Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  In Djibouti we had access to all kinds of things that we didn’t have in Gebilay. There was a local cinema, basically a dark room with a TV at one end wired up to an old-school VHS recorder. Whenever Hassan and me had a few coins, we’d be straight off to the ‘cinema’ with our friends to watch a movie. Sometimes the cinema owner would show one of those old black-and-white Westerns with cowboys and Indians. Other times it was a Disney cartoon or a Hollywood action movie – whatever they happened to have on tape at the time. We didn’t care. Most of the time we didn’t understand what was being said by the actors anyway (there was no dubbing, and we couldn’t read or write in English). We just liked watching the films, seeing all these exotic locations, people doing crazy things. Sometimes I’d get bored and make animal noises over the film. We were just kids having fun.

  Dad occasionally visited, flying back to Djibouti from London for a week here or a few days there. I was probably too young to appreciate the difficulties of travelling back to Djibouti from London at the same time as working and studying, not to mention the cost. Looking back, I can understand the reasons why my dad wasn’t able to visit more often. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept as a young boy. We never had that normal father-son relationship. For me, there was my grandma and my mum, and my brothers, and that was it.

  A few people in our neighbourhood had TVs, and we watched programmes whenever we could. My favourite was Esteban, le Fils du Soleil, which translates as ‘Esteban, Son of the Sun’. It was a French cartoon series from the early 1980s about a Spanish kid called Esteban who goes on this great adventure to the Americas to find a lost city of gold. (In English it’s known as The Mysterious Cities of Gold.) His friends accompany him on his epic quest, including an Incan girl called Zia, and Tao, the last survivor of an ancient civilization. But although Esteban is on the hunt for the cities of gold, that isn’t his real mission. Actually, he’s searching for his dad. Esteban also wears this cool medallion around his neck that allows him to control the sun. As a kid, I thought this show was the best thing ever on TV. Every day at 6.30 p.m. on the dot, I’d find a TV to watch it. I never missed an episode. I was totally addicted.

  But following the adventures of Esteban and his crew was a bit of a challenge for a kid living in Djibouti. The city suffered almost daily power cuts, and more than once I’d sit down to watch the latest episode and then – phhtt! – the power would cut out. The TV screen went blank. No way was that going to stop me. I simply had to know what happened next, so I’d sprint out of the house, racing across the streets and running towards the lights of a friend’s house several streets away, where I knew the power would still be working. In a matter of minutes I’d get to my friend’s house, catch my breath and tune in to Esteban. A few minutes later, same thing. Power cut. I’d dart off again in search of the next house where I could watch the programme. Sometimes I’d have to rush between three or four houses across the city just to catch a single episode of Esteban. But it was worth it. I was totally mad about that cartoon show.

  Looking back on it, I guess it was pretty good training for a career in distance running.

  2

  THE MECHANIC

  I GOT my first experience of school in Djibouti when I was five. There was no formal primary school system as such. Kids like Hassan and me were required to attend the local madrash each morning from eight o’clock through to midday. The madrash was basically a long, narrow room built next to the local mosque, with rickety chairs for the kids and a massive blackboard at the front of the classroom. Our teacher was an old man with a shaven head and a stern look in his eyes. If he spotted you misbehaving in class, he’d march you to the front of the classroom and start whipping you on the backside with a cane in front of the other kids. Sounds pretty shocking now, but this was the norm in Djibouti. The cane had the desired effect. None of us dared step out of line.

  Our studies at the madrash focused on the Koran, but we also studied French and local history. Some mornings at the madrash we’d take turns to read out passages in front of the class. This was hard for me because I couldn’t read or write and I suffer from dyslexia. When it came to my turn, I’d spend the evening before class learning the passage until I had it committed to memory. The next morning I’d head to the madrash with Hassan and ‘read’ in front of the teacher and kids, with my eyes glued to the page to make it look as if I was reading rather than reciting. Most of the time I got away with it.

  Part of my problem was that I never had anyone sit me down and help me with my studies. Half an hour, forty-five minutes a day outside of school, with one of my relatives patiently teaching me how to read and write – I never had any of that. It’s not the Somali way. I was just expected to go to school and get on with it.

