by Hawa Abdi
Though it pained me, I’d asked whether Aden would be buried alongside his son. “The area is full,” his brother told me.
Oh, how I struggled as I spoke with them, feeling only my own sharp hatred and my own suspicion infecting my mind, threatening my life. What good then was my own education and experience, if in the end I was reduced to these feelings? I sat among well-wishers and old friends who mourned the life of a man who had left me, who was still considered my husband, but I could not swallow the anger. I worried about my daughters: I raised them, I educated them; like their brother, they did not belong there. When they would finally come, I would insist that they stay with me. I would not allow them out of my sight.
One man came to me whom I’d last seen in 1993, in Addis Ababa. He was a part of the movement for independence in the north. “Why are you doing that?” I remember asking him at the time, hearing that he wanted to divide Somalia. “Do you want to cut our body in two?”
When I saw him again, he sat by my side. “I am responsible for taking Aden from you,” he said. He explained that at a meeting in London, the powerful members of the Issaq clan decided to make Aden a part of the government. Like so many, Aden was a man who loved to be the boss; he had to leave his home to find a way.
I asked that man if he remembered our conversation in Addis Ababa. “You were creating and cultivating hate these twenty years,” I told him. “What have you done?”
“We haven’t done anything,” said his wife, shaking her head. “Just, we suffered.” They had only a few goats, she said. No river, no water catchment.
“You see how you changed?” I asked the man. “Then you were a very strong, smooth, and handsome man. But now, how do you look?”
By the time Aden’s wife came to me, I was tired and overwhelmed. When I saw her face for the first time, I was shocked: She was a young, innocent woman, not at all what I had expected. “It is God’s decision that we will meet today only,” she said.
“There is no problem,” I said. “I got my portion when we were still young, and we were playing together. You got yours when he became heavy, old, and sick.”
Her mouth opened, her chest shrinking back, as I continued, “I loved him, and he loved me—it was love at first sight,” I said. I felt every minute of those thirty-two years that Aden and I lived together, the beautiful days and the angry silences. I saw past his wife’s shock into the twenty-four years that I was connected to our Ahmed. “So you took him. I have no problem—I didn’t come after him,” I said. “But what happened to my son? Don’t you know that if he were still alive, he would be raising your children?”
She cried when she heard that, grabbing my leg in protest. “Don’t cry,” I said. “You now have a son. Ahmed was very strong, and his father loved him well. Did someone think that he could take his father back? Is that why they killed him?”
Many people came to see about the noise, and finally she spoke, “Excuse me! Why are you saying this?”
“I believe that his killing was planned,” I said in an even tone. “But what can I do? I can do nothing.” She ran from the room, and a silence settled into my heart. As we drove in a group to the airport, to meet my daughters who were accompanying their father’s body, those ugly words rang in my ears, along with all the ugly things I had said to my children—“Your father is a liar,” I’d told them again and again. “He lied to you, he lied to me.”
For so long I had wanted to eradicate every thought of Aden because he had caused me so much pain, but I was here now, the reality of his death before me, and with it, all the facts of our lives.
My daughters had made all the funeral arrangements, insisting we go directly from the airport to the grave, which Aden’s brother had prepared. They returned on a Thursday. When I saw Deqo and Amina before me once more, in their eyes was a deep sadness that they had never before known, and I knew that I had to stop fighting, to stop searching. I was always thinking about other people when I spoke about reconciliation—not about my own life. I saw now that although Aden was gone, my blood and his blood were mixed. I had for so long spoken for my country—now I had to act for myself. I had to let the north and the south come together in my children. It was the only way that we would survive.
By the time we arrived at the burial ground, I had let go of my anger. “He lived well in his life and reached a normal age,” I said to the people who came to pay their respects.
My daughters brought me to the edge of the grave. “We want you to forgive our father, his body is lying there,” said Deqo. I could not cry as they did, but I stood with them, agreeing to join them in the ritual of taking sand and placing it atop the body.
