Don't Tell Me You're Afraid

by Giuseppe Catozzella

  “That way you’ll carry your beloved sea with you,” she told me. “The entire sea in this seashell.”

  Teresa had to wait awhile for me in the taxi before I could tear myself away from Hooyo. I couldn’t help it; I just couldn’t leave her. Finally I clenched my fists, gave her one last kiss, and went to confront my new destiny like a soldier or a warrior going off to battle.

  We would travel by plane and would land, after a two-hour flight, at two in the afternoon.

  It was the second time I had been taken to the airport by car, and this time my frame of mind was very different. I didn’t even need a sleeping pill for the flight. I was so sad that I wasn’t afraid of anything. Fear is a luxury afforded by happiness.

  In the few hours since I’d obtained my papers, everything in my life had changed. In what seemed like just moments, as if I’d been catapulted through time, I was somewhere else, in another world, ready for a new start.

  During the trip Teresa and I talked nonstop. Teresa kept telling me to focus on what was to come and forget about all the things that had slowed my career. It would take some effort, but I could do it. If I had made it to the Olympics on my own two legs, I’d be able to do that too.

  CHAPTER 23

  WAITING FOR US at the airport in Addis Ababa was Eshetu Tura himself.

  He had been an athlete in his youth and now he trained talented runners. He would be my coach. He was tall and lean, with muscular shoulders that seemed at odds with his graying hair and a face that was no longer youthful. He wasn’t as I had imagined; in my head I’d pictured him younger, but he was very elegant, both in the way he dressed and in his manner.

  His consideration and courtesy immediately inspired my trust.

  “Welcome to our city, Samia,” he said in English as he held out his hand.

  “Thank you very much, er . . .” I paused as I shook his hand. I didn’t know what to call him, whether by his first or last name.

  “Coach. You can just call me coach for now.” He broke into a big smile that put me at ease. Then he motioned to the bag, which I had set on the ground, as if to say that he would carry it. And so he did. Teresa was traveling with an overnight case; she would stay only a couple of days. I let Eshetu put my bag over his shoulder.

  “Let’s go now. There’s a taxi waiting for us.”

  The city was much bigger than Mogadishu and also much more modern. The buildings were intact, the plaster wasn’t peeling, and the balconies weren’t falling down; to me it seemed like a miracle. That’s why I rolled down the window and enjoyed the crisp, clean breeze coming from outside. I needed the fresh air on my face to realize that it was all different. Everything was suffused with a distinct smell, even though the terrain was similar to what I was used to.

  “The air here is scented,” I said to Teresa, who was sitting in the back with me.

  “It’s not scented; it’s normal, Samia. It’s just that you don’t smell the stench of gunpowder.” I had never thought about it. The smell of gunpowder had been born before I was, spawned by my older sister, the war, and I had never considered it anything but the normal smell of air. Now I was breathing air as it should be, and the breeze was already transforming me.

  The taxi left me and Teresa at a hotel, where we would stay for a few days, until I was settled in my new quarters. We said good-bye to Eshetu and arranged to meet in two days.

  When I left the hotel, I would live in a small apartment in an area near the sports field, along with eleven other Somali and Ethiopian girls. Teresa had been the one to find the place, thanks to a journalist friend who often came to Addis Ababa. It would be my new home. Of course, there wouldn’t be a lot of room, but at least it was cheap; I couldn’t afford more than that.

  Two days later Teresa left. A new laceration. With her departure the last tie that bound me to my city was broken. We had become friends and had had time to get attached to each other. Now I was alone again. Once again someone dear to me had left me.

  We said good-bye like sisters. “See you soon, abaayo,” I said at the door of the hotel room that I would leave that same day.

  “See you soon, Samia. Maybe when you come to the U.S. for a big race,” she replied with tears in her eyes before closing the door.

  From that day on I would be alone.

  Alone with my desire to run.

  The apartment had only two bedrooms, plus a kitchen and a bathroom. It was small, and there were twelve of us, but I had never known such conveniences.

  From the moment we met, I quickly made friends with the two Ethiopian girls, Amina and Yenee. They were my age and, like the other nine girls, worked on a farm just outside Addis Ababa. All of them were field hands hired by the day. The house we lived in belonged to the landowner.

  They worked in two shifts, morning and afternoon. Amina and Yenee usually did the afternoon shift, so we often cooked together. The kitchen was really tiny, its floor and walls completely covered with the same greenish blue tiles. There was a gas stove with an oven. Beside it were a sink, a cabinet for dishes and glasses, and a refrigerator—the first one I’d ever had. Amina and Yenee let me taste their traditional Ethiopian dishes, and I had them try Somali cooking. We made ourselves understood by gestures, but we soon invented a language of our own, a mixture of Somali, Ethiopian, and English.

