The family will go to the mosque and commune with other Somali people, eat and talk, listen and learn, and pray. Sunday will run by in a rush and then it will be Monday again. Another week of school awaits. Wait. It is summertime now. They don’t have school. Instead, Awo has her internship at the medical clinic in Edina. She gets paid a real check every two weeks. Although only a sophomore in high school, Awo helps her mother take care of her younger siblings now. Awo shakes her head to clear away the remains of the dream.

  Awo reaches for her phone, tucked beneath her soft pillow. She presses a button and the screen lights up. A photograph of her mother smiling appears. It’s only three in the morning. Awo goes online. She visits YouTube and looks for a video of the sound of ocean waves hitting the beach. The weight of the phone on her chest, Awo keeps her body straight but turns her head toward the wall. She wiggles her right foot out from under the comforter so that it touches the cool wall. She closes her eyes, and the sound of the ocean lulls Awo to sleep once again; she has no memories of visiting the sea, despite having been born in Mogadishu, a coastal city—she left too early to remember.

  In the morning, in their small kitchen, her mother is making fresh kimis, rolling out dough, cooking the circles of flat dough on a pan. Awo stands before the stove and uses a spatula to flip the flat bread sizzling in olive oil. She mentions the recurring dream to her mother. The woman in the brown hijab is moving quickly, the circles of dough ready for the pan stacking up in front of her, but Awo knows she is listening. When the last ball of dough is flattened, she wipes her hands on a dish towel and says, “That is not a dream, Awo. That dream comes from your life. The courtyard you described was our house in Mogadishu. Those were our dogs, and the funeral, that funeral was the funeral of your uncle.”

  Awo wants to ask her mother more questions but there is no time and she is more concerned about the older woman than her own curiosity. She does not want to revive the old hurts. Awo knows the answers will make her mother sad. She knows how hard her mother tries not to be sad in front of her and her siblings. It is too early in the day for tears. Awo can’t bear the thought of ever causing her mother pain.

  The younger siblings enter the kitchen and living area one by one, first the sisters and then the brothers. Everyone situates themselves at the round table. The tea kettle on the stove lets out its morning whistle. Awo moves quickly to prepare the family’s morning tea carefully, her tapered fingers and slender hands dancing in the air as she moves between the kettle and the cups.

  At the table, Awo serves cups of hot tea for everyone. The family passes around olive oil and a jar of honey. Awo’s favorite way to eat morning kimis is to spread olive oil on the bread and then dribble it with honey. She rolls the spongey bread on her plate and then eats delicately, taking sips of hot tea with milk in between bites. There is a quiet in the apartment in the mornings. Awo savors the calm and makes a firm decision to let go of the dream.

  On the bus to Edina, Awo finds herself trying to remember the last time her mother cried.

  The family’s journey away from Somalia is a story Awo knows only in bits and pieces. Memories play in her mind like scenes from a silent movie, with a simultaneous time line that moves toward her mother’s past and her own future, both shrouded in mystery.

  It was hot in Nairobi, Kenya. The family had been in the country for several years. Maryam was only in her early thirties and pregnant when she’d arrived with her three oldest children. Her youngest wasn’t even conceived yet.

  The children saw the city only from their rooftop apartment. Awo has no memories of making her way through the busy streets below.

  Her maternal grandmother hung laundry to dry on the clotheslines strung across the rooftop. The colorful hijabs and the white cotton macawiis flapped in the wind like sails. Awo and her younger brother Mohamed played a game between the hanging sheets. Beneath the hot sun, the damp sheets were cool. The children laughed as they chased each other up and down the lines of clothes, caught up in the magic of their world sandwiched between the expanse of sky and cement.

  Awo was chasing Mohamed. He ran between the sheets, from one end of the rooftop to the other. He was leaping like a gazelle. Awo chased as fast as she could. He grabbed on to a metal rod at the edge of the cement wall that kept the children safe from a long fall. A sheet blew into Awo’s face. She shoved it aside with both hands—in time to see the metal rod turn and her eight-year-old brother swing off the roof. He held fast, his legs kicking at the air below. Neither of them made a sound. Then Awo heard the sound of the rod breaking. Mohamed flew before her eyes. She jumped after him, her hands cutting through air toward the boy who had become a blur of legs. She caught his ankle, one ankle in both hands. The young girl braced a bare foot against the cement wall and pulled. Awo swayed with the weight of her brother and felt her arms grow taut as she held tight with all the strength of her ten-year-old body and prayed to Allah. Mohamed’s chin connected with the hard side of the building as Awo pulled him back onto the roof. Blood and tears soaked his face. Once she had wrestled him over the edge, she pulled him close to her neck, both of them too stunned to make a sound. Awo thanked Allah for her name that day; Awo means “lucky” in the Somali language.

