Sidow’s mother hated it when he spoke like that and had often reminded him that Allah provides for those he creates.
Still, he insisted that we have no more children until things changed for the better. “Mother, I have six people to worry about. We can’t add more to the load.”
I don’t think his mother liked the explanation any better than she had liked the reason that led to it, but she left it alone. Sidow was the man of the house, and it was up to him to make the final decision.
“I wish I were pregnant. That would make me feel more secure.”
“What are you talking about?”
I told Sidow what I was worried about and how his comments had brought painful memories.
He laughed at me. “Idil, I was only making a point.”
“I don’t want to feel like my mother.”
“Farmers have no time to be unfaithful. They have too much work to make time for that,” Sidow said.
“But there are husbands with more than one wife.” I pointed to two families in the neighborhood.
“That’s not the same. They are not having affairs. They are married. That’s legal.” Sidow must have seen my eyes widen at hearing him justify men taking a second wife. “Also, they are not married to a beautiful woman like you.” That was an attempt to placate me. He tried to kiss me, but I pulled away. He moved close and held my shoulders. “Idil, I am not your father and I am not looking for another woman. My father didn’t take another wife and had no mistresses. You can ask Mother if you want. She’ll tell you he never cheated.”
I did that. I asked his mother.
She shook her head when I told her what my mother had gone through, trying to keep Father. “Women stay because they must, but men stay because they want to. If your father didn’t want to stay, there was nothing your mother could’ve done to stop him. Healers don’t change hearts, they mend them. Only Allah can do that. Sidow loves you and he is not going anywhere.”
It was true. Sidow was faithful, but I was worried about what was yet to come. There had been a time before the Soviet Union, before Nadia, before Ayan, when Father was sweet and loving to Mother. He came home every night and called her pretty names. We ate dinner together as a family and they went to bed at the same time. Those days Mother scoffed at any women whose husbands strayed. All that was lost only weeks after Father returned from the Soviet Union. Mother spent the rest of her days trying to recapture the happier times in vain.
As it can do, time revealed to me that Sidow was not cheating, so the fear of finding him in another woman’s bed diminished slowly and finally died on our eighth wedding anniversary.
Sidow hugged me close to him that night and said, “Can you believe it has been eight years from the day the two of us were on the bus trying to get married?”
I smiled at the memory and stayed in his embrace, not wanting to speak lest my words spoil the beautiful feeling between us. The happy days that started with the celebration of our long marriage were interrupted, not by another woman, but by the news of unrest in the northern region of the country.
*
In the evenings, since the beginning of that year, after long days of work when the children were in bed, we sat around the fire. Others from the neighboring farms often joined us. We shared the news of the unrest in the north and our thoughts about it.
“The military planes have bombed two villages near Hiraay,” Sidow brought word from the market one night.
“They are pounding the villagers into submission,” another man said.
From both experience and upbringing, farmers were always suspicious of the government and its policies, but this was more than simple mistrust. “What would they get from destroying the country?” I asked, the first time I heard about the attack.
“They can instill fear. If a man is consumed by his need to protect or feed his family, he will be very unlikely to ask questions beyond safety and the price of grain and milk,” Sidow explained to me.
Others nodded in agreement. We went on like that for months, discussing for hours each night what was happening in the north as fear in the south mounted. Yet, what was going on as we spoke remained distant until the trucks that were scheduled to pick up our crops weekly didn’t arrive.
“Let us hope the shipment will be picked up next week,” the white-haired elder said, as we gathered in our yard.
We had no discussion that night, and the farmers drifted, one by one, back to their homes.
The next week came and went without bringing any of the trucks with it, and the farmers worried about how they would keep the January crops in temporary silos if the previous crops hadn’t been delivered to the Wheat Board for distribution. We waited and hoped for a pick-up, but two weeks became three, and three weeks turned into a month. Still no shipment left the village.
We gathered in our neighbor Dooyow’s house when he returned from the capital after visiting his daughter. His news was alarming. “My son-in-law said the government is fighting with militia insurgents.”
It was hard to believe the government that had ruled Somalia with such an iron fist for the last twenty-one years could be in such a trouble, but the crisis deepened.
“I was told the government has no power beyond army headquarters and the presidential palace. The city is in chaos,” Dooyow said.
Every day from the end of January of 1991, Sidow, along with other farmers, went to the market to buy daily supplies for their families and to learn what they could about the goings-on in the capital. Fear about what to do with the crops and how to obtain necessities occupied our nightly discussions. We no longer spoke about the injustices the government might or might not have committed. We didn’t question what we heard; we focused on how to survive.
After word of trouble in Mogadishu, the elders assembled at the Farmers’ Hall and established a youth militia group to protect the village. The farmers’ weapons were limited to a few hunting rifles, homemade bows and arrows, and daggers and knives.
