by Dirie, Waris
Of all her children, though, I always felt I was my mother’s special favorite. We had a strong bond of understanding between us, and I still think about her every day of my life, praying to God to take care of her until I’m able to do the job. As a child I always wanted to be near her, and all day I would look forward to coming home in the evening when I would sit next to Mama and she would stroke my head.
My mother wove beautiful baskets, a skill that takes years of practice to achieve. We spent many hours together as she taught me how to make a small cup that I could drink milk from, but my
attempts at larger projects were never like hers. My baskets were raggedy and full of holes.
One day my desire to be with Mama and my natural childish curiosity drove me to secretly follow her. Once a month she left our camp and went away by herself for the afternoon. I said to her, “I’m so determined to know what you do, Mom what is this thing you do every month?” She told me to mind my own business; a child in Africa has no right meddling in parents’ affairs. And, as usual, she told me to stay home and watch after the younger children. But when she walked away, I hurried behind her at a distance, hiding behind bushes to stay out of sight. She met with five other women, who had traveled long distances also. Together they sat under a huge, beautiful tree for several hours during our siesta, when the sun was too hot to do much else. During that time the animals and family were all resting, so they could spare a little time for themselves. Their black heads gathered close in the distance like ants, and I watched as they ate popcorn and drank tea. What they talked about, I still don’t know, as I was too far away to hear. Eventually I decided to risk revealing myself, mainly because I wanted some of their food. I walked up meekly and stood next to my mother. “Where did you come from?” she cried.
“I followed you.”
“Bad, naughty girl,” she scolded.
But all the other women laughed, and cooed, “Oh, look at the cute little girl. Come here, darling .” So my mother relented and let me have some popcorn.
When I was this young age, I had no conception of another world different from the one we lived in with our goats and camels. Without travel to different countries, books, TV, or movies, my universe simply consisted of the sights I saw around me each day. I certainly had no conception that my mother had come from a different life. Before Somalia’s independence in 1960, Italy had colonized the southern region. As a result, Mogadishu’s culture, architecture, and society were full of Italian influences, so my mother spoke Italian. Occasionally, when she was angry, she’d spew a string of Italian cuss words “Mama!” I’d look at her in alarm. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, that’s Italian.”
“What’s Italian? What does it mean?”
“Nothing mind your own business,” and she’d wave me aside.
Later I discovered for myself-like I discovered
cars and buildings that Italian was part of a broader world outside our hut. Many times we children questioned Mama about her decision to marry our father. “Why did you ever follow this man? Look where you’re living, while your brothers and sisters are living all over the world they’re ambassadors and what have you! Why did you run away with this loser?” She replied that she’d fallen in love with Papa, and made her decision to run away with him so they could be together. Yet my mother is a strong, strong woman. In spite of everything I watched her go through, I never heard her complain. I never heard her say, “I’m fed up with this,” or “I’m not doing this anymore.” Mama was simply silent and hard as iron. Then without warning, she’d crack us up with one of her silly jokes. My goal is to someday be as strong as she is, then I can say my life has been a success.
Our family was typical in our choice of occupations, since over 60 percent of Somalis are pastoral nomads, earning a living by raising animals. My father periodically ventured into a village and sold an animal in order to buy a sack of rice, fabric for clothes, or blankets. Occasionally, he sent along his goods for sale with anybody traveling into town, and a shopping list of items he wanted purchased in return.
Another way we made money was by harvesting frankincense, the incense mentioned in the Bible as one of the gifts the Magi brought the baby Jesus. Its scent is still a valued commodity today, as it has been since ancient times. Frankincense comes from the Boswellia tree, which grows in the highlands of northeastern Somalia. It’s a beautiful little tree, about five feet tall, and the limbs hang in a curve like an open umbrella. I would take an axe and strike the tree lightly not enough to damage it just enough to slash the bark. Then the tree would bleed a milky fluid. I waited a day for the white juice to harden into gum; in fact, sometimes we would chew it like gum for its bitter taste. We gathered the clumps into baskets, then my father sold them. My family also burned frankincense at night in our campfires, and whenever I smell it today I’m transported back to those evenings. Sometimes, in Manhattan, I’ll find incense advertised as frankincense. Desperate for a little reminder of home, I buy it, but its smell is such a weak imitation that it can never match the rich exotic perfume of our fires burning in the desert night.
Our large family was also typical in Somalia, where the average woman has seven children. Children are looked at as the future old-age pension for the elders, as they will take care of their parents when they grow old. Somali children regard their parents and grandparents with great respect, never daring to question their authority. All your elders, even your older brothers and sisters, must be treated with respect, and you must follow their wishes. This fact was one of the reasons my rebellious acts were considered so incredibly scandalous.
Part of the reason for large families, other than lack of birth control, is that the more people who Share the work, the easier life is. Even basic functions such as having water not plenty of water, or enough water, but any water at all required back-breaking work. When the area around us dried up, my father went in search of water. He strapped huge bags onto our camels, bags my mother had woven from grass. Then he left home and was gone for days until he found water, filled the bags, and traveled back to us. We tried to stay in one spot waiting for him, but each day would become increasingly challenging, as we traveled miles and miles to water the herds. Sometimes we had to move on without him, yet he always found us, even without the aid of roads, street signs, or maps. Or, if my father was away, if he’d gone to the village in search of food, one of the children had to do this job, because Mama had to stay home and keep everything running.
Sometimes the job fell to me. I’d walk and walk for days, however long it took to find water, because there was no point in coming back without it. We knew never to come home empty handed, because then there was no hope. We had to keep going until we found something. No one accepted the excuse “I can’t.” My mother told me to find water, so I had to find water. When I came to the Western world, I was amazed to find people complaining, “I can’t work because I have a headache.” I wanted to say to them, “Let me give you hard work. You’ll never complain about your job again.”
One of the techniques for providing more hands to ease the workload was increasing the number of women and children, which means that having multiple wives is a common practice in Africa. My parents were unusual in that only the two of them were together as a couple for years and years. Finally, one day, after having twelve children, my mother said, “I’m too old… why don’t you get yourself another wife and give me a break? Leave me alone now.” I don’t know if she me ont it or not she probably never thought my father would take her up on it.
But one day, Papa disappeared. At first we thought he’d gone in search of water, or food, and my mother looked after everything by herself. After he’d been gone for two months, we thought he was dead. Then one evening, as suddenly as he’d left, my father reappeared. All the children were sitting around in front of our hut. He strolled up and said, “Where’s your Mother?” We told him she was