by Dirie, Waris
“Well, yes. Come with me.” She walked into the living room, and as we climbed the stairs, I saw the elegant furnishings: the chandelier, white sofa covered with dozens of pillows, abstract oils hanging over the mantel, the logs crackling in the fireplace. Aunt Maruim took me into her room and told me I could sleep in her bed. The four poster was the size of my family’s entire hut and was covered with a beautiful down comforter. I ran my hand across the silky fabric, enjoying its feel. “When you wake up, I’ll show you the house.” “Are you going to wake me up?”
“No. You wake up when you wake up. Sleep as long as you like.” I climbed under the covers and thought I had never felt anything so soft and heavenly in my life. Auntie closed the door quietly, and I fell asleep as if I were falling down a tunnel – a long black tunnel.
The Maid
When I opened my eyes, I thought I was still dreaming and it was a beautiful dream. Waking up in the huge bed in the lovely room, at first I couldn’t believe it was real. Aunt Maruim must have slept with one of the children that night, because I lay unconscious in her room until the following morning. But as soon as I got out of bed, my fantasy life crashed back to real life.
I came out of Auntie’s room, and was wandering through the house when she found me. “Good. You’re up. Let’s go to the kitchen and I can show you what you’ll be doing.” In a daze, I followed her into the room she called the kitchen; however, it
did not look like the kitchen in my auntie’s house in Mogadishu. The room was surrounded by creamy-white cabinets, gleamed with blue ceramic tiles, and was dominated in the center by a monstrous six-burner stove. Auntie opened and slammed drawers, calling out, ‘… and here are the utensils, the cutlery, the linens .. I had no idea what this woman was talking about no idea what these things were she was showing me, let alone what I was supposed to do with them. “At six-thirty each morning you’ll serve your uncle’s breakfast, because he goes to the embassy early. He’s a diabetic, so we must watch his diet carefully. He always has the same thing: herbal tea and two poached eggs. I’d like my coffee in my room at seven; then you’ll make pancakes for the children; they eat at eight sharp, because they have to be at school by nine. After breakfast ‘
“Auntie, how am I supposed to know how to do all these things? Who’s going to teach me? I don’t know how to make how you call it pancakes. What’s pancakes?”
Aunt Maruim had just inhaled a big breath before I interrupted her, and she’d extended her arm pointing at a door. She held the breath for a moment with her arm still outstretched, while she stared at me with sort of a panicky look on her face. Then she exhaled slowly and brought her arm down to her side, pressing her hands together the way she had when I first saw her. “I’ll do these things the first time, Waris. But you must watch me closely. Watch me very closely, listen, and learn.” I nodded, and she inhaled again, picking up where she’d left off.
After the first week, and a few minor disasters, I had the routine down to a science and followed it every day, 365 days a year, for the next four years. For a girl who had never been aware of time, I learned to watch the clock closely and live by it. Up at six, Uncle’s bretkfast at six-thirty, Auntie’s coffee at seven, children’s breakfast at eight. Then I cleaned the kitchen. The chauffeur brought the car back from taking my uncle to the embassy, and took the children to school. Then I cleaned my aunt’s room, then her bathroom, then worked through each room of the house, dusting, mopping, scrubbing, and polishing my way up all four floors. And believe me, if I didn’t clean the house to someone’s satisfaction, I heard about it. “I don’t like the way you cleaned the bathroom. Make sure it’s clean, next time. This white tile should be spotless shining.”
Other than the chauffeur and the chef, I was the only servant for the entire household; my aunt explained there was no need to hire more help for a small place like ours. Chef made dinner only six nights a week, and on Sunday, his day off, I cooked. In four years I never had a day off. The few times I asked, my aunt threw such a fit that I gave up trying.