Every night, along with the youth militia, the men from the villages waited at the truck depot for any information coming from the capital. Night after night, they came back with no news. The buses and trucks from Mogadishu hadn’t come. Even the postal truck didn’t come for weeks, taking with it my only contact with Elmi.
“A bus arrived this evening!” Sidow said when he came home late one night, five weeks after the news of trouble in the capital reached us. “It doesn’t sound good. The bus was attacked along the way by gunmen who took money, jewelry, and three women.” Sidow flinched. “Only two came back.”
I had no intention of speaking, but the words tumbled out. “Did you see the women? Did you ask them what happened to the missing one? Were they raped?” I peppered Sidow with questions.
“I don’t know. We asked the driver what happened to them, but he wouldn’t say. He just locked up his bus and left.”
We listened to the radio every day for any hope that all was well, and that the government had regained a control of the capital.
With the pompousness he had always possessed, the president gave his last weekly address just one day before he fled the capital. The fighting that had started at the end of December in 1990, the year that marked the country’s final collapse, had been going on in the capital for six weeks by then. Still, listening to that radio address, no one would have known anything was the matter.
“It is every citizen’s duty to reject rumors spread by the enemies of the nation.” The president spoke with confidence. “You might hear that the militia has forced the president and his government from the capital, but that is not true. The government is leaving the capital for strategic reasons.”
After the address, regular radio programming continued, but the story of the war in Mogadishu reached us all the same. Tales of the horror continued to pour in, and the evidence of the government’s fall arrived
in Bledley soon after with convoys of military vehicles, filled with top government officials, including the president and his family. They were upon us before we realized we were under siege. Rows of cars, tanks, and emergency vehicles rolled into town, and the sound of gun salutes filled the night sky.
“What is happening?” I asked Sidow when he returned from the market.
“People are saying the president was pushed out of Mogadishu, and he is here with his military to plan how to take back the city.”
“Do you think my father is with him?” I asked Sidow.
“Probably. Everyone from the president’s tribe is coming this way. Your father knows the base and Bledley, so he must be with them.”
Sidow was right. I said a quick prayer that Father would have more important things to worry about and leave us alone.
That night when we met at the Farmers’ Hall, the discussion centered around what they might do next. All the following week the military stayed inside the base and didn’t bother us. There were whispers about women of varying ages from several families having been taken into the compound. At first, we had no specifics, and it sounded as if the rumors were born out of fear, rather than fact. That all changed when the first actual name was announced at our weekly meeting.
“They took my daughter,” a man named Enow told us. He attempted to stand in front of all the farmers and relay his loss, but collapsed onto his chair and sobbed.
Three days passed before she returned home. No one in her family—including the girl—spoke about what had happened to her. After that day, soldiers raided and looted one farm after another and took herds of sheep, goats, and cows to be slaughtered and cooked for their consumption. It was not if but when we would get hit. A month after the president and his soldiers came, it was our turn to suffer. Men in military uniforms showed up just before dawn. Guns aloft, they opened the gate to the sheep and goat barns. We left the children asleep inside, and the four of us stood against the kitchen wall with practiced silence.
“You, come here!” A soldier pointed his gun at us as they rounded up the animals.
I pointed a shaking finger at my chest to see if he was summoning me.
“No, you in the middle, come here.” They wanted Hasan.
The man pushed Hasan with the butt of his revolver. “Walk ahead and lead the animals.” They took Hasan, along with three sheep and four goats. They merged into the darkness of the dying night, minutes before dawn.
“I should have died long ago!” my mother-in-law wailed.
Sidow and I took her to her room and I stayed with her all day. She refused to eat or come outside until she heard Hasan’s voice the following night. “I am so thankful you are home. Did they harm you?” My mother-in-law inspected Hasan.
Hasan stepped back. “I slaughtered and cooked.”
My mother-in-law sighed. “If stolen livestock is the worst we suffer, we are lucky.”
No one said anything more until Hasan spoke. “I saw your father.”
“My father?” I asked to be certain of what Hasan said.
“He came out to the service quarters with two other men when I arrived. I didn’t make eye contact, fearing he would recognize me, but he saw me anyway.”
I watched Hasan intently, holding on to every word.
“He asked me if I had an older brother. When I shook my head no, your father called me a clever little Boon. One of the men asked him if he knew me since he’d lived in the village before. Your father denied it, saying ‘I can’t tell one ugly Boon face from another.’ I have never been more grateful to be insulted.”
“So, he didn’t ask about me or Sidow or the children? Do you think he was thinking about us?”
“He didn’t, and I don’t know if he really recognized me. He came out three times while I was working, as if he was waiting for me to finish, so he could speak to me. But he never said another word. As soon as I finished, he pointed at two men standing by the gate and told them to take me home.”
“Was my mother there?” I didn’t want to ask, but I felt the need to know.
“I heard a woman speaking from within the main house, but I didn’t see her.”
