Don't Tell Me You're Afraid

by Giuseppe Catozzella

  A few hours after Alì’s departure, Hodan returned home. With only the few belongings she had brought with her after the aroos ceremony. Not many, just the essentials.

  When we saw her appear in the courtyard with the little red cardboard suitcase that many years ago had been Hooyo’s, Hodan said simply: “I’m back. Hussein left.”

  Hooyo rushed to embrace her, and we all followed her.

  In the blink of an eye I’d lost my best friend and gotten my sister back.

  But fate could do whatever it wanted with me. I knew exactly where I was headed. The wind has always had a tough time with my skinny body. It’s me who has always moved it, as I ran by. It was me who had learned to use the wind as a driving force behind my back, to make me fly.

  What I did that morning was embrace Hodan, crying with joy and shedding the same bitter tears that were still flowing for Alì.

  Then right away I started training again.

  CHAPTER 13

  I HAD BEEN LEFT WITHOUT a coach at age fourteen and six months away from the most important race of my life, the one in Hargeysa. The one I had to win if I was to become the fastest and be able to go to Djibouti to run in the name of my country for the first time. The very thought of it made my head spin; I had to do it at all costs.

  There was no one to clock me anymore, no one to make me do the exercises for my legs and arms. No one to check if I cheated on the reps or the abdominals.

  Every day since Alì’s departure I had wondered where he was, what he was doing. As I ran I heard his voice buzzing in my ears. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Lift your heels more, keep your arms in close. Try to coordinate your breath with your stride. And smile! When you reach the finish line, smile, Samia!

  I never did. I didn’t care about smiling. By the end of a race I was exhausted, and there were a ton of things I’d done wrong. I knew there was room for improvement, and I just wanted to work on that. When I passed the finish line, I wasn’t even able to savor the victory. I began thinking about the next race, mentally correcting my mistakes.

  Besides that, I was also a little afraid. Afraid that there might be someone in the stands who didn’t like young girls to flaunt themselves. Alì, on the other hand, pressured me each time and insisted that it was important to smile. “It’s like acknowledging the spectators,” he said.

  In the evening before going to sleep, with the ferus still lit, I lost myself staring at Mo’s photograph. I gazed at him and asked him questions. Said teased me, saying that I was talking to a piece of paper.

  “Samia, are you still talking to that newspaper?”

  “I’m not talking to any newspaper,” I retorted irritably. Yet that’s really just what I was doing: talking to a worn-out scrap of paper.

  “Ink stains, you know, but it doesn’t talk.” Said kept it up.

  When the others all laughed, I woke up from my trance. Then Hodan gave me a kiss on the forehead and told me not to get mad, that Said was only joking.

  True, he was joking, but he was right.

  I looked at Mo in that photo where he was about to cross the finish line, his eyes wide open and frenzied from the effort yet serene and satisfied with another victory, and I whispered to him to reassure me. To tell me that one day it would be the same for me. That I too would win with that look of hope and serenity in my eyes.

  Still, winning serenely seemed unlikely to me. Each victory was also a sin that I knew displeased a lot of people. Naturally I did everything I could not to let it bother me; I went my own way, not caring what others thought, not smiling either.

  But the truth was that Alì’s absence made it all seem less carefree, less of a game; running had taken on a different feel, even though Hodan was back to put me to sleep with her velvety voice.

  During those months the only thing I did besides going to school was run. I trained as much as seven hours a day. I ran in the courtyard, and after curfew, as soon as I could, I went out and ran through the streets.

  The burka over my head and under it the terry headband to soak up the sweat.

  Running in that getup was impossible. I stumbled repeatedly in the long garment, and the heat buildup under that confining black garb brought me close to fainting each time.

  But all I could think about was Hargeysa, the race of my life, the one that would change my destiny. I had to win; it was my only chance to become a professional, even though that word has never meant much in Somalia. No one has ever earned a red cent through sports. But I hoped that I would at least have the chance to compete in major races, to represent my country in the world and to run for the liberation of Somalia while Somalia thought I was playing by its rules.

  Two days a week I went to help Hooyo at the vegetable stand, to earn a few shillings that would help pay for my bus ticket to Hargeysa. Hodan went with Hooyo on two other days and Ubah the last two, and they too gave me something whenever they could. Their contribution to freedom.

  The Islamic Courts administration had prohibited Hodan and her group from rehearsing and playing in the city.

  They could no longer go to the concert hall and were forced to meet in the cellar of a restaurant up north, toward the Shabelle River. If they were found again in the concert hall near the old port, they would be shot.

  When I returned, drenched in sweat, from my run around the block at curfew, Hooyo looked at me strangely, as if I were a rare animal.

  “Who did you take after?” she asked me, slipping off my burka and running a hand over my damp hair as she stood in the corner by the burgico preparing supper. Each time it was the same routine. As soon as she saw me duck in from under the red curtain, she smiled at me with her usual tenderness. Then, when I went over to her, she turned serious.

