Don't Tell Me You're Afraid

by Giuseppe Catozzella

  “But I’m already a real athlete,” I replied, digging my heels in under the chair.

  “Let’s say you’re on your way to becoming one.” He smiled.

  “But I won the race in Hargeysa. I’m the fastest woman in the country,” I insisted. I would have punched him there on the spot if he’d continued questioning my ability.

  The man looked at me with his head slightly tilted; then he again displayed his white teeth in a smile. “Among the amateurs, Samia. For now, only among the amateurs.”

  It was the first time he’d said my name, and I liked the way he pronounced it, with a drawn-out a. “Saaamìa,” just as Aabe used to say it. I drove the thought of my father out of my head. “Do you want to become a professional?” he asked then, breaking through the drift of my memories.

  I didn’t answer right away because I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Do you want to become a part of our Olympic team?” Duran repeated in that gentle voice of his.

  At that point he could just as well have asked me to jump off a mountain or swim up the Shabelle River and I would have done so without a second’s hesitation.

  Six weeks later I was back on a bus. Only this time I hadn’t had to help Hooyo for months to pay for my ticket.

  A bus to Djibouti.

  With me was Xassan.

  Overhead, a Somalia duffel bag.

  On me, a blue Somalia tracksuit.

  It was all so perfect that every morning since meeting Xassan, I had gone to Hooyo and asked her to pinch my cheek to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

  It prompted the first smile of the day from her, those mornings when her eyes were still swollen from crying all night, thinking about Aabe.

  On that bus I felt like Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest woman of all time, the perfect athlete, whose name had been engraved in my memory the first time I’d heard it on the radio at Taageere’s: Poor man, I always made him tune in to the sports station.

  I was wearing the color of my country, the blue of the sky and sea, and I felt like the strongest sprinter in the world. I would so much have liked Aabe to be with me. Sometimes I thought that even Alì would have been enough, if I couldn’t have Aabe back. From their eyes I would have been sure that everything that was happening to me was real. Papa would have whispered gently: “I told you, my little warrior.” And that would have eliminated any doubt. Then he would have kissed me on the head, though I would have had to be the one to bend down, since I was taller now; I could no longer sit on his lap. And he would have said simply: “Go. Go and win.”

  The two drivers spelled each other several times, and I slept almost the entire way. There was Xassan to watch over me.

  After a twenty-eight-hour trip, we arrived in Djibouti.

  We would rest up the night before the race in order to be in top form. Sleeping in a hotel was one of those things—like riding in a car, traveling by bus, wearing the Somalia uniform—that had always seemed impossible to me. Yet it was all real. The light of my good fortune had been lit somewhere. Maybe it was Aabe who turned it on, in a secret place known only to him.

  The hotel wasn’t fancy—it wasn’t even all that clean—but it was what our poor Olympic Committee could afford. Still, I had a room all to myself with a bed, a mattress, and carpeting on the floor. Though the surroundings were a little shabby thanks to time and cigarette burns, there were no nocturnal animals, none of the spiders or cockroaches that drove Ubah crazy (sometimes at night she’d start hopping around like a cricket and would wake us all up with her shrieks). There were no awful things. Only nice things. But the best thing of all was the bathroom. I had never had one in my entire life. We’d always used the common toilet in the courtyard. A hut with a big hole in the ground that was emptied each week. We’ve never had running water; my brothers went to get water from the well every night before supper. By contrast, here in the hotel in Djibouti I had a bathroom all to myself.

  A sink with a faucet. It was a little dirty, and the steady trickle had left a rusty stain, but if I turned the faucet on, as much water as I wanted came out.

  A bathtub with a shower. I could stand under it and turn on the hot water and wash as long as I wanted without Hooyo saying anything.

  And there was a toilet bowl for doing your business. I could pull the chain to flush it and the stink disappeared.

  After ten minutes I felt like going down to the reception desk and calling Taageere to have him pass me Hodan so I could tell her everything. But I would save the news until I returned.

