By then I was wailing, because I could see what was coming, but I said, “But they won’t be able to work, and the buses will crash, and there will be a state of total fitna!”
“So why is there not a state of total chaos everywhere around us, here, in Europe?” Mina asked.
It was true. All I had to do was use my eyes. Europe worked perfectly, every bus and clock of it. Not the first tremor of chaos was detectible. “I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “It must be because these are not really men.”
“Oh? They are not really men, these big strong blond Dutch workers?” By this time the Ethiopian girls were almost weeping with laughter at the bumpkin that I was. They thought it was such Muslim bullshit. We Muslims were always boasting about something or other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated. And who on earth did I think I was to personally wreak fitna on the world? They were friendly, because they knew it wasn’t my fault I felt this way, but they really let me have it.
I got up and put on my headscarf, and stood at the doorway of the bungalow. A group of Bosnian asylum seekers lived a little farther on, and they were talking in the sun. These women were supposed to be Muslim, but they were really almost naked, wearing short shorts and T-shirts with not even a bra, so you could see their nipples. Men worked nearby, or sat and talked to them quite normally, apparently not even noticing them. I stared at them for a long time, thinking, Could there be some truth to what the Ethiopian girls had said?
The next morning, I decided to stage an experiment. I would walk out of the door without a headscarf. I was in my long green skirt and a long tunic, and I had my scarf in a bag with me in case of trouble, but I would not cover my hair. I planned to see what would happen. I was sweating. This was really haram, and also the first time I had walked in a public space with my hair uncovered since I was sixteen.
Absolutely nothing happened. The gardeners kept trimming the hedges. Nobody went into a fit. Still, these were Dutch people, so perhaps not really men. I walked past Ethiopians and Zaireans, and no one paid any attention to me; but then, these people were not Muslims either. So I walked over to the group of Bosnians. Nobody looked at me. If anything, I attracted less attention than when I was covering my head. Not one man went into a frenzy.
Slowly, in the next few days, I shed the headscarf. I thought to myself, “I will tell Allah that I was careful. It didn’t do anyone any harm.” He didn’t strike me with a thunderbolt. I concluded that when the Quran said women should cover their bodies, it must really just mean that they shouldn’t attract attention to themselves. This way I didn’t feel as though I was sinning. In fact, walking about with my hair in the air, I felt somehow taller.
From then on, the only thing I was careful about was trying to stay away from the Somali men. I knew they could recognize me as a Somali. One had already approached me to ask me about my clan. I had used the new name, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and he had not been Darod, so he didn’t instantly realize I was lying. Still, I knew it was only a matter of time before I was discovered.
* * *
One day the Ethiopians told me a friend of theirs was coming over to teach them to ride bicycles. He was an Ethiopian refugee and had bought them three secondhand bicycles with the 20-guilder living allowance we all received every week. They planned to ride into the village: it would be an adventure. So I went along.
I watched the Ethiopian girls straddling the saddles in their short skirts and sniffed at their wanton, typically Ethiopian behavior. All the same, I would have liked to ride a bicycle, too. But when I tried, in my long skirt, I could only perch sideways on the thing. “This isn’t a horse, you know!” the Ethiopian man scoffed. “You’ll have to wear trousers. Go buy yourself a pair of jeans.”
I had just received my 150-guilder clothes allowance. The next day I walked to the village with Mina and tried on some cheap trousers. Only men’s sizes were long enough to cover my legs, and I finally emerged with an enormous, baggy pair of men’s jeans. They showed not one inch of the shape of my legs, and I wore them with a tunic that went halfway down my thighs. You couldn’t have described this outfit as immodest. Then I tried the bicycle. Falling off it, I felt I was free.
I began having a huge amount of fun. Every day, the Ethiopian girls found something to do. One day they asked me, “Do you want to swim?” I said, “I can’t. I’ll drown,” but they said, “Rubbish,” and I could borrow a swimsuit at the pool. So, less than a month after I first arrived in Europe, I found myself in an ill-fitting swimsuit, in front of a crowd of other asylum seekers, women and men.
