by Dirie, Waris
By this point I was about sixteen, and had lived in London for two years. I had actually become acclimated enough that I knew what date the Western world attributed to this span of time: 1983.
During the summer of that year, Uncle Mohammed’s sister died in Germany, leaving behind a young daughter. Her daughter, little Sophie, came to live with us, and my uncle enrolled her in All Souls Church School. My morning routine now also included walking Sophie several blocks to her school.
On one of those first mornings, as Sophie and I strolled toward the old brick building, I saw a strange man staring at me. He was a white man around forty with a ponytail. He didn’t try to hide the fact he was staring at me and, in fact, he was quite bold. After I left Sophie at the door, the man walked toward me and started speaking to me. But of course I didn’t speak English, so I had no idea what he was saying. Frightened, I wouldn’t look at him and ran back home. This routine continued: I’d drop off Sophie, the white man would be waiting, he’d try to talk to me, and I’d run.
On the walk home after I met Sophie in the afternoons, she’d frequently mention a new friend a little girl she’d met in her class. “Yeah, um hmmm,” I’d say, completely uninterested. One day I was a little bit late arriving to pick up Sophie. When I got there, she was waiting outside the school, playing with another little girl. “Oh, Waris, this is my friend,” Sophie said proudly. Standing next to the two girls was the man with the ponytail, the guy who had been bothering me for nearly a year.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said nervously, eyeing my man. But he bent over and said something to Sophie, who spoke English, German, and Somali. “Come on, Sophie. Get away from that man,” I warned, and snatched her hand.
She turned to me and said brightly, “He wants to know if you speak English.” Sophie shook her head at the man. He said something else and Sophie translated, “He wants to ask you something.”
“Tell him I’m not talking to him,” I replied haughtily and looked in the other direction. “He can just go away. He can just…” But I decided not to finish my sentence, because his daughter was listening, and Sophie would immediately translate. “Forget it. Let’s just go,” and I grabbed at her hand and pulled her away.
Shortly after this encounter, I dropped Sophie off one morning as usual. Then I walked back home and was upstairs cleaning when the doorbell rang. I headed downstairs, but before I could reach the door, Aunt Maruim was opening it. Peering through the railing from the stair landing I couldn’t believe what I saw; there stood Mr. Ponytail. He must have followed me. My first thought was that he was going to make up some stories to tell my aunt say that I was doing something wrong. Some lies, like I was flirting with him, slept with him, or he’d caught me stealing something. Auntie said in her fluent English, “Who are you?”
“My name is Malcolm Fairchild. I’m sorry to bother you but can I talk to you?”
“What do you want to talk to me about?” I could see Auntie was shocked.
Walking back upstairs, I felt ill, wondering what he was going to say, but within two seconds I heard the door slam shut. I rushed into the living room as Aunt Maruim was storming toward the kitchen.
“Auntie, who was that?”
“I don’t know some man who said he’s been following you, wanted to talk to you, some nonsense about wanting to take your picture.” She glared at me.
“Auntie, I didn’t tell him to do it. I didn’t say anything to him.”
“I KNOW THAT! That’s why he’s here!” She marched past me. “Go do your work don’t worry about it. I took care of him.” But Auntie refused to go into details about their conversation, and the fact that she’d been so angry and disgusted led me to believe he wanted to take some sort of porno pictures. I was horrified and never brought up the incident after that morning.
From then on, each time I saw him at All Souls Church School, he never talked to me. He simply smiled politely and went on about his business. Until one day when I was picking up Sophie, he startled me by walking up and handing me a card. My eyes never left his face as I took it and stowed it in my pocket. I watched him steadily as he turned around to walk away, then started cussing him in Somali: “Get away from me, you dirty man you fucking pig!”
When I got home, I ran upstairs; the kids all slept on the top floors, so this part of the house was our sanctuary from the adults. I went into my cousin’s room and, as usual, interrupted her reading. “Basma, look at this,” I said, fishing the card from my pocket. “This is from that man, remember that man I told you about, the one who’s always bothering me, and who followed me here? He gave me this card today. What does it say?”