  That night, on that mattress, I slept so soundly that it seemed like forever.

  The next morning we took the bus straight to the stadium. It was a real stadium; I had never seen one like it. Not even the one in Hargeysa had looked anything like it. This was an honest-to-goodness stadium, even bigger than the new one we had in Mogadishu: the one occupied by the militias and their tanks. It was enormous, huge. And its stands soared several tiers high, packed with people in constant motion, chanting, cheering, clapping, or whistling.

  I was all worked up, but Xassan was serene; he appeared to be in perfect command of the situation.

  The other athletes seemed much taller and more muscular than I. And they were dressed better too. I was wearing a used tracksuit. And I would run in my own T-shirt, my own shorts. The terry headband from Aabe. Somalia couldn’t afford more, and I didn’t ask for more; what I had already seemed like a lot to me. The other women, however, wore high-tech tank tops and matching shorts. Brand-name shoes and socks.

  It all made me uncomfortable; I felt out of place, inferior. Xassan, on the other hand, remained composed, as if he were used to it.

  I just had to keep in mind that, like the other women, I was there to represent my country and that I was being asked to give it my all. And to do so in one shot: There were no qualifying rounds; we gave it our best in two hundred meters.

  “Run as fast as you can,” Xassan said while we waited at the edge of the track for them to call our heat.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Samia.” I looked at him. He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “You won’t win today. You won’t even come close, but show me what you can do. Show me you’re not afraid of the track, the spectators, or your opponents.”

  I squinted as if the sun were in my eyes, forcing myself not to lower my gaze. “I’m never afraid, Xassan,” I lied.

  “Good girl. Don’t be afraid today either. You’ll see: Everything will go as it should.” Then he walked off toward the end of the course, carrying the tracksuit that I had worn during the warm-up, and I was left alone to await the call.

  As I’d done in Hargeysa, and as I now did at night in Mogadishu, I lay down on the ground. It had become a ritual. I loved to feel the grass prickling my back and have its subtle, pungent scent in my nose. A ritual that I hoped would bring me luck here too.

  When I heard my name on the loudspeaker, I got up. Head down, focused, I went to my block. I was starting in the fifth lane.

  In much less time than I would have expected, the starting gun was fired.

  Boom.

  I gave it my all, everything I had.

  The others were simply faster than me; Xassan was right. I pushed to the limit, but there was nothing more I could do. Though I spurred my muscles to the bursting point, it was no use.

  I finished sixth out of eight.

  It had not gone well, yet I was still nearly ecstatic.

  Aabe had watched me from the place where he was, and he was as joyful as I was; I felt it. Maybe even more so. His little warrior had run and given it her all, even though she hadn’t won. But winning really didn’t matter to him—I knew that. All he wanted was for me to push myself to the limit.

  Two days later, at home, I regaled them all with my stories. The trip, the hotel, the stadium, the opponents, the size of the crowd, Xassan, al
l of it. I went to each of my siblings and insisted on repeating the whole account. I was all revved up.

  Hodan, on the other hand, seemed strange.

  She was happy for me, but I sensed a distance. It felt like she had something to tell me and was just waiting for the right time, even though she was trying hard not to let me notice. But between us there could be no secrets. I knew everything about her, even the slightest vibe, just as she knew everything about me.

  It wasn’t until just before going to bed that she told me she needed to talk to me. That she had made a decision.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  At first, through tears and sobs, she just kept repeating that she had made up her mind.

  I took her by the hand and led her to our room, to our mattresses, our natural place. Nothing could be so terrible; we had already experienced all the pain imaginable with Aabe’s death.

  But Hodan kept sobbing and saying that she shouldn’t be crying, that it was actually a positive thing, a good thing. For her, at least.

  Then she told me.

  She could no longer stay in our country; the sense of guilt for what had happened to Aabe was killing her. The only thing she could do was leave. She had waited to tell me, waited until I ran the race in Djibouti and came back happy, at least, if not a winner.

