In Mogadishu, our days were once more long and empty, animated only by occasional visits from members of my mother’s family. Aunts and cousins and the cousins of aunts would come—women from the desert who came to Mogadishu to be married, or men in search of jobs. But in a town environment, they were completely inept. They didn’t understand traffic or even the toilet; Ma had to teach them not to empty their bowels on the floor. They were hicks, wore embarrassing clothes, and put any kind of glittery thing in their hair. Ma lectured them constantly: how to sit on chairs, wipe tables with a sponge, not eat like savages, and cover their shoulders instead of striding about in the country goh, a wide band of cloth that desert women wrapped over their body and slung over one shoulder, leaving their neck and much of their shoulders bare.
Like all city people, Ma felt superior to these hicks from the miyé. She knew they would have to accept that her way was better than theirs, because she had made the move to the city herself. But like all country people, her miyé relatives resented being spoken down to. If Ma was too sharp with them, they became indignant and moved out.
Mahad began primary school and I began my own little war on Grandma. Sometimes I climbed the talal tree as she sat underneath it, and then spat down. Not on Grandma, for I wasn’t allowed to do that, but next to her, on the sand. Grandma would complain to Ma; then an endless discussion followed on whether the spitting was on Grandma or near her. This resulted in a general forbidding of all spitting. This kind of futile bickering was our pastime.
Ignored by the grown-ups, Haweya and I made up games precisely to annoy them. If they drove us out of the house, we played Guulwade. One of us would act aggressive and tyrannical, pretending she had a weapon, pushing and shoving in the air and demanding to see what lay under the beds. The other would do everything Afwayne forbade, such as hiding food or bidding our imaginary children to beg Allah for people to be released.
We also begged, quite loudly, for the destruction of Afwayne and his regime. Sometimes I would climb the talal tree and shout down to Haweya, “Ha ha, I am Darod, Harti, Macherten, Osman Mahamud, and the daughter of Hirsi Magan!” Afwayne had banned the clan system, and people were no longer permitted to ask who others were from. We were now supposed to be just Somalis, one glorious, clanless nation, united in worship of Siad Barré. Speaking of your clan made you an “anti”—an opponent of the regime—and could earn you prison and torture. Our loud breaches of orthodoxy made the adults witless with nerves, particularly Aunt Khadija, who was the only family member who actually supported Afwayne. After such outbreaks she and others would quickly herd us into the house to play.
Our bedroom was large and almost completely empty, its walls so high there was an echo. We developed the game of competing with the echo, making stranger and louder noises with it. This made such a phenomenal racket that Grandma would drive us back out of the house.
Aunt Khadija provided a solution for our apparently boundless energy. Khadija thoroughly approved of all things modern, including the brand-new local school. “Ayaan needs school in the morning and Quran school after lunch,” she pronounced. Ma was reluctant to send her daughters out of the house, where we were protected from both harm and sin. In school I would be in danger of both. Still, Mahad was already in school, and my father, consulted on the subject, probably told her to do it. Finally, against her better judgment, she agreed.
So, at five years old, I received a crisp new uniform. I was to become a grown-up and go out on my own in the world. Ma warned me that in school I would be told to sing hymns of loyalty to Siad Barré, but I wasn’t to do it. “Move your lips or just say the first verse of the Quran,” she said. “You may not sing praises to Afwayne. Just learn to read and write, and don’t talk to the other children—they could betray us. Keep to yourself.” She repeated this every morning.
The first day, my class teacher hit me on the head when I wouldn’t open my mouth to sing the songs. The hitting hurt, so I repeated her words. It felt awful: I was betraying both my father and my mother. Each morning, in line with other kids, I would try just to move my lips, and the same teacher would pull me out and beat me. She told my class by way of introduction that I was the daughter of an “anti” and that I therefore was an “anti,” too, because all we learned in school was to chant praises to Siad Barré and communism, and I refused to join in. I had no friends after that.
Quran school was a shed down the road. The other pupils were from the neighborhood. At first I liked it. I learned to mix ink from charcoal, water, and a little milk, and to write the Arabic alphabet on long wooden boards. I began learning the Quran, line by line, by heart. It was uplifting to be engaged in such an adult task.
But the kids at madrassah were tough. They fought. One girl, who was about eight years old, they called kintirleey, “she with the clitoris.” I had no idea what a clitoris was, but the kids didn’t even want to be seen with this girl. They spat on her and pinched her; they rubbed sand in her eyes, and once they caught her and tried to bury her in the sand behind the school. The madrassah teacher didn’t help. Once in a while he called her dammin, dunce, and kintirleey, too.
My teenage cousin Sanyar used to pick me up after madrassah. One day she arrived just as a girl hit me in the face. Sanyar took me home and told the story. “Ayaan didn’t even defend herself,” she said in horror. “Coward!” my family jeered.