I didn’t eat with the family. I grabbed something when I had a chance, and kept working until I fell into bed around midnight. But I didn’t feel that missing dinner with the family was any great loss, because in my opinion, the chef’s cooking was garbage. He was a Somali, but from a different tribe than mine. I thought he was a pompous, wicked, lazy man, who loved to torment me. Whenever my aunt would walk into the kitchen, he would start in out of the blue: “Waris, when I came back in on Monday morning, you had left the kitchen in a disgusting mess. It took me hours to clean it.” Of course this was a total lie. All he ever studied were ways to make himself look good in front of my aunt and uncle, and he knew it wasn’t going to be with his food. I told my aunt I didn’t want to eat her chef’s cooking, and so she said, “Well, make whatever you want, then.” At this point I was really glad I had watched my cousin Fatima cook back in Mogadishu. But intuitively I had a talent for voice, slurring her words, as if she were talking in her sleep, “What do you want to talk about?” “What are you reading?” “Hmmm?”
“What are you reading? What’s it about?” Finally, once I got her attention, she’d stop and tell me what the whole book was about. More often than not, they were romantic novels, and the climax came when, after several interruptions and misunderstandings, the man and woman finally kissed. Since I’ve had a lifelong love of stories, I enjoyed these times enormously, and I’d sit spellbound while she went through the entire plot in great detail, her eyes flashing and arms waving. Listening to her stories made me want to learn to read, because then, I figured, I could enjoy stories whenever I wanted.
Mama’s brother who lived with us, Uncle Abdullah, had come to London with his sister, so he could attend the university. He asked me if I wanted to go to school. “You know, Waris, you need to learn how to read. If you’re interested, I can help you.” He told me where the school was located, what times it met and most important that it was free. The notion that I could go to school would have never occurred to me on my own. The ambassador paid me a tiny sum each month for pocket money, but certainly not enough to pay for school. Excited about learning to read, I went to Auntie Maruim and told her I wanted to go to school. I wanted to learn how to read, write, and speak English.
Even though I lived in London, we spoke Somali at home, and since I had no contact with the outside world, I knew only a few words of English. Auntie said, “Well, let me think about it.” But when she discussed it with my uncle, he said no. I kept pressing her to let me go, but she didn’t want to go against my uncle. Finally, I decided to go without their permission. School met three nights a week, from nine to eleven. Uncle Abdullah agreed to take me the first time and show me where to go. By now I was about fifteen, and this was my first time in a classroom ever. The room was full of people of all ages from all over the world. After the first night, an old Italian man would pick me up when I sneaked out of my uncle’s house, then bring me home again when we were finished. I was so eager to learn that the teacher would say to me, “You’re good, Waris, but slow down.” I learned the alphabet, and was beginning on the fundamentals of English, when my uncle discovered I was sneaking out at night. He was furious that I’d
disobeyed him and put an end to my attending school after only a couple of weeks.
Even though I was no longer permitted to go to school, I borrowed my cousin’s books and tried to teach myself to read. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV with the family, but sometimes I’d linger at the door and listen to the English, trying to develop an ear for the language. Everything continued as usual until one day Auntie Maruim called to me as I was cleaning “Waris, come down here when you’ve finished upstairs. I have something to tell you.” I was making the beds, and when I’d done them all I walked into the living room, where my aunt stood by the fireplace.
“Yes?”
“I got a phone call today from home. Ah…
what’s your little brother’s name?”
“All?”
“No, the youngest one, the little one with gray hair.”
“Old Man? You’re talking about Old Man?” “Yeah. Old Man and your big sister, Aman. Well, I’m sorry. They both died.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My eyes fixed on Auntie’s face, thinking she must be joking or maybe she
was mad at me about something, and she was trying to punish me by telling me that awful story. But she had no expression of any kind to give me a clue; her face was completely blank. She must be serious, or why would she say this? But how can it be true? I froze in that spot and couldn’t move, until I felt my legs giving way, and sat down on the white sofa for a minute. I didn’t even think to ask what had happened. My aunt might have been talking, she might have explained the horrible events to me, but all I could hear was a roaring in my ears. Numbly, walking stiffly like a zombie, I went up to my room on the fourth floor.
