I had also heard the news that the SSDF forces had advanced across the north of the country, all the way to Bari. My father had already visited Somalia once, but he had refused to renounce the struggle and return to the wide smile of Siad Barré, as some of the other exiles had. Siad Barré’s rule really did seem to be crumbling. One day soon, peace would come, and all Somali exiles would be able to go home.
When we left, in March 1990, I was twenty years old. I wasn’t frightened of going to Mogadishu. I was glad to be leaving my mother and Nairobi, and to be heading back to my true home and my roots.
CHAPTER 7
Disillusion and Deceit
As soon we came out of the plane in Mogadishu the heat hit us. I loved it. I was so excited that Farah Gouré’s assistant, who was traveling with us, burst out laughing at me. But I was taken aback by the chaos. The airstrip was a path swept in the sand. Passengers scrabbled and tugged at a huge heap of battered suitcases that were dumped, unceremoniously, under the plane. Outside the airport, a swarm of men descended on us, urging us to ride with them into town. There was no order, no systems in place at all.
It didn’t matter; this was just the airport. I was prepared to forgive almost anything from the place where I would at last be at home.
Mogadishu was beautiful at dusk. In those days, the city was not the scabbed, burned-out ruin that it is today, devastated by the violence of the clans. It was gentle and pleasant. As we rode to Maryan Farah’s house in a taxi, the streets looked deeply familiar. Downtown, the Italian buildings were stately, and the streets were fine white sand. All the people looked like me. They walked high and tall, the women striding down the street in long patterned dirhas. I fancied that I was truly coming home.
We went to Maryan Farah, my father’s first wife, who lived in a big white villa in the Casa Populare neighborhood, right near Tribunka Square. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this: a prosperous, self-confident stepmother with a government job.
I met my two stepsisters, who were as different as two girls could be. Arro, who was twenty-five, and who I had actually met briefly in 1984 when her mother brought her to Nairobi for medical treatment, looked like our father—like me—with a round forehead and high cheekbones. She was delicate and small, in a pale green and mauve gauze dirha so transparent you could see her lace bra strap, with a pale green underskirt and mauve high heels. Arro was a medical student. Her younger sister, Ijaabo, had just left school; she was dumpier, and dressed in a thick, dirt-brown Islamic robe.
Mahad was living in Mogadishu, and he came to welcome us that evening. I hardly recognized my own brother. Mahad had never been fat, but in Kenya there was always something soft about him. Now he had grown taller and more muscled, and the sun had burned his skin dark. He had spent two years in Mogadishu, studying at an international college, but he had also been to Bari. And he had seen our father.
Our father was in Somalia! He was just a few miles away, and Mahad had stayed with him! My heart leapt.
Abeh was in a place called Ayl, on the coast, quite near Bari. He had entered the country with the SSDF forces, which had gained control of most of the old Isse Mahamud territory. There had been a lot of fighting, and our father was establishing a new administration on what was now “free” Somali soil.
The situation in Ayl was stable, but the road there from Mogadishu was extremely dangerous, so Mahad couldn’t take us there yet. We would have to wait until an air connection could be opened. Bandits were roaming unchecked across the disputed territory; the army checkpoints alone were dangerous to pass. In the rainy season, a four-wheel-drive vehicle could be stuck for days in the mud. People were robbed and raped on the road. Mahad couldn’t risk delivering dead bodies to our father. But Abeh was well. We would have to be patient.
That first evening we went to one of the neighborhoods near the ocean, where the cool breeze filters in from the sea in the evenings. I filled my lungs with the smells: garlic, frankincense, and the salt sea. We bought lamb wrapped in hot pita bread. Walking through the streets, I remembered playing on sand just like this as a little girl, and I took off my shoes and walked barefoot.
It was such a pleasure to feel the fine, dry white grains of sand on my feet. In Nairobi it was dusty, and when it rained, which was often, the ground was mud, so you never felt clean. And in Nairobi everyone went to bed early. In Mogadishu, everyone came alive at night. All the shops were open, and the only pools of light in the darkness came from the shopkeepers’ bare lightbulbs; there were no street lamps in this neighborhood. Groups of people strolled around, young families with children.