  “Who did you take after, huh, little Samia?” she said in that gentle voice of hers. I’d grown as tall as her, and I noticed that her bright eyes, deep as a bottomless well, were being framed by wrinkles all around.

  “I take after Aabe,” I replied.

  She looked at me, took my face between her hands, and said: “How beautiful you are, Samia. By now you’re a woman. You’re the most beautiful one in the family.”

  Then she folded the damp burka, untied the laces of my sneakers and told me to go rinse off and rest my feet.

  It was like a ceremony. The disrobing of the beautiful, wacky daughter.

  But at that time all I thought about was conserving my energy for the following day’s training. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

  The day of my fifteenth birthday was two weeks before the race, and Said gave me a stopwatch.

  I never knew where he got it or how much it cost. The fact is he came to me and said: “This is for you, warrior Samia.”

  It was the first time he’d called me that; usually Said came up with a hundred different names, all to make fun of me. But that day he called me “warrior,” as Aabe sometimes called me, maybe because I was growing up: I was fifteen, and fifteen is a grown-up age. Then he said he hoped that stopwatch would someday mark the women’s speed record for our country.

  “I promise you, Said,” I told him, kissing his cheek.

  I had never had a stopwatch. Alì used to measure my time by calculating the seconds with his battered old wristwatch. The strap had been missing for a long time; only the dial remained. Until the day they stole that too from him.

  He was on the corner of the national monument waiting for me to reappear from the narrow street across the way, when he was approached by a group of three Abgal boys whom he had never seen before; they must not have been from our neighborhood, and who knows what they were doing there? Alì was standing in the shade, leaning against the trunk of an acacia tree, when the three started insulting him.

  “This Darod has a face just like a nigger,” they said.

  Alì, as always, didn’t breathe a word; he looked them straight in
the eye one by one.

  “So this Darod doesn’t talk. He must be so hungry he even ate his tongue.” And the three morons burst out laughing.

  Alì knew he wouldn’t get very far with three against one. Besides, he was in an Abgal district, so he didn’t have much hope. Remaining calm, he let the one who seemed like the leader get close enough, then suddenly, as swiftly as he had bitten the militiaman’s hand that long-ago night, he kicked him on the shin. The guy doubled over in pain and Alì ran away fast. The other two ran after him for a while; then, being slower than him, they blew the whistle that thugs wear around their necks for times like these. Tweeeeeee! So loud it could be heard through half the city. Turning the corner, Alì found himself face to face with a man who stopped him, demanding to know why he was running and whether he had by chance stolen something, which was contrary to the law of the Koran. Right then the two guys showed up and told the man that Alì was a thief, that he’d stolen their money.

  They beat him and took everything he had, which was only that strapless wristwatch. From then on we did without a watch.

  Now, with Said’s stopwatch, everything changed.

  Who knew what Alì would have said. He’d have found it hard to believe that he could use a real timer. Being able to measure my times seemed impossible to me too.

  Until that day all I had known was that I’d come in first.

  I must have inherited the seed of madness from Aabe, in any case.

  I was right to say that to Hooyo when she asked me. It was with my father’s permission, in fact, that I went to the CONS stadium at night on the last three days before the Hargeysa race.

  I had been asking him for years. Alì had told me many times about how he and his friends Amir and Nurud would sneak in and play soccer there when they were little. It had stuck in my mind. A time when I could use the stadium in peace.

  Aabe had never given me permission to do it. Until those three days before the race, when I went to plead with him, and he relented.

  “Thank you, Aabe. I’ll be forever grateful to you,” I told him, making sheep’s eyes at him.

  “I hope you’ll be grateful when these three days are over, because it will mean that nothing happened to you,” he replied worriedly.

  The truth was that, even though it was pitch dark, this was the only time when there was no danger, because there was no one around and the evening curfew had already quieted things down.

  I left the house around eleven o’clock, all covered up in my burka, and in half an hour, running through the most out-of-the-way streets, I was at the stadium.

  I slipped through one of the holes in the fence, crossed the ticket-window area, climbed over a low gate that led to the central tunnel, and from there got in.

  It was fantastic.

  The scent of grass was overwhelming; my senses were completely engulfed by that sweet, subtle, pungent fragrance.

  Having the empty stadium all to myself, illuminated only by the light of the moon, was as breathtaking as touching the star-studded sky.

  I stopped at the edge of the tartan track on which I had won my first race and took off the onerous black burka. I folded it and left it on the ground. Then, as I took slow, deep breaths, just the idea of being in there at night produced a rush of adrenaline that energized me. I warmed up, taking long, unhurried strides that brought me to the center of the soccer field. From there, for a few seconds that lasted an eternity, I savored the sight of the deserted stadium.

  Not a soul.

  Only me, my breath, and the moon. And the scent of the grass, heady, all around me.

  I pretended that there was peace outside, that this was a minor infraction and that I wasn’t risking anything.