  The two siblings stood on that roof shaking with their luck.

  Below them, on the street, the people were poor. Kenya was a kind country that had opened its doors to many of its African neighbors whose countries were ravaged by war and death. Its city streets were teeming with impoverished people in despair.

  Awo and Mohamed were not poor children. They were the children of professionals. They, the three oldest, had a special tutor who visited their apartment each weekday to help prepare them with English lessons, for their lives across the ocean. Beyond their education, they were well fed, unlike many of the children who wandered the streets. Each night they slept in the safety of their apartment, cognizant of other children on the streets below. They did not know that some of those children found sleep each night only when they had placed heavy stones or bricks across their thin, shriveled bellies to quiet the cries for food in the darkened alleys of the city. Awo and Mohamed knew they were the fortunate ones, even in light of the near-death experience Mohamed had just survived.

  Awo dried Mohamed’s tears with gentle fingers. They held each other as they made their way into the apartment, his head resting awkwardly on her thin shoulder; the boy was nearly as tall as his sister despite a difference in age of two years. The pair took careful steps across the hot rooftop, now caught in roles they’d not quite envisioned. He clutched her middle tight. Awo felt like her mother; she had saved a life.

  While Awo’s mother hardly ever talked of the past, she carried herself as someone in the business of saving lives. She split her time taking ca
re of the youngest girls, the little girl she’d given birth to in Kenya and then the new arrival, conceived during one of the rare visits from Awo’s father, and thinking of a plan for the future. She was concerned, because the new babies were not included in the original paperwork when the family had first entered Kenya and registered as refugees of war. When the applications were approved, Awo’s mother faced a devastating decision: to come to America with her three oldest and leave her two youngest behind, or to stay in Kenya and try to attain paperwork for the two new ones—knowing their presence would be challenging to explain in the context of a war and a husband who was not supposed to be traveling across borders for visits with his family. In the end, Awo’s mother decided that her oldest children deserved a life beyond the rooftop of the apartment in Kenya. She phoned Awo’s father and told him that the family would be separated: she and the three oldest would leave for America; Ayan would live with him and his parents; and little Saredo would be sent to Maryam’s home village to be cared for by her beloved stepmother. She quieted his protest, reminding him that it was her stepmother who had taken care of her as a child and was fully equipped to do the same with her own child. She reminded him of a simple fact that they both believed deeply: “Life is too valuable to face with fear.”

  On the day the family was scheduled to leave for America, Awo’s mother, with her hair done, her makeup on, her clothes flowing around her slender body, cuddled the baby to her breast. Their flight was scheduled for the evening. The woman spent all day, from sunup until sundown, crooning to the baby girl in her arms, “Saredo, eat, my little one, eat as much breast milk as you can. You will need it in the days ahead.”

  Just before the family had to leave for the airport, their grandmother quietly approached Awo’s mother and took the sleeping child from her arms. Awo’s mother went to Ayan, the toddler girl, and held her for a moment, touched her cheek tenderly, before carrying her down the steps of the apartment building. In the street a car waited to take them back to Somalia. Awo and her brothers watched from the rooftop as their mother helped their grandmother and her youngest girls settle into the car. She did not cry. She simply waved.

  Awo’s mother did not cry later when the family went to the airport. As Awo peered out the round window of the plane during takeoff, she was filled with a sense of excitement and dread. Her mother sat across the aisle, an arm wrapped around sleeping Mohamud, the youngest boy, head leaned back with her eyes closed. She did not cry when they arrived in cold Minnesota or when the landlord opened the door to their small apartment and the stench of dust and old cigarette smoke greeted them.

  Later, when it was just the family, the hanging telephone on the wall in the kitchen and a long-distance phone card, Awo’s mother told her father, “The trip here was fine. We are fine. The apartment will work. I will take care of these three. You take care of those two.”

  Her voice was firm, not mad but tight, when she had to remind him that there was no use talking about other possibilities or options. She had pushed for and they had made the best possible choices for the future of their children, the future of the family. She gentled her voice, saying, “One day, when Somalia is peaceful again, we will all return—not as some relic of the worst years of the war, but as responsible adults who have made the most of our lives far away.”

  Awo’s mother did not cry when the people on the streets of Minneapolis gesticulated with their hands and feet at her as if she were stupid and uneducated because she knew little English. She pretended she didn’t understand the signals they threw at her or hear the volume of the words thrown at her, or understand their intentions.

  Shortly after their arrival, Awo’s mother made sure the children were enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Awo was put in the seventh grade, Mohamed in fifth grade. Mohamud, who had been a middle child, was all of a sudden the youngest child, and he was placed in the lowest grade: third. With the help of other Somali refugees, Awo’s mother enrolled in an English as a Second Language class at the International Institute of Minnesota, a brown building across the street from the state fairgrounds in St. Paul.

