Nomad

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  My grandmother’s mother had died young. Her father had remarried, and his new wife, who may not have been much older than my grandmother, did not get on well with his daughter. The solution was to marry her off.

  My grandmother tried at first to escape her new husband. She packed a few things—a guntiino cloth, her knife for making mats, perhaps a little food—filled her gourd with water, and set off across the desert to find her father’s hut. I do not know how many days her journey took. According to her, she won everyone’s admiration for finding her way back to her father’s home unharmed: she had not been eaten by wild animals, had survived hunger and thirst, and was not raped by the vagabond camel boys who roamed the desert. But her father and her clan were also angry with her, for she had set a terrible example to all the other potential brides of her age and dishonored the family.

  It was resolved that my grandmother should be permitted to rest for a day or two and would then be returned to her lawful husband. But before the agreed-upon time had passed a delegation of searchers arrived, led by her husband. They were well received, fed and watered, and offered profuse apologies. Then they set off for the second and last time with my grandmother.

  “Two seasons later, I gave birth to your aunt Hawo,” she would tell us. Did she mean two dry seasons, or a dry season followed by a rainy season? Who knew? Her method of measuring time was extremely unreliable, as in northern Somalia it sometimes does not rain for very long stretches of time.

  Aunt Hawa was, of course, a girl. This was bad news for my grandmother, but she was young and her husband was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt: she would soon bear him sons. But only one of her sons survived infancy. After she had borne him eight daughters and only one son, my grandfather finally married again, for he needed more sons. His new wife gave him three sons in succession.

  Overcome with shame and anger, Grandma packed her bags and left, never to return. My grandfather died a year or so later, and Grandmother always made it clear that he died because he could not cope without her. The new wife was foolish. She could not help him navigate the desert by smelling the air and analyzing old trails. She bore him sons but had no idea how to keep order in his camp, how to receive the elders from his subclan and others; she was always late with meals, and her sons were undisciplined.

  Under Grandma’s hard hand, her husband’s caravan had run smoothly and was much admired and much envied. That was thanks to her sacrifices, her endurance, diligence, hard work, and honor. Her husband’s decision to take another wife was a shock to her, an insult, an expression of ingratitude on his part. All the talk about nobility did not deter Grandma from bolting a second and final time from her husband and his estate.

  The very fact that she could actually leave and not be recaptured was a sign that things had changed. It is on this point that I always found Grandma’s resentment of modernity odd. She claimed to hate every part of it: the arrival of the white man, the technology and superior weapons he used to oppress the free and proud Somalis, the decay of our nomad culture and loss of roots. She seemed to forget that she had voluntarily left her world because she felt betrayed by her husband and shamed by her cowife’s success in bearing sons. And she seemed to forget that the reason she could leave, and survive, was that her daughters were, to some extent, able to make a living in those modernizing societies that she so hated.

  Even as she taught us the old lessons, she herself knew, I think, that they were not, perhaps had never been, truly valid. She taught us that our husbands would be our rulers, but that if we were good wives they would make us their queens. If we could navigate the desert by listening to the wind our husbands would come to rely on us. If we could make muqmad—dried meat cut into the tiniest beads, cooked in oil for hours, and mixed with dates—that did not rot even in the hottest sun, then they would honor us forever.

  But we had a refrigerator.

  There is a Las Vegas moment in every culture, when the electricity goes on. It represents exactly what the real Las Vegas means in the West: it is a space where you can throw off the fetters of traditional morality and values, where you can gamble and fornicate. You can indulge yourself in secret, and then sneak home to respectability. This Las Vegas of big neon lights and modern temptations that appears in every culture is something the elders and preservers of morality cannot police, because its power lies outside their understanding. This contact with modernity is a death blow to their ancient culture and the old ways of life.

  Culture is accumulated human experience, an anatomy of obstacles and techniques for overcoming them. Traditional culture breaks down once that first contact with modernity is made. For next comes the radio, the TV, and the washing machine; then a rush of neon lights, cell phones, and new roads, all of which usurp the stories of the grandmothers and the elders, stories that used to hold communities together.

  When my grandmother left the nomadic life of her clan and moved to the city, the history book that was inside her, the archive of poetry and folk knowledge, the museum of skills, was rendered in one stroke almost irrelevant to her life as well as to ours.

  As she learned, modernity is not a controlled zone that you can visit and then leave, then return and ask for forgiveness. Modernity is a permanent state that replaces your former outlook. You can try to fight it, but it is irresistible. It sucks in your young.

  It is painful to transition from a premodern society to the contemporary world. But although assimilation can be postponed, it must happen one day. Postponing it only creates difficulty, for those who have failed to make the transition cannot continue to live a purely traditional life. That old world is lost.

  The West is full of academic departments, commentators, intellectuals who write about diversity and respect for minority cultures. They have an entrenched interest—endowed university chairs, subsidized publications—so minorities who are stuck somewhere between their original way of life and civilization are literally a source of income for these commentators and prophets of diversity. Unfortunately, celebrating and preserving their traditional cultures cannot recreate the dreamworld of the traditional utopia; all that happens is that the minorities are kept outside of the boundaries of civilization even longer, the recipients of condescension and false compassion.

