by Dirie, Waris
Once, on an excursion, I discovered an ostrich egg. I decided to take it home with me because I wanted to watch the baby ostrich hatch, then keep it as a pet. The egg is about the size of a bowling ball, and I hoisted it up from its hole in the sand and was carrying it away when Mama Ostrich came after me. She chased me and believe me, ostriches are fast; they can run forty miles an hour. She quickly caught me and started pecking my head with her beak, kakaka. I thought she was going to crack my skull like an egg, so I put down her baby and ran for my life.
Seldom were we close to forested areas, but when we were, we loved to see the elephants. From a great distance we’d hear their thundering roar and climb a tree to spot them. Like lions, monkeys, and humans, elephants live in communities. If they had a baby in their midst, every adult elephant, the cousin, the uncle, the auntie, the sister, the mother, the grand all of them would watch after that baby, to make sure nobody touched it. All of us children would stand high in the top of a tree and laugh, watching the elephant world for hours.
But gradually all those happy times with my family disappeared. My sister ran away; my brother went to school in the city. I learned sad facts about our family, about life. The rain stopped coming, and taking care of our animals was more and more difficult. Life became harder. And I became harder with it.
Part of that hardness formed watching my brothers and sisters die. Originally there were
twelve children in my family, but now there are only six of us left. My mother had a set of twins who died right after they were born. She had another beautiful baby girl who was about six months old. One day the baby was strong and healthy, the next my mother called to me, “Waris!!!” I ran to her and saw her kneeling over the baby. I was just a little girl, but I could tell something was terribly wrong, the baby didn’t look right. “Waris, run get me some camel’s milk!” my-mother commanded. But I couldn’t move. “Run, hurry!” I stood staring at my sister in a trance in terror. “What’s wrong with you?” Mama screamed at me.
Finally, I tore myself away, but I knew what would be waiting for me when I got back. I returned with the milk, but the baby was totally still, and I knew she was dead. When I looked at my sister again, Mama slapped me hard. For a long time she blamed me for the baby’s death, feeling that I had some sort of sorcerer’s powers, and when in my trance I stared at the baby, I caused its death.
I had no such powers, but my little brother did have supernatural gifts. Everyone agreed he was n o ordinary child. We called him Old Man, because when he was roughly six, his hair turned completely gray. He was extremely intelligent, and every man around us came to ask for his advice. They would walk up and say: “Where’s the Old Man?” Then, by turns, they would sit this little gray-haired boy on their laps. “What do you think about the rain this year?” they would ask. And honest to God, even though in years he was a child, never did he act like a child. He thought, talked, sat, and behaved like a very wise elderly man. While everyone respected him, they were frightened of him, too, because he was so obviously not one of us. While he was still technically a young boy, Old Man died, as if in a few short years he’d crammed in an entire lifetime. No one knew the cause, but everyone felt his passing made sense, because: “There’s no way he belonged to this world.”
As in any large family, each of us developed a role. Mine became the role of rebel, a reputation I earned in a series of actions that to me seemed perfectly logical and justified, but to my elders particularly my father seemed outrageous. One day my younger brother, Ali, and I sat under a tree eating white rice with camel’s milk. Ali wolfed his down greedily, but because this was a rare treat for us, I took each bite slowly. Having food was not something we took for granted; I always appreciated mine, savoring each bite with pleasure. Only a small amount of rice and milk remained in my bowl, and I anticipated it eagerly. Suddenly Ali stuck his spoon in my dish and scooped out my last bite, taking every last grain of rice. Without thinking, I retaliated by grabbing up a knife lying next to me and burying the blade in Ali’s thigh. He shrieked, but took it out and sunk the knife in exactly the same spot in my leg. Now both of us sat with wounded legs, but because I was. the one who had struck first, the blame went to me. Today, we carry matching scars from this meal.
