by Dirie, Waris
“Oh, that’s your friend, Shukrin.”
“Is her family moving from here?” “No, she’s getting married,” came my mother’s reply.
Stunned, I stared at the figures disappearing. I was around thirteen, and Shukrin was only slightly older than me, about fourteen, and I couldn’t believe she was getting married. “To whom?” No one answered me, as such a question was considered none of my business. “To whom?” I repeated my question, which was again met by silence. “Will she be leaving here with the man she marries?” This was common practice and my greatest fear was that I would never see my friend again.
My father said gruffly, “Don’t worry about it. You’re next.” My parents turned and walked back to our hut, while I stood there grappling with the news. Shukrin was getting married! Married! It was a term I’d heard over and over, but until that morning I’d never really questioned what it meant.
As a girl in Somalia, I never thought about marriage or sex. In my family in our whole culture nobody ever talked about any of that. It never, ever, came to mind. My only thoughts on boys were competing with them to see who could be best at caring for the animals, racing with them, and beating them up. The only thing anyone ever said on the topic of sex was “Be sure you don’t mess with anybody. You’re supposed to be a virgin when you marry.” Girls know they will marry as a virgin, and will marry only one man, and that’s it. That’s your life.
My father used to say to my sisters and me, “You girls are my queens,” because he was considered very lucky to have some of the best-looking daughters around. “You are my queens, and no man will mess with you. If he tries, just let me know. I’m here to protect you I’ll die for you.”
More than one opportunity came for him to guard his ‘queens.” My oldest sister, Aman, was out one day taking care of her animals, when a man approached her. This guy kept pestering her, and she kept repeating, “Leave me alone. I’m not interested in you.” Finally, when his charm didn’t work, he grabbed Aman and tried to force himself on her. This was a big mistake, because she was an amazon, well over six feet tall, and strong as any man. She beat him up, then came home and told my father the story. My father went looking for this poor fool, then Papa beat him up. No man would mess with his daughters.
One night I awoke when another sister, Fauziya, let out a piercing scream. As usual we were sleeping outside under the stars, but she was separated from the rest of us, and lay off to one side. I sat up and dimly saw the shape of a man running away from our camp. Fauziya continued to scream as my father jumped up and chased the intruder. We went to her and she reached down to touch her legs, which were covered with white, sticky semen. The man escaped from my father, but in the morning, we saw the prints of the pervert’s sandals next to where my sister had slept. Papa had an idea who the culprit was, but couldn’t be sure.
Sometime later, during an intense dry spell, my father had traveled to a local well to gather water. As he stood in the damp earth at the bottom, a man approached. This man grew restless waiting his turn for the water and yelled out to Papa, “Hey, come on! I got to get some water, too!” In Somalia, wells are open areas where someone has dug down deep enough to reach groundwater, sometimes one hundred feet deep. As water becomes scarcer, everyone becomes very competitive, trying to get enough water for the livestock. My father replied that the gentleman should come ahead and get what he needed.
“Yeah, I will.” This man wasted no time and climbed down into the hole. He went about his
business, filling his bags with water, and as he walked about, my father noticed the prints of his sandals in the mud.
“It was you, wasn’t it?!” Papa said, grabbing the man by the shoulders and shaking him. “You sick bastard, you’re the one who was messing with my girl!” My father hit him, beating him like the cur that he was. But the cur took out a knife, a big African killer knife, carved with an ornate pattern like a ceremonial dagger. He stabbed my father four or five times in the ribs, before Papa managed to wrestle the weapon away from him and stab the man with his own knife. Now they were both seriously wounded. My father barely managed to climb out of the well, and make it back to our hut; he returned home bloody and weak. After a long illness, Papa recovered, but I realized later he had told the truth: he’d been prepared to die for my sister’s honor.
My father always joked with us girls, “You are my queens, my treasures, and I keep you under lock and key. And I’ve got the key!”
I would say, “But Papa, where’s the key?”
He would laugh like a madman and say, “I threw it away!”
“Well, how are we going to come out?” I would cry, and we’d all laugh. “You’re not, my darling. Not till I say you’re ready.”
These jokes were handed down from my oldest sister, Aman, all the way to the youngest baby girl. But they were not really jokes. Without my father’s permission, there would be no access to his daughters. But more was at stake here than Papa protecting us from unwanted advances. Virgins are a hot commodity in the African marriage market, one of the largest unspoken reasons for the practice of female circumcision. My father could expect a high price for beautiful virgin daughters but had little hope of unloading one who had been soiled by having sex with another man. When I was a girl, however, none of these facts concerned me, because I was a child and never thought about the subjects of sex or marriage.
That is, until I learned of my friend Shukrin’s wedding. A few days later, my father came home one evening and I heard him call out, “Hey, where’s Waris?”
“Over here, Papa,” I yelled.
“Come here,” he called in a soft voice. Normally he was very stern and aggressive, so I knew something was up. I assumed he wanted me to do him a favor, do something with the animals tomorrow, look for water, hunt for food, or some similar chore. So I stayed where I was, staring at my father cautiously, trying to imagine what he had planned for me. “Come, come, come, come,” he said impatiently.