“It says he’s a photographer.”
“But what kind of photographer?”
“He takes pictures.”
“Yeah, but what kind of pictures?”
“It says, “fashion photographer.”
“Fashion photographer,” I said, sounding out each word slowly. “You mean, he takes pictures of clothes? He’d take pictures of me wearing clothes?”
“I don’t know, Waris,” she sighed. “I really don’t know.” I knew I was bothering her, that she wanted to get back to her book. Standing up from the bed, I took the card and left. But I hid the fashion photographer’s card in my room. Some little voice told me to hang on to it.
My cousin Basma was my only adviser; this girl was always there for me. And never was I more grateful for her guidance than when I sought advice concerning her brother Haji.
Haji was twenty-four-years old, my uncle’s second-oldest son. He was considered very bright and, like Uncle Abdullah, was attending university in London. Haji had always been friendly to me from the time I arrived in London. When I’d be upstairs cleaning, he’d say, “Hey, Waris, are you finished with the bathroom?”
“No,” I’d reply, ‘but if you want it, go ahead and I’ll clean it afterward.”
“Oh, no… I just wondered if you needed some help.” Or he’d say, “I’m going to get something to drink. Would you like something?” I was pleased that my cousin cared for me. We frequently talked and joked around.
Sometimes, when I opened the door to walk out of the bathroom, he was standing right outside, and wouldn’t let me pass. When I tried to duck around him, he moved too. When I tried to push him, yelling, “Get out of my way, you slob,” he’d laugh. These little games went on, and although I tried to shrug them off as corny jokes, I was confused. There was something underneath his behavior that made me nervous. He’d look at me in a funny, moony-eyed way, or he’d stand a bit too close. When I’d get that queasy feeling, I tried
to stop and remind myself, No, come on, Waris, Haji is like your brother. What you’re thinking is sick.
Then one day I was walking out of the bathroom carrying my cleaning bucket and rags and when I opened the door he was standing there. He grabbed my arm and pushed himself against me, his face a hair’s width from mine. “What’s going on here?” I started laughing nervously.
“Oh nothing, nothing.” He turned me loose instantly. I took my bucket and went to the next room, very casually, as if nothing had happened. But my mind was racing, and after that moment, I didn’t wonder anymore if something was going on. I knew. I knew something wasn’t healthy here.
The next night I was in my room asleep, and my cousin Shukree, Basma’s little sister, was asleep in her bed. But I’m a very light sleeper, and around three in the morning, I heard someone coming up the stairs; I figured it must be Haji, since his room was across the hall from mine. He’d just gotten home, and from the way he was stumbling in the hallway, I could tell he was drunk. This sort of behavior was not tolerated in my uncle’s household coming in at this hour, and certainly nobody drank. They were strict Moslems, and drinking alcohol of any kind was forbidden. But I guess Haji thought he was old enough to be his own man and he’d give it a try.
The door to my room opened quietly and my body went rigid. Both the beds in this room were on
a raised platform, up a couple of steps from the door. I could see Haji tiptoeing up the stairs, trying hard not to wake my little cousin, who was in the bed closest to the door. But he missed a step and tripped, then crawled the rest of the way over to my bed. In the light from the windows behind him, I watched him craning his neck to see my face in the shadows. “Hey, Waris,” he whispered. “Waris…” His breath reeked of liquor, confirming my suspicion that he must be drunk. But I lay completely still in the darkness, pretending to be asleep. He reached out his hand and started feeling around the pillow to find my face. I thought, Oh, my God, please don’t let this happen. Snorting, “HAYYUH,” I flopped over on my side as if I were dreaming, trying to make enough noise to wake up Shukree. At this point he lost his nerve and ran quietly back to his room. The next day I went to Basma’s room. “Look, I need to talk to you.” I guess the look of panic on my face told her this wasn’t one of my ordinary visits just to kill time.
