It was late afternoon before they finally drove into a town. On the outskirts, two or three children ran alongside the truck. They were joined by more people, and still more; by the time the truck stopped in the center of town it was surrounded by an excited crowd. People pressed their hands against the windows, and some scrambled onto the truck’s nose, others onto the ledge at the rear. Most were children, but Asad was shocked to see that many were not; there were elderly women thumping the windows and middle-aged men tapping the sides of the truck with sticks. The thought of climbing down terrified him. What if he lost Rooda in the mob? As the others opened their doors, Asad remained frozen in his seat.
Rooda, the deni, and Bille Dheer got out of the cabin, and as they moved off they resembled the corpses of large cockroaches or locusts, carried away by swarms of flies. The cafeteria where they chose to eat was in sight of the truck, and Asad watched in amazement as it filled with dozens upon dozens of people. At one point, Rooda came into clear view; he was sitting at a table eating his meal, and the people around him were quite literally reaching for his plate with their hands.
Asad sat there frozen. There was no way he was going to venture out of the truck. He feared that the crowd would rip a limb from his torso, that he would stand and watch helplessly as dozens of mouths gnawed at his severed arm. And so he waited, his hunger mounting, his hands running urgently against the plastic of the car seats.
When they had finished eating, the three men returned to the truck. Rooda started the engine and had to move at a crawl, his way blocked by the crowds. On the outskirts of the town, they had still not shaken everybody off; a few stragglers jogged alongside the truck on either side. One of them scrambled onto the side of the vehicle, and the deni leaned out of the window and shouted blue murder until the intruder let go and tumbled into the dust.
They were out in open desert once again. The hours passed, and Rooda chewed his mira and drank his Coke and laughed his laugh. Not once did he turn around and look at Asad. The garrulous man, so pleased to be on the road, had forgotten his charge.
It was very late by the time they stopped again, close to midnight, as Asad recalls. They were in a tiny village. Asad turned out his pockets and found that he had one hundred twenty shillings, enough for a glass of camel milk and no more. There was one remaining canteen open, and he went there and bought his milk and sat down. He had taken but a sip when Rooda came striding up to him.
“Before he started speaking, I knew he was furious,” Asad recalls. “It was such a shock seeing Rooda’s face angry. I had never seen that face before without its smile around the eyes. It was like another person had jumped inside Rooda and taken over his face. I think I stopped breathing.”
“Where have you been all day?” Rooda shouted. “Did you not have lunch?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of all the people.”
“You must follow me, Asad! I have a hundred people falling over me. I cannot remember you when it is like that. You must follow me, always, always, always, you must follow me. Do you understand?”
Asad thought that Rooda might lay his hands on his throat and throttle him. But instead he turned around and stormed off.
As Asad watched Rooda recede into the night his shock gave way to a feeling of lightness. Sitting there alone with his glass of milk, he suddenly felt unfathomably merry. His mouth widened into a grin. Here was an adult who grew angry because he worried about Asad. It had been a long time since he had confronted such anger. He pictured himself grinning, as if he were watching his own face from the other side of the table, and he felt foolish.
—
“I traveled with Rooda for a year and a half,” Asad tells me, “until I was fifteen or sixteen. I grew up. I became tall. I became strong. I could pick up a truck’s wheel by the time I left.”
He describes his development as physical, but it was much more than that. To live one’s life on an Ogadeni truck was to be at the center of the universe. You were in the business of moving things and people, and everybody wanted to have something or somebody moved. As Asad went about his work, the world came to him. Young people, in particular, were drawn to trucks, for to be young in the Ogaden was to need urgently to get somewhere and yet to have no means to do so. The truck stops in the Ogadeni towns swarmed with the young, and there wasn’t a soul among them who did not need to befriend Asad. Everybody wanted to be close to this boy who moved. Perhaps he would put in a good word with the deni and get one a free place on the roof of the truck.