As we walked past the tailors’ stalls, however, the electricity failed, so that the shops went dark and the whole street was suddenly plunged into complete darkness. Gradually, candles were lit, and lanterns, and a generator coughed to life. Somalia was clearly a lot poorer than Kenya. This hadn’t occurred to me before.
Mahad told us we would have to stay at Maryan’s house; leaving her would make our family look bad. People would say there was jealousy in Hirsi Magan’s family. He didn’t issue an order, but he had a much more authoritative air about him now. It was a request, but it was also more than that. Haweya couldn’t stand living in Maryan’s house, even though she liked and respected Maryan. She may have hated Ma sometimes, but she felt a fierce loyalty to her, and liking Maryan made her feel guilty. After a short while Haweya moved out. But Mahad asked me to stay, for the good of the family.
It was an awkward situation. I always felt a tension when Maryan Farah was around. It wasn’t her fault—she was gracious, perfectly observant of all the proper behavior—but I always felt there was a crosscurrent of something we were not supposed to feel, let alone voice.
The house had an uncomfortable amount of static in the air, anyway. Our older sister, Arro, could be spiteful, and she squabbled constantly with Ijaabo. Ijaabo wore a headscarf even inside the house and dressed in drab grays and browns. Outside the house she wore the full jilbab, which covered the eyes with a separate thin black cloth. She eyed my hidjab with approval, but there was something insufferably cloying about her. Both sisters clearly had mixed feelings about Haweya; they seemed to envy her defiance but didn’t seem to like her.
Arro and Ijaabo treated us both as if we were in some way retarded. They sneered at our weirdness; we were tarnished by having grown up far away. Yet Arro, in particular, coveted every Western item that we owned. Neither of our new sisters read for pleasure; it was quite difficult to find books in Somalia, and no one seemed to read novels, which were common in Nairobi. Instead, they watched endless Indian movies and Arab soaps on TV, which we found mystifying, because the stories were fatuous and Arro and Ijaabo spoke even less Arabic and Hindi than we did.
Arro was out of the house a lot, at the university. Ijaabo, however, was still in high school. She was a completely devout believer in the Muslim Brotherhood. Maryan thought Ijaabo’s devotions were probably just a phase, but she allowed her to study with a ma’alim, who came every week to instruct Ijaabo in the Quran.
Ijaabo invited me to join her Quran study a few times, but never again after I told her that I thought her ma’alim wasn’t really teaching her anything, just reading the Quran in Arabic while she nodded. Ijaabo was indignant. Who did I think I was, I who spoke English, the language of infidels? How could I dare say this man, who had studied in Medina, was wrong?
When Mahad visited it was a relief to get out of the house. He often came over, usually with his friend Abshir, the younger son of the prison director who was executed for helping my father and the brother of Abdellahi Abdi Aynab, the young man who had asked me to marry him. It felt natural for all of us to go out together, with Haweya and Ijaabo, in a pack. We went to see other family members.
It felt good to belong. This is what the bloodline was: this self-evident feeling of not having to justify your existence or explain anything. We joked around. We had fun. Mahad was always gallant and pleasant, even to Ijaabo. His fr
iend Abshir was dark-skinned and handsome, very polite and civilized, and bright. He was an imam in the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was rapidly capturing the imagination of young people in the city. Abshir was intensely devout. He had put his mind to learning how to be a good Muslim, an example to others. I admired this in him and also that, like me, Abshir sought explanations. Whenever we were alone together we would have deep discussions of religion, in Somali and English, which he had taught himself to speak and read. He was nothing at all like any imam I had ever met.
In Somalia the Muslim Brotherhood was cool. Siad Barré’s dictatorship was anticlan and secular. The generation that grew up under his rule wasn’t driven so much by clan: they wanted religion. They wanted Islamic law. The Brotherhood was above politics—and clan; it was fighting for God’s justice. And it had money. Funds were pouring in from the oil-rich Arab countries to support and promote the pure, true Islam.