I cringed. I wasn’t ready for this. Even while I was splashing in the pool I thought about Allah and the angels looking down at me. But when I looked around, none of the men was even noticing me. Every so often a man would look at me, but I in no way had the impression that because of me, any of them would end up in Hell or drowned at the bottom of the pool. The tall Bosnians, and the Zaireans, with their wonderful torsos: I found myself noticing them, too. But I was not going into any kind of fit either.
I kept coming back to it, arguing with myself, trying to justify what I was doing. I was supposed to cover myself because I was so beguiling that I would lead men astray; even the allure of perfume or high heels under a black hidjab could supposedly cause an intolerable chaos of desire. But this was clearly not true: everything was going on entirely the same.
I kept returning to the Bosnians. I found them fascinating, partly because all the Dutch workers at the center called them “the Muslims,” as if all the rest of us weren’t. I struck up a conversation with one Bosnian girl, who said of course she was a Muslim, though she never wore a headscarf; she had on a tiny T-shirt. She never read the Quran, either; she didn’t even know how to say Bism’Allah Al-Rahman Al-Raheem, “In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful.” I didn’t see how this girl thought she qualified as a Muslim, but to her, apparently, Islam wasn’t really a religious belief at all, more like an ethnicity. I found this mystifying.
At the end of August, I got an official letter from the Dutch refugee office. My heart sank; this must be my letter of rejection. I would be sent to Canada, or to Nairobi—it amounted to the same thing. I didn’t deserve refugee status; it was over. When Mina saw my face, I confessed to her that I had lied to the authorities. She shrugged and said she had lied, too; the camp was full of people with manufactured stories quaking that they would be thrown out.
Mina opened the letter for me. It was a transfer. I was to go to Lunteren, to a long-stay center, to await the final answer.
* * *
I wrote to Haweya at a personal post office box that she had recently rented in Eastleigh. I gave her my address and told her to keep it to herself. She wrote back, “There was a lot of fracas here when you left. Father asked me to give him your address. I refused, and now we don’t talk.”
She went on, “Your husband is in Germany looking for you, and the whole search is being coordinated by father here. If you are going to run away, or meet him, it is up to you, but I am warning you, if you don’t already know, that practically all the Osman Mahamud in that area are looking for you everywhere. Be warned.” She also asked me to send her clothes and a passport so that she, too, could get out. My nightmare was coming true: I was being hunted.
I arrived in Lunteren at the end of August 1992. The train station was a sweet little building in the middle of a cobbled village with manicured front lawns. Everyone was white, well-dressed, and looked happy.
I had traveled there with another girl, Rhoda, who was claiming to be Somali though anyone could tell from her accent that she was from Djibouti. The center for asylum seekers was miles into the forest; there was nothing for us to do but start walking. When we arrived at the refugee center, a field of tiny green-and-pale-green houses on wheels, called caravans, and a white brick office, it was pitch dark.
We would be sharing a caravan with two Somali women, but when we knocked on the door they wouldn’t let us in. These women were Hawiy
e and could tell I was Darod from my accent. They didn’t want any Darod woman living with them. The social worker accompanying us was an Iranian man, and when he asked the Hawiye women to unlock the door they ignored him. He left, then returned with one of his Dutch colleagues, a woman called Sylvia, and two guards. Sylvia announced that she would break the door down and transfer the women if they couldn’t obey the camp rules.
I thought it was such innocence. I explained to Sylvia that the Hawiye and the Darod were destroying each other and couldn’t possibly live together in such a tiny, toylike place. But Sylvia said, “This is Holland. You will just have to ignore each other. You are four adult women and you will manage.”
Finally the door opened. It emerged that one of the Hawiye women, Yasmin, had a grandmother who was Isse Mahamud, like my father’s mother. I explained that I had grown up in Kenya and had no hostility toward her about clan. Yasmin said she felt the same way. Gradually we worked things out and became friends.
