by Hawa Abdi
Together we walked down to his place, nearby my great-great-grandfather’s farm, and he showed me every corner—sandy roads and trees we call garas, with wide branches. He stopped under the trees. “Your grandfather had a son, by his other wife,” he said. “When he was young, I sat with him right here.” Later, near a field of sorghum, he leaned on his cane and leaned so deeply, I thought he might fall. “When I was a child,” he said, “I chased away the birds that came down to steal the green seeds.”
I saw his memories, my own memories, too. And I saw my future. “I am pregnant,” I told him—a secret that Aden and I had not yet shared with many of our friends. “If it is God’s will, our children will sit under these trees with your great-grandchildren.”
“From now on, you and my daughter Nuune Ahmed, you are the same,” said the old man. We bought 50 hectares from him and immediately began clearing the bush. Since the place was just a kilometer from the river, my friend’s husband, the Somali Minister of the Interior, helped us with irrigation. We planned for sorghum, beans, maize, sesame, spinach; together Aden and I planted an entire orchard of fruit trees: four hundred mango trees, a thousand grapefruit trees, and some lemon and papaya trees besides.
We put so much of our hearts into the farm that I began discussing our progress with my patients at the hospital. Some of the women who lived in the rural area began coming to see me at home, rather than in Mogadishu. They told their sisters and daughters and friends about me; so I began to schedule appointments on Friday afternoons, when I was home with my children. While I performed examinations in one of our bedrooms, other women sat on our veranda, waiting to talk with me. Though I had little equipment, I tried to help them in whatever way I could. Some mornings, the only way to help was for Aden to drive his Land Cruiser into Mogadishu with a crying woman and her children in the back.
The women told me about their friends and neighbors—people who had never seen a doctor—so I began going to the villages to see them. By then, Deqo and Amina, who were eight years old and three years old, came with me. As I became more heavily pregnant, they proudly carried some of the equipment; we sang as we walked. Even though many children ran away when they saw my white coat, we tried to talk nicely to them, to reassure them.
Sometimes, at the suggestion of a village elder, we would go inside one of the families’ homes. “How are you?” I would say, entering the small hut slowly. “Are you okay?” I would introduce myself and explain how I had known that there was a problem, and who had told me. “Show me the child, please? I want to see.” I would try to examine him, listening to his lungs and heart and looking at his face to see if he was very anemic. If a woman was pregnant, or if she had just delivered, I would do an examination, and if a child had malaria, I would give an injection or some tablets. We would pray that the next time we came to the village, the same boy would run to us; many times, he did.
When I visited these rural areas, I was not just a doctor—I was a lawyer, trying to convince the women to trust me, as I could help them in a way that their own families could not. It was hard not to become very frustrated with the women who resisted me because they didn’t have an education. “I am a mother and I am Muslim,” I said. Science and health were gifts from God, I explained—like our own innate intelligence.
One afternoon Siad Barre called a meeting of all the doctors. After we filed into a big hall, one of the senior doctors stood up to address the issue of private practice, which, at the time, was against the law. “Mr. President, we receive a small salary, but some of our patients, when they become healthy, want to bring us money and other gifts,” he said. “To refuse compensation is no way to live.” A few months later, Siad Barre issued a letter giving permission for doctors working within the government system to establish private clinics.
One day shortly thereafter, after a long afternoon in one of the villages, I brought the girls back home so they could get their lunch. I remained outside, to have some quiet time to think. That day I had seen a young girl nearing her last month of pregnancy; if she delivered at night, and a complication arose, she wouldn’t be able to get the help she needed. I looked out at a group of trees, my mind full of worries for her. She needed to deliver in a hospital, with a doctor who understood the danger she faced. Would she go? I had seen a few other women that day who hadn’t needed a hospital, but just another woman who could support them, who could offer advice. I wished they could come to me somehow.
What if, in the clearing near our home, I built a one-room clinic? Many pregnant women from the villages could travel the few kilometers to our place in the middle of the night. Behind it, where a thick thatch of trees stood, we could build a small corridor, where patients could sit and wait for me. I couldn’t save them all, but I could do something.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Losing My Past and My Future
When I was still in medical school, my father once told me how he’d bragged to his friends: “They celebrated when they got their sons,” he’d said. “I told them, ‘When Hawa was born, no one celebrated, but look at her now. How are your sons, and how is my daughter?’ ” Although my father did not live to see me become a doctor, he knew that I would succeed. “You are now tougher than their sons,” he’d said.
It’s painful for me to remember this, for when my mother was dying, my parents imagined a very different life for me. “There is a man who has asked for your hand in marriage,” my mother said one afternoon in 1959, in the same soft, even voice she had used to introduce me to distant family members that were now lying outside on our carpets.
“I don’t want that,” I said. I was just twelve years old. “I am studying. I want to go to secondary school. I want to stay with you.”
Her head never left the pillow as she told me about the man. “We gave you a very good boy,” she’d said. “I liked him as soon as I saw him.” His father and my father had known each other—they had both come from the same part of Somalia, far away from Mogadishu. To me, that meant that we were living where the sun rose, and this man was living where the sun set. “His family came this morning, to talk to me and your father,” my mother said. “We have accepted.”