“Mama, we have no brother, our father died,” said Amina. “We have no one else. You have to forgive.”
We stood there together, three women, knowing everything that had happened, and knowing, too, that somehow, by the grace of God, we had survived. For the hope of what could come, with the thought of my Ahmed who died and my grandson Ahmed, my soul, who would continue our story, I opened my hand. “Aden, I forgive you,” I said as I released the sand. “Go to paradise.”
Somali tradition says that if you are a woman and your husband dies, you will dress all in white, wearing the mourning veil called asaay for four months and ten days. For the sake of our daughters, for the memory of our son, I wore the white, giving my daughters the possibility to say, “My mother is in asaay, my father died.” That is Somali tradition, to say, “My mother doesn’t have to move anyplace—we will work, to give her whatever she wants.” As I tell you my story now, I am still wearing the shroud. To me, the asaay is a symbol of a bigger loss, one for all women and the whole of our society, as old as the canal nearby Afgoye, Kel Asaay, where many Somali slaves broke their backs at the hands of the Italian colonists.
Our lives have changed drastically since that time. Now as we prepare to mark the thirtieth anniversary of my clinic, the threat is just as great as it’s always been: innocent people still suffering because of division, violence, and poverty. The young men controlling Somalia were, like my beloved late son Ahmed, only small children when our government collapsed. Having come of age without law and order, too many of them see no choice but to side with the evil that we pray will leave us.
Just one month after we buried Aden, a group of al-Shabab’s men came into the camp with a fleet of buses, forcing at gunpoint seven hundred schoolchildren to board, and many other people as well. Deqo, Amina, and I were together in Nairobi when Deqo’s phone rang with the news. It was Ismael: He told us that the mothers had run after the buses on foot, terrified that their children would be forced to pick up arms, or worse, that they would be killed. Then, for hours, the phones were silent, and we were helpless to do anything but alert the media and our other friends and partners, and to pray.
By the late afternoon, we learned that the children had been forced to attend a nearby rally to announce that al-Shabab had joined with al-Qaeda. We thank God that they had been returned unharmed, but it was a sign that the big hatred was only growing. Oh, if I had been there. “You didn’t collect these children,” I would say. “You didn’t build a school, you didn’t care for them. Why do you want them to support you? Support yourself!” I would have died of a heart attack, I know, saying these things.
Two weeks later, an al-Shabab-backed businessman took about 100 square meters of the land in front of the hospital—some of my very first property—falsely claiming that he had the deed. While we tried to argue, sending our lawyer to contest the claim, the only court in the region was an al-Shabab court; we were powerless to stop him. Soon after, when a bulldozer came to clear the land of the carefully built huts, four hundred of our people were again displaced and we again began appealing for help all over the world.
Every person in the world has an enemy, but I do believe that those enemies get what they have given. Although they have seen unimaginable difficulty, the people living in my place still call every day, telling me that they p
ray, just as we do, that these evil people will leave us.
“I know that God gave you power,” one person told me recently. “If you pray, al-Shabab will be lost, as Hizbul Islam was lost.”
“We know that you will succeed,” they say, and after so many years, I believe it, too. I pray that I will return to my place, to speak to my people in person, to tell them that because we are alive, we can fight this biggest enemy, this ignorance. So long as people are ignorant, I will say, they can’t see another person’s value—what he was doing before and what he is doing now. Ignorance is the reason why people attack without any reason, as they have attacked me, as they have attacked countless innocent people in Somalia and all over the world.
Although I am proud of my daughters, I regret that my worries are now theirs: These days we stay up late into the night wondering when the next drought will hit or whether the people who have taken a portion of our land will return for our hospital. “You must relax,” Amina says, but still, sometimes I become angry, insisting that I will fight with the stupid people. You gave these people your blood and your soul, your life, I think to myself, and all they are thinking about is how to disturb you.
