Alì told me how he’d felt when he saw me enter the gate of the stadium and how excited the crowd had been when I passed the other runners. He was all keyed up.
Now and then, as often happened, we’d run into someone who would look me up and down and, seeing me dressed as a boy, would shake his head or mutter a few words under his breath before moving on.
About halfway home we were stopped by an old man with a long beard and bony face.
After looking at me disapprovingly, he started in with the same old story. “Where are the qamar, the hijab, and the diric, huh, girlie? Did you perhaps forget to get dressed today?”
“She’s an athlete, sir,” Alì answered for me. “And she just won a race. She commands the respect that athletes deserve.”
It was the first time I heard it said publicly that I was an athlete.
The old man looked at us and rolled his eyes, not knowing what to say. “And you? If she’s an athlete, who might you be?” he asked.
“I’m her coach. And her spokesman. When this athlete becomes known throughout the world someday, you, sir, will remember this conversation.”
At that point we looked at each other and burst out laughing.
The man muttered something and walked away, shaking his head.
I had become an athlete. For the second time, from the day Alì decided that he would be my coach. But this time it was more real.
By now it was late afternoon and the wind had suddenly risen, and when the wind starts blowing, there are only two things you can do in Mogadishu: keep your mouth shut to prevent the dust from drying out your throat for the rest of your days and quickly look for shelter somewhere so you won’t get coated from head to toe.
We filled our lungs and started running home.
I wasn’t tired at all. I could have run for another ten hours straight.
All of a sudden, at the intersection with the big avenue, a copy of the newspaper Banadir plunged down from the sky like a dive-bombing meteorite, carried from somewhere by the wind.
It hit me right on the shoulder, then fell to the ground, open to a full-size photo of a young man who immediately looked familiar.
Curious, I bent to grab the paper before it flew away again.
It was the face of Mo Farah, the runner who’d left Mogadishu when he was more or less my age to seek refuge in England; there a proficient coach was leading him to win numerous major races.
He had always been one of my heroes, someone to look up to. Born in Somalia like me, he had gone on to run and win throughout the world.
News of his victories and his talent often reached us.
Whenever I listened to something about him on the radio at Taageere’s bar or heard someone mention his name, I felt my stomach clench, due partly to anger, because he had managed to get away, and partly to never-ending admiration, so boundless it made me dream of becoming like him.
The headline said that Mo was a champion and that Somalia had made him flee.
Alì was already far ahead of me; he had continued running. I snatched the page hastily, folded it, and followed Alì home.
As I ran I thought that Mo’s face, which had looked at me in the wind, must be a sign.
A medal in one hand and a folded sheet of newspaper in the other, I let myself be carried along, transported lightly by the squally gusts.
When we got home, Alì told everybody about my victory before making the rounds to display the trophy.
Hooyo was moved, and Hodan and Hamdi teased her, imitating her wiping away her tears with a handkerchief and then blowing her nose with a big spluttering honk.
Nassir and Ahmed were also there, in a corner near the wall, sitting on the ground playing griir. Ahmed. It had been a while since I’d seen him; he didn’t come to the courtyard so often anymore.
When Alì got to them with the medal in his hand, Ahmed didn’t even raise his head from the pebbles. Nassir glanced at his little brother and then went back to talking to his friend.
Alì stood there frozen. Both Ahmed’s and Nassir’s eyes looked cruel, hostile, the pupils dilated.
Yassin had been watching the whole scene from the table where he was playing cards with Aabe. “Pay attention to your brother, Nassir,” his father shouted to him from there.
Nassir and Ahmed gave no sign that they were even present.
They went on with their slow, mechanical gestures, as if the world around them didn’t exist, as if we were all mere shadows in their minds.
“Nassir! I told you not to ignore Alì!” Yassin shouted louder, rising menacingly from his chair.
Nassir looked up in slow motion and said, in a deliberate monotone: “I saw, Aabe, I saw it. Calm down. It’s Samia’s medal. The one she won today. I saw it. Sorry, but it doesn’t interest me much. Don’t get riled up over such a little thing. Go back to your card game.”
Yassin stared at him bitterly, then looked disheartened. He mumbled something under his breath about Ahmed and waved a hand as if to say, The hell with him. Then he sat down again.
From where I was I heard him confide to Aabe: “I can’t do it alone. Without my Yasmin, every now and then I feel like I just can’t do it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Aabe told him. “You just have to forbid Nassir from seeing that friend of his.”
Then Aabe called Alì, who had been standing stock still in the middle of the courtyard.
Without saying a word, Alì came over with his head down, the medal still clutched in his hand. He seemed very little. A little child. Which, in fact, he was.
Aabe and Yassin tried to tell him something to make him smile, but by now it was no use. His good mood had vanished in an instant. Seeing Ahmed was all it took.
Then Aabe clapped his hands and everyone sang a traditional hymn to my victory.
After that day, Ahmed never again showed up at our house.
That evening, after supper, there was a big party for me. Hussein, Hodan’s fiancé, who had been sitting beside her and Hooyo all evening, had brought a sesame cake that his mother had made for the occasion. If I’d won, the cake would be to celebrate; if not, to console me.