  The apartment was on the top floor of a four-story building that wasn’t bad looking, its walls covered with red plaster. Down below there was even a small garden where dogs did their business. We slept six to a room, on six mattresses lined up beside one another. Since I was the last to arrive, mine was farthest from the door. To get to it I had to climb over the other girls.

  At the end of the day the girls were very tired; working in the fields was exhausting. Some of them took a dislike to me from the beginning, especially two Somalis from the outskirts of Mogadishu, who saw me as a princess who had nothing better to do in life than run.

  One night before going to bed, when we were together in the small kitchen, Amina, tired of the malicious remarks made by those two, came out with the fact that I had gone to the Olympics, that I had run for their country.

  “I don’t give a shit about where she was before she came here,” one of the two Somalis retorted; she was very beautiful and could have been a model. “She’s here just like we are now. You can tell things aren’t going very well for her either.”

  She had a point.

  “Besides, she didn’t even win,” the other one added; she was tall and heavyset, her eyes perpetually apathetic, as if everything were a bore. “She could have made us look better.” She too had a point.

  Nevertheless, during those first weeks I breathed the scent of freedom, of the absence of gunpowder. I had friends and I could go around without fear of someone shooting me. I could go to the market, which was much smaller than the Bakara market but still full of goods and people; I could shop there or in some small supermarket, go home, and cook.

  Normal things that to me, however, seemed incredible. I felt full of energy; every event filled me with enthusiasm.

  Soon enough, though, I realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as I had thought. I was there to run. I would have done so from day one, but at first Eshetu told me that it wasn’t yet possible. I had to be patient and wait, maybe two weeks. Things still weren’t ready for me, but they would be soon.

  I felt like a filly with no bridle and no saddle. I needed to lengthen my stride, keep my muscles moving.

  The days passed and my impatience grew. I did exercises at home when the others weren’t there, but most of all I wanted to run.

  Before long I even started working in the afternoon: To support myself I helped the landlady, the landowner’s wife, sew lace on clothes. I went to her apartment, which was next door to ours on the same floor, and spent four hours with her and thirty other women sewing all types of different lace onto thousands of w
omen’s garments. The kind that Muslim women wear under the veils, all transparency and sensuality. That was her job, and I helped her, sitting on the floor in a large room with a multitude of girls. We sat there in silence, retracing those secret intrigues, weaving the threads of future forbidden pleasures. No one said a word. The landlady turned on the radio and we worked to the sound of traditional Ethiopian music. She paid me very little, but it was still something. Besides, maybe the Somali girl was right: I couldn’t go to work in the fields; I had to conserve my body for the race.

  In fact, as I worked, all I thought about was when I would start running again.

  Then the truth came out.

  I could not use the track until documents arrived from Somalia confirming the fact that I was an Olympic Committee athlete in political asylum in another country.

  Six weeks had already gone by. A month and a half without running. I tried to make Eshetu understand that it was suicide, that I should run regardless, because those documents could take months, if not years, to come and in the meantime I was in danger of forgetting what a tartan track was like. I tried to make him see that things in Somalia were worse than he imagined. That it might be years before those documents arrived. I tried in every way I could to persuade him to let me train with his other athletes. But there was no way.

  “You cannot, Samia. I am sorry. You have to get it through your head,” he repeated in his polite voice each time I pounced on him. “You cannot, Samia.”

  I kept insisting: It couldn’t end like this; it was absurd that I should have to wait months before I could start training. “But I ran in the Olympics! I’m a famous athlete! Do you know how many women have written to me?” I burst out once.

  Nothing for it; he didn’t bite. The answer was always the same.

  “You cannot.”

  I went there every day, each time hoping it would be the right time. One afternoon I skipped the lace work and charged into his office in tears: I was willing to do anything to get started. Eshetu was furious; he said I couldn’t suddenly show up there. I wasn’t yet authorized to use the facility, and if they found me it would be even worse. I kept insisting but it was no use. Then, finally, when I had decided to give up and was about to hang my head and leave, he said: “There may be a solution, however. It’s the only way.” Head tilted, he looked at me through the eyeglasses he used for reading.

  I leaped up from the chair across the desk from him. “I’m willing to do anything,” I cried.

  “You can run at night. When the other athletes have left the field.”

  Still at night. Still alone. Even more alone.

  It couldn’t be further from what I had hoped for when I decided to leave.

  I would be in hiding again.

  Only this time it was even worse. I was no longer in my country. I was a foreigner without papers, without a passport. Nothing official to attest to my identity and where I came from. That was another thing that being Somali meant: not being able to be seen in someone else’s country.

  “You have to get it through your head that for some people here you’re a tahrib, an illegal immigrant, Samia. You have to be careful what you do,” Eshetu continued. “You can’t display yourself too much.”

  From a “little subversive,” as Alì had said they’d called me, I had become a tahrib, a clandestine figure.

  Was that what fate had in store for me? A return to the days when I went to the CONS stadium at night and trained for hours in silence?

  But there was no alternative if I wanted to run.