My only expectation now is that God will reward me, but it does not mean that I don’t feel pain when I remember. I risked my life for my own sisters, whom I carried in the name of our mother and father, and for my people, for whom I have tried my best in the name of our beloved Somalia. When you love so much, you are exposed to so much pain. I will try to forgive nonetheless, for while my daughters and I are only three, with my sisters’ children, and with all the other families together, we make a small village. Children grow to love one another, you see, if they have a parent who is patient, who can guide them in the right way. Love is the only way to peace.
When I was eight years old, Ayeyo told me something that I will never forget: “You will be the big trees that everyone comes and relaxes under,” she said. “On the road, people will say, ‘I am going to Hawa.’ ‘Where did you come from?’ they will ask. ‘I come from Hawa,’ they will say.” Many people might think that it’s a curse, but I say that I am happy, anyhow, with what Ayeyo gave me. I know that one day, the truth will come out; the bandits, the people who use our religion as a shield, will be destroyed totally, and the poor people will get back their rights.
In 2008, when my grandson Ahmed was just three months old, I brought him to the farm. “This farm is yours,” I said. “You have to protect it, you have to see it and defend it.” I know that he will, and I know that he will succeed. As you know, blessings last for fifty generations—as I have been blessed, so, too, will he be.
In my place are all different parts of Somalia—that rural area and the seaside, my mother and my father. It is paradise, so long as we have peace. I live for the hope that peace will come, so I can build a beautiful home for myself by the seaside, nearby the place where, long ago, Aden and I planted five hundred coconut trees. There, where the waves are roaring and the fruit from the trees provides water in the driest times, is where I will spend my happiest days. I will divide my time between the seaside and the farm, where, in the green space, I will walk slowly, enjoying time with my children and grandchildren.
Until that time, I can only give them my story. Seeing the mistakes that I’ve committed and the good things that I’ve done, they can build on what I have started. When peace seems impossible, I will tell them to remember so many other things that should have never happened—that I would be educated, that I would build something of my own, that I would survive. That is how I know they will grow into a future that we have dreamed for them, that we have all worked so hard to build. I cannot wait.
About the Authors
Dr. Hawa Abdi is a Nobel Peace Prize–nominated Somali human rights activist, one of the country’s first female gynecologists, and a lawyer. She is also the founder of the Doctor Hawa Abdi Foundation, which runs a hospital and school in one of the largest internally displaced persons camps in the country and which has, for more than twenty years, offered sanctuary to as many as 90,000 people at any one time. In 2010, Glamour magazine named her and her daughters, Deqo and Amina Mohamed (who are also doctors) “Women of the Year,” dubbing the trio “the Saints of Somalia,” and calling her “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.” Dr. Abdi was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Shake the World” in 2011 and received the 2012 John Jay Medal for Justice and the Vital Voices’ Global Leadership Award in 2013. She and her daughters have saved tens of thousands of lives in their hospital in Somalia.
For more information on Dr. Abdi or to donate to her foundation, go to dhaf.org.