By the time I arrived, little congregations had formed all over Mogadishu. People called them the Assalam-Alaikums, the Blessedbe’s. That was how they greeted you on the street, in Arabic, which in a Somali context was like someone suddenly spouting liturgical Latin. The most fanatical Brotherhood members, who were usually in their teens and twenties, spoke only to other Brotherhood people, and they attended their own mosques and Quran schools, in houses. They sneered at the big official mosques that older people attended, where the imams reported to the government. A Muslim Brotherhood mosque was a place of inquiry and conspiracy, where people muttered against Siad Barré and shouted doctrine at each other in corners.
As Abshir took Mahad to places like that, Mahad was becoming more of a believer, too. I liked Abshir’s influence on my brother. As the weeks went by, and we spent almost every evening all together, I found myself telling Abshir about Kenya, about myself. He liked me, too, and sought me out. One twilight, as we sat on the verandah at Maryan Farah’s house, he said to me, “I wish I could meet a girl like you.” I looked up at him and answered, “And I wish I could meet a man like you.” He took my hand and very poetically expressed his desire.
After that, our legs and hands seemed often to brush against each other. We happened to find each other alone. We held hands. After a few weeks, I decided to tell Mahad and Haweya that I was having some kind of relationship with Abshir; that way, Mahad could untangle matters with Abshir’s older brother.
It made Mahad very angry to have to write a letter to Aden to explain that I would not, in fact, be marrying Abdellahi. I told him he was wrong to have promised such a thing anyway. He yelled at me, only this time, it wasn’t the old Mahad, twisting my arm. He lectured me on honor, and the clan, and the impact of my decisions on our kinsmen. Certain decisions, he informed me, were better made by the men of the family.
Ijaabo and the others were also scandalized by my announcement. Many kids had relationships—they kissed and touched in corners—but you weren’t supposed to admit it. It was shocking, un-Islamic, un-Somali to fall in love. You were supposed to hide such a thing. Of course, someone would have noticed and gossiped; but you were supposed to wait until the boy’s family asked your father, and then you were supposed to cry. I was violating all the codes. Gossip was rampant.
In Mogadishu I felt the tension between the new wave of Brotherhood Islam and those who thought of religion as important but not all-pervading. The older generation was bothered by the mixing of the sexes but had learned to accept it, as part of the modern culture of life in the city, the magalo; in fact, some modern older women wore Western skirts, too. And not all young people in Somalia were traditional. Many wanted to fall in love and date just like Westerners. But the younger generation was split into two blocs: those who looked to the West for inspiration, and especially entertainment, and those who subscribed to the sermons of men from the Muslim Brotherhood like Boqol Sawm.
On my visits to Arro’s campus, where she was studying medicine, I saw crowds of young students strolling on the grounds; beautiful girls dressed in the latest Italian designs actually held hands with their boyfriends. Arro had to pinch me and hiss in my ears not to stare. In Arro’s crowd, staring was considered something that only bumpkins from the miyé would do, and Arro had been boasting that her sisters had come to visit from abroad. Among her friends, having relatives abroad enhanced your status and proved how worldly your family was.
At the university Ijaabo attended, Lafoole, the students seemed to be divided almost equally between the West and the Muslim Brotherhood, characterized by their choice of dress. Some girls wore Western skirts and high heels; when they passed they left a trail of Dior, Chanel, or Anaïs Anaïs, not frankincense. The boys who hung around them had fitted shirts that they tucked into their trousers and drove cars.
The girls in the other group wore the jilbab or were shrouded in the nine-yard-long cloth that my grandmother once wore as a guntiino. The boys they associated with wore white robes; if they did wear trousers they never tucked in their shirts, and the trousers, like their robes, stopped short of their ankles. They looked peculiar, with wispy beards and scrawny lower legs, but this was a way of showing how strong you were in your belief. They had as much confidence as the kids in the cool cars.