One of the earliest outbursts of my rebel behavior centered on my longing for a pair of shoes. All my life I’ve been obsessed by shoes. Today even though I’m a model, I don’t own many clothes a pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts but I have a cupboard stacked full of high heels, sandals, tennis shoes, loafers, and boots, even though ironically I have nothing to wear them with. As a child I desperately wanted shoes, but not all the children in my family had clothes, and certainly there was no money to buy shoes. Yet it was my dream to wear beautiful leather sandals like my mother wore. How I wished to put on a pair of comfortable shoes and look after my animals, walk without worrying about rocks and thorns, snakes and scorpions. My feet were always bruised and marked, and I still carry the black scars today. Once a thorn came all the way through my foot; sometimes they would break off in my feet. We had no doctors in the desert, or medicine to treat the wound. But still we had to walk, because we had to look after the animals. No one said, “I can’t.” We just did it, went out each morning and limped along as best we could.
One of my father’s brothers was a very wealthy man. Uncle Ahmed lived in the city, in Galcaio, but we looked after his camels and the rest of his animals. I was the favorite to care for his goats, because I always did a thorough job, making sure they were well fed and watered, and I did my best to keep them safe from predators. One day, when I was about seven years old, Uncle Ahmed visited us and I said, “Look, I want you to buy me some shoes.”
He looked at me and laughed. “Yeah, yeah, all right. I’ll get you shoes.” I knew he was surprised, because it was very unusual for a girl to ask for anything, let alone anything as extravagant as shoes.
The next time my father took me to see him, I
was excited, because today would be the day I got my first pair of shoes. At my earliest opportunity I said eagerly, “Well, did you bring them?”
He said, “Yeah, I have them right here,” and handed me a parcel. I took the shoes in my hand and examined them; they were rubber sandals, flip-flops. Not beautiful leather sandals like Mama’s, but cheap, yellow flip-flops. I couldn’t believe it.
“These are my shoes?.” I cried, and threw them at him. When the flip-flops bounced off his brother’s face, my father tried to be upset, but this time he couldn’t help himself-he doubled over laughing.
My uncle said to him, “I don’t believe it. How are you raising this child?”
I started fighting with my uncle, swinging at him, because I was so disappointed, I was furious. “I worked so hard for this shit!” I screamed. “I did all this work for you, and this is it? I get a pair of cheap rubber sandals? Fah!! I’d rather go barefoot – I’ll go barefoot till my feet bleed before I wear this garbage!” and I motioned toward his gift.
Uncle Ahmed just looked at me, then raised his eyes to heaven and moaned, “Oh, Allah.” He stooped with a sigh, picked up his flip-flops, and took them back home. I was not content to give up so easily, however. 20After that day I kept sending my uncle messages by every relative, friend, or stranger heading to Galcaio: “Waris wants shoes!” But I had to wait many years until I realized my dream of owning a pair. In the meantime, however, I continued to raise Uncle Ahmed’s goats, and help my family care for our herds, walking thousands of miles barefoot.
Several years before the shoes episode with Uncle Ahmed, when I was a tiny girl, around four years old, we had a visitor one day. The man, Guban, was a good friend of my father’s and frequently came to see us. At twilight he stood talking with my parents, until finally my mother, staring at the sky, watching the bright planet maqal hid hid emerge, said it was time to bring in the lambs. Guban said, “Oh, why don’t you let me do that for you? Waris can help me.”
I felt important at being chosen over the boys to help Papa’s friend with the animals. He took my hand and we walked away from the hut and began to round up the herd. Normally I would have been running everywhere like a wild animal myself, but it was getting dark now, and since I was frightened, I stayed close to Guban. Suddenly he took off his jacket and laid it on the sand and sat down on top of it. I stared at him, confused, and protested: “Why are you sitting down? It’s getting dark we have to get the animals.”
“We have time. We’ll do that in a minute.” He rested on one side of his jacket and patted the empty space next to him. “Come sit down.” Reluctantly I came to him. Since I always loved stories as a kid, I realized this might be a good opportunity to bear one. “Will you tell me a story?”