I walked a couple of steps toward him, eyeing him suspiciously, but didn’t say anything. Papa grabbed me and sat me down on his knee. “You know,” he began, ‘you been really good.” Now I knew something serious was up. “You been really good, more like a boy, more like a son to me.” I knew this was his highest praise.
“Hmmm,” I responded, wondering why I was receiving such accolades.
“You’ve been just like a son to me, working hard as any man, taking good care of the animals. And I just want to let you know that I’m going to miss you very much.” When he said this, I thought my father was afraid that I was going to run away like my sister Aman had. When Papa had tried to arrange her marriage, she ran away. He was afraid I was going to run away, too, and leave him and Mama with all the hard work.
A flood of tenderness came over me, and I hugged him, feeling guilty for being so suspicious. “Oh, Papa, I’m not going anywhere!” He pulled back from me, and stared at my face. In a soft voice he said, “Yes, you are, my darling.”
“Where am I going? I’m not going anywhere I’m not leaving you and Mommy.”
“Yes, you are, Waris. I found you a husband.” “No, Papa, no!” I jumped up and he tried to grab me back, tried to grab my arms and hold on to me. “I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to leave home, I want to stay with you and Mama!”
“Sh, sh, shit’s going to be fine. I found you a good husband.”
“Who?” I said, curious now.
“You will meet him.”
My eyes filled with tears, even though I tried hard to be tough. I started swinging at him, and screaming, “I don’t want to get married!”
“Okay, Waris, look…” Papa reached down and grabbed a rock, pulled his hands behind his back, and swapped the rock back and forth. Then he held his hands out in front of him, with both fists clenched, so I couldn’t see which one held the prize. “Choose the right hand or the left hand. Choose the one that holds the rock. If you guess right, you’re going to do wha
t your days will be full of sorrow, because you’ll be banned from the family.”
I stared at him, wondering what was going to happen if I chose the wrong hand. Was I going to die? I touched his left hand. He turned up an empty palm toward the sky. “I guess I’m not going to do what you tell me,” I murmured sadly.
“We can do it again.”
“No.” I shook my head slowly. “No, Papa. I’m not going to marry.”
“He’s a good man!” my father cried. “You’ve got to trust me I know a good man when I see one. And you’re going to do what I say!”
I stood there with my shoulders slumped, feeling sick and scared, and shook my head.
He tossed the rock hiding in his right hand into the darkness and shouted, “Then you’ll have bad luck all your life!”
“Well, I guess I’m the one who’ll have to live with it, won’t I?” He slapped me hard across the face, because no one talked back to my father. I realize now that he had to marry me off quickly, as much for this type of behavior as for any traditional reasons. I had grown into a rebel, a tomboy, sassy and fearless, and was getting a reputation as such. Papa had to find me a husband while I was still a valuable commodity, because no African man wanted to be challenged by his wife.
The next morning I got up and took my animals out to graze as usual. While I watched them I thought about this new notion of marriage. I tried to think of a plan to persuade my father to let me remain at home, but knew in my heart this would never happen. I wondered who my new husband would be. To date, my only childish romantic inkling had been an interest in Jamah the son of my father’s friend. I had seen him many times, because our families often traveled together. Jamah was considerably older than me, and I thought him very good-looking, but he wasn’t married yet. My father loved him like a son, and thought Jamah was a good son to his own father. But probably my biggest attraction to Jamah was that he’d once had a serious crush on my sister Aman and didn’t know I was alive. I was just a little girl to him, where Aman had been a desirable woman. When I whispered that Jarnah liked her, Aman waved her hand and said, “Pshhh.” She never gave him a second look, because she’d seen enough of the nomadic life and had no desire to marry a man like our father. She always talked about going to the city and marrying a man with lots of money. And when Papa tried to marry her off to one of his fellow nomads, she ran away in search of her big city dreams. We never heard from her again.
All that day, as I sat watching my animals, I tried to convince myself that marriage might not be so bad, and envisioned myself living with Jamah, the way my mother and father lived together. As the sun was going down, I walked back to our camp with my herd. My little sister ran to meet me and announced, “Papa has somebody with him and I think they’re waiting for you.” My sister was suspicious of this sudden interest in Waris, thinking perhaps she was being left out of some worthwhile treat. But I shuddered, knowing my father was continuing with his plan just as if I’d never objected.
“Where are they?” My sister pointed in one direction, and I turned and headed in the other. “Waris, they’re waiting for you!” she cried.
“Oh, shut up! Get away from me!” I put my goats in their pen and began to milk them. When I was about halfway through the job, I heard my father calling my name. “Yes, Papa. I’m coming.” I stood up with dread but knew there was no point in putting off the inevitable. A small hope flickered that maybe my father would be waiting with Jamah, and I envisioned his smooth handsome face. I walked toward them with my eyes closed. “Please let it be Jamah…” I muttered as I stumbled along. Jamah had become my salvation from this unsavory notion of leaving home to live with a strange man.