The next day Sanyar waited for me outside the madrassah with another teenager, the older sister of the girl who had hit me the day before. They caught hold of the two of us and tugged us over to an open space, then ordered us to fight. “Scratch her eyes out. Bite her,” Sanyar hissed at me. “Come on, coward, think of your honor.”
The other girl got the same encouragement. We flew at each other, fists tight, hitting, wrestling, pulling each other’s hair, biting. “Ayaan, never cry!” Sanyar called out. The other children cheered us on. When they let us stop, our dresses were torn and my lip was bleeding, but Sanyar was delighted. “I don’t want you to ever let another child hit you or make you cry,” she said. “Fight. If you don’t fight for your honor, you’re a slave.”
Then, as we walked away, the other girl shouted after me, “Kintirleey!”
Sanyar winced. I looked at her, horror dawning on me. I was like that other girl? I, too, had that filthy thing, a kintir?
* * *
In Somalia, like many countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made “pure” by having their genitals cut out. There is no other way to describe this procedure, which typically occurs around the age of five. After the child’s clitoris and labia are carved out, scraped off, or, in more compassionate areas, merely cut or pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissue forms a chastity belt made of the girl’s own scarred flesh. A small hole is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of pee. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider, for sex.
Female genital mutilation predates Islam. Not all Muslims do this, and a few of the peoples who do are not Islamic. But in Somalia, where virtually every girl is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam. Uncircumcised girls will be possessed by devils, fall into vice and perdition, and become whores. Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.
Many girls die during or after their excision, from infection. Other complications cause enormous, more or less lifelong pain. My father was a modern man and considered the practice barbaric. He had always insisted that his daughters be left uncut. In this he was quite extraordinarily forward-thinking. Though I don’t think it was for the same reason, Mahad, who was six, had also not yet been circumcised.
Not long after that first fight of mine at the madrassah, Grandma decided that the time was right for us to undergo the necessary and proper dignity of purification. My father was in jail and my mother was away for long periods, but Grandma would ensure that the old traditions would be respected in the old ways.
After she made the arrangements, Grandma was
cheerful and friendly all week long. A special table was prepared in her bedroom, and various aunts, known and unknown, gathered in the house. When the day itself came I was not frightened, just curious. I had no idea what was going to happen, except that there was a festive atmosphere in the house and we—all three of us—were going to be cleansed. I wouldn’t be called kintirleey anymore.
Mahad went first. I was driven out of the room, but after a while I stole back to the door and watched. Mahad was on the floor, with his head and arms on Grandma’s lap. Two women were holding down his spread-eagled legs, and a strange man was bending down between them.
The room was warm and I could smell a mixture of sweat and frankincense. Grandma was whispering in Mahad’s ears, “Don’t cry, don’t stain your mother’s honor. These women will talk about what they have seen. Grit your teeth.” Mahad wasn’t making a sound, but tears rolled down his face as he bit into Grandma’s shawl. His face was clenched and twisted in pain.
I couldn’t see what the stranger was doing, but I could see blood. This frightened me.
I was next. Grandma swung her hand from side to side and said, “Once this long kintir is removed you and your sister will be pure.” From Grandma’s words and gestures I gathered that this hideous kintir, my clitoris, would one day grow so long that it would swing sideways between my legs. She caught hold of me and gripped my upper body in the same position as she had put Mahad. Two other women held my legs apart. The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. “There it is, there is the kintir,” one of the women said.
Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma’s words of comfort and encouragement. “It’s just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, he’s almost finished.” When the sewing was finished, the man cut the thread off with his teeth.
That is all I can recall of it.
But I do remember Haweya’s bloodcurdling howls. Though she was the youngest—she was four, I five, Mahad six—Haweya must have struggled much more than Mahad and I did, or perhaps the women were exhausted after fighting us, and slipped, because the man made some bad cuts on Haweya’s thighs. She carried the scars of them her whole life.
I must have fallen asleep, for it wasn’t until much later that day that I realized that my legs had been tied together, to prevent me from moving to facilitate the formation of a scar. It was dark and my bladder was bursting, but it hurt too much to pee. The sharp pain was still there, and my legs were covered in blood. I was sweating and shivering. It wasn’t until the next day that my Grandma could persuade me to pee even a little. By then everything hurt. When I just lay still the pain throbbed miserably, but when I urinated the flash of pain was as sharp as when I had been cut.
It took about two weeks for us to recover. Grandma tended to us constantly, suddenly gentle and affectionate. She responded to each anguished howl or whimper, even in the night. After every tortured urination she washed our wounds carefully with warm water and dabbed them with purple liquid. Then she tied our legs again and reminded us to stay completely still or we would tear, and then the man would have to be called again to sew us back up.
After a week the man came and inspected us. He thought that Mahad and I were doing well, but said Haweya needed to be resewn. She had torn her wound while urinating and struggling with Grandma. We heard it happening; it was agony for her. The entire procedure was torture for all of us, but undoubtedly the one who suffered the most was Haweya.
