by Hawa Abdi
“Don’t touch!” I shouted. “Close the door!” How they laughed at me, the nervous grandmother, suddenly concerned, after so long in the bush, about whose hands had been where. I understood the irony and laughed, too, but still, in the beginning, I didn’t permit any other woman to care for Ahmed. He was ours alone.
After about three weeks, Amina grew restless, and she got up to work. “I can’t just sit down here, when there’s so much to do,” she told me. I protested, wanting her to have massages, to sleep well, and to continue eating the special, nutritious food that was part of the forty-day umul. When she insisted on working, I stayed with the child. Many journalists were coming at the time, about two or three times a week, so my Ahmed and I greeted them in our sitting room, offering them something to drink.
At the end of 2008, at a conference in Djibouti, the UN helped establish another new government, calling for the withdrawal of all remaining Ethiopian troops from Somalia. As the new president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, took office in January 2009, the Islamic courts split into two groups, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, the latter of which was headed by former ICU leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. Hizbul Islam controlled our area, and we knew they disapproved of our leadership within our land. Some of them tried to order Amina around, and she clashed with them. “This is my place,” she said. “I will be the one ordering people.”
I encouraged Amina to be calm and even-tempered, but we were all, in our place, at the ends of our abilities. The number of people with us was still going up and up; a count at the end of 2009 showed that we had 90,000 people in our camp. What that meant for Amina and me was ceaseless work and very little sleep. While we were constantly alarmed by the difficult cases we saw, there were so many that we forgot them almost immediately—the details we’d just written down replaced in our minds by the sight of someone else’s suffering. To see the children in need was the most difficult, especially when we didn’t have much to give them, but when we could do something, they were also the ones who returned to health most quickly.
Deqo flew from Atlanta to meet me in Geneva, where I had a follow-up doctor’s appointment. While we were there, I met Claire-Lise’s husband, Jean-Jacques Dreifuss, and Deqo presented them with a proposal to expand the overcrowded school to twelve rooms. We also discussed a separate proposal, a Women’s Education Center, which was based on the good work Claire-Lise brought me to see at Camarada. Agreeing to support our plans for the schools, Claire-Lise and Jean-Jacques established their own organization to help us raise money in Switzerland—Association Suisse Hawa Abdi. With the help of the association, we could guarantee that the school would stay open for the next four years, and that the teachers would earn a steady monthly salary.
We returned to the camp to oversee construction: Using the same strong sticks, our workers added another ten rooms onto Eliza’s two in less than two weeks and built the Women’s Education Center in another place, using the same materials. A huge crowd of boys and girls formed the day we reopened the school, and we had the difficult task of choosing which children would attend first. While many people argued, we tried to convince them to be patient. Having trusted in us to provide free medical treatment and free water, they believed that free education would be possible in time.
When the Women’s Education Center opened, we had the same high demand—about 3,000 women wanted to join, although we could only take 100. We began with instruction about sewing and other handicrafts, so women could make something and earn a small income. Since most of the women in our camp didn’t know how to write their own names, one of our schoolteachers came to teach them the Somali language. We set up a small kitchen at the center, as we had in the school, to guarantee that at least once a day, a small group of women and children would have enough to eat. I got my lunch with them on Wednesdays, and I talked with the mothers about the best ways to care for children: how to prevent, recognize, and treat illness; how to administer basic first aid; how to prepare balanced food.
We also tried to discuss the female circumcision ritual that by then had become widely known as female genital cutting. Although the brutal practice had caused me—as well as the women who sat around me, and more than 90 percent of the women in Somalia—so much pain, my daughters and I knew that telling people to stop the practice would never work. The beliefs of a society are often solid as stone, and most of the mothers in our center believed that their girls wouldn’t marry if they weren’t circumcised. They felt that they would be seen as unbelievers—as gallo—and shunned.
We tried to explain the difference between what was written in the Holy Qur’an and what was a Pharaonic custom, as old as Moses. The most straightforward way was to show them the many complications from circumcision. If the clitoral artery was cut, there would be too much bleeding, and the child could die. Others died of infections like tetanus, which were picked up in the sand, and as you know, many young women and children died during labor because the child could not pass through in the right way. Sometimes we even brought the women in our center to the hospital to see the complications like infection or birth defects. They were shocked, but they began to understand.
As conditions in the camp stabilized, my daughters were able to start thinking of their own lives, their own dreams. Deqo prepared to return to the U.S., and Amina made regular trips to Nairobi, where Faysal was now working and where she was required to attend certain meetings for MSF. After a while, Amina decided to resign from her position with MSF and stay in Nairobi, where she began working at Kenyatta Hospital with the hopes of opening her own clinic. I was happy to have her away from the tense situation in our place, as she’d had a few more run-ins with Hizbul Islam. Deqo, who had been away from her new home for so long, kissed me good-bye. “We will be together soon,” she promised.