I lay there in shock for the rest of the day, stretched out on my bed under the eaves in the tiny room that I shared with my young cousin. Old Man and Aman both dead! How could it be? I had left home, missing my opportunity to spend time with my brother and sister, and now I would never see either one of them again. Aman, always the strong one; Old Man, always the wise one. It didn’t seem possible that they could die and if they could, what did that mean for the rest of the family those of us with lesser abilities?
By that evening, I decided I didn’t want to suffer anymore. Nothing in my life had gone the way
I’d hoped since that morning I ran away from my father. Now, two years later, I missed the closeness of my family terribly, and knowing two of them were gone forever was more than I could bear. I walked downstairs to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and removed a butcher knife. With the knife in my hand I returned upstairs to my room. But as I lay there trying to get the courage to cut myself, I kept thinking of my mother. Poor Mama. I lost two this week, she’d lose three. It hardly seemed fair to her, so I laid the knife on the table next to the bed and stared at the ceiling. I’d forgotten about the knife, when later my cousin Basma came in to check on me. She looked at it in shock. “What the hell is that! What are you doing with a knife?” I didn’t try to answer, just Went back to looking at the ceiling. Basma took the knife and went away.
After a few days my aunt called me again: “Waris! Come down.” I lay there pretending not to hear. WAR IS COME DOWN!” I went downstairs and found her waiting at the foot. “Hurry up! Telephone!” This news astonished me, as I never got phone calls. In fact, I’d never spoken on the telephone.
“For me?” I said quietly.
“Yes, yes.” She pointed to the receiver lying on the table. “Here, pick it up pick up the phone!”
I held the receiver in my hand, looking at the contraption as if it were going to bite me. From about a foot away, I whispered, “Yes?”
Aunt Maruim rolled her eyes. “Speak! Speak talk into the phone!” She turned the receiver right side up and pushed it next to my ear.
“Hello?” Then I heard an amazing sound: my mother’s voice. “Mama! Mama! Oh, my God, is it really you?” A grin spread across my face for the first time in days. “Mama, are you okay?”
“No, I’ve been living under the tree.” She told me that after Aman and Old Man died, she went crazy. At this point in Mama’s story, I was so thankful I had given up the notion of adding to her grief by killing myself. My mother had run into the desert; she didn’t want to be with anyone, look at anyone, talk to anyone. Then she went on to Mogadishu alone and visited her family. She was still there with them now, calling from Auntie Sahru’s house.
Mama tried to explain how it happened, but still nothing made sense. Old Man had fallen ill. As was so typical of our lives as nomads in Africa, there was no medical help; nobody knew what was wrong, or what to do about it. In that society there were only two alternatives: live or die. There was no in between. As long as someone lived, everything was okay. We didn’t worry much about illness, since without doctors or medicine, there was nothing we could do to fix it. When someone died, well, that was okay, too, because the survivors would continue. Life went on. Always, the philosophy of in’shallah ruled our lives: “If God is willing.” There was an acceptance of life as a gift, and death as the unarguable decision of God.
But when Old Man fell sick, my parents were frightened, because he was a special child. Mama not knowing what else to do had sent a messenger to Aman in Mogadishu, asking for help. Aman was always the strong one; she would know what to do. And she did. Aman set off on foot from Mogadishu to come and get Old Man and take him to a doctor. Exactly where my family was camped at the time, or how far they were from the capital, I have no idea. But what Mama couldn’t have known when she sent for her was that Aman was eight months pregnant. As my sister carried Old Man to the hospital, he died in her arms. Aman went into shock, and she also died a few days later, and the baby with her. I was never even sure where they were when they died, but after learning this, Mama, who had always been so quietly steadfast, fell apart. And since she was the center that held our family together, it sickened me to think what life was like for the rest of them. More than ever, I felt terrible about being stuck in London and unable to help Mama when she needed me most.
However, life went on for all of us, and in London I tried to enjoy it as much as I could. I did my duties in the house, and joked with my cousins and their friends who visited.