Yasmin had never meant to go to Holland. She had been on her way to the United States, with false papers, but she got caught at the Amsterdam airport. She claimed asylum when they caught her, and though she was my age, she told the officials she was a minor so she could stay in the country. She knew how it worked.
Yasmin didn’t like Holland. She said the Dutch had treated her like a criminal at the airport. The air stank of cow dung and the language sounded stupid. She called the Dutch gaalo, and kufr. Being nice in Somali terms means when someone gives you what you ask for. So if someone politely said no, even if they explained why they couldn’t do something, Yasmin and the others saw this as arrogance, or racism.
Like all the asylum seekers, I had to check in once a week to have my card stamped. September 1 was my first Tuesday in Lunteren, so that morning I went over to the police office at the asylum-seeker center. When I went to the desk, the policewoman looked at me and disappeared underneath the desk for a minute. She reemerged, cooing in English, “Oooh! Congratulations!” and waving a pink card instead of my green one. I didn’t understand, but she shook my hand and said, “You can stay in Holland for the rest of your life. You are a recognized refugee, and now I will read you your rights.”
Sweating, I thought, “Thank you Allah, thank you.”
The policewoman told me that there is no better status than the A status I received. As an A-status refugee, I would never again have to check in to have my card stamped. I could work or register for unemployment benefits, I could buy or rent property, I could attend university, receive free health care, and after five years in the country I could apply for naturalization and vote. I didn’t even know they had elections in Holland. What would they vote about? I thought. Everything seemed to work so perfectly.
“Do you have any more questions?” the policewoman asked me, and I said, “Yes. Why are you doing this?” She said, “The authorities have determined that you have a well-founded fear of persecution. It’s the law.”
She gave me a bus ticket to Ede, where I could register for municipal housing. There were so many refugees in Ede now that the city had waiting lists for municipal housing, but I could register for the waiting list and, in the meantime, still live at the Lunteren long-stay center. She apologized for this. And could I really go to the university? I asked. The policewoman said yes, although I would have to learn the language first, of course.
I left, floating, staring at the pink card with my photo, printed in indecipherable Dutch. Suddenly, I could stay in this country, with all these nice people. It was like a dream.
CHAPTER 11
A Trial by the Elders
At first, I felt an enormous sense of relief. The nightmare that I would be returned to Kenya, or sent back to Germany, receded, and I was euphoric. I registered in Ede with various offices, constantly taking buses; then Refugee Aid gave me a secondhand bicycle of my own. I bought another pair of jeans: I never wore long skirts any more. I was constantly cycling places, registering for things.
My first imperative was to learn Dutch. Now that I was a recognized refugee, I was eligible for lessons at the refugee center, taught once a week by a woman volunteer from the village. But once a week wasn’t enough for me; I wanted more. This Dutch volunteer, blessed woman, persuaded a real language school in Ede to accept me, and she told me she would pay for the classes; I could pay her back in weekly installments out of my pocket money. So I began cycling three times a week to my Dutch class at Midlands College in Ede. The leaves were turning, I remember, and I felt so happy riding my bicycle through the forest, with a sense of purpose and an overpowering impression of good fortune.
Haweya’s letters were full of her fights with Ma and the growing rift between Ma and Abeh, as well as constant requests for clothes. She said all the Somalis in Nairobi were shunning my mother, saying she was behind my disappearance. She refused to talk to anyone: the whole community—all the Farah Gouré family, my stepsisters, Arro and Ijaabo, everyone—thought Ma had plotted my escape to take her revenge on my father. They thought I was too docile to have come up with such an evil stratagem on my own. I felt horrible thinking about what Ma was going through.
It grew cold. The rain never stopped, and the caravans shook in the wind and froze on the outside at night. One day that was too wet to cycle, I waited at the bus stop, so cold I thought I might cry.