  Typically, Somali mums and dads want their children to become doctors or lawyers when they grow up. They want their kids to have the kind of opportunities they didn’t have themselves, to have the things they didn’t have, to be able to afford a good house and provide for a family. From my perspective I can’t understand that way of thinking, given that, in that environment, it’s very, very hard to obtain the qualifications necessary to become a professional. It seems naïve to expect children to do well whilst at the same time not providing them with the educational tools they need.

  In those days, I wanted to be a car mechanic. I loved the idea of handling bits of machinery and fixing things up. To this day, I’m forever taking things apart and fiddling with stuff. If I see a button on a wall, I have to press it. Fire alarms, intercoms, whatever. I can’t keep my hands by my sides. Being a mechanic, I thought, was a great way to put my fidgety nature to good use. And I loved cars. It was the perfect match.

  There were always bits of scrap metal and rusted parts lying at the sides of the road in Djibouti. People often dumped their rubbish out on the street, so you could find all sorts of stuff piled up by the road. One day I was walking home from the madrash with Hassan when I stumbled upon a few pieces of scrap metal that looked like the kind of things used to assemble cars: spark plugs, exhaust pipes, that sort of thing. My eyes instantly lit up. I grabbed as many of the parts as I could carry and raced home. I must have been six or seven years old at the time, and I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. I remember being really excited as I laid out all the parts on the ground in front of the house and began playing around with them whistling to myself, when suddenly this stern voice barked out behind me: ‘What have you got there?’

  I spun around.

  Uncle Mahamoud, the strictest man in the family, towered over me. Whenever me or Hassan stepped out of line and needed to be taught a lesson, it was our uncle who sorted us out. Once I took a pee in the bowl at the back of the family refrigerator. When Uncle Mahamoud found out, he punished me. So I must have looked a sight to him, standing there with my grubby hands, my T-shirt and shorts smeared with grease and dirt from handling the car parts. Uncle Mahamoud just stood there and waited for an answer.

  ‘I’m putting something together,’ I replied.

  Uncle Mahamoud peered over my shoulder and saw all the car parts spread out.

  ‘You shouldn’t pick up things from the street,’ he said. ‘What are you doing with all this junk, anyway?’

  I grinned. ‘It’s not junk, Uncle! These are car parts. I’m learning what they do. I want to be a mechanic when I grow up.’

  Uncle Mahamoud’s face went dark. ‘A mechanic?’ he spluttered. ‘Tell me something, then,’ he demanded, rolling his eyes in the direction of the madrash. ‘Why am I paying all that money for you to go to the school and get an education if you want to waste your life fixing cars?’

  That was the end of my brief experiment with building my own car. But I didn’t give up on my dream of being a car mechanic – at least, not for a few more years.

  Unlike me, Hassan had a natural talent for learning. He did well at the madrash; he had a sharp mind. This is one of the few ways in which we were different. When it came to learning some
thing new, Hassan had this ability to pick it up like that. My dyslexia held me back and hindered my ability to learn. I would continue to struggle with it throughout my years at school.

  In the mornings we went to the madrash. In the afternoons, we stayed at home. Djibouti has a hot, humid climate and for several months a year the temperature can hit over a hundred degrees. It was too hot to walk around the streets, let alone study. By around one or two o’clock the sun would be scalding the ground under your feet. It’s impossible to do anything in that sort of heat. Everyone disappears indoors to keep cool.

  That’s the thing I remember most about living in Djibouti: the heat. It was relentless. On the really bad days the soles of our feet would get blistered from the baking earth. Even having a wee was hard. We’d drink loads of water, but because the heat was so dry, we’d still be badly dehydrated and unable to squeeze out so much as a drop. In the evenings the temperature would drop a bit, but it was still hot. There was no escaping it.