When I visited Arro’s university, she demanded I come dressed like Iman, the famous Somali model. When I visited Ijaabo she demanded I wear the jilbab. Living in the same house with Arro and Ijaabo when they were both present—on Fridays and Saturdays and throughout the long holiday in July and August—was like being in the middle of a religious war. Arro derided Ijaabo’s clothes, friends, and way of life, and Ijaabo made it a sacred aim of her life to persuade Arro to pray and return to the Straight Path of Allah.
Nobody told the “adults” about me and Abshir, and because Mahad, Haweya, Ijaabo, and the rest of the family respected Abshir, they began to leave the two of us alone more often. Abshir and I talked constantly about the Prophet. Abshir thought of himself as a pure, true believer. He persuaded me to get another robe, even thicker than the zippered hidjab I already wore, with material so stiff it showed not one curve of my body. I confessed to him that I found it difficult to keep up the five daily prayers and steer my mind from sinful thoughts.
I was having more and more sinful thoughts. When we were alone Abshir would kiss me, and he could really kiss. It was long and gentle and thrilling and therefore sinful. Afterward I would tell him how bad I felt in the eyes of Allah, how much that bothered me. And Abshir would say, “If we were married, then it wouldn’t be sinful. We must exercise willpower and not do it anymore.” So for a day or so we would steel ourselves and refrain, and then the next day we would look at each other and just kiss again. He would say, “I’m too weak. I think of you all day long.”
Our attraction was definitely mutual. But it was beginning to seem as if we were taking God for a ride. Abshir would tell me, “We must repent,” so we did, and tried to steel ourselves; but then we would kiss again, sometimes even before the next evening’s prayer.
From Sister Aziza and from my own reading, I knew that what mattered was not just the act, but the intention. It was not only the kissing that was forbidden—or even breaking your promise to God—it was wanting to break that promise. I enjoyed those kisses, longed for them, thought about them constantly, wanted more. I fought these thoughts, but they seemed uncontrollable. I wanted Abshir; he wanted me. And that was evil.
Ramadan began, the Holy Month of fasting, when everyone must behave in the holiest possible way. Somalia is an entirely Muslim country, and Ramadan is also a month of family togetherness, the great festive event of the year. Mahad came over to see us almost every day; when we heard the call to prayer at twilight, we would all break the day’s fast together, with three dates and a glass of water. We would pray three rakhas and then eat out of a big communal dish, laughing, happy, all the young people sitting together around our own dish, separate from the adults.
At 8 p.m., when the call would come for the last prayer of the day, all of us young peo
ple walked together to the mosque. Although Abshir was an imam at his own mosque, he sometimes asked a friend to replace him in leading prayers so he could accompany us. All the shops were lit; there were people laughing in the street and huge crowds heading to the grand central mosque. Inside, the large, carpeted men’s area was ornate. The women’s area behind it was much less showy—just a white hall with sisal mats—but even so, there was an architectural sense of awe in a space so large, so charged with meaning.
After the evening service, some of the older women would go home, but Ijaabo and I always continued to pray, as did Mahad and his friends. Every night of that Ramadan we prayed the whole Taraweh, the long, optional Ramadan prayer, an intensive stream of chanting and bowing that could go on until eleven o’clock. Tucked in the back, we women didn’t face an imam, just a loudspeaker. But the mosque was full: there was a feeling of oneness and union, a huge sense of community from everyone involved in a small space doing just one thing, and doing it voluntarily.
When you pray, you are supposed to feel the force of God and know that you are in His presence. But though I tried hard to open my mind to that force, I never seemed to feel it. To be honest, I prayed because I knew I should, but I never felt very much during prayer, only the discomfort of the grass mat pressing against my feet and the unpleasant odors of some of the bodies around me as the imam droned, monotonously, for hours. I never felt as exalted by prayer as Ijaabo said she did. Ijaabo had a mystical, beatific look on her face during Taraweh. Afterward she would talk about how wonderful it was, how she had seen the light of Allah and felt the presence of the angels, how she had traveled in her mind to a place that resembled Paradise. I never reached a transcendental state; there was no inner light.
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