  “Okay. I’ll train at night when the others have gone.”

  And that was it. Each day I met Eshetu at the entrance to the field and watched the others leave, tired and happy after a day of training. Then, head down, I entered the locker room, which still smelled of their sweat and their shower gels.

  As the sun set and the moon rose, I made my furtive entrance onto the track.

  The first run was a liberation and a joy for the legs, which had been still for too long. Finally the muscles were able to function again, to let their power explode. But nothing could shake the thought that I was some kind of undesirable little mouse.

  Eshetu was there the first few days, watching me run and correcting me, assigning me targeted exercises.

  It was great to have a professional coach look after me for the first time. I felt that was the only way I could grow as an athlete. He would be able to mold me into the form of a perfect runner.

  “You waste too much energy, Samia,” he told me.

  “You lift your heels too high.”

  “You move your arms too much. Hold them still!”

  “Don’t roll your shoulders at every stride, Samia! How many times must I tell you? Start over!”

  “Your eyes should always be fixed on the finish line. Don’t look around; you’re wasting time!”

  “Those hands, Samia! Keep them still! Still! Every unnecessary movement means the loss of a few tenths!”

  “You have no quads, Samia. I’m sorry. You need to develop some muscles first of all. Work out on the machines. You can’t move a train on wagon wheels!”

  “Breathe, breathe, breathe! You have to work on the breath and on the muscles. How do you expect to run otherwise?”

  “Reps and the machines, Samia. Remember that. Reps and the machines. For six months, every day: two hours of reps and an hour and a half on the machines!”

  Two-hundred-fifty-meter sprints at maximum power every day. And forty-five minutes on the weight machines before and after each workout.

  Nothing else for weeks and weeks.

  For five months.

  Every week I called home, to Said’s phone, and told them that everything was perfect. That I lived in a beautiful apartment and that I was training with a coach who was bringing out the best in me.

  They were all happy for me. Hooyo cried each time and was relieved to hear my voice. For me it was the only way I could go to bed at peace.

  At the beginning Eshetu stayed for the entire workout. Then he left me alone to complete the sprints and work out on the machines. Finally he didn’t even wait anymore: I knew what I had to do. He went home to eat with his family. Only the groundskeeper, old Bekele, was left with me. Every so often he emerged from his booth and applauded me, cheering me on. I could make out his minute shadow, its silhouette illuminated by the moon behind him.

  I was glad to be gaining strength, and I was pleased with the work that Eshetu was making me do. It was just that I had a need to compete, to measure myself against the others. A need that was becoming increasingly urgent. Was all that effort leading to results? I craved what I liked best about running: competing. Pushing myself to the extreme. Winning.

  During those months in Addis Ababa I realized that winning was an irreplaceable fuel, that only victory could give me the energy to continue. But that wasn’t possible there. To compete I needed the light of day, not the shadows of night. I needed other athletes.

  Instead there I was again, alone, at night, on a field. Once more under the light of the moon.

  The more months passed, the greater the certainty that the documents from Somalia would never come. Nor, with them, the possibility that Eshetu might treat me like the others, signing me up for competitions, letting me compete, putting me to the test.

  Every so often I went to the field before the end of the training sessions and watched the others run from outside the wire mesh fence, for fear that Eshetu might see me and get angry. If they were to catch me at the field, he said, if they were to do an inspection and find me there, I would likely not be able to use it anymore, not even at night. So I went a little early and watched them run from outside. I stood there gripping the green diamond-patterned wire mesh and observed them. Sometimes I hid behind a hedge near an electricity meter, and from there I spied on them, the way you spy on those kissed
by fate, by good fortune.

  I forgot about the races I had won, about the Beijing Olympics, all of it. I became an amateur dreaming about racing. While the others seemed unreachable. They were perfect. Incredibly swift. It was like being in front of the TV. Power, precision, dedication, drive. It was all there in their movements.

  They were everything I might never be able to be. I remained a tahrib, running alone.

  But in truth there was only one thing I wanted, and that was to win.

  Little by little during those months, without even being aware of it, I began to entertain the desire to leave that place as well. I realized that occasionally, talking with Amina and Yenee, I would speak about Addis Ababa and our house as if they were already part of the past, as though I felt the need to start preserving their memory. Even though I was there.

  I lived the last few months in a kind of melancholy countdown toward the future. The more I began to feel uncertain about what was to come, the more I tried to stamp those places and sensations in my memory. As in Mogadishu six months earlier. I had a premonition that those memories would accompany me on a Journey that I couldn’t decide to face but that I increasingly felt was crucial.

  I said things like “Someday I’m going to miss your cooking and all the commotion you make before you go to bed.” They looked at me and didn’t understand. They thought I was homesick for my house and for Hooyo and that that was why I was sad every now and then.

  Though I realized it only later, the truth is that those six months flew by and gave breath to the desire to leave behind the condition of tahrib for good.