“If Father was here, Mother is probably with him,” I said. “Father set the house on fire with us inside, but now he has freed Hasan.” I told Sidow, Hasan, and their mother that this made no sense to me. They agreed that the situation was odd, but were willing to take solace in the small gesture of good will.
“If your father recognized Hasan and set him free, then we must accept the gift.”
Chapter Eighteen
Under the constant scrutiny of the occupiers, life became tiresome. Walking, shopping, and making meager meals left me exhausted. The yard fires that marked the evening family time and the end of a hard day’s work were left unlit. We no longer visited each other except to share our dwindling supplies of sugar, tea, and coffee beans. As if condemned by fate, neither the villagers nor the president and his troops could leave Bledley. I thought about Father often and wondered whether he thought about me as well. The fear of what he might do lingered, no matter how many times I reminded myself he had far more important things going on. I expected a soldier, sent by him, to arrive at my door anytime but I never anticipated Mother’s visit.
She showed up one morning, seven weeks after the occupation began. “Idil!” She called my name in her unmistakable warmth that was now foreign to me.
At the sound of her voice, I dropped the blade I was using to dig potatoes and cried out. “Mother!” When I looked up, she was standing near me, a soldier with a large gun right behind her. For her to find me, she would have had to pass the house and the cooking area and encounter Sidow, Hasan, or their mother. “How did you get here?” I feared that the gun-toting soldier, standing at her order, might have harmed them on the way in.
“I saw Sidow and asked him to point me in your direction and let me come.” Mother appeared haggard and unkempt.
“What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you before I left.” Mother motioned to the soldier, who lowered his gun to the ground and moved a few feet away.
I had stayed at home, like others in the village, to avoid any possible run-ins with people from the base, but I never expected Mother to come all the way to the farm. I was both surprised and disturbed by her unexpected call. “What for?”
Mother shook her head. “Things are not right between us, and I don’t know if I will ever see you again.”
“You didn’t worry about that when Father wished me dead.”
Mother didn’t respond to my statement. Instead, she whispered, “The president has ordered two other ministers along with your father to return to the capital and take care of things. But your father is thinking of deserting and carrying on with his business.”
“Is the president staying here?”
“He can’t go back because the capital is overrun by two different militias.” Mother came closer. “Don’t tell anyone this, but the president does not feel safe here or anywhere else in the country.”
“Where will he go?” I didn’t care to know where the president and his people went. All I needed to hear was that they were leaving Bledley.
“They’ll continue to the south, away from here and out of the country. Your father, Omar, Rhoda, and I are going as soon as they leave.”
“When are they leaving?”
“I’m not sure, but soon I expect.”
“I wish you all the best, Mother!” If she noticed the sarcasm in my tone, she didn’t admit it.
“I have made so many mistakes,” she began as if speaking to herself. “Bringing Rhoda into my life, even when I knew Omar wasn’t interested in her. You can’t imagine how many times I ask myself why I, a woman who knows only too well the suffering that comes from being with a man who doesn’t care for you, would put Rhoda in such a un
ion.” Mother stopped, took a deep breath and continued. “Everyone has suffered: Rhoda, Elmi, me, but most of all you.” Here she hesitated. “Never mind. I can’t help it now,” she said.
“You can’t, or you don’t want to?” I asked, unwilling to let her off so easily.
“I am sorry, Idil.” Mother looked at the soldier standing behind her, as if she were afraid she’d said too much already and he might report on her. His back was facing us, so she continued. “I pray things change before it is too late.”
“It is too late, Mother. At least it is for my me and my family.”
It was then that she hugged me, and I didn’t pull away. Instead, I rested my head on her chest and took in the scent—incense and homemade lotion—so preserved in my childhood memory. I held on, not wanting to let go.
After a few brief moments, Mother dropped her hands to her sides, ending our embrace. She kissed me on the forehead. “Good-bye, Idil. May Allah be with you.”
I watched her walk by the main house, through the gate, and away from the farm. That night when we gathered in my mother-in-law’s room to eat dinner, no one mentioned the visit. They didn’t ask why Mother had come, or what she’d said. I was grateful for that. I told them about the president’s plan to leave Bledley, but I said nothing regarding my parents deserting and traveling back to the capital.
A week after Mother’s visit, the president and his troops left Bledley as quickly as they had come. The villagers emerged from their homes in daylight for the first time in weeks and waved and clapped at the departing convoy. For their part, the soldiers atop the tanks waved back victoriously and shot several rounds of gunfire into the air.
*
The joy that came with the departure of the president and his army didn’t last long. Soon after, the fighting between the two militia groups that had pushed the president out of the capital spilled over and reached us in Bledley. Once united by their hatred of the dictatorship government that had ruled the country for the last twenty-one years, they couldn’t agree on how to share power. Each faction wanted to govern in its own way, and that led to bitter fighting that engulfed the whole country.
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