  When I speak of assimilation, I mean assimilation into civilization. Aboriginals, Afghanis, Somalis, Arabs, Native Americans—all these non-Western groups have to make that transition to modernity. When I was a child in Somalia, we called this the difference between Miyé and Magaalo. If you live in the rural, traditional Miyé, life is predictable: it revolves around definite roles for men and women, mostly dedicated to subsistence, getting and cooking food, bearing and raising children, and religious rituals. Community trumps individual urges, vices, passions, and aspirations. Year after year all days resemble each other. Life in the Miyé is disrupted by natural disasters, droughts, wars, and conquests, but these are matters you deal with in the old, ancestral ways. They are part of the cosmic plan that we all just accept, Inshallah.

  The biggest disrupter of the Miyé is the Magaalo, the city. Whether that urbanization comes to the countryside, or the people of the Miyé move to the city, the advent of the Magaalo is inevitable and irreparable. This is a tide of history that my grandmother understood could not be stopped, that was sweeping along her and her own family, including me.

  Those individuals from the Miyé who either instinctively or rationally understand that their traditional order of life is doomed make the transition to modernity, and they thrive there. Those who resist or move back and forth—one inch forward, one inch back, borrowing parts of modernity but not all of it—are sooner or later confronted with reality. They are only prolonging their pain. Learning the language of modern society, learning hygiene, adopting a modern code of sexual and social conduct—only after individuals have mastered those skills can they thrive in the real world.

  Prevailing wisdom in the West seems to be that immigrants can thrive onl
y if they stick with their own. It reminds me of my work as an interpreter in Holland. A typical dialogue would be with a social worker trying to find accommodations for a Somali client. The client would cling to the idea of finding a home with separate areas for men and women. After a while the social worker would say that such accommodations cannot be found: Holland does not have houses built like that. “If you really want it, you will have to have a lot of money and have it made on your own,” she would say (and I would translate). “Even that will be difficult because you must then meet the city’s building requirements.” There would be tension in the room; the conversation would get angry. The client would accuse the social worker of not respecting his wishes, his culture; he would claim (and I would translate) that he was being abandoned, treated with a lack of respect, ill-served.

  This idea that immigrants need to maintain group cohesion promotes the perception of these people as victim groups requiring special treatment. If people should conform to their ancestral culture, it therefore follows that they should also be helped to maintain it, with their own schools, government-subsidized community groups, and even their own system of legal arbitration.

  In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn’t translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.

  This is one of my grandmother’s stories.

  Once upon a time there was a man, Saleh the wrestler. He was of such-and-such a clan and subclan. Each week he would challenge another star wrestler from this or that subclan. The challenged man, poor fellow, had to accept or he would never find a wife from a good clan. But if Saleh defeated him, he still would not find a wife from a good clan. Saleh challenged and defeated so many men that good families would now send their firstborn sons far away to avoid meeting the challenge.

  Saleh was great at wrestling, but he was not content with that: he boasted also of his talent for poetry. One day a poet named Burhaan from the Dhulbahante clan invited Saleh the wrestler to meet him in the arena of words instead of the arena of muscles. This caused a huge sensation. What would Saleh do now? If he accepted, ooohhh, he would have to defeat Burhaan or forever be taunted as a fool, a man who knew neither his place nor his calling. If he rejected the challenge, he would be dismissed as a bundle of muscles with no brain. But if he won, he would be Godlike. He could then claim strength of body above all other, and also strength of wit.

  Saleh accepted the challenge. Burhaan orated his poem. (Grandma would quote it to us; she knew every word of it. Although sadly I have forgotten it, I remember the flash of her eyes as she declaimed the sonorous words.)

  Saleh could not come up with an equivalent poem. He was forever discredited.

  The moral of this story is that every person has his place. Know your place, and even if it is lofty, stick to that place. Venturing further, into another man’s domain, is foolhardy; boasting that you can match his achievements is an invitation to your downfall.

  But I couldn’t resist asking Grandma what would happen if a wrestler decided to challenge a poet to fight in the arena of muscles.

  “Foolish girl,” Grandma told me. “A poet is verse-ready: he will of course reject such a stupid proposal with his intelligence.”

  And so it was that I learned that poets were very smart people, and that words have a power that can break through many other kinds of force.

  EPILOGUE

  Letter to My

  Unborn Daughter

  Dear Child,

  Let me start by telling you about my encounter with a brave and remarkable woman named Oriana Fallaci. I met her on a Friday afternoon in Manhattan early in May 2006. She had spoken and written much about the threat of radical Islam, and she got in touch with me through a mutual friend, insisting that I visit her. At the time I knew only that she had forcefully condemned the theology of totalitarianism.