“Insha’Allah,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Attack
There is a Somali saying that when you finish hard work, life gives you more hard work. People remarked that I had become the mayor of my own city, but I didn’t think about power and influence—or even about the fact that 90,000 people were depending on me. I simply continued on my own, making rounds, meeting with the committees, fighting to support the people who were suffering.
When we began to hear rumors that Hizbul Islam was trying to brainwash young people in our camp, turning them against one another, we tried our best to protect our place. We recruited more young boys to work as nurse’s aides, as we had done for Ismael; we took their photos, so that they would be proud of their jobs and defend their home. Otherwise our elders, our committee, our guards, and I tried to approach the rule of Hizbul Islam in the same way that we had all the other groups who had lost and gained control of the area for two decades—we gave them what they wanted, within reason, and we didn’t ask for anything in return. Along the edges of our property, we hung white sheets to declare our neutrality.
Hizbul Islam pressured us anyway, harassing some of our staff, asking our guards to give them their guns. While it was a common menacing tactic among these groups, I told the guards I would never agree to it. My place was private, I said, and the guns belonged to the guards themselves. If they wanted to defend me, it was their choice.
A few of their men approached one of our young doctors, an MSF employee. “This lady is almost seventy years old,” they said. “Since you are a man, we want to talk with you. What has happened? Why does the lady say, ‘My guards, they are not giving you my guns’?” The doctor responded with my logic, which angered the men.
They began coming to our gate in the afternoons, wanting to see me, to negotiate. At first I refused to speak with them, but when they would not stop, I agreed to a meeting. I called for my guards and the elders, and we welcomed a few Hizbul Islam representatives in my sitting room, where I’d received so many guests over the years. But when we all sat down to talk, the men insulted us. “We want to take over this place,” they said. They thought that since a woman was in control, it was the
ir right.
No one on our side agreed with this proposal, and I argued with them, citing my professional, legal, and moral authority: “I built this myself, to care for these poor people. I am the only doctor here. With what qualifications would you run this place?”
“You people are not obedient,” said one of their men. “You are not recognizing us.”
But what had they done, besides killing? I tried to explain to the men of Hizbul Islam that the people in our camp had a different idea about leadership, although when I could see that they weren’t listening, I stopped talking and returned to my crowded hospital, to work. I knew that after more than twenty years, the people in my place believed in themselves and in their own society. They would never recognize a leader whose only aim was to take.
The first call to prayer in Islam is before sunrise. Usually, I prayed in my room and asked for my breakfast after, while downstairs, the guards at the gate would pray together. On the morning of May 5, 2010, two of my guards were finishing their prayers. One of them, Macalin Hussein, was still reading the Holy Qur’an, and the other guard, Abdisalan, was walking back toward the gate with a big stick in one hand and prayer beads in the other. Suddenly another man they knew, who worked for Hizbul Islam, pushed through the gate without warning. About 50 meters away, I heard the sounds of gunshots and ran to my window. That man’s name was Sharab, and he’d begun firing immediately.
“What’s happened?” asked Abdisalan. “Sharab! What do you want? Whatever it is, take it!”
But the bullets didn’t stop; one struck Macalin Hussein in the shoulder. Abdisalan had been military trained, so he dove under a nearby minibus. While Sharab sent more bullets, hitting the car, grazing the top of the guard’s head, Macalin Hussein took his gun with the good hand and shot Sharab through the heart, killing him immediately.
“Sharab died!” I heard the scream, and someone came running to me. “Mama Hawa! Sharab died, Macalin Hussein is bleeding!” More Hizbul Islam men ran in after Sharab, capturing our guards. I had once seen them together, drinking tea in the afternoon, joking. What had happened today?
“Bring Macalin Hussein to the emergency room and stop the bleeding,” I told the boy. “Give the first aid immediately.” Who had provoked this? As I rushed to dress, my phone rang. It was one of Hizbul Islam’s big bosses, telling me to prepare my guards and their guns.
I knew we were outnumbered. “Okay, my child,” I said, “I will prepare them. But please, here I have women delivering, children sick—the most vulnerable groups. Don’t attack me, we can’t defend ourselves. Anything you want, we will do.”
I called all the elders, who agreed with my decision to surrender our arms, but still, their eyes were fearful, their hands shaking. We were all like chickens sitting on a nest of fragile eggs, thinking of the suffering people in the hospital, the defenseless people in the camp. We hoped we could talk rationally, to reach an agreement.
When our thirty elders collected all the guns and came to the gate, they were met by a big crowd of militants. They’d come to take the camp by force. While gunfire came from every direction, their men forced the elders onto the ground, beating them with the backs of their guns and then taking them away.
Hizbul Islam’s black flag hung inside our emergency ward while their mortar shells slammed into the cement walls and aluminum roofs of our hospital compound. A group of our staff was arrested and brought to another place, in another direction.
I learned all this while pacing inside my room, listening to the explosions. I called Amina to tell her what had happened, and to tell her that I didn’t know if I would live or die. “You are now a doctor, you have your family, your child,” I said. “I thank God you’re not here.”