“I don’t want to leave you!” I cried.
“You must marry,” my mother told me. “Then, if I die, I will have a clean heart.”
A few weeks after we buried my mother, I learned that the man’s family was ready to make a wedding. It was worse than if I’d learned that I would go to the grave. I know that my father felt sorry to see me cry, but since he had not needed my consent, he hadn’t asked me for it.
My mother’s cousins wanted the wedding to be in Mogadishu. “No, no, no,” I said. “I have no mother, but I have a grandmother. The wedding will be in Lafole.” So Ayeyo called all the people of her generation, all the women and men, and they came to her side, bringing camels, cows, and goats for a feast.
I cried as they wrapped me in a new guntiino, the traditional one-shouldered Somali dress. It was bright red, my favorite color. “Oh, she is crying for her mother,” said some of the older women softly, but my friends knew the truth.
My father also cried as he hugged me. I know he felt sorry. “Your mother wanted it this way,” he told me, so there was nothing else to do.
In that time it was traditional for the young people, girls and boys, to accompany the bride to her husband’s house. So around eleven o’clock that evening my friends gathered in front of Ayeyo’s home to bring me to Mogadishu. During the hour-long walk, they sang a popular song—words I knew were meant to comfort me. “Run away from that guy,” they sang. “You are so beautiful, you are the queen of the society, and you are going to marry that man? No, no.”
I was a child then; I didn’t know the expectations of a bride on her wedding night. But as my friends sang—“We will wait for you at the market!”—I became less fearful. I even began to laugh a bit, as they put their arms around my waist and we walked together. After a while, the friendly faces all around me di
stracted me from my sadness and fear.
When we arrived at the man’s home, one of Ayeyo’s relatives bent down and took me up, like a child, onto her back. I entered into the courtyard this way, with a person on all sides of me, right and left. I squeezed my eyes shut, listening only for a familiar voice, and when I opened them, I was in a room filled with strangers, all surrounding a bed made up to be very beautiful, with orange and red blossoms on top. On the cement floor I saw a mat that Ayeyo had been weaving since the day I first spoke with my mother about marriage. As is the tradition, the woman carrying me said, “I am not putting her down until I am given my money.”
The man’s parents were in the room. They gave the money, and the woman put me on the bed, my bare feet touching the flowers first. I sank down. There were big containers everywhere, filled with milk, sugar, and sesame oil. Everyone began drinking fresh camel milk from a cup, but when it was handed to me, I was crying too hard to drink.
My girlfriends came around the bed, whispering the same song, “We will wait for you in the market, don’t remain here with this guy.” But almost immediately they left, and only my husband’s family remained.
They held out tea for me, and cool water. “We are your family now,” one woman said. “You have nothing to cry for. Stay calm, and everything will be just as it should be.”
“But I love those people,” I cried, my face in my hands. “I grew up with them. I do not know you.” But to go with them was impossible. Another woman in the room, who had never known divorce, gave me a beautiful new headscarf and a blessing to accompany it. I sat still as it was tied tightly around my hair. “We give this to you so you will never fall down,” she said.
The man walked into the room by himself. He sat down on the bed and took my hand. “Don’t cry,” he said.
I could not obey. Even after all I’ve seen over the years, the seven days to follow I still count as some of the worst in my life.
My first husband’s name was Mohamed Hussein. He worked as an officer of the Somali military police, and he smoked so much that when he smiled, you could see that his tobacco-stained teeth were red. He tried to reach out to me, to console me, but I was scared and in pain; whenever he came close to me, I felt a chill. This was not love, preparing food for him, cleaning and washing; the beautiful headscarf I’d been given felt more like a mourning veil, an asaay.
Just a few weeks after the wedding, Mohamed Hussein’s position was transferred to Kismayo, a city about 500 kilometers south of Mogadishu—farther from my family than I had ever been. I didn’t want to go, and the night before we left, I stayed with a friend. She agreed to go with me, so I wouldn’t be alone, and in the morning, she and I went together to the big military car waiting for us and sat together in one seat, holding hands.
Mohamed Hussein was surprised to find both of us there. “Who are you?” he asked my friend, “and where are you going?”
When I tried to explain, he threw his cigarette down. “You are a stupid child,” he said to my friend. “Why would you think that you could come with me and my wife?” As we pulled away, I could see her running home from the open-top military car.
In Kismayo, we lived in military housing—each family had one big, open room divided into a kitchen and a bedroom, and a walkway passed between the rooms, which meant the neighbors could see what was happening inside. I tried to talk with the other wives, but they were so much older than I was. I walked into town by myself, visiting my favorite shops for some oil and sugar.
Some afternoons I lay on the floor, feeling as though I’d been infected with a horrible disease. The bright sun and salty air that I loved in Mogadishu seemed suddenly harsh; Mohamed Hussein’s hands on my body remained those of a stranger. Even the smell of cooking food made me vomit. When he was sent north, on a mission to the border of Kenya, I remained alone for ten days, too sick to go to the market for my daily needs.