Hussein and Hodan were now talking about marriage; our two families had already met, and his family had indicated that he would soon ask for Hodan’s hand.
Aabe hadn’t had to think twice.
He liked the young man, who was already twenty, five years older than Hodan, and he also liked Hussein’s father, his daughter’s future father-in-law. A family more well off than ours. He was happy to give his consent.
Soon Hodan and Hussein would marry.
When I heard that, I got jealous; I didn’t want anyone to take my favorite sister away. But then I tried to understand. I saw that Hodan was happy, and I was happy for her.
Besides, Hussein was pleasant, polite, and always well dressed; he liked me right away and called me “champion.”
That night everyone was happy for me, but the happiest of all was Aabe, who took me aside, kissed me on the head, and whispered in my ear: “Good for you, my little one. I told you you could do it.”
Then he got up, with the help of his ever-present cane, and limped to his room. When he came back he was holding a large black plastic bag. Inside was a pair of sneakers. White. Brand new, like none I’d ever seen before.
I could have swooned with joy.
I put them on and started leaping up and down like an idiot.
Then I looked around for Alì, my coach.
He wasn’t there.
Yassin shook his head and nodded to their room.
Alì had withdrawn. Again. Ahmed’s presence had that effect on him.
At least this time he hadn’t retreated to the eucalyptus.
I approached soundlessly, and after a while I popped in, showing off the shoes.
Alì lay on his mat
tress on his stomach, his face hidden in the crook of his arm. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t answer me. I asked him if he wanted to try on the shoes, and again it was as if he hadn’t heard me.
If he hadn’t reacted to that, nothing would budge him. A pair of brand-new sneakers would normally have revived him.
It was all Ahmed’s fault.
I wanted to make Ahmed pay, even though he was good-looking enough to take my breath away. But it was my party. I was an athlete and I had won that day: Now I should just celebrate.
After two hours of dancing around and singing, I couldn’t wait to go to bed and tell Hodan about the sheet of newspaper that I had hidden under the mattress.
That afternoon, in fact, I had come home with a medal, but also with a challenge: One day I would win the Olympics and Hodan would become a famous singer, thanks in part to her husband’s family, and would compose our people’s hymn of liberation.
But unlike Mo Farah, we would both do it without leaving Somalia.
I would win wearing the blue jersey with the white star. And the same for her. We would show the way for the liberation of women and then lead our country out of war.
I was sure of it: In my heart I felt that together we had the power to change our world.
That night, in bed, I talked to her about these things.
Hodan held my hand tightly and said yes.
We would never leave Mogadishu. We would not flee. We would become the symbol of liberation. Before falling asleep I slipped the medal under the mattress and took out the page with Mo Farah’s face. I wet the four corners of the sheet with a little saliva and stuck it on the mud wall a few inches from my head.
Looking into his eyes, in silence, I made a promise to Mo Farah as well. I would become a champion like him. But he, every night, would have to remind me.
CHAPTER 8
A FEW MONTHS LATER, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, Hodan got married.
The aroos, the wedding celebration, was unforgettable. It was held in a splendid, elegantly decorated hall that Hussein’s family had rented, as was traditional. There were hours and hours of food, talk, and dancing with half the people in our neighborhood, which was the same one in which Hussein lived.
Hodan was wearing a white dress that had been our mother’s, and she was stunning, radiant. I had never seen her so beautiful.
The previous night I hadn’t slept. Not even a wink. We held each other’s hands the whole time, and when she finally fell asleep, I kept thinking that this would be the last time we’d lie so close at night. In the morning when I woke up, my eyes were swollen from crying and rimmed with dark circles.
Still, the seven days of festivities were wonderful. I had never seen anything more spectacular in my life.
We girls and Hooyo were very vibrant in our qamar, diric, and garbasar in every color of the rainbow. Veils, veils, veils. And how light and fluttery and magical all those veils were! I’ve never liked covering up my hair and body but that day, for the first time, I felt pride in wearing traditional garments.
Not that morning, though, when I was embarrassed to leave the room with everyone waiting in the courtyard to see me as they never had before.
I didn’t want to come out. There were no mirrors in the room, but even without seeing myself, I felt uncomfortable.
I was sitting on the edge of the mattress, all dressed up, when Hooyo came in.
As soon as she saw me, her lips widened in a broad smile. “You’re beautiful, my daughter. Come on, stand up.”
“I feel ridiculous, Hooyo. I don’t want to be seen like this,” I said softly as I got up.
Without saying a word she went out and came back with a white veil and a large mirror that she had borrowed from a neighbor. She arranged the white veil around my shoulders and then, with a clip, gathered my hair into a twist at the back of my head. She used a pencil to outline my eyes and applied red lipstick to my mouth. I stood motionless the whole time, like a stone statue.
Hooyo took a few steps back and repeated: “You look beautiful, my daughter. If it weren’t your sister getting married, I would say that today you look more beautiful than the bride.”