One night I recruited Basma to help me with my first modeling job. Since arriving in London, I had grown to love clothes, but I didn’t particularly want to own them there was just something fun about trying them on. It was like playacting; I could pretend to be someone else. While the family was in the den watching television, I went into Uncle Mohammed’s room and closed the door. I opened his armoire and took out one of his best suits, a navy wool pinstripe. I laid it on the bed with a white shirt, silk tie, dark socks, elegant black English shoes, and felt hat. I put everything on, struggling to knot the tie as I’d seen Uncle do. Then I pulled the hat down low. When my ensemble was complete, I went to find Basma. She doubled over laughing.
“Go tell your dad there’s a man here to see him.”
“Those are his clothes? Oh, my God, he’s going to kill ‘
“Just go do it.”
I stood out in the hallway and listened to my cousin, waiting for the right moment to make my big entrance. “Father,” I heard Basma say, ‘there’s a man here to see you.”
“A man at this time of night?” Uncle Mohammed didn’t sound too happy. “Who is it? What does he want? Have you ever seen him before?”
Basma stammered, “I, uh, I don’t know. I think,
yeah, I think you know him.”
“Well, tell him…”
“Why don’t you see him,” she said quickly. “He’s right outside the door.”
“Okay,” my uncle agreed tiredly. That was my cue. I pulled the hat all the way down over my eyes till I could barely see, stuck my hands in the pockets of his jacket, and swaggered into the room.
“Hi, don’t you remember me?” I said in a baritone voice. Uncle’s eyes bugged out, and he ducked down trying to get a look under the hat. When he realized who it was, he cracked up laughing. Auntie and all the rest of the family roared.
Uncle Mohammed wagged his finger at me. “Now, did I give you permission to…”
“I just had to try, Uncle. Don’t you think it’s fun?”
“Oh, Allah.”
I did this stunt a few more times, each time waiting long enough till I figured my uncle wasn’t expecting it. Then he would say to me, “That’s enough, now, Waris. Don’t try on my clothes anymore, all right? Leave them alone.” And I knew he was serious, but still he thought it was funny. Later I’d hear him laughing and telling his friends, “This girl will go in my room and try on my clothes. Then Basma will come in and say, “Dad, there’s a man here to see you.” Then she strolls in wearing my things from head to t
oe. You should see it…”
My auntie said her friends had mentioned that I should try modeling. But Auntie’s response was “Um-hmmm. But we don’t do that sort of thing, being from Somalia and being Moslem, you know.” However, my aunt never seemed to object to the modeling career of her old friend’s daughter, Iman. Auntie had known Iman’s mother for years and years, so whenever either of them were in London, Aunt Maruim insisted they stay with us. Listening to discussions of Iman was how I first became acquainted with the idea of modeling. I had cut many of her pictures from my cousin’s magazines and taped them to the wall in my little room. If she’s a Somali woman and she can do this, I reasoned, why can’t I?
When Iman came to our house, I always wanted to find the right opportunity to talk to her. I wanted to ask, “How do I become a model?” I barely even knew that such a thing existed; I certainly had no idea how to become one. But each time she’d visit, she would spend the evening talking with the elders; I knew my aunt and uncle would never approve of my interrupting their conversation for such nonsense as my desire to be a model. Finally, one night I found the right moment. Iman was in her room reading, and I knocked on the door. “Can I get you something before you go to sleep?”
“Yes, I’d like a cup of herbal tea.” I went down to the kitchen and brought back a tray.
As I set it down on the nightstand, I began. “You know, I have so many of your pictures in my room.” I listened to the clock ticking on the night stand, feeling like a perfect idiot. “I’d really like to do modeling, too. Do you think it’s hard..” how did you do it… how did you start, anyway?”
I don’t know what I expected her to say; maybe I hoped she’d wave a magic wand over me and turn me into Cinderella. But my dream of modeling was an abstract one; the whole idea seemed so far-fetched that I didn’t spend much time thinking about it. Instead, after that night, I went on with my daily chores, focusing on the day-to-day business of breakfast, lunch, dishes, and dusting.