  Hassan and me did everything together in Djibouti. We were twin brothers and best friends. We went through the same things at the same time. I was close to the rest of my family, especially Grandma and Mum. In Somali families everyone tends to sleep in the same room – it’s not unusual for eight people or more to sleep in a single room. Me, Hassan, Wahib, Ahmed, our aunts and uncles and grandparents: we’d all sleep next to each other in one big room in the house. You’re that close, you end up seeing your relatives more as friends. In Somali culture there’s no real concept of privacy. It took a bit of getting used to when I moved to Britain, where people tend to sleep in separate rooms. I never quite got used to it. I like having people around. It reminds me of my family in Somaliland. When I went to university at St Mary’s in Twickenham, I treated my bedroom as more of a place to hang out with all my friends. It wasn’t a bedroom for me. Any day of the week, you’d have to step over somebody sleeping on the floor in order to get from one end of the room to the other. To me, that was normal. I like it that way.

  Among all my relatives, Hassan and I were definitely the closest, although he was the real troublemaker. Whenever I did something mischievous, he’d have to do something twice as bad. There was no limit to what Hassan was prepared to do for a laugh. He was daring and totally unafraid. He was like the extra-crazy version of me as a kid. Hassan was forever pushing it just that little bit further than me. And then sometimes he’d go and totally overstep the mark.

  One sweltering hot afternoon we were throwing stones across this open field not far from our house. We often had a competition to see who could throw a stone the furthest. Hassan had a pretty good throw on him, and he wound up his arm and launched this stone a huge distance, clearing the field – and smacking against the head of a middle-aged woman who happened to be walking along the road on the other side of the field. The woman let out a shriek. It wasn’t a big rock, but it struck her in such a way that it opened up a cut on her head. From where we were standing I could see the blood. The woman clamped a hand to the side of her head and screamed at other passers-by to catch the person who’d thrown the rock. Hassan and me both froze on the spot.

  ‘Shit!’ Hassan cried. ‘I hit her, walaal [brother]! This isn’t good. Let’s go now, before anyone catches us. Hurry!’

  Before I could answer, Hassan seized me by the arm and dragged me away from the field. People shouted after us. We sprinted through the streets, running as fast as we could, but I was convinced we were going to get caught. Hassan, being the quick-thinking one, hit upon an idea and tore off his T-shirt, telling me to do the same. He was wearing a distinctive red shirt that you could spot from a mile off. ‘So no one will recognize us,’ Hassan explained. It seemed to do the trick. We got home without anyone stopping us; everyone was out looking for a kid in a bright red shirt. We both thought Hassan had got away with it until a neighbour recognized him from the field and told Grandma. Uncle Mahamoud dished out the punishment that day.

  That stone-throwing incident was typical Hassan. He’d do crazy stuff I wouldn’t even dream of doing. But we were always there for each other. Sometimes we’d get into fights with other kids in our neighbourhood. Nothing serious – just the usual scrapes that young boys get in from time to time. If someone tried it on with Hassan, I’d be right there at his side. Likewise, Hassan would stand up for me in a fight.

  One of my best memories of childhood in Djibouti is the food. At dinner we’d usually eat a traditional meal of pasta (baasto) and chicken (digaag), usually with some spices mixed in for flavour. In between meals we’d snack on samosas, or have a treat such as black beans mixed with butter and sugar. For breakfast, Grandma cooked a type of thin, sweet pancake called malawah. Every morning I’d wake up to that smell. Grandma made the best pancakes. She liked to drench them in honey and serve them with cooked liver or heart. To this day, I’ll order pancakes for breakfast if they’re on the menu – although they never quite taste as good as Grandma’s.

  I remember hurrying home to eat dinner one evening while Hassan was still playing outside with some friends of his, kicking a ball around.

  ‘Save me some food,’ he called.

  The fact that Hassan and me looked identical gave us plenty of opportunities to cause all kinds of trouble and confusion. One of our favourite games was to play tricks on people by pretending to be each other. I saw a golden opportunity to play a joke on Grandma.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’ Grandma asked as I arrived home. ‘Dinner’s ready.’

  ‘He’s out, Ayeeyo,’ I replied, licking my lips at the smell of the feast Grandma was serving up. ‘He says he’ll be in soon and to save him some.’