  In six months, Awo’s mother was able to take the intermediate English classes. She took advantage of the work-training program in nursing assistance and received her certification. She found a job at a Methodist senior care center on the night shift.

  During the day, Awo’s mother made her children’s favorite foods. The small apartment was filled with the scent of the spices the family knew from home: cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, clove, coriander, and black pepper. She made kimis that they ate through the day. In the mornings, they ate them with olive oil and honey or ghee and sugar. During lunch they used them as bread to dip into savory chicken stew and other leftovers from the night before. A couple of times a week, for dinner, Awo’s mother made the children’s favorite dish, suugo suqaar, Somali spaghetti, and they used the kimis to mop up the sauce.

  Awo’s mother became an expert in navigating public transportation. She knew the bus routes and taught her children how to use them. The family took the bus to buy groceries from the Somali stores and the regular American food stores. Together, they sat or stood during rush hour, leaning on one another for stability. Awo’s mother proved to her children and herself that she would lead them where they needed to go; even if she was not at the helm, she would be their navigator.

  Throughout all of this, Awo never once saw her mother cry.

  Throughout Awo’s day, answering phones, greeting clients, learning how to track patient records on the computer, she keeps thinking: I’ve never seen my mother cry, I’ve never seen my mother cry. How many people can say this?

  * * *

  I’m walking through fog.

  They are arguing, my mother and father. They don’t do this often. This is not a normal occurrence in my life.

  She is telling him we have to leave for America, for our education, for the future. She is telling him that no price is too high to pay for our eventual success.

  He wants her to stay. He wants his children close. He is comfortable driving the distance—when possible—from Buuhoodle to Laascaanood. There is a future in Somalia. They have parents. Their parents have land and animals. The children can grow up and become good adults like us, still. Their educations have not been interrupted. They will be fine.

  She will not hear any of it. Her voice is steel. It can cut. It will cut. It will make such a clean cut through my father’s heart that he will not be able to feel it until we are gone.

  I’m staring at a wall.

  I see my mother and father on this day as characters in a mural. She is wearing black and he is wearing white. There is no setting, no sun, no moon, no other characters, just the two of them on the white wall of my childhood. He is smaller. He is in the background. She looms large. She’s beautiful and wise and she stands so tall and elegantly, her head high, facing the blank future, unafraid.

  She tells him, “I will come back one day. We will buy land, enough to build five houses. The children will live in those houses. We will be together again in Buuhoodle.”

  He tells her, “I am a man. I am a husband. I am a father. If you go away, if you take the children, what is left of me?”

  She says, “You are a doctor as you were when I met you. Your first duty is to take care of those in front of you. I am a nurse. My duty is to assist your work to the best of my ability.”

  His exhausted sigh, his defeated sigh, my father, just a man in white, his hands parted, palms open, a gesture always of welcome, of goodwill. He is a warrior fighting the good fight, not with a sword, but with his steadfast obedience to my mother’s vision of the world.

  The fog grows thick and it grows thin as I grow up and grow older.

  * * *

  Later that day, Awo’s mother is preparing dinner for them before she leaves for work. The older woman holds a knife in one hand and a peeled onion in the other. She cuts the onion in half. She sits the two halves on the cutting board, flat s
ide down. Within minutes, there’s a pile of cubed onion on the cutting board. The onion fumes make Awo’s eyes water. Her mother blinks away the tears. She looks up to see Awo crying and smiles.

  Awo is grateful. She is lucky to be so well loved. She waits by her mother’s side, much like her father from his place in Somalia. Like her father, Awo will do what her mother wishes in the end. She smiles back at the woman whose image is blurry in the wash of liquid falling from her eyes.

  Together, Awo and her brothers go to school every single day they can. When they struggle, they go to the public library, where a retired tutor, an old woman with curly white hair, helps all the Somali children. The tutor is a little plump and wears cream-colored orthopedic shoes. She wears colorful pieces of jewelry, big, heavy-looking bracelets made of painted ceramic, and heavy-heavy-looking necklaces that sit around her thin neck like a collar. At the library, the children not only find help for their schoolwork, but they find entertainment in the books on the shelf or, best of all, with other Somali children.

  The children watch television only on Saturdays, between six a.m. and twelve p.m. Awo and her brothers sit together on the one couch in the living area and take turns managing the remote control. None of them fight. No one wants to disturb the fragile system on which their whole lives are hinged—the equilibrium of their mother.

  Every Saturday and Sunday, the family goes to the mosque with other Somali people. Awo’s mother relaxes with the community around her. She talks. She laughs. She comes up with ideas. When a new family joins the mosque, she leads the charge to go and buy them dishes, fill their fridge, and find them suitable clothes for the seasons. On the weekends, Awo’s mother gets to take care of other people, and her children all bask in the attention their mother receives.