“Mama, stay there,” she said. “Don’t run from them. You are stronger than they are.” She told me that she and Deqo would call everyone they knew, to try to get some help.
She reached a BBC producer, who called me immediately, during some of the heaviest shelling. I told him what my guards had told me: Hizbul Islam’s targets were the maternity ward, the surgical ward, and the pediatric malnutrition section. One woman recovering from a Cesarean section I’d performed earlier that day had stood up to run, her wound opening as she disappeared toward Mogadishu. Another shell had hit the cholera treatment center. Terrified mothers had detached feeding tubes and IV lines from their dehydrated children’s noses and arms to flee into the bush. We knew those children would not survive.
Imagining my voice on the radio, I tried to appeal to all Somali people, begging them to stand up to defend their society: “You hear what’s happening now? It’s a disaster.” When the next round of gunfire sounded, I said, “That is aimed at the house and the camps.” Then I stopped talking, having heard a loud noise. I shouted for the people around me to close the doors, fearing that the soldiers would come in.
“There was no confrontation between the two of you?” asked the BBC producer.
“They came the other day and said they would take control.” We heard more explosions in the camp, and then a heavy crash. “Pray for us,” were my last words before hanging up. “Pray for us.”
More staff members and friends pushed into my room, wanting to help me flee. I refused, begging them to save themselves. “These people want to kill me. I don’t want you to be wounded here, or something to happen to you. Please leave me alone.”
“Mama Hawa, if you’re going to stay, then we are going to stay with you,” said one young man, who had been with us since he was a child. I swallowed my fear, and we all huddled together and waited.
Around noon, about fifty Hizbul Islam men came to our apartments; they first broke the gate and shot through my iron door with a round of bullets, which shook the entire house, making a terrible sound. Then about twelve men stormed in and began beating our young men who were still inside. They were going through the different rooms and looting, hoping to find something—money, maybe, or gold. They destroyed a small container filled with grass and vegetable seed packets, which Amina had bought, and then they entered all the bedrooms, looking under the pillows and mattresses.
The men came into my room, shouting. “You’ve talked to the media outside?” Faduma Duale and several other nurses surrounded me for protection.
“Why?” I asked. “You did not tell me not to talk.” I had to act strong. I couldn’t be intimidated, with so many of my people watching me with terror.
He grabbed my phone and ordered the rest of the women to give theirs as well. “Dress up,” he said. “We’re taking you to our court.”
“I am dressed,” I said. “This is traditional Somali dress.” I even managed a smile, saying, “My sons, I don’t even know how to wear hijab.” The frightened nurses covered my body with a large shawl, and together we walked silently down the stairs and outside, where about 150 people stood in large groups. As we were pushed toward a waiting minibus, one of the boys in the camp came to my side, saying, “I will go with my mama.”
The militants refused him, shoving him aside.
“But she is my mama,” the boy said.
They permitted the nurses to follow me inside the bus. As we drove away to an unknown place, I heard Macalin Hussein’s screams. Hizbul Islam were holding the hospital staff hostage, refusing to allow them to help Macalin Hussein—to dress his bleeding wound or to even give him antipain medication.
A few days earlier, he’d brought his mother to me. She lived in nearby Merca, and she was skinny, her face hard from a lifetime of rearing cows, goats, and chickens. As we had talked for a few minutes before her examination, I could tell she was proud of her handsome, well-educated son. He was twenty-five, and married with two boys. Thank God his mother couldn’t hear his screams.
After about fifteen minutes we pulled into a small compound and were ordered to get out of the minibus. As we had walked into one of the buildings, some of the young men who knew me from the area approached me, saying sincerely, “Oh, Dottoressa, you are welcome.”
We were led inside a big, open hall, furnished by only a carpet and two mattresses. We sat down on the mattresses, talking quietly to one another, for hours. We were interrupted from time to time by the men, who came in saying, “I am the administrative head,” or “I am the security head,” describing their position in the administration.
While we were listening, waiting, we worried so much about the situation in the camp—had our guards been returned? Did they all think that we were dead? One of the senior nurses, who had worked with me at Digfer and knew me well, was menstruating at that time. She went to one of the guards and told him that she was bleeding heavily. The guard came to me and said, “Doctor, what do we do with this nurse?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “it’s your job—you treat!”
“I was pregnant!” the nurse lied, crying. “And now I lost my child, because of you!”
Not knowing what else to do, the men released her and another nurse to accompany her. They ran back to the camp to tell the worried people that we were okay. The men had given us food, they said, and although we’d at first refused to eat it, we finally accepted. Then the same nurse changed her clothes and came back to me, reporting that the camp was quiet.
At five o’clock, when the BBC Somali service came on, I heard my own terrified voice from the next room—it was a recording of the interview from the attack. A few minutes later, one soldier entered the room and handed me a mobile phone. “You have many supporters,” he said. “Tell them that we didn’t kill you or beat you.” I talked and talked, reaching out first to my daughters.