  No sooner had we sat down than I’d finished off my plateful. I had a voracious appetite in those days. Still do. Once I was finished, I stood up, made my excuses and ducked out of the room. Hassan, meanwhile, was still busy playing outside. Making sure no one was looking, I snuck out of the back door, scurried around the side of the house and waited a couple of minutes. Then I sauntered through the front door again pretending to be Hassan. In those days we often wore each other’s clothes, had the same haircuts and the same tall-but-skinny build. Even for someone who knew us as well as our grandparents, it was almost impossible to tell us apart.

  ‘Hi, Ayeeyo, I’m home!’ I announced. ‘Where’s my dinner? I’m starving!’

  Thinking I was Hassan, Grandma handed me my twin brother’s plate of food. I scoffed his portion down. Hassan returned home a while later, belly growling with hunger and asking Grandma for his dinner.

  ‘Don’t be so greedy,’ Grandma snapped at him. ‘You’ve already eaten!’

  There is one way you can tell my brother and me apart. I have a large scar on my right arm around the elbow joint. I got it one day when I was mucking around in the kitchen during Ramadan. I must have been five or six years old at the time. Grandma was making samosas in preparation for the feast to celebrate the end of the fast. The air was filled with the smell of fried pastry and coriander. While my grandma was cooking, I started spinning around in a circle on the spot.

  ‘Stop it, Mo!’ Grandma warned. ‘You’re going to cause an accident!’

  All of a sudden I lost my balance and stumbled backwards. There was this deafening clang as I crashed against the oven and a bunch of pots and pans went flying and clattered to the floor. Grandma shrieked. I shook my head, wondering what the fuss was about. Then I felt this searing pain on my right arm. I lifted up my arm to get a better look at it. The skin was all blistered and scalded. Suddenly I realized what had happened. My arm had slammed against the frying pan as I’d crashed into the stove, tipping the pan over and spilling the hot cooking oil down my arm. I don’t remember the pain, but I do remember having to stay in the nearby hospital for three months while the doctors treated my wounds. The burn marks ran along the back of my arm past my elbow and up towards the underside of my biceps. I was told that although I’d be scarred for life, I should consider myself extremely lucky. If the cooking oil had scalded
me one or two centimetres further up my arm, the nerves would have been irreparably damaged and I wouldn’t have been able to move my arm properly for the rest of my life. I came within two centimetres of never being able to run at all.

  Despite the occasional freak accident, Hassan and me couldn’t resist joking around. It almost became a competition to see who could draw the biggest laugh. When we weren’t hanging out at the local cinema, we’d be chucking stones at people’s doors or throwing balls around the streets. We never deliberately set out to hurt or upset anyone – we were just regular kids. And if we ever stepped out of line, we could be sure that word would get back to our grandparents or our mum. We lived in a close-knit neighbourhood where everyone knew each other. Being identical twins makes you instantly recognizable to passers-by. We were forever annoying the neighbours. ‘I know who you are!’ one of them would shout at us. ‘I’ve seen you two around. I’m going to tell your grandparents what you’ve been up to, mark my words!’

  ‘Please don’t!’ we’d beg. ‘We won’t do it again. Just please don’t tell on us.’

  Usually our pleading did the trick. We’d be let off with a few stern words and a warning that if we dared step out of line again, they’d be straight round to our house to tell Grandma and Grandad. We’d agree to behave, of course. Then the next day we’d be out causing yet more mayhem.

  We were restless. We needed an outlet for all the energy we had. Playing football was pretty much the only thing that kept us out of trouble. When we weren’t at the madrash or escaping the heat, Hassan and me would join the other kids playing in the streets. (Wahib and Ahmed were too young to join in.) Football was my passion. I fell in love with the game as a young kid when I saw my first-ever football match on TV. It was the World Cup in Italy in 1990. Brazil were playing Argentina, wearing their famous yellow shirts. I knew next to nothing about the game or the players. But there was something about the way the Brazil players moved, playing with incredible skill despite the fact they were running at such a fast pace, the huge crowd inside the stadium, the immaculate green pitch – the sheer scale of it all. I was hooked. Hassan too. From that moment on, we both played football whenever the unforgiving Djibouti weather allowed. Street football was our thing. There were no pitches. We lived for those street games. We didn’t have a proper football, so we’d make our own by gathering up a load of old socks and tying them together, just like the kids do in Brazil.