Then she picked up the mirror that she’d leaned against the wall and told me to look at myself.
I was stunned by what I saw. In the glass there was no longer a little child but a young girl with even, delicate features, beautiful.
It was me, and I was beautiful. I would never have believed it.
As soon as I stepped shyly out the door, Hodan gave me a look of pure admiration. “You’re beautiful, my little abaayo,” she said, moved, as Hooyo hastened to wipe away the tears that threatened to cause her makeup to run.
“It’s you who are beautiful, my dear young bride Hodan,” I replied, using words that are customary on a wedding day. “Don’t forget us.”
We celebrated feverishly for hours. Even Aabe danced with all of us daughters, supported by his buddy, the cane.
Then he and Hooyo danced in each other’s arms in a way that no one had ever seen; they looked like an engaged couple deeply in love. Hooyo was radiant in her white veils: In a single day she’d shed twenty years, as if she were our sister.
We carried on like that, singing and dancing, late into the night, to live niiko music played by the Shamsudiin Band. But the most moving part of the whole aroos was Hodan’s singing. As a surprise, she had written a song for each of the people she held dear. One for Hooyo, full of gentleness and gratitude; one for Aabe, full of hope and promise; one for Hussein, overflowing with pure love; and one for me, her little warrior sister. At the table we pulled out our handkerchiefs and cried like babies until she’d finished. It was a low blow, unfair; we’d make her pay.
Everyone, however, was awaiting the most entertaining moment of the wedding: testing Hussein. It’s a tradition that serves to show the bride’s family that the groom will be able to cope with any eventuality.
The most enthusiastic challenger was an uncle of Hussein’s, a very funny man, short and bald, with a long, thin mustache.
Poor Hussein had less than five minutes to obtain a basket of fresh fruit for the bride.
Outside the hall was a large field planted with watermelons. Hussein came back with a single huge watermelon. It weighed so much that his arms nearly gave out, his smile slipped, and his legs faltered.
Then he had to wring a chicken’s neck. We all went out into the garden to wait for Hussein to get up the courage to do something he’d never dared do before. His relatives explained that the hen was very old, and wringing its neck would only be doing it a favor. Hussein took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his starched shirt while the poor creature squawked and flapped around awkwardly. I kept my eyes closed the whole time, and the hen’s terrified screeches gave me goose bumps. I opened my eyes again only when I heard the final applause.
As a final test, Hussein had to prove that he was strong enough to carry Hodan to the table where Aabe and Hooyo were sitting; it was to the right of the bride and groom’s table, along an obstacle course that his cousins had set up while he was busy with the chicken. It was the last straw and Hodan, merciless, laughed and laughed.
Everything had been perfect; we were elated.
The closer we came to the end of the weeklong celebration of the aroos, however, the more I felt a pall of sadness come over me.
After tomorrow my beloved sister would no longer be with me; she would go to live in Hussein’s parents’ house. It would no longer be me she’d sing to sleep but Hussein. No longer would she hold my hand tightly; no longer would she lead me to the most wonderful dreams of hope and liberation.
She would do all these things with him.
I would have to settle for mornings.
Every day, in fact, Hodan and I continued to see each other to go to school. We met halfway between her new ho
me and ours, which were barely half a kilometer apart, and we walked the last stretch together.
She described what it was like to be a wife at sixteen and live in the home of people who loved you but who, in the end, were strangers. She told me that you had no choice but to grow up. It made me think that I certainly didn’t want to get married; each day I was more and more convinced that the only things I really wanted to be wed to were a tartan track with no holes and a good pair of running shoes with cleats. Every morning when we met, Hodan hugged me, kissed the top of my head, and told me she missed me. I admitted that since she’d gone I occasionally had bad dreams. Then she asked about everyone, about Aabe and Hooyo, about our brothers and sisters; she wanted to be filled in on every detail, even though she and Hussein came to our house for supper at least once a week.
She needed to know everything, as if we were light-years away. Her eyes flashed with impatience and nostalgia until I described every single minute of our new home life.
The school we went to wasn’t large or even attractive: The walls were peeling and the desks were worn; still, it was a school, and I liked it there. I enjoyed the classes, especially gym, where I was the best, but also arithmetic and accounting. My favorite thing of all, though, was the geometry theorems. It was amazing to learn that there were laws hidden in the world around us: in the rectangles of courtyards or in outhouse pits. Or, for example, in the circle that the burgico left on the ground after cooking. It seemed magical, and it gave me a sense of assurance. If there were rules that explained it, the universe couldn’t be so bad. Maybe someday we would come to discover the laws that led men to wage war, and when that day came we would eliminate it forever. It would be the greatest day in the history of mankind.
But the best part of school took place during recess. Hodan and I had always eaten rice and vegetables, which were never lacking, especially once Hooyo had started working. But now, since Hodan lived in a household that was more prosperous than ours, she would sometimes bring meat. Hussein, like his father, was an electrician, and in a country at war, given everything that ends up ruined or destroyed each day, there’s never any lack of work for an electrician.
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