Mahad was already up and about, quite healed, when the man returned to remove the thread he had used to sew me shut. This was again very painful. He used a pair of tweezers to dig out the threads, tugging on them sharply. Again, Grandma and two other women held me down. But after that, even though I had a thick, bumpy scar between my legs that hurt if I moved too much, at least my legs didn’t have to be tied together anymore, and I no longer had to lie down without moving all day.
It took Haweya another week to reach the stage of thread removal, and four women had to hold her down. I was in the room when this happened. I will never forget the panic in her face and voice as she screamed with everything in her and struggled to keep her legs closed.
Haweya was never the same afterward. She became ill with a fever for several weeks and lost a lot of weight. She had horrible nightmares, and during the day began stomping off to be alone. My once cheerful, playful little sister changed. Sometimes she just stared vacantly at nothing for hours. We all started wetting our beds after the circumcision. In Mahad’s case, it lasted a long time.
When Ma came back from her trip this time, she was furious. “Who asked you to circumcise them?” she yelled, more angry with her mother than I had ever seen her. “You know their father doesn’t want it done! Allah knows, I have never in my life been so betrayed as by you. What possessed you?”
Grandma turned on my mother in fury. She yelled that she had done Ma a huge favor. “Imagine your daughters ten years from now—who would marry them with long kintirs dangling halfway down their legs? Do you think they’ll remain children forever? You’re ungrateful and disrespectful, and if you don’t want me in your house I’m going to leave.” This time she really meant it.
Ma didn’t want Grandma to leave, so she sent for her twin sister, Halimo, Sanyar’s mother. Aunt Halimo and Ma looked exactly alike. Both of them were tall, thin, and dark-skinned, with hair that wasn’t kinky like mine but waved gracefully around their faces and nestled into buns at the back of their necks. All the Artan women had long, thin limbs and hands and perfect posture, but despite their identical features, Aunt Halimo was much milder than my mother. They sat and talked for hours, waiting for Grandma to cool off. Then everyone, including Mahad, began begging Grandma to stay.
After that, the circumcision was not discussed at all. It was just something that had happened—had had to happen. Everyone was cut.
* * *
There followed a period of intense whispering in our household. Something had happened to our father. It seemed to be good. After several months of this Ma left us again, and when she came back it was with presents, not flour and vegetables. The ritual of praying for my father’s freedom under the talal tree every evening suddenly stopped. Ma seemed less desperate, too, and less miserable and weary.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my father had escaped from jail.
Apparently it was the director of the prison himself who helped my father to escape. Abdi Aynab was an Osman Mahamud, like my father, and what he did was truly noble. Despite the danger of betrayal, Abdi Aynab managed to get my father out of jail, and even went on to accompany him partway to the Ethiopian border, hidden along the way by members of the clan.
When Abdi Aynab returned to his job and family in Mogadishu, he was betrayed by an underling. He was executed by a firing squad on Tribunka Square. By that time, my father was already out of the country, helped from village to settlement and finally across into Ethiopia by his clansmen, although the border was bristling with soldiers. It was sometime in 1975, I believe; Ethiopia and Somalia were on the brink of war.
Somehow, my father got to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Together with others he formed a political movement of Somali exiles opposed to Siad Barré’s rule over Somalia. They called it the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, the SSDF.
The Ogaden War was brewing. Somalia and Ethiopia, the ancient enemies—nomads and mountain people, Muslims and Christians—locked into yet another hideous bout of violence. My father’s group of exiles began receiving assistance from the Ethiopian government. President Mengistu was a dictator every
bit as cruel as Siad Barré, but he was glad to fund Siad Barré’s enemies. Weapons were purchased, and a base of fighters was set up in Dirirdawa, near the border.
I was told this story in bits and pieces as I grew up. It was not a child’s place to know such things. All I knew then was that at five o’clock every day, my mother would secretly put on the radio, very quietly. All the adults would creep over to my grandmother’s bed to listen to the BBC Somali Service and news of the SSDF advances. Stray aunts would be there, people from the miyé—anyone but Khadija, who still supported Siad Barré’s regime. We children would be pushed outside, with Sanyar there to look after us and keep watch for the Guulwade brigades.
It was months before Mahad and I could gather any kind of concrete idea of what had happened to our father. Ma was determined to keep us safe by keeping us ignorant. In fact, I don’t know how much she herself actually knew about where my father was. When Siad Barré’s soldiers came to the door to demand information, she did a convincing job of yelling back that the last she had seen of her husband was in their custody: they owed her that information, not she them. But she also left for much longer trips after that, and we knew that these were trips we absolutely must not speak of or ask any questions about.
My mother was meeting my father clandestinely, in Saudi Arabia.
CHAPTER 3
Playing Tag in Allah’s Palace
By this time, Somalia and Ethiopia were engaged in a crippling conflict. The war to come would kill thousands of citizens in both countries, ripping out the thin roots of two economic systems that had only just started to function. No travel between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa was permitted. It was obvious that my parents would have to meet somewhere else if they were going to see each other again.
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