Guban patted his coat again. “If you sit down, I’ll tell you one.” As soon as I sat next to him, he started trying to push me back onto his coat. “I don’t want to lie down. I want you to tell me a story,” I insisted stubbornly and squirmed upright.
“Come, come.” His hand pushed my shoulder firmly. “Lie down and look at the stars and I’ll tell you a story.” Stretching out with my head on his jacket, I stuck my toes in the cold sand and stared at the phosphorescent Milky Way. As the sky deepened from indigo to black, the lambs ran in circles around us, crying in the dark, and I waited anxiously for the story to begin. Abruptly, Guban’s face came between me and the Milky Way; he squatted between my legs and yanked up – the little scarf wrapped around my waist. Next I felt something hard and wet pressing against my vagina. I froze at first, not understanding what was happening, but I knew it was something very bad. The pressure intensified until it became a sharp pain.
“I want my Mama!” Suddenly I was flooded with a warm liquid and a sickening acrid odor permeated the night air. “You pee peed on me!” I screamed, horrified. I jumped up and rubbed my scarf against my legs, mopping off the foul smelling liquid.
“No, no, it’s okay,” he whispered soothingly and grabbed my arm. “I was just trying to tell you a story.” Jerking free, I ran back to my mother, with Guban chasing after me, trying to catch me. When I saw Mama standing next to the fire, the orange light glowing off her face, I ran up and threw my arms around her legs.
“What’s wrong, Waris?” Mama said in alarm. Guban ran up behind me panting, and my mother looked at him. “What happened to her?”
He laughed casually and waved his arm at me. “Oh, I was trying to tell her a story and she got scared.” I held on to my mother with a grip of iron. I wanted to tell her what Papa’s friend had done to me, but I didn’t have the words I didn’t know what he’d done. I looked at his smiling face in the firelight, a face I would have to see again and again over the years, and knew I’d hate him forever.
She stroked my head as I pressed my face into her thigh. “Waris, it’s okay. There, there, it was only a story, baby. It’s not real.” To Guban, she said, “Where are the lambs?”
A Nomad’s Life
Growing up in Africa I did not have the sense of history that seems so important in other parts of the world. Our language, Somali, did not have a written script until 1973, so we did not learn to read or write. Knowledge was passed down by word of mouth poetry or folktales or, more important, by our parents teaching us the skills we needed to survive. For example, my mother taught me how to weave from dried grass containers tight enough to hold milk; my father taught me how to care for our animals and make sure they were healthy. We didn’t spend much time talking about the past nobody had time for that. Everything was today, what are we going to do today? Are all the children in? Are all the animals safe? How are we going to eat? Where can we find water?
In Somalia, we lived the way our ancestors had for thousands of years; nothing had changed dramatically for us. As nomads we did not live with electricity, telephones, or automobiles, much less computers, television, or space travel. These facts, combined with our emphasis on living in the present, gave us a much different perspective on time than the one that dominates the Western world.
Like the rest of my family, I have no idea how old I am; I can only guess. A baby who is born in my country has little guarantee of being alive one year later, so the concept of tracking birthdays does not retain the same importance. When I was a child, we lived without artificial time constructions of schedules, clocks, and calendars. Instead, we lived by the seasons and the sun, planning our moves around our need for rain, planning our day around the span of daylight available. We told time by using the sun. If my shadow was on the west side, it was morning; when it moved directly underneath me, it was noon. When my shadow crossed to the other side, it was afternoon. As the day grew longer, so did my shadow my cue to start heading home before dark.
When we got up in the morning, we decided what we’d do that day, then did that task the best we could until we finished or the sky grew too dark for us to see. There was no such notion of getting up and having your day all planned out for you. In New York, people frequently whip out their date books and ask, “Are you free for lunch on the fourteenth or what about the fifteenth?” I respond with “Why don’t you call me the day before you want to meet up?” No matter how many times I write down appointments, I can’t get used to the idea. When I first came to London, I was mystified by the connection between people staring at their wrist, then crying, “I’ve got to dash!” I felt like everyone was rushing everywhere, every action was timed. In Africa there was no hurry, no stress. African time is very, very slow, very calm. If you say, “I’ll see you tomorrow around noon,” that means about four or five o’clock. And today I still refuse to wear a watch.