“Come in, close the door.”
“This is about your brother,” I said, taking a deep breath. I didn’t know how to tell her this, and I just prayed she’d believe me.
“What about him?” Now she looked alarmed.
“Last night he came into my room. It was three o’clock in the morning and pitch-black.”
“What did he do?”
“He was trying to touch my face. He whispered my name.”
“Oh, no. Are you sure? You weren’t dreaming?” “Come on. I see the way he looks at me, the way he looks at me when I’m alone with him. I don’t know what to do.”
“Shit SHIT! Get a fucking cricket bat and put it under your bed. Or a broom. No take the rolling pin from the kitchen. Put that under your bed, and when he comes into your room at night, mash him in the head! And you know what else to do?” she added. “Scream. Scream your head off so everybody can hear.” Thank God, this girl was definitely on my side.
All day I kept praying, “Please don’t make me do this horrible thing; please just make him stop’ I didn’t want to make trouble. I worried about what lies he might offer his parents as an explanation, or that they might throw me out. I just wanted him to stop no more games, no more late-night visits, no more groping because I had a sick feeling where it was all headed. But my instincts told me to prepare for battle in case prayer didn’t work.
That night I went to the kitchen, smuggled the rolling pin up to my room, and hid it under the bed. Later, when my cousin was asleep, I brought it out and laid it next to me, never releasing my grip on the handle. And in a repeat performance of the previous night, Haji came in around three in the morning. He paused in the doorway and I saw the light from the hallway glinting off his glasses. I lay there with one eye open, watching him. He crept over to my pillow and started tapping me on the arm. His breath stank of Scotch so bad that I wanted to gag, but I didn’t move an inch. Then, kneeling next to the bed, Haji groped around until he found the bottom hem of the covers, and pushed his hand underneath and across the mattress to my leg. Sliding his palm up my thigh, he was going all the way to my knickers, my underwear.
I have to break his glasses, I thought, so at least there’s proof he was in the room. I tightened my hand around the rolling-pin handle and brought the wood down across his face with all my might. First there was a sickening thud, then I screamed,
“GET OUT OF MY FUCKIN’ ROOM, YOU FUCKIN – ”
Shukree sat up in her bed, crying, “What’s happening?” Within seconds I heard footsteps running from all corners of the house. But because I had broken Haji’s glasses, he couldn’t see, so he resorted to crawling back to his room on hands and knees. He got into his bed with all his clothes on, pretending to be asleep.
Basma came in and threw on the lights. Of course she was in on the whole plan but pretended total ignorance. “What’s going on here?”
Shukree explained, “Haji was in here, crawling around on the floor!”
When Aunt Maruim walked in with her robe pulled around her, I yelled, “Auntie, he was in my room! He was in my room, and he did it yesterday too! And I hit him!” I pointed at Haji’s shattered glasses next to my bed.
“Shhh,” she said sternly. “I don’t want to hear this not now. Everybody, get back to your rooms. Go to bed.”
Free at Last
After the night I mashed Haji’s face with the rolling pin, no one in the house ever mentioned the incident again. I might have thought his late night visits were merely a bad dream, except for one big difference. Whenever I saw Haji in the hallway, he no longer gazed at me with longing. That expression had been replaced by one of naked hatred. I was thankful that as I’d prayed, this unpleasant chapter in my life had come to an end. However, it was soon replaced by a new concern.
Uncle Mohammed announced that in a few weeks the family would be returning to Somalia. His four-year term as Somalian ambassador was up, and we were going home. Four years had sounded like a lifetime to me when I’d first arrived, but now I couldn’t believe the time was over. Unfortunately, I wasn’t excited about going back to Somalia. I wanted to go home wealthy and successful, as every African dreams of returning home from a rich nation like England. In a poor country like my homeland, people are constantly searching for a way out, clawing to make it to Saudi or Europe or the States, so they can make some money to help their destitute families.