  But she had already made up her mind two months ago. And I hadn’t noticed a thing. Aabe’s death on the one hand and the Olympic Committee on the other must have blinded me to the world around me if I hadn’t realized that Hodan was brooding over such an important decision.

  She kept saying that it was all her fault that our father was gone, but I knew that it was my fault too. Indeed, in my heart I believed that Aabe had been taken away so that I could run in peace.

  Something must be wrong, Hodan said, if Aabe had always urged us to follow our instinct for freedom, had actually nurtured it in us, yet that same instinct had first crippled him and then killed him.

  I begged her; I tried in every way I could to remind her of what we had promised each other years ago, a promise that still meant something to me: that we would never leave our country, that we would stay and change it. I tried telling her that maybe Aabe had sacrificed himself for us, to allow us to realize our dreams more freely. Which were also his dreams for the liberation of our country.

  “Don’t you remember what we told each other in bed, almost every night?” I said, tears streaming down my face.

  “Of course I remember my songs.” Her voice was hard, turned to stone.

  “So how can you want to leave now?”

  “Everything has changed, Samia.”

  “What’s changed? There’s war now and there was war before.” I was angry, my hands twitching.

  “Now there’s Al-Shabaab.” Hodan, unlike me, was composed. “Before, there was respect; now there’s only violence.”

  “We have to make a greater effort,” I insisted, pounding a fist on the mattress.

  “No, our efforts will only lead to more violence. Don’t you see, Samia?”

  No, not only didn’t I understand, but I didn’t believe it. “I have to stay here and continue running; this is my destiny. I have to win the Olympics, Hodan. I have to show the whole world that we can change. I have to keep the promise I made to Aabe. . . . This is what I must do.”

  “You have a talent, Samia,” Hodan said quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder, “and it’s right that you continue to follow your path.” She dried her tears and blew her nose. She looked like Hooyo when she pretended she wasn’t moved. In that position, in that light, Hodan had our mother’s face. She had become a woman, and I hadn’t realized it. “What I dream of today, though, is to be free. Right now, unconditionally. I dream of having a family, as I could not do with Hussein. I dream that my children may grow up in peace. The war took away my husband, and I don’t even know for sure where he is.” She paused. “At this point I just need a new life, Samia.”

  “I dream of being a free woman too, but I’m going to realize that dream here,” I said, shrugging her hand off my shoulder.

  “Not me, Samia.” She was silent for perhaps a minute, but to me it seemed like a year or a millennium. “I’m leaving for Europe. Maybe I’ll get to England, like Mo Farah.” She tilted her chin up toward the photo, which still hung where I’d stuck it that long-ago night, next to the two medals from Hargeysa. “Or maybe Sweden or Finland.”

  There was nothing more to say.

  Hodan had made up her mind.

  All I could do was use the time remaining before she left to resign myself to it, so I wouldn’t be unprepared and distraught when the time came and we had to separate.

  I was beginning to think that the more I achieved in running, the more I lost in life.

  CHAPTER 17

  AFTER THE RACE IN DJIBOUTI, the Olympic Committee gave me a pair of running shoes. The kind with cleats in the soles. But the thing that most changed my life was that I could go running at the stadium during the day, in sunlight.

  Each moon that passed, however, was for me one less moon before Hodan’s departure. In the months that remained before our separation, I continued training as much as before, if not more. The tunnel I had entered with Aabe’s death had become even more endless. All I could do was lower my head and try to run my way out of it. I had just one goal: to keep from thinking and in that way qualify for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. As I had promised Aabe. I knew it all depended on me, on the times I’d be able to achieve on the track.

  I dropped out of school because we couldn’t afford it anymore. The longer the war went on, the less money people had. The little money that Hooyo managed to bring home was needed for food.

