Nomad

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  This wasn’t just a new job, it was a new country: new culture, new holidays, new history. Even my old friend from Kenya, the English language, seemed very different on the streets of the District of Columbia. Would I ever take root here?

  I went back to my hotel and thought about it. The first and most striking feature of America is its ethnic diversity; that was the first thing I noticed at the airport when I made my first visit to New York. Everywhere I went I saw Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and more ethnic blends than I could even dream of identifying. I noticed too how positive they were about America. Immigrants spoke easily about how glad they were to have come to this country, that they had no intention of going back home because America offered their children opportunities that were unthinkable where they came from. This was so different from the constant complaining about Holland that I was used to hearing from immigrants who sent their money home and who remained cultural and emotional foreigners for generations.

  Unlike many immigrants to Holland, when I immigrated to the United States I already spoke the language of my new country and I already knew a few people. I had a visa in my passport that was reserved for people possessing “extraordinary talents” that were “indispensable” for the United States of America, a visa for “exceptional aliens.” I enjoyed the phrase, but I wondered: What extraordinary talents did I really have? This visa meant that I was being given a very smooth, privileged admission into a nation where many people in the world would give a lot to go. Other immigrants endure a much more arduous and lengthy application process.

  I told myself to be worthy of that visa. It had been given to me because I was a Muslim woman who had found her way to freedom and independence, who was actively propagating the ideals of democracy.

  I quickly felt that I belonged at the AEI. The week I arrived in Washington I was introduced to a man I had long hoped to meet, Charles Murray, who in 1994 cowrote The Bell Curve. When his book was published I was still a student at the University of Leiden, where it seemed everyone was talking about this horribly racist book that argued that black people were genetically of lower intelligence than white people. I read it, of course, and I found it to be the opposite of racist, a compassionately written book about the urban challenges that confront black people more than white. All black people should read it.

  When I was introduced to Murray, I couldn’t help thinking that even his head was shaped like a precise bell curve. While we exchanged greetings, I mentioned that I recognized his name from reading his book, at which point he gritted his teeth, no doubt bracing himself for another attack from an offended black person. When I said how great I thought his book was, his smile was so broad and so surprised. We became instant friends.

  Despite my initial suspicions and my Dutch friends’ prejudice against the AEI, my fellow scholars were well-read and knowledgeable, as well as friendly. Far from being dogmatic warmongers, they showed themselves entirely capable of criticizing the Bush administration. Chris DeMuth proved to be a man of exceptional intellectual depth and breadth, who asked sharp questions about matters ranging from the Iranian nuclear program to the moral crisis of feminism.

  In the main, the AEI’s focus is on economics, and the major principles on which the scholars seemed in rough agreement are individual responsibility and limited government. Working at the AEI wasn’t like working for the think tank of a political party in Europe, where people are obsessed with preparing elections and avoiding controversy. I was able to write, to read, to think, and to attend discussions chaired by the other scholars on subjects that ranged from national security to religion, genetics, Medicare, global warming, and development aid to other countries.

  It added to my pleasure in my new life that Washington, D.C., is such a miraculously easy city to navigate, laid out in straight lines, with streets whose names run through the letters of the alphabet and the numbers up to twenty-six. I felt I could never get lost.

  When my memoir, Infidel, was published in the United States in February 2007 I began promoting the book around the country. This was very instructive. To my amazement, it could take five or six hours simply to fly from one city to another; there were four different time zones (five, including Hawaii) and numerous different weather zones. Of course, I had known these facts since my school days, but it was now that I finally grasped the sheer staggering physical scale of the United States.

  In Holland, after you drive for two hours you’re already in another country. The land there is flat and all the fields are manicured squares; every acre of Holland has been touched and engineered by man. In contrast, entire European nations could fit inside a big state like Texas or California. The rugged landscape of America, with valleys, mountains, creeks, ravines, and canyons, is almost as untamed and challenging as Somalia’s. Flying across the country, peering out of the small windows of airplanes, I began to see why people in the rural United States believe they have a right to carry guns.

