From Somalia with Love

by Na'ima B. Robert

  “We should hang out some time, you and I,” she continued, brushing something off my jumper. “We could go shopping, catch a movie or just hang out.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded, imagining asking Hoyo if I could go to the mall with Firdous to ‘hang out’.

  “Yeah, that would be cool, really cool.” I listened to myself sounding like a complete idiot. But I wanted her to think that I wasn’t boring-Safia-Dirie-with-no-life.

  So I gave her our house number and she wrote down her mobile number for me. I stuffed it into my bag and smiled at her.

  “Make sure you call me, yeah?” she said, turning to me as she walked out of the room.

  Habaryero called after her. “Are you going to help Hoyo in the kitchen, Firdous?”

  Firdous smiled that lazy half smile. “Nah, I think I’ll go chill with Ahmed and Faisel. I want to see my favourite footballer in action: Ronaldo rocks!”

  And she was gone.

  Habaryero opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. I knew what she wanted to say. Ayeyo didn’t like us girls spending too much time with the boys and their friends. “That’s how problems start,” she always said.

  As soon as Firdous left, everyone went back to their conversation. But I saw the looks that followed her, I saw the sly whispers. I seethed inside. Why did they have to be so two-faced? Whatever beef they had with Firdous, they didn’t have the right to gossip about her. I felt even more apart from them then but this time, I was glad they didn’t include me. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s gossip.

  As I started talking to Habaryero again, I wondered to myself what Firdous was really up to, why she was staying with Auntie Iman. And I realised then that she never answered my question.

  The meal that night was wonderful, Ayeyo had really outdone herself. As usual, we all sat on the floor around huge trays, passing each other bananas, salad and glasses of water. We ate and ate until we couldn’t eat anymore and had to unzip, unbutton and roll down the gogorat to make space for our full bellies. We left around midnight, tired but happy. We rode home in a comfortable silence, and it was only when Hoyo shook me to wake me that I realised I had slept through the journey again.

  Chapter 4

  The first few weeks with Abo home passed in a blur. Everything was different but somehow the same. Abo and Abdullahi would leave early to pray Fajr at the mosque which meant that Hoyo and I still prayed together, in our huge prayer gowns, on the glossy smooth prayer mat. We still sat for a while afterwards, Hoyo reciting verses she had learnt when she was a little girl, practising new ones she was learning in her Qur’an class at the mosque. So, in that way, our mornings were the same.

  But, too soon, Hoyo would be up and in the kitchen. Now she cooked breakfast every day and there were no more rushed bowls of cereal washed down with juice. Abo was home: things had to be done properly.

  In fact, one of the things I remember about those early days is the food. Hoyo made every kind of Somali dish, some I was used to and quite a few I hadn’t tried before. It was as if she was determined to make up for lost time and feed Abo every dish she had wanted to cook for the last twelve years. Of course, we weren’t complaining!

  “Hey, man!” Ahmed would laugh, “Hoyo’s food’s been giving me a serious pot belly y’know!” – but that didn’t stop him eating it! More than once, I came home to find him and his friends in the kitchen, eating Abo and Hoyo’s lunch leftovers straight from the pot.

  But there were other changes too. Hoyo began putting henna on the tips of her fingers, dark henna that stained the skin burgundy-black and the nails a deep red. Once a week, she would get fresh henna patterns from the lady on the fifth floor.

  Hoyo also started wearing her wedding gold again and a new dira’ every day: I hadn’t even known she owned so many! White, soft grey, black with red starburst patterns, purple with silver swirls, orange with green tie-dye… she had a whole rainbow collection I had never seen before.

  Once, Habaryero came over and teased Hoyo: “You’re just like an aroosa now, masha Allah!”

  And it was true: although I had never seen Hoyo work so hard, I had never seen her look so radiant.

  I saw the way Abo smiled at her when she brought him his food, the melting, tender way she looked at him when he would say, “Remember that day, back in Somalia…?” and they would start another conversation without me, one I couldn’t understand. More than once, I had come downstairs in the night to get a drink of water and found them, sitting on the floor in the kitchen, drinking tea, talking quietly.