  Truthfully, I wasn’t too sorry, because that way I could run both in the morning and in the afternoon. By the time I got home in the evening, I was wiped out, but I didn’t care; I collapsed on the mattress before the others went to bed and woke up the next morning after a deep, restful sleep, full of energy.

  I also tried, in my heart, to get used to the loss of Hodan’s singing, her caresses, the hand that squeezed mine before going to sleep. And she did the same.

  For the second time we prepared to say good-bye. But this time we wouldn’t be seeing each other during the day at school.

  We spent that period before the separation in a state of pathological attachment and, at the same time, of morbid rejection. If one of us came home and the other wasn’t there, we would search for hours and then, once found, not talk to each other. Or we fought as we had never done before, and when Hooyo or Said stepped in to have us make up, we’d burst into tears and hug each other tightly.

  It was our tormented way of putting distance between us.

  Two months later, in October 2007, Hodan left one night to set out on the Journey. She’d filled a small backpack with a few things; she had with her the shillings needed for the bus to Hargeysa, the requisite first stop for leaving the country, and not much more.

  Without saying a word to anyone, she turned up that night ready to leave. She preferred to say good-bye without much fuss, especially for Hooyo’s sake. I wasn’t surprised; it was just like Hodan.

  That way there was no time for lengthy good-byes and weeping. We held each other tight, and we all kissed her, Hooyo last of all. Before letting her go, Hooyo gave her a folded white handkerchief that held one of the small shells from the jar that Aabe had given her when they became engaged. Our portable sea, the one we would listen to when we were little. Hooyo tied the handkerchief to Hodan’s wrist.

  Then Hodan was gone.

  She left on foot, alone, to walk to the bus station.

  Without even knowing what she would do once she got to Hargeysa. But that too was just like Hodan.

  The Journey is something we’ve all had in our heads from the time we were born. Everyone has friends and relatives wh
o did it, or who in turn know someone who did it. It’s like a mythological creature that can just as easily lead to salvation or death. No one knows how long it might take. If you’re lucky, two months. If you’re unlucky, as long as a year, or even two.

  Ever since we were children, the Journey has been a favorite topic of conversation. Everyone has told stories about relatives who reached their destinations in Italy, Germany, Sweden or England. Scores of trailer trucks with men who perished, scorched by the sun, in the oven of the Sahara. Human traffickers and appalling Libyan prisons. Not to mention the numbers of travelers who die during the most difficult leg: crossing the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. Some say tens of thousands, others say hundreds of thousands. We’ve been hearing these stories, these unsubstantiated numbers, since the time we were born. Because those who make it there always say the same thing when they call home: I can’t tell you what the Journey was like. It was horrific, that’s for sure, but words can’t describe it. That’s why it’s always shrouded in absolute mystery. A mystery that for some is necessary in order to reach safety.

  Hodan, like all those who leave, knew only that she would get to northern Europe. That somehow she would cross those ten thousand kilometers. She would find a good man, she would get married again, have children and live a happy life. Every month she would send money home, a little for Mama and a little for me, to allow me to run, and she would wait until she was settled enough to be able to pay for the Journey for us too. That was what everyone did, and that much she knew, that much she had been told. Everything in between wasn’t worth thinking about.

  And so, with a certain foolhardy unawareness, she left.

  We, of course, were greatly concerned. We knew we could not expect any news, except occasionally, and this, rather than leaving us in the hands of blind hope, made us even more anxious.

  Every so often, when she managed to find a phone somewhere, she would call us. Said had bought a cell phone, and we passed it around so Hodan could exchange a few words with each of us. At times, if there was an Internet connection available, like when she was in Sudan and then in Libya, we set a time an hour later when we would write to each other for hours. I went to Taageere’s, the only place close to home with a computer. We did this a few days in a row sometimes, when she was forced to stop someplace to wait until Said, Abdi, Shafici, or Hooyo managed to scrape together enough money to send her to pay the traffickers for another leg of the Journey. Hodan awaited the day when she would go and withdraw the money at the money-transfer booth the way one awaits death.