  I always feel a sense of wonder when facing the geography of America. I traveled for over an hour from Santa Fe to Albuquerque without seeing a single human being. The land was a moonscape of strange rock formations and craters studded with cactuses, and though it was warm in the car, snow-topped mountains rose in the distance.

  There’s nothing wild about Holland. There the protected species are muskrats and certain obscure insects; anything larger was eliminated centuries ago. In the United States, simply hiking up a hill I have seen trees so tall they seem primeval, and among them coyotes and elk.

  * * *

  I admired the vast new landscape of America and liked my job in Washington, but I felt most at home in New York City, which I often visit in order to stay with friends. One beautiful weekend late in June 2007 I took a walk in Central Park. Summer was about to begin—I could tell from the thunderstorms and torrential rain we’d been having—but that morning was glorious: bright and sunny, with hardly any wind. It was the sort of day for running around in the park in a bikini.

  I walked past the bronze statue of the Angel of the Waters and her four cherubs and on toward the lake. A couple of roller skaters dashed past me; a woman with two children in a twin buggy jogged up. All around me Europeans were talking in familiar languages: Italian, French, and Scandinavian. The dollar was low and the weather was great.

  I was tapped on the shoulder and almost jumped. A nice young Dutch couple, in jeans and leather jackets, were smiling broadly, cameras in hand. It was a reminder of my last, lost home. It was also a reminder of my continued insecurity. My bodyguards moved closer. I gestured that I was okay.

  “Mevrouw Hirsi Ali,” said the man, in Dutch, “may we take a picture with you?” Mevrouw in Dutch can mean “Miss.” or “Mrs.”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling back, and one of the bodyguards offered to take the picture with their camera. As we posed the woman asked me, “Will this ever come to an end?” She meant my needing bodyguards.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know when it will end.”

  “Do you still receive death threats?”

  “It is hard to say. I get threats via e-mail. But people who mean real harm will not bother to send me an e-vite.”

  During my book tour for Infidel I was scheduled to give a talk at the Philadelphia Public Library. A week before, I was informed by my security detail that threats against me had been intercepted on a Muslim website. They were explicit about the venue and the details of my talk and outspoken about their plans to prevent me from carrying out my engagement. I was sitting in a restaurant in Los Angeles when I was given this news and was advised to cancel the appearance. Without hesitating I exclaimed, “You cannot be serious. This is a free, democratic country. I will give this speech, and it is because I have protection that I am able to do so. This is exactly why I have protection!” Once I had calmed down, I called Chris DeMuth at the AEI to ask his advice. I didn’t want to risk other people’s lives. Without hesitation he said, “You go and do what you should.”

  The sp
eech went ahead as planned, thanks to the concerted efforts of a number of security organizations, including the local police.

  People often ask me what it’s like to live with bodyguards. The short answer is that it’s better than being dead. It’s also better than wearing a headscarf or a veil, which to me represents the mental and physical restrictions that so many Muslim women have to suffer. Still, the irony of my situation has not escaped me: I am supposed to be a great icon of women’s freedom, but because of death threats against me I have to live in a way that is, in a sense, unfree. It’s not much fun to be followed around all the time by members of a team of physically intimidating armed men. It’s a little like wearing an astronaut suit, a protective casing that prevents your contact with the elements. It slows you down and makes every movement very conscious and stiff. I don’t like to be watched all day and night.

  Yet bodyguards keep me safe. They make me feel less fearful. When you live with death threats all the time, you do feel fear, and you do have horrible nightmares. When a car is parked outside for too long, I ask myself whether I am being watched. If the man at the newsstand stares at me, I wonder if he knows who I am. If a delivery boy rings the bell, I hesitate: Is he really who he appears to be? Should I answer the door?