Finally, I opened my eyes and stared into the blood-red sky; the sun melted into the horizon, and I saw two men in front of me in silhouette. My father said, “Oh, there you are. Come here, my darling. This is Mr. …. I didn’t hear another word he said. My eyes fastened onto a man sitting down, holding on to a cane. He was at least sixty years old, with a long white beard.
“Waris!” I finally realized my father was talking to me. “Say hello to Mr. Galool.”
“Hello,” I said, in the iciest voice I could muster. I had to be respectful, but I did not have to be enthusiastic. The old fool just sat there grinning at me, leaning on his stick with all his might, but did not reply. He probably didn’t know what to say, looking at this girl he was about to marry, who only stared at him in horror. To hide the look in my eyes, I hung my head down and stared at the ground.
“Now, Waris, dear, don’t be shy,” Papa said. looked at my father, and when he saw my face, he realized that his best tactic was to shoo me away, so I didn’t scare off my prospective husband. “Well, okay, you go ahead and finish your chores.” He turned to Mr. Galool and explained, “She’s just a shy, quiet young girl.” I didn’t linger another second but ran back to my goats.
All that evening I thought about what my life would be like married to Mr. Galool. Never having been away from my parents, I tried to imagine living not with them, but instead with a person who I didn’t even know. At least it was fortunate that I didn’t add to my misery by including the thought of having sex with a disgusting old man. But at the tender age of thirteen, I was naive about that part of the bargain. As a distraction to take my mind off my marriage dilemma, I beat up my little brother.
Early the next morning my father called me.
“You know who that was last night?”
“I can guess.”
“That’s your future husband.”
“But Papa, he’s so old!” I still couldn’t believe my father thought so little of me that he’d send me to live with an old man like that.
“That’s the best kind, darling! He’s too old to run around, chasing after other women, bringing home other wives. He’s not going to leave you he’ll look after you. And besides’ Papa grinned proudly ‘do you know how much he’s paying for you?”
“How much?”
“FIVE camels! He’s giving me FIVE camels.” Papa patted my arm. “I’m so proud of you.”
I looked away from my father, watching the golden rays of morning sun bring the desert landscape to life. Closing my eyes, I felt its warmth on my face. My thoughts returned to the previous night when I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I lay there sheltered in the midst of my family, watching the stars spin overhead, and made my decision. I knew if I protested against marrying the old man, that wouldn’t be the end of the situation. My father would just find another man, then another one, then another one, because he was determined to get rid of me… and get his camels. I nodded my head. “Well, Father, I got to take my animals out now.” Papa looked at me with satisfaction, and I could read his mind: “Hey, that was much easier than I thought it would be.”
As I sat watching the goats playing that day, I knew it would be the last time I looked after my father’s herd. I pictured my life with the old man, the two of us in some completely isolated desert place. Me doing all the work, while he limped around with his cane. Me living alone after he had a heart attack, or better yet, me raising four or five babies alone after he died, because in Somalia, widows do not remarry. I made up my mind this was not the life for me. That night when I came home, my mother asked me what was wrong. “Have you met that man?” I snapped.
She didn’t need to ask me which man. “Yes, I saw him the other day.”
In a frantic whisper, so my father couldn’t hear, I said, “Mama, I don’t want to marry that man!”
She shrugged. “Well, my darling, it’s out of my hands. What can I do? It’s your father’s decision.” I knew that maybe tomorrow or the next day, my new husband would come for me, bringing his five camels in exchange. I formed my plan to run away before it was too late.
That evening after everyone went to sleep, I listened for Papa’s familiar snoring. Then I got up and went to my mother, who still sat next to the fire. “Mama,” I whispered, “I can’t marry that man I’m going
to run away.”
“Shhh, quiet! Where, child? Where are you going to go?”
I’ll find Auntie in Mogadishu.”
“Do you know where she is? I don’t!” “Don’t worry, I’ll find her.”
“Well, it’s dark now,” she rationalized, as if this could stop destiny.
“Not now, in the morning,” I whispered. “Wake me up before the sun comes up.” I knew I needed her help, because it wasn’t as if I could just set the alarm clock. I needed to get some rest before I set off on my long journey, but I also needed to get a head start before my father woke up.
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.” “Oh, please! Mama, I cannot marry this man go and be his wife! Please, please. I’ll come back for you. You know I will.”
“Go to bed.” She had that stern look, her look that told me the subject was closed. I left my tired mother looking into the fire and I pushed into the tangle of arms and legs, between my brothers and sisters, to get warm.
While I was sleeping, I felt my mother lightly tap my arm. She knelt on the ground beside me. “Go now.” Immediately I was jolted awake, then flooded with the sick sensation of what I had to do. I wriggled carefully from the warm bodies and checked to make sure my father was in his usual position guarding the family. He still lay snoring. I shivered and walked away from our hut with my mother. “Mama, thank you for waking me.” In the gloomy light I struggled to see her face, trying to memorize its features, because I wouldn’t see that face again for a long time. I had planned to be strong, but instead choked on my tears and hugged her hard.
“Go go before he wakes up,” she said softly into my ear. I felt her arms tighten around me. “You’re going to be all right don’t you worry about that. You just be very careful. Careful!” She turned me loose. “And Waris… please, one thing. Don’t forget me.”