One gray November evening, the day I turned twenty-three, an Iranian asylum seeker set himself on fire in the canteen just as I was on my way to line up for dinner. Having received a negative decision on his appeal for refugee status, he poured paraffin over himself and ignited it as a kind of mad expression of his hopelessness. I felt horrible for him. Other, far more deserving people than I waited for years at this refugee center and received negative decisions. People from countries involved in civil wars were often accepted into Holland, usually with C status, a temporary right to stay on humanitarian grounds. But Iranians, Russians, Iraqis—most other asylum seekers—were more usually denied any right to stay in Holland at all.
I was lucky and felt guilty for getting refugee status so quickly, on false pretenses, when so many people were being turned down. I tried to be of service to people; it reassured me to feel that I was still a good person. I wanted to pay all this back in some way, and return goodness with goodness, which is how I understood Islam at the time. I registered with the center as a volunteer. I worked in the laundry office once a week and in the library. Sylvia, who worked at the center, asked me if I wanted to play volleyball; that was fun.
I liked the people who worked at the center, and they liked me. I was useful to them because I spoke English, the center’s lingua franca. Any time a Somali was sick and couldn’t make himself understood, or someone needed help filling in a form, they knew they could call on me to act as go-between, without going to all the bother of getting an official interpreter to come in. If there was trouble with a Somali—and there often was—I used to mediate. People who refused transfers, or who got into fights, or who wanted something—either the Somalis themselves or the staff would come for me.
Thankfully none of the Somalis in the center were Osman Mahamud, but they still regarded me and my jeans with undisguised hostility. To them, it seemed normal to lecture me, to try to make me conform. They were always telling me I must cover my hair and dress in long skirts. One man said, “You are putting us all to shame with your bicycle. When you ride toward us with your legs spread we can see your genitals.”
I told him I was wearing the same trousers he was, and if they showed genitals then a man’s would be more visible than mine; then I sped away as fast as my legs would take me. Sylvia had said that anyone who threatened me physically would be transferred, but other than that, I would have to defend myself. “The Somalis here are dependent on your goodwill,” she told me. “They knock on your door and beg you to translate for them when they need something. They need you. Just tell them it’s none of their business what you wear.”
So I did. I used direct l
anguage. I stared right in their face when I said it. It was kind of thrilling to be able to say such things out loud.
* * *
Early in December, I received a letter from my father, addressed to the asylum-seeker center. He had tracked me down. “My Dearest Liver,” he began. My father used to call me his liver, which in Somali is very meaningful, because without a liver, you cannot survive. (Haweya was his eyes. Mahad he called his heart.) “In our game of hide-and-seek I finally got you.”
My father’s letter was intended to persuade me to return to the proper path, but it was also couched in such a way that I could do this with my head high—and with his honor intact. He feigned to believe that I was still planning to live with the husband he’d chosen for me, that I’d somehow just made a short detour. And he told me that he needed $300 for an urgent operation on his eyes. “Although you have yet to get enough allowance, still I feel you can come up with a few hundred dollars because you are very influential,” he wrote.
My father knew that I would become frantic at the news that his eyesight, always weak, was now failing. He assumed I would go straight to Osman Moussa to get the money: How else could I come up with such a sum? The husband is the maintainer of the wife—and, if necessary, the wife’s family. Father ended his letter, “Your house shall be either a source of honor or a source of disgrace for me. . . . God be with you.” He knew me, and he thought that to save his eyes, I would agree to go back to my husband.
Several days later, Osman Moussa called the asylum-seeker center. Someone came to the caravan and said I had a call from Canada. My legs shook. I went to the phone, and I spoke to him, and again I lied. I spun a tale. I pretended that I had never really disappeared, just gone to Holland for a few weeks to be with my dear friend Fadumo. He scolded me—“You can’t just disappear like that”—and told me to get back to Germany as soon as possible. I said I would. Then I told Osman Moussa about Abeh’s letter. He said he was constantly in touch with my father, and that he would deal with it. Apparently he sent the money.
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