In his memory, he was kind to everyone who came his way. He would share money freely whenever Rooda or the deni filled his pockets. He enjoyed being a person of consequence. It made him feel magnanimous and good-spirited. He would ride with people on the roof of the truck and talk and talk. He remembers these as the best conversations of his life.
“All we had was time,” he recalls. “Those journeys would go on for hours and hours and there was nothing to do but talk. And when talk is given freedom it goes everywhere. You find out about so many lives, about so many things.”
I ask him to recall one of these conversations. He thinks for a moment, and then smirks into his chin and chuckles.
“We would return to Wardheer every few weeks. When it was time to leave, I would allow Tube and Zena and Abdi onto the truck until we were out in the desert, and then they would jump off and go home. One time, Zena was in a very good mood, and he started to imitate all the adults in the town. We had to guess who he was imitating. He was so brilliant, we got it right every time. We were laughing and laughing there on top of the truck, and we lost track of time. When we realized, it was too late. To walk back to Wardheer all these miles, the boys would have died of thirst. So I banged on the roof of the cabin and told Rooda that we had to turn around, and the deni got so angry it looked like his eyes would explode. Zena turned his back to the deni and made these exploding eyes, and everyone on the roof laughed, which made the deni even angrier.”
His lightness has filled my car, and we are smiling at each other and enjoying ourselves. He has more stories.
“At night,” he continues, “Rooda and the deni would sleep in the town, and Bille Dheer and me with the truck. Because he was senior, Bille Dheer made his bed in the cabin. I made mine on the roof. The first time it rained at night, I lay there. I felt the drops hitting my head like someone was punching me. There was no way Bille Dheer would let me sleep with him in the cabin, even if it was raining stones. I was thinking of maybe going to sleep under the truck, in the dirt, on the ground, when, suddenly, Rooda came running.
“ ‘I was lying in bed listening to the rain,’ Rooda said, ‘when I realized I had not taught Asad how to make a tent on the roof of the truck.’ ”
And there and then, in the pouring rain, Rooda showed Asad how to assemble a tent.
For some reason, the image of a tent on a truck roof amuses him, as if it is comically out of place; as if, for instance, a neighbor here in Blikkiesdorp had erected a kennel for his dog on the roof of his shack. He sits in my car and laughs out loud.
Rooda’s truck traveled an international circuit over and again during the eighteen or so months Asad was with him. He lost count of how many times he went to Addis; of how often the truck crossed the border and went to Bosaso, the main port in Puntland; to Berbera, the deep-sea port in Somaliland; and to Djibouti, whose railway line threaded south to Dire Dawa. The deni’s dealings with people who wanted their goods to cross borders were none of Asad’s business. He knew not to watch, not to ask, and not to look interested. I saw for myself some fifteen years later how delicate these matters are. After searching in vain for more than half a day, I discovered the truck stop in Dire Dawa where Asad slept whenever he was in town. Many trucks were parked on the side of the road, and some of them looked exactly like the one Asad had described to me. Excited by my find, I immediately put my camera to my face a
nd began clicking. Within moments, the air was humming with muttered discontent, and I slipped my camera back into my bag and threw up my arms in apology.
Asad was permitted to take an interest in uncontentious cargo.
“There was often drought somewhere in the Ogaden,” he recalls. “The Ethiopian government would give food aid. The trucks get notice, they go to Addis or to Dire Dawa to pick up food supplies, then they go off into the Ogaden. About forty trucks will go. You arrive at your destination, and the truck is mobbed by hungry people. The Ethiopian army is there, and they hit a couple of people with their rifle butts until everyone calms down.
“Sometimes, we transported subag, which is pure butter, straight from the sheep or cow. Also, we transported hides. And masago, which is a starch that grows in East Africa. And livestock itself: sheep and goats. When there is no order, the truck is free for anyone to hire. Sometimes it is empty. Then we just transport people, but there is not much money in that.”