  I try to stay vigilant. I don’t keep a routine. But I have decided not to stop writing, not to stop drawing attention to the plight of Muslim women and the threat that extremists pose to free thought, free speech, and democratic governments. If I were to stop, I don’t think it would help my situation, because once an enemy, always an enemy. There will always be someone happy to take me with him to the hereafter.

  In a way these threats motivate me. They have given my voice more legitimacy.

  That afternoon in Central Park I lingered for a moment in the sunlight, talking to the Dutch couple. They told me how upset they were at how I had been treated in Holland and how much they would like to give me support. It was a lovely encounter, completely surprising, as it often is when I encounter Dutch people; some are hostile to me, but most are very loving, extremely warm. This chance meeting gave me a pang of homesickness for Holland. Hearing Dutch in Manhattan produced the familiar, affectionate, almost unconditional feeling of being connected that a people share when they are from the same place. It is the feeling that a nomad is always grasping for: that elusive sense of family.

  By Christmas of 2009, three years after my immigration to the United States, I was more than ever living the life of a nomad. I did not spend much time in Washington. My job was a cross between academic work and activism. In research I discovered that debates on Islam, multiculturalism, and women had been exhausted in the late 1980s and 1990s, long before September 11, 2001. As far as I could see, there was nothing original I could add to the existing volume of scholarly work. My academic job as I defined it was to follow closely new attacks in the name of Islam. The activist part of my job took me all over America as a speaker. This meant I spent much of my time traveling from one city to another on the lecture circuit and to conferences.

  Globalization and the threat of terrorism are best experienced at airports. Most of the American airports that I have used are better than those in Africa and far worse than those in Europe, except for London’s Heathrow. The Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles airports are excellent, while Chicago’s O’Hare is as confusing as Paris’s Charles de Gaulle but not quite the nightmare that Dulles and JFK are. The further inland you go, to places like Aspen, Beaver Creek, and Sun Valley, the smaller and more efficient the airports become. These little airports are almost a relief to travel through.

  My first taste of an American airport was in 2002. I landed at Kennedy Airport, en route to Los Angeles. For a minute I thought that there was some mistake, that I had taken the wrong flight to somewhere in Africa. Crowds of people huddled in large groups, some in transit, others just arrived. At Immigration there were stanchions with lanes marked by ribbons that wound around for hundreds of yards to keep us moving along in an orderly way. The civil servant who checked my passport spoke poor English and seemed to be angry, probably because he was trapped in such a tiny cubicle. The lines seemed to last forever; the luggage carousels spilled over with bags, and some men were throwing the bags back onto the few empty spaces that were left. People in uniform were yelling at passengers, and a cacophony of voices came from loudspeakers admonishing us, as did the television screens at every gate, “Do not leave your bags unattended. The terror alert is on orange.”

  I soon grew accustomed to such scenes at major hub airports. If anything, the Departure areas were even worse: endless lines of people slowed down by the new safety rules; laptops removed from their bags; shoes and belts and even jackets tediously put in gray plastic trays. Flights operated by almost bankrupt airlines nearly always departed much later than scheduled. The erratic American weather—thunderstorms, hurricanes, wind gusts, and snowstorms—periodically threw everything into chaos.

  I had come to America looking for a new home, but I soon found that I was living out of a suitcase, moving from airport to airport and from hotel to hotel. I began to consider the obstacles of modern travel to be similar to those of the caravans Grandma used to talk about. In her time the risks came from marauding warlords and their militias, from severe drought or floods, from beasts of burden that were overused and underfed. In modern America the equivalents were terrorist alerts and snowstorms.

  After months of such nomadism, my American friends took pity on me. It was time, they said, to discover that life in the United States was not all about work. One friend asked if I had ever been to Las Vegas. My immediate thought was gambling. That was the only sin I had not yet committed that is expressly forbidden by Islam. “Not Las Vegas,” I stammered. “It’s a place of crime, gambling, and fierce neon lights. I don’t think I want to go there.”