Sarah J. Robbins is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in Glamour, Newsweek, Marie Claire, Real Simple, and Publishers Weekly magazines, among others, as well as in the anthology The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women’s Rights. She is a professor with the Bard Prison Initiative, and lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
Glossary of Somali Terms
Abayo—term of endearment for an older sister
Abtirsiinyo—counting ancestors
Ai—term of endearment for “aunt”
Asaay—white garment worn by a widow
Ayeyo—grandmother
Bun—green coffee beans cooked in oil
Darod—Siad Barre’s clan
Dugaal—fence around a typical Somali home, protecting your open courtyard from threat of wind or wild animals
Fakash—pejorative word for another clan
Gallo—unbelievers / people who are not Muslim
Garas—big tree with broad leaves
Guntiino—traditional one-shouldered Somali dress
Hawiye—Hawa’s father’s clan
Hooyo—term of endearment used in the mother / child relationship
Injera—flat pancake often served for breakfast
Insha’Allah—God willing
Isaaq—Aden Mohamed’s clan
Karfan—white shroud used to cover the body in Muslim burial tradition
Jaaji—fishing community
Qat—a popular stimulant made from leaves
Umul—forty days of traditional rest following the birth of a child
Zakat—charity given to the poor; one of the pillars of Islam
Hawa’s Family
Abdi Diblawe (Hawa’s father)
Abdi Karim (Hawa’s nephew)
Aden Mohamed (Hawa’s husband)
Ahmed Aden Mohamed (Hawa’s son)
Ahmed Faysal (Hawa’s grandson)
Amina Abdi (Hawa’s sister)
Asha Abdi (Hawa’s sister)
Amina Aden Mohamed (Hawa’s daughter)
Asli (Hawa’s cousin)
Ayeyo / Salaho (Hawa’s grandmother)
Dahabo (Hawa’s niece, Amina Aden’s daughter)
Deqo Aden Mohamed (Hawa’s daughter)
Faysal (Amina Aden’s husband)
Faduma Ali (Hawa’s half-sister)
Faduma Mohamed Hussein (Hawa’s daughter)
Kahiye (Hawa’s nephew)
Khadija Abdi (Hawa’s sister)
Mohamed Hussein (Hawa’s first husband)
Sharif (husband of Amina Abdi and Khadija Abdi)
Su’ado (Hawa’s niece)
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment to my daughters, Deqo Aden Mohamed and Amina Aden Mohamed. To Jean-Jacques and Claire Lise Dreifuss and the Association Suisse Hawa Abdi; Médecins Sans Frontières; Matthias Bruggmann; Aisha Ahmad and the team at the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation; Eliza Griswold; Sahal Abdulle; Melanne Verveer, Alyse Nelson, and Vital Voices Global Partnership; Cindi Leive, Susan Goodall, and Glamour magazine; Tina Brown, Kim Azzarelli, Kyle Gibson, Ellen Kampinsky, Anna Hall, and Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s Women in the World Foundation; Angelina Jolie and the Jolie-Pitt Foundation; Raj Gandesha, Leslie Morioka, and White & Case LLP; Daniel Wordsworth, Said Sheikh-Abdi, and the American Refugee Committee; Ahmoud Foundation; Alalusi Foundation; Amanda
Lindhout and the Global Enrichment Foundation; Chautauqua Institution; the Somali diaspora community of North America; Saint Louis University; the Virtue Foundation; and the countless individuals who have sustained our lives and our work.
To Sarah J. Robbins, for telling my story, and to all who have brought it to light: Jamie Raab, Karen Murgolo, Linda Duggins, Karen Andrews, Claire Brown, Joan Matthews, and Grand Central Publishing; Lenny Goodings and Virago; David Kuhn, Billy Kingsland, Becky Sweren and Kuhn Projects. To Nadifo Farah, Terrence Finneran, Bashir Goth, Osman Harare, Abdi Issak, Erika Iverson, Safia Jama, Imam Hassan Mohamud, Omar Mohamed, Mohamed Ali Nur, Dan Salemson, Abdi Samatar, and Elisa Slattery. To David Anderson, Nicole Francis, Lindsay Goldwert, Tim Heffernan, Noelle Howey, Mike Wipfler Kim, Brian Marcus, and Amanda Grooms West; to Lawrence and Terry Robbins, and to Craig Holland.
Hawa with President George H.W. Bush and delegation, December 1992. (©Larry Downing/Sygma/Corbis)
President George H.W. Bush is greeted by schoolchildren in Hawa Abdi Village, December 1992. (©David Ake/AFP/Getty Images)
Aden and Hawa, early 1990.
Deqo and Ahmed, September, 2000.
Hawa (seated) and her team perform a gynecological procedure in the surgical department, January 2007. (©Seamus Murphy/VII Network/Corbis)
Hawa (center) operates on a patient in the surgical department, January 2007. (©Seamus Murphy/VII Network/Corbis)
Hawa (center) and her surgical team, January 2007. (©Seamus Murphy/VII Network/Corbis)