  And while I was happy for Hoyo, I felt cut off by her happiness, left out because I didn’t feel it too.

  To be honest, I think Abdullahi was the only one out of us kids who was really happy to have Abo home. Abdullahi had been ten years old when we left Somalia so he remembered Abo. His Somali was better than ours and he knew more about the history, the culture, our family back in Mogadishu. So he and Abo had lots to talk about.

  “But Abo,” he would say, “everyone knows that it was the Ishaqs who sold us out to the Italians in 1950 – if it wasn’t for them, Somalia would never have been colonised.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true,” Abo would answer, stroking his beard. “But you have to remember that the British also had their eye on Somalia – if it wasn’t for the Ishaqs, we’d be eating fish and chips instead of baasto!” They both enjoyed that one.

  I could tell Abo was an intelligent man – he seemed to know so much about Somalia, politics and history. At first, I tried to appear interested, tried to keep up. But they never included me. So, after a while, I stopped trying. Neither of them noticed. They went to the mosque together to pray and Abdullahi took Abo down to the local Somali shops and introduced him to the older men there. Abdullahi would go with Abo when the other men invited him. I didn’t know what it was they wanted Abo to do but once I heard Uncle Yusuf telling Abdullahi: “Your father was one of the best of our generation, one of the very best!” And, as the days became weeks, I saw them develop a bond. I could see that Abo was proud of his eldest son and that Abdullahi was pleased to have his father back again.

  This was not the case with Ahmed. I could see straight away that Abo and Ahmed were not going to hit it off. For a start, Ahmed had no time for Abo. He started leaving the house straight after breakfast and coming home late. When he was around, he was silent, withdrawn, and gave one word answers to all our questions. While Abdullahi was full of curiosity, full of questions, Ahmed would roll his eyes and laugh, an empty, harsh laugh, nothing like the laughter I loved to hear. Soon he would be on his phone and go up to his room, leaving Abdullahi and Abo to continue their conversation.

  Then I noticed that, every time Ahmed came into the room, Abo would frown, a look of irritation on his face. He criticised everything about Ahmed: his hairstyle, his clothes, his ‘gutter Somali’. I cringed inside. I didn’t want him to look at Ahmed that way, I didn’t want him to start behaving like Suad’s dad. So I would always try to draw Ahmed into the conversation, even if I hadn’t been part of it, even if I hardly understood what they were talking about.

  “Nah, little sis,” he would always say, and then he’d leave the room. Abo’s eyes would follow him, a line etched between his brows.

  Whenever I prayed, I asked Allah to please make us all get along.

  ***

  “So, what is it like, having your dad home?”

  Hamida was perched on my bed, sticking a henna transfer on her arm. “Mum says that it’s cheating but I don’t care,” she had said earlier. “I’m not about to sit still, wrapped up like a mummy for hours.” She patted her arm to make sure the transfer was stuck on then turned to me.

  “Well?” she said, jutting out her chin, “what’s it like?”

  I twisted my hands in my lap. “Well,” I began, “it’s weird. On the one hand, it’s nice because it feels like we are a ‘normal’ family now: mum, dad, kids, etc. On the other hand, I hadn’t minded it the way it was, you know?
I mean, we all got along and Hoyo and I, we were cool, we were really close, you know that.”

  Hamida nodded. “And now you feel shut out, is that it?”

  “That is so it!” I couldn’t believe that she had seen that so quickly. “It’s like, now that Abo’s here, her life is complete. But then what does that say about how she felt when it was just us?” I shook my head. “It’s nice that Abo and Abdullahi get along – I’m really happy about that. Boys need their fathers, don’t they?”

  “But girls need their dads too, you know,” Hamida said softly. I looked at her and saw the question in her eyes. I looked down at my hands: my father’s hands.

  “Well, “I said at last, “maybe not all of us do. And maybe not all dads are that into daughters…”

  “What about your dad?” Hamida, the future psychologist, was pushing me. We had an unspoken rule: don’t push Safia to open up because she won’t. Keep it light-hearted and we’ll be OK. Now she was trying to do an Oprah on me. But I wasn’t about to go there – some things are better left unsaid… or written down.