As ever, I am interested in how the politics of the region shaped Asad’s experience on the truck; and, as always, I have to push him, asking pointed, detailed questions about the officials they met at the sides of the road.
“The best was traveling in Ethiopia,” Asad says, “because the police and the army are very disciplined. The Ethiopian government is very strong. There is no space for the police to ask for a bribe. It never happened. Not even once. But when you cross the border and are in Somaliland or Puntland, there is trouble. In Somaliland, the police want bribes. It is sometimes hard to tell whether they are actually police, but you pay them anyway. But it is not so bad. You pay them, and they let you move on. Puntland, brother, is another story. There are lots and lots of roadblocks, and you pay a lot of money. And in each town, there is a group of Somalis called qaaqlayaal. They are not police. They are not anything. They are just very violent people, and they demand certain money. The deni must pay up. If he refuses, he is going to get hurt. Once, they asked for a lot of money, a lot of money, brother. And the deni hesitated; just for a moment, he thought about it. And one of the qaaqlayaal hit him hard on the front of the nose. The deni fell over and slowly got up again, and there was blood pouring. And the qaaqlayaal said, ‘I have punished you for thinking. Now pay.’ ”
I press him about Ethiopia. “You say the armed forces didn’t ask for bribes,” I begin, “but surely they gave you other trouble, especially in the Ogaden, where there was armed resistance to Ethiopian rule.”
He nods and, for the first time during his account of his time on the truck, begins speaking in the future tense, as if he is talking hypothetically about events that have not actually happened.
“The army will stop you and ask if you have seen rebels on the road. Sometimes they will keep you a long time. A little later, the rebels will stop you and ask whether you have seen the soldiers. They are very serious people. Both try to get real information from you. If they feel you are hiding information or lying, they get very tough with you. They unload the truck. They interrogate you individually and privately. They take two or three people off the truck, and you never see them again. Whether they end up at home in one piece one cannot know. Several times, the deni or Rooda was beaten. You have no recourse; there is nobody to complain to. You must be honest both with the government and with the rebels. If you take sides, you are in trouble. Tell both sides what you know. That is the best policy. Don’t play games with anybody. If they are genuinely scared—if they think that the other side is nearby—the interrogations are very scary.”
His account is quick and stylized, like a story written on a surface of slick, shiny steel. People get taken away, never to be seen again, and then the tale slides on, as if it cannot stop for anything, no matter how alarming or dramatic. I try to think of ways to slow it down.
“What language did the soldiers interrogate people in?” I ask. “Were they fluent in Somali?”
“The soldiers do not speak Somali,” he says. “They interrogate you in the Amharic language. Some speak Oromo. A few of the soldiers know Somali, but when they are interrogating people, they speak in their own language, and they use interpreters. It makes the whole situation more uncertain. I learned a little Amharic in Ethiopia, but not much, not like English or Swahili. And so they are talking among themselves, and you do not know what they are planning for you, and everyone gets scared.”
—
What he remembers above all from this time is being dirty. He was always covered in grass or in oil.
“In big towns like Jigjiga you can buy a shower. Some people build a business that is only showers. It is not just for travelers. In the heat of the day, the whole town comes to cool off. The showers are equipped with hair oil, a comb, a drinking glass, a mirror. You drive all day, arrive in a town, the driver and the deni go off immediately. They come back later with pretty faces, fresh clothes. You still stink. You are still full of grass. One of the reasons I gave up the truck was the desire to be clean.”
Qorahay
Asad was on the roof of the truck talking to travelers when one of them mentioned in passing that they had just entered Qorahay. Asad snapped his head up and looked about him. All around was desert. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
“What is Qorahay?” he asked.
“It is a region,” the traveler replied, “a region of the Ogaden. It has a town called Qabridahre and a few villages. Otherwise it is just nomads.”
And then the specifics melt away.
“I looked around Qorahay,” Asad tells me, “and there was nothing.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Did you inquire about your father?”