  It was there, on those nights, three days before the most important race of my life, that I discovered that I could run a hundred meters in 16.32 seconds and two hundred meters in 32.90 seconds. I had thought I was faster, but I wasn’t. Said’s stopwatch had revealed a bitter truth. My times were way over the world records; like it or not, I would have to improve. I had no choice but to improve.

  On all three of those nights Aabe was there waiting for me at the exit to take me home safe and sound. On the way back, covered by the burka but skipping joyfully, I spelled out everything I had to do to improve. He kept looking around nervously, and every so often he would stop and threaten me with his cane, telling me to settle down and not attract attention, or he’d bop me on the head. I laughed; I knew we shouldn’t be out and about at that hour, but I was happy.

  The sudden freedom, the empty stadium, the full moon, the scent of grass filled me with irrepressible euphoria.

  Aabe got mad and told me to quiet down.

  But all I could think about was the race.

  Three days later I left for the north.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE BUS TRIP TO HARGEYSA made me feel like a celebrity. I was by myself and the ticket was expensive, the equivalent of sixty U.S. dollars—being able to buy it was a miracle in itself.

  I had never been on a bus. Everything was very comfortable, the seats soft and roomy, covered in gray velvet, and there was background music. The driver wore a dark blue uniform and he was very kind. When he saw me get on alone, wearing the tracksuit that Aabe had gotten hold of somewhere and given me for the occasion, he must have thought I was a famous athlete. He looked at me and greeted me the way you regard and address a person worthy of respect.

  “Good morning, abaayo,” he said to me as I climbed in. “Have a good trip.”

  “Thank you” was all I managed to say, I was so excited.

  The journey took almost a whole day.

  I felt like one of those tiny birds that beat their wings so rapidly that all you see is a blur; the birds look like they’re suspended in the air, dangling somehow from an invisible thread. I was so impatient that I couldn’t sit still. I must have gotten up a hundred times with the excuse of stretching my legs. When we stopped to get out and eat something or go to the bathroom, I couldn’t wait to get moving again.

  We reached our destination at seven the next morning, as the sun was rising. I hadn’t slept for even one minute.

  I got off the bus with the strange feeling of being in a country at peace.

  The fact that there were no armed guards at the station, that there were no traces of guns or camouflage uniforms, and that outside there were no bullet holes in the walls didn’t seem real. I felt disoriented. Like an animal that has spent its entire life in a cage and suddenly finds itself free, the cage door open. I was struck by a feeling of extreme euphoria, which instead of spurring me on at that moment immobilized me. I was tempted to turn around, get back on the bus, and return home to my natural setting, where freedom was measured by counting land mines and mortar rounds. That morning at dawn, with the sun peeking shyly through the cracks between the station’s wooden roof and walls, I thought that too much freedom so unexpectedly isn’t good for people; they aren’t used to it.

  I sat on a metal bench beside a newspaper stand and waited a bit. The news vendor was opening up just then, his face still sleepy.

  With the few shillings I had I bought a shaat in the only bar that was open. The heat flowed from my hands to my throat and from there, after a while, finally reached my head.

  I made my way to the stadium on foot.

  I had all the time in the world, plus I had to loosen up my joints after all those hours with my knees bent, not being able to straighten them.

  The city at peace seemed like a miracle to me. Being able to go around without a burka, being able to walk or even shout in the middle of the street. Being able to stop someone and talk to him. The idea of being able to do all those things made my head spin.

  After an hour I reached the stadium; it was now eight o’clock. The guard behind the gate was moved to take pity on me. When he heard where I’d traveled from, he o
pened the gate with a big key, let me in, and even found me a shady spot where I could rest.

  I tried to lie down on the grass surrounding the track, in front of the stands, but sleep was the last thing on my mind.

  I was quivering like the strings of a shareero, the instrument that Hussein played in Hodan’s group.

  At ten they opened the gates and the first runners arrived with their coaches. Only then, unhurriedly, did they set up the tables for those who had signed up.

  I was the first to present myself.

  The lady in charge looked at me questioningly and asked me my name. I answered her, terrified that somehow, between Mogadishu and Hargeysa, my name might have been lost along with my registration and that I had come all that way for nothing.

  But the lady looked me up and down and only asked: “Did you sleep, child?”

  “Yes, of course I slept. How could I run if I hadn’t rested, abaayo?” I replied, candid as a lily.

  “All right, then go rinse your face afterward. There’s a fountain over there.”

  “Thank you, abaayo.”

  “What’s your name, child?”

  “Samia Yusuf Omar,” I said, all in one breath.

  The lady opened the register and searched. Endless seconds went by. “I come from Mogadishu, abaayo,” I added.

  “Samia Yusuf Omar from Mogadishu . . . Here it is.”

  I signed the book and she gave me the bib with my number. My first bib.

  I was signed up for the women’s one-hundred-meter and two-hundred-meter races.

  My number was 78.

  I had to wait another two hours before running. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  Fortunately, the women competed before the men.