  “I don’t know about my dad,” I said finally, “he doesn’t say that much to me anyway. I suppose he doesn’t know what to say. I mean, he’ll ask me how I am and if I can bring him some tea or more salt or whatever, but nothing deeper than that…”

  I didn’t tell Hamida that I wished my dad did talk to me, like he spoke to Abdullahi, asking his opinion, asking him to translate, telling him about Somalia.

  To me he would say things like, “Safia! Do you know who Siad Barre was?”

  I would shake my head. “No, Abo.”

  “Ah, just what I thought. The children of today know nothing about our history!”

  “Never mind, Abo,” Abdullahi would say, grinning at me, “as long as she can make baasto iyo hilib, she’ll be all right!” Then they both roared with laughter.

  But he never did explain who Siad Barre was. I guess Abo didn’t think I would have anything worth saying, young as I was and a girl as well. As long as I brought him cold water with ice and black tea with four sugars, I was OK as far as he was concerned.

  But I didn’t mind, really. I wasn’t that bothered. At least, that was what I told myself every time I went up to my room, tired of being invisible for yet another evening.

  “You know what though?” I said at last. “It’s Ahmed I’m worried about.”

  “Ahmed?” Hamida’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

  “Cos he’s just not into this new set-up, he won’t even give it a chance.” All my worries for Ahmed starting pouring out. “I’ve seen the way he looks at Abo, the way he watches him when he’s eating. It’s like he can’t stand him. When Abo speaks to him in Somali, he won’t look him in the eye and he deliberately answers in English or speaks such broken Somali that Abo just gives up. He won’t discuss anything with him. It’s like they have nothing in common and Ahmed won’t even make an effort. He’s even stopped talking to me…” My voice faltered. Ahmed was closer to me than anyone else in the family. What was happening if he felt he couldn’t even talk to me?

  Hamida nodded slowly. “Hmm, sounds like the return of the old man has mashed things up a bit. What about your mum, what does she make of it all?”

  “Hoyo? She’s over the moon!” I couldn’t keep an edge of bitterness out of my voice. Hoyo was happy and we were miserable – was this the way things were meant to be?

  “It’s like they’re on their second honeymoon or something! Except that she’s always cooking, always cleaning the house, cleaning up after Abo – she won’t let him touch a thing in the kitchen, she says it’s ’eeb. I just don’t get it…”

  “I know!” answered Hamida. “If I ever get married, my husband had better know more than how to boil an egg!”

  I laughed then because I knew that Hamida had burnt a boiled egg more than once: she was a total disaster in the kitchen!

  “But Hoyo doesn’t seem to mind, Hamida! She’s quite happy to cook and clean for him and treat him like royalty! Me? I would be expecting him to make it up to me for all the years I spent on my own raising his children!”

  I could see Hamida was impressed: this kind of talk was suitably rebellious and I felt surprised at myself, surprised and a little pleased: so Safia Dirie did have some fire in her after all, ha!

  But fire was the last thing on my mind later on that night. Ahmed came home late, really late. I was on my way downstairs to get some water when I heard a key in the door. I looked at my watch: one o’clock in the morning. In the semi-darkness, I could just make out Ahmed’s curls and the hunch of his leather jacket. He was breathing hard, trying to avoid the creaky floorboard next to the stairs. I held my breath.

  Why was he home so late? Where had he been?

  Just then, the kitchen door burst open and there was Abo, his tall frame filling the narrow doorway, anger all over his face.

  The light from the kitchen flooded the hall and Ahmed was caught like a rabbit in the headlights. His eyes were red and his clothes tousled. He seemed to be having trouble staying upright and a strange smell drifted up the stairs towards me.

  Oh, Ahmed, Ahmed, what have you been doing?

  Abo didn’t waste any time. In a few steps, he was right in front of Ahmed. He grabbed him by the collar and I saw the look of disgust on his face as he too smelt the strange smell.

  “Where have you been?” he shouted, his face close to Ahmed’s. “What kind of time is this to come home?”

  Ahmed seemed to be in a daze and he mumbled incoherently.