Now here I was about to return home after four years abroad with nothing. What could I say I’d accomplished when I went back? Would I tell my mother I’d learned how to cook pasta? Back traveling with my camels, I’d probably never see pasta again. Would I tell my father I’d learned how to scrub toilets? “Huh? What’s a toilet?” he’d say. Ah, but money, cash, there was something he could understand the universal language. There was something my family had never had much of.
By the time my aunt and uncle were ready to return to Somalia, I had saved a pittance from my maid’s wages, which was difficult enough considering my pathetic salary. My dream, however, was to make enough money to buy my mother a house a place where Mama could live without
having to travel constantly and work so hard to survive. This isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound, since with the exchange rate, I could buy a house in Somalia for a couple of thousand dollars. To accomplish this goal, I felt since I was already in England, I wanted to stay and make some money, because once I left, I certainly couldn’t come back. How I would manage this, I didn’t know. But I had faith that somehow things would work out, once I was free from working like a slave for my aunt and uncle. However, they didn’t agree. “What on earth are you going to do here?” my aunt exclaimed. “An eighteen-year-old girl, with no place to stay, no money, no job, no work permit, and no English? It’s ridiculous! You’re coming home with us.”
Long before the scheduled departure, Uncle Mohammed advised us all of two things: the date we were leaving, and the need to make sure our passports were in order. I did. I promptly took mine into the kitchen, sealed it in a plastic bag, then buried it in the garden.
Waiting till the day before our flight to Mogadishu, I announced that I couldn’t find my passport. My plan was simple enough: if I didn’t have a passport, they couldn’t take me back. Uncle smelled something rotten
and kept asking, “Well, Waris, where could your passport be? Where have you been that you could possibly have left it?” Obviously he knew the answer to that question, since in four years I had barely been out of the house.
“I don’t know maybe I accidentally threw it away while I was cleaning,” I answered with a straight face. He was still the ambassador and he could help me if he wanted. I kept hoping that if my uncle realized how desperately I wanted to stay, he wouldn’t make me go home, but instead would help me get a visa.
“Well, now what are we going to do, Waris? We can’t just leave you here!” He was livid that I’d put him in this position. For the next twenty-four hours we played a game of nerves, to see who would give in. I kept insisting my passport was lost; Un
cle Mohammed kept insisting there was nothing he could do to help me.
Aunt Maruim had her own ideas. “We’ll just tie you up, put you in a bag, and smuggle you on board the plane! People do it all the time.”
This threat got my attention. “If you do that,” I said slowly, I’ll never, ever, forgive you. Look, Auntie, just leave me here. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll be fine,” she answered sarcastically. “NO, you are NOT going to be fine.” I could see in her face that she was very worried, but was she worried enough to help me? She had plenty of friends in London; my uncle had all his contacts at the embassy. A simple phone call was all it would take to provide me with a link to survival, but I knew if they believed for an instant they could bluff me into coming back to Somalia, they wouldn’t make that call.
The next morning the entire four-storey mansion was in complete chaos with everyone packing, the phone ringing, and swarms of people running in and out of the house. Upstairs, I prepared to leave my little room under the eaves, packing my cheap bag with what few belongings I’d accumulated during my stay in England. In the end, I threw most of the hand-me-down clothes in the trash, deciding they were too ugly and old-womanish for me. Why haul around a bunch of garbage? Still a nomad, I’d travel light.
At eleven o’clock, everyone gathered in the living room as the chauffeur loaded the bags into the car. I paused for a second to remember this was the way I had come so many years ago the chauffeur, the car, walking into this room, seeing the white sofa, the fireplace, meeting my aunt for the first time. That gray morning was also the first time I’d seen snow. Everything about this country had seemed so bizarre to me then. I walked outside to the car with my distressed Aunt Maruim, who said, “What am I going to tell your mother?”