During my childhood years in Somalia, it never occurred to me to fast-forward into the future, or delve into the past enough to ask, “Mama, how did you grow up?” As a consequence I know little of my family history, especially since I left home at such an early age. I constantly wish I could go back and ask those questions now ask my mother what her life was like when she was a little girl, or ask where her mother came from, or how her father died. It disturbs me that I may never know these facts.
However, one thing I do know about my mother is that she was very beautiful. I know I sound like the typical adoring daughter, but she was. Her face was like a Modigliani sculpture, and her skin so dark and smooth, that she looked as if she’d been perfectly chiseled from black marble. Since Mama’s skin was jet black and her teeth dazzlingly white, at night when she smiled all you could see were her teeth glowing, as if they floated all by themselves in the night. Her hair was long and straight, very soft, and she’d smooth it with her fingers, since she never owned a comb. My mother is tall and slender traits that all her daughters inherited.
Her demeanor is very calm, very quiet. But when she starts talking, she’s hysterically funny and she laughs a lot. She tells jokes, and some of them are funny, some are really dirty, and some are just stupid little things she’d say to crack us up. She’d look at me and say, “Waris, why are your eyes disappearing into your face?” But her favorite silly joke was calling me Avdohol, which means ‘small mouth.” Mama would look at me for no reason and say, “Hey, Avdohol, why is your mouth so small?”
My father was very handsome, and believe me, he knew it. He was about six feet tall, slim, and lighter than Mama; his hair was brown, and his eyes were light brown. Papa was cocky because he knew he was good-looking. He always teased Mama, “I can go and get another woman if you don’t -‘ and then he’d fill in the blank with whatever he was after. Or, “Look, I’m getting bored around here. I’m getting me another woman…” My mother would tease back, “Go ahead. See what you can do.” They really loved each other, but unfortunately one day these taunts came true.
My mother grew up in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. My father, on the other hand, was a nomad and had always lived roaming the desert. When she met him, my mother thought Papa was so handsome that a life wandering with him as nomads sounded like a romantic idea; they quickly decided to g
et married. Papa went to my grandmother, since my grandfather was dead, and asked permission to marry my mother. My grandmother said, “No, no, no, absolutely not.” To my mother she added, “He’s just a playboy!”
Grandmother was not about to allow her beautiful daughter to throw her life away raising camels in the wilderness with this man, this desert man! However, when my mother was about sixteen, she ran away and married Papa anyhow.
They went to the other side of the country and lived with his family in the desert, which created a whole series of problems for my mother. Her family had money and power, and she had never known this type of harsh nomadic life. Greater than that dilemma, however, was the fact that my father was from the Daarood tribe, and my mother was from the Hawiye tribe. Like Native Americans, the citizens of Somalia are divided into individual tribes, and each has a fanatical loyalty to its own group. This tribal pride has been the source of wars throughout our history.
A great rivalry exists between the Daaroods and Hawiyes, and my father’s family always treated my mother badly, assuming she was a lesser mortal by virtue of being from a different tribe than their own. Mama was lonely for a very long time, but she had to adapt. After I ran away from home and was separated from my family, I realized what life must have been like for her, living all alone among the Daaroods.
My mother started having babies, and raising her children gave her the love she missed being away from her own people. But again, now that I’m grown, I look back and realize what she went through having twelve children. I remember when Mama was pregnant, she would suddenly disappear, and we wouldn’t see her for days. Then she would show up carrying a tiny baby. She went off into the desert alone and gave birth, taking along something sharp to cut the umbilical cord. Once after she disappeared we had to move our camp in the endless search for water. It took her four days to find us; she walked across the desert carrying the newborn baby while she looked for her husband.