  I saw Hoyo in the doorway, holding a corner of her sheedh in her fist, her hand pressed to her mouth. Wasn’t she going to do anything?

  Abo started to really give it to Ahmed: about his attitude, his laziness, his unexplained absences. Even though I knew that most of what Abo was saying was true, my heart ached for my brother. Why didn’t he speak, explain himself, defend himself? Ahmed just stood there, swaying slightly, letting Abo’s words wash over him.

  “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Don’t you know your mother has been worried sick about you? You think I don’t know what you’re up to? Ha? You think I’m a fool? That I was born yesterday? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  I thought that would be the end of it, that we would all be able to go back to bed. But then, Ahmed put his head back and looked Abo square in the eye.

  “Shut up, old man,” he said, slowly and clearly, “just shut the f…” He hadn’t even finished saying the awful words before Abo’s open hand hit the side of Ahmed’s face. Ahmed swayed slightly before crashing backwards into the wall. Abo made to go after him again but Hoyo ran up behind him and held his arms, begging him to stop. I screamed then, a piercing, terrified scream; a scream that made them all look up at me, hidden in the dark on the stairs. I saw the shocked look on Hoyo’s face, the tears in her eyes, the horror on Abo’s face, the hurt anger on Ahmed’s.

  “Safia…” Hoyo called after me as I ran up the stairs, tears streaming down my face, my stomach churning, my heart tight and hurting, as if it was about to burst.

  I ran into my room and slammed the door behind me. I couldn’t wait to get into bed, to hide under the duvet, to shut it all out, to pretend it had never happened. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ahmed’s curled lip as he spat out those hateful words; I heard the sickening clap as Abo’s hand met Ahmed’s face; I heard Hoyo’s pleas, her tears as hot and painful as my own.

  Hoyo tried to come in and speak to me but I had lodged my chair against the door and she couldn’t get in. She gave up in the end, perhaps thinking that, if she left me to sleep, I would feel better in the morning. But I hardly slept at all and I didn’t feel better when the weak sunlight hit my sari curtains.

  And I felt even worse when I went down to breakfast and found only Abo, Hoyo and Abdullahi at the table, their faces tense and drawn. It didn’t take me long to discover why.

  Ahmed was gone.

  Chapter 5

  Now you depart, a
nd though your way may lead

  Through airless forests thick with hagar trees,

  Places steeped in heat, stifling and dry,

  Where breath comes hard, and no fresh breeze can reach –

  Yet may God place a shield of coolest air

  Between your body and the assailant sun.

  And in a random scorching flame of wind

  That parches the painful throat, and sears the flesh,

  May God, in His compassion, let you find

  The great-boughed tree that will protect and shade.

  Sayyid Mahamed Abdillah

  Ahmed had been gone for three days. Three days of sleepless nights and tears during my salah.

  Allah, please bring him home safely, don’t let anything happen to him…

  Everyone else tried to carry on as normal. No one mentioned the events of that terrible night; there were no apologies, no explanations. Hoyo never said anything but I could tell that she was worried. Her routine didn’t change – she still cooked and cleaned and wore her dira’ – but there was a difference. The spring was gone from her step and she let her dira’ trail on the floor instead of hitching one side up to show the embroidered gogorat underneath.

  One morning, when Abo and Abdullahi had gone to pray, I walked past the boys’ bedroom and heard sniffing. I pushed open the door slightly and saw Hoyo sitting on Ahmed’s bed, holding one of his T-shirts to her face. It was wet with her tears. My heart ached for her, for us, for Ahmed and, in a moment, I was in her arms.

  “Hoyo?” I sniffled, wiping my nose.

  “Shhh, Safia, shhh,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “It’s OK, he’ll come home soon, insha Allah, don’t worry…”

  Every hour that I was at home, I jumped to get the phone when it rang and my ears strained for the sound of keys in the lock. I kept checking Ahmed’s room to see if he had come home while we were out.

  When I was out, I looked for him constantly: on the bus I always went upstairs to check the seats at the back, my eyes scanning the pavements as we drove past. When I walked, I looked around all the time, hoping to catch a glimpse of his tousled head or leather jacket.