  When I rang the bell and the door opened, I was let in by an extremely fragile woman. Small, very thin, and pale, she greeted me by saying, “Darling, I don’t have long to live, but it is wonderful that you’re visiting me. I have cancer.” As she walked up a narrow flight of stairs she continued to speak. “The Muslims could not beat me. Mussolini’s fascists could not beat me.” She talked to me about an incident in Latin America, when, following an burst of gunfire, she was lumped together with dead bodies and someone accidentally discovered her in a morgue. She told me about the lawsuit against her that was filed by the Italian public prosecutor in a bid to silence her criticism of Islam. “All those evil forces could not beat me. But cancer, cancer, the cancer that’s eating my brain …” Her flow of words fell away.

  In her living room Oriana insisted that we drink champagne to celebrate that I had come to see her. “And you’re so young,” she said. I offered to get the bottle and to open it, but she said, “No, I can still do this, I have to do this.” When I saw how much her hands trembled and how tiny she was in proportion to the large bottle, I insisted on helping her. “No,” she said again. “I still want to do this, because I’m able to.” Then she began to speak again. And as fragile as her body was, her spirit was so strong and resilient. I listened.

  After she had recounted her life journey through Italy, the Middle East, and now in the United States, she arrived at the subject that brought our own paths together: the threat of Islam. But instantly she changed the subject. “You must have a child,” she said. “I only regret one thing in my life, and that is that I do not have children. I wanted a baby, I tried to have one, but I tried too late, and I failed. Darling,” she almost pleaded with me, “it hurts to be alone. Life is lonely. It must be, sometimes. Still, I would very much have liked to have a child. I would have liked to pass on life. I want for you what I wanted for myself and failed to get. I want you to start thinking about having a child of your own before it is too late. Time flies, and one day you will come to regret that you postponed it.”

  She handed me copies of her books, in Italian. She had other life lessons to tell me, I knew, but she was visibly exhausted. Twice she said, “Darling, don’t let life pass you by.” She refused to let me say good-bye and invited me to visit her again. I wanted to. Her fierce eyes and sharp cheekbones and her sense of resolution reminded me of my fearsome aunt Khadija. But four months later, on the morning of September 15, 2006, I was behind my desk at the office of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington when I heard on the radio that Oriana was gone. I remember her telling me, “Darling, when the cancer kills me, many will celebrate.” I belong to those who mourn her loss.

  Dear child, she inspired me to have you. In the short time I was with her Oriana told me that she had miscarried, and months later I read her Letter to a Child Never Born. Her message to me was dual: that motherhood is a choice and that love between a woman and a man is a hoax. I agree and disagree with Oriana. Motherhood for women in my circumstances is indeed a choice, but it is not a choice for many others. And love between a man and a woman is not a hoax.

  First, motherhood. Your great-grandmother had little choice about being a mother, maybe none. She was about thirteen when she was given away to an older man. She conceived at fourteen. When she was sixteen, she gave birth to twins. She was always proud to tell us that she did it alone, under a tree, cut the umbilical cords herself and returned home that evening, not only with the babies but also with her count of sheep and goats. The only thing that marred what could have been a moment of exceptional joy and pride was that she showed up with two girls instead of two boys.

  In her life there was little to choose. The seasons chose for her. It barely rained, so she and her family moved from waterhole to waterhole. Sometimes wild animals attacked them, sometimes enemy tribes. Animals and men vied for the green pastures and oases, for scraps of food and shelter. My grandmother’s life oscillated between periods of subsistence that were considered luxurious and periods of ma
lnutrition and famine. All this was punctuated by epidemics. She used to tell us of the seasons of duumo, or malaria, an epidemic spread by the mosquitoes that suck the blood of their victims and leave parasites behind. Mothers woke up and found their babies dead after their little bodies had been wracked by fever all night long. Wailing, the women would run to the next hut to ask for help, only to find that another child had died there and two more in the next hut. On and on, death spread over miles of huts. Young men, children, women—many people became sick, feverish, and in a matter of weeks or days passed away.

  My grandmother told these stories along with stories of other women getting pregnant and giving birth to more children, of their suffering and dying, of being overtaken by circumstances, being pushed into marriage, war, or worse. It seemed to me like a senseless cycle of pain, discomfort, and death.

  In the letter to her unborn baby Oriana Fallaci, that brave, unfazed, and unabashed woman, admits fear. Not fear of pain, suffering, or even death but fear of her child. She worries that her baby may accuse her of bringing him or her into a world of violence, death, pain, and misery. For Oriana life is an effort, a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which one pays a cruel price.

  My child, the world was always full of fear, full of pain and suffering. Every day there are reports of accidents, bankruptcies, wars and starvation, the threat of nuclear bombs, the rise of dictatorships, mass exoduses of boys and girls, men and women from battle-torn states, whole villages that now carry the status “displaced” because of natural and man-made disasters. There is not only news of destruction but also the threat of more miseries to come: shortages of water in the near future will threaten the lives of millions of people, and rising sea levels could inundate whole cities.