  “Oh, come on,” replied my friend Sharon. “You don’t know what you’re missing. It is such a part of America, you must see it.”

  So one weekend she drove me from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. L.A.’s sprawl can seem infinite, but as we sped along the highway the buildings eventually became fewer and fewer and the landscape became steadily less green until there was only desert, barren land with mountains, hard rock, soft mounds of sand whitish in color but brown and gray too. We passed by places with bizarre names like Zzsyk. My interest was caught by a sign proclaiming “Ghost Town Road.”

  “Spooky,” I said pointing to the sign.

  “Maybe we should stop in one of those places on the way back,” my friend replied.

  After several hours of desert landscape we finally reached Las Vegas. I was dazzled. Turning right at Mandalay Bay was like entering a magic island with surreal replicas of New York, Paris, and Rome. At the Wynn Hotel, where we stayed, there were not only bedrooms and restaurants but also full-scale shopping malls; high-end European stores with the latest in fashion; jewelry stores displaying gold, platinum, and diamonds and other precious stones; and at the center of all this splendor, rows and rows of gambling machines and gambling tables. And of course, strip clubs for men and spas for women.

  Sharon urged me to try one of the machines. I lost eight dollars and won a dollar twenty-five at one machine; at another I won ten dollars and lost twenty; and at a table we played a game called blackjack. Sharon and I put in a hundred dollars. We lost sixty. It was weird. We had to buy chips of five and ten dollars each; the game started with fifteen. A dealer gave you two cards while he held two. You could play a hand or ask for an extra card. If all three cards added up to twenty-one, you won—that is, you won more chips.

  I must have looked as if I had walked in straight from the bush. To play, you had to make tiny gestures, like moving your forefinger back and forth or waving your palm slowly to and fro as if you were stroking the table without touching it. The dealer would nod and my friend would nod back in a strange way. Blackjack is supposed to be the simplest of the card games, but I felt that it would take me a long time to grasp a
ll the secret signs, and even longer to analyze the probability of what the next card would be. By then I would have run out of cash. So we stopped playing.

  To round off the night we went to the Palace Hotel to see the musical Jersey Boys, which tells the story of a band of poor kids growing up in New Jersey. I was soon captivated by this classical American account of the price of fame. At first it seems like a good idea to form a band, though their path to success is strewn with obstacles. When at last success comes, not only has the band split up, but the protagonist’s marriage breaks down, his girlfriend leaves him, and he loses his daughter to drugs; sadly he sings about being abandoned by everyone. The show ends with solos from all four men as they look back on their lives.

  On the way back to L.A. we stopped for gas very close to where Ghost Town Road went, winding up a hill of colored rocks. “Would you like to take a look at the town?” Sharon asked, remembering my earlier curiosity.

  Why not? I was up for more adventure. We drove to the ghost town of Calico.

  At the entrance to what was once the town is a cubicle with a thatched roof manned by a guard who collects a small fee from the tourists. The ghost town is essentially an open-air museum. A century and a half ago Calico was known for silver mining and attracted crowds of prospectors who wanted to get rich quick. It had had a couple of provisions stores, a couple of shops that sold garments and household goods, and a saloon with a brothel attached to it. A simple family home had been restored to give you a glimpse of how people had lived in the Wild West.

  A nineteenth-century stove caught my attention because it was far superior to the charcoal braziers we’d used in our homes in Mogadishu and Nairobi and which are still in use in many African homes today. Even the rustic furniture in this old and abandoned home was better-designed and sturdier than ours. The townspeople of Calico had walked about two miles to fetch their water, as many Africans have to do; they washed their garments (uncannily similar to many still worn in Africa) by hand. Their woven floor mats, bowls, and placemats transported me back to Mogadishu, Addis Ababa, and Nairobi. Grandma used to spend hours weaving such mats.