I could hear the voices of some of the women, looking in: “Oh, you see how she’s lying there? She’s a child, and inside her is another child.”
When Mohamed Hussein came back, he saw how I was sick. I told him that I wanted to go to see my father and Ayeyo. At first, he tried to refuse—his friends feared that I might miscarry—but after several arguments, he bought me my bus ticket. I stepped into the car with excitement, hoping the pang of homesickness would go away, hoping, also, that I would never return.
I arrived in Mogadishu early in the morning and went straight to my father’s stall in the market. When I saw him, I began to cry uncontrollably, falling into his arms. “Calm down, my child,” he said as he stepped back to look at me. “I am happy you are pregnant—I will have a grandchild!” I stayed with my family for the rest of the pregnancy. My father took me to see a doctor and then to Lafole, where, from the comfort of Ayeyo’s old mat, I breathed in the clean air. She washed my face and gave me cool water, sweet bananas, and papaya.
The night my water broke, Amina ran for my father. Together we waited and waited for a car to bring us to Martini hospital. I cried, not wanting to return to the hospital that had failed my mother, but my father insisted. In the waiting room, as we waited for a midwife to come talk with us, he gripped my hand and told me to remain calm. I tried, although I felt pain—so much sharp pain.
Morning had come by the time a midwife finally examined me. “This area is totally closed!” she wailed. “What have they done to you?”
I did not understand. I knew that I had been closed—it was a memory so painful, from when I was just seven years old, that I do not speak of it. It was the reason why a woman had to stay with me on my wedding night and the days after—to care for me as I healed, and to reassure me, as my mother once had, that every woman goes through the same thing. I didn’t understand the implication of being cut and stitched together; I didn’t know what it took to deliver a child. While I would later learn the term female genital cutting, the frustrated midwife had a simple explanation. “If the child comes, I can’t do anything,” she said. She steadied me on the table and began to cut.
Oh, it was painful, painful, painful! It’s natural to jump when you feel pain; when I moved, she cut into my muscles, some other places too. But still the child did not come, not for hours, until the afternoon. When I finally saw the baby girl, she was not crying, not moving. “She’s alive,” said the midwife as she slapped her back. “It’s no problem.”
“Oh!” my father said, looking at the child, and then at me. “I think they are the same weight!” He named my daughter Faduma, a common name for a family’s oldest girl—like my half sister, Faduma Ali. When we were discharged, we stayed for forty days in the home of Mohamed Hussein’s parents, but they did not follow the Somali customs of the umul. They fed me only small portions. I gave Faduma my breast, but I didn’t have enough milk for her. I struggled, and when my father came to visit and saw that I was still so thin, he brought me back to our family’s home, to care for me properly.
Faduma could not move her head as a baby should, and when I saw some swelling around her scalp, I showed it to my father. Early the next morning Amina and I walked together to an outpatient clinic, standing in a long, long line of patients until the afternoon, when we finally heard “Faduma Mohamed Hussein.”
An Italian doctor, probably forty years old, came to talk with us. “Did she fall?” he asked, holding Faduma’s head in his hands and looking closely.
“No,” I said.
He asked many questions: How old I was, and how long I’d been in labor. When I told him, he said that he thought something could have happened to the child during her birth. “You are so small,” he told me. “Her brain may have been damaged during delivery.” He wrote for us a prescription for some medicine, but the problems continued. We brought her back to the doctor, but there was nothing he could do.
The Holy Qur’an says that a husband must care for his wife and his children, to feed and clothe them, but Mohamed Hussein hadn’t cared for me at all as I’d suffered. He had seen
his daughter only once, when he and a few of his relatives had come into the sitting room in my father’s house. He didn’t say anything—he just looked at the child, for five or ten minutes, as I breast-fed her.
“Your father with the red teeth came,” I sang to my daughter, so Mohamed Hussein could hear, “and he doesn’t love you, because you are a girl. Ah… you don’t know that he’s sad, because of you. You’re a daughter, so he won’t get any satisfaction.”
One of his relatives overheard and shouted, “Do you know that this is your husband? How can you address him that way?”
About two months after Faduma’s birth, Mohamed Hussein’s position was transferred to the city of Beledweyne, closer to the Ethiopian highlands. My father and Ayeyo insisted that I live with him there. We had been there just a short time when, one afternoon, I came home from the market to find him in our small sitting room, still dressed in his work uniform. He stood. “I have come to tell you I’m sorry that your grandmother died,” he said, reaching for my hand; he’d bought my bus ticket for the dusty journey back to Mogadishu, without him.
On the road, Faduma and I became sick. I pulled a shawl over my head and face; she lay, hot, against my chest as I shivered. When the road ended, I went the rest of the way by foot, passing the tall weeds and the now-empty fences until I saw my sister Asha in the distance. I called to her, walking faster, and we came together, holding each other and crying. Later I left the baby sleeping in Amina’s arms and went to the place where a small stone marked Ayeyo’s grave.
There I stood, first without motion and then swinging my head and my arms, twisting in the wind. I felt my eyes sting and hot tears on my face. I bent forward, put my hands and knees onto the ground, and then I lay on my side, my cheek to the patch of sand under which Ayeyo lay.