“During my time with Rooda, we went to Qabridahre maybe three times,” he says. “There was nothing there.”
—
We do not talk about Qorahay again for a long time. And then I go to East Africa and to London, and I return with a slippery, difficult gift—some knowledge of Asad’s family history.
We are in my car, as usual, but, for once, we are not outside Asad’s shack. When I phoned in the morning, he said to meet him in Bellville Town Centre, for he had business there.
We met in a crowded place and strolled for some time, and then we sat in a Somali restaurant and drank coffee. But the surroundings unsettled us, and our conversation slid and drifted. Our interviews had come to require their own space, it seemed, and that space was the interior of a car. We made our way to the lot where I had parked and resumed our usual positions, I in the driver’s seat taking notes, Asad in the passenger seat.
I have resolved to tell him baldly and simply what I have discovered. And so I describe my meeting with Sheikh Hussein, the London cabdriver. I tell him that Sheikh Hussein’s father and Asad’s grandfather grew up together in Marsin, a village in Qorahay.
He nods and says he knows of that village; he passed through it with Rooda.
I tell him that his parents were married sometime in the 1970s in Qabridahre, exactly how long before the 1977–78 war I am not sure, but they were among the nearly one million Ogadeni who fled Ethiopia in 1978. I tell him of Sheikh Hussein’s escape from the Ogaden, of the time he spent in a refugee camp in southern Somalia, of the discrimination he and other Ogadeni refugees felt after they arrived in Mogadishu. Sheikh Hussein saw Asad’s father occasionally in the Somali capital, I say, but he left in 1981 for Egypt and lost touch.
For a long time, Asad says nothing. He folds his fingers together in his lap and stares out of the passenger-side window.
“It would have been easy,” he says eventually.
“What would have been easy?”
“Finding my family. I was told after I got to South Africa that my father had been in Qabridahre when I was living in Ethiopia. But I convinced myself that I would never have found him anyway. From what you are saying, it would have been easy. If Qabridahre is where my family is from, I could have told anyone my name, and they would have taken me to my father.”
“You were a boy on your own,” I s
ay. “You were careful not to tell anyone too much about yourself. You were protecting yourself. You were surviving. That you did not find your father makes sense.”
“No,” he replies. “I was not alone. I had Rooda. He was always asking me: ‘Who is your father? Who are you?’ It would have been easy. I was kirishbooy. I had to stay with the truck when we spent the night in Qabridahre. But I could have sent Rooda to find my father. I could have told him to ask questions when he went into town. Given what you are saying, he would have found close family within an hour of making inquiries, maybe two hours.”
“What do you think stopped you from asking him?”
He shrugs. “I was a child. I was not thinking.”
He falls silent again and resumes his contemplative posture, staring out of the window, fingers folded.
“It is so strange to think about it,” he says. “If the thought had come into my mind just once, only once; if I had watched Rooda walking into town and called him back and said: ‘Rooda, in Dire Dawa I was staying with my father’s sister and she told me maybe my father is in Qorahay. Will you ask? I will tell you my father’s and grandfather’s nicknames. I will tell you what you need to know to find him.’ If it had crossed my mind just once to ask Rooda that, my whole life would have turned out different. I would never have come here. I would be with family.”
“What happened happened,” I say.
He nods. “That is how you must think. What happened happened. If you spent your time thinking that where you are now is because of mistakes you made long ago, you would not get up in the mornings. A person cannot live like that.
“But still, it is natural to wonder. I was young back then. I was like a stone in the road. Anybody could just come along and kick me, and that would decide where I ended up.”
I begin to grow uncomfortable. The news is fresh and disorienting. It is best that he absorb it alone. Sheikh Hussein has asked me to give Asad his phone number in London. The two of them are to have a long talk. Perhaps we should resume this conversation after they have spoken. I offer to take him home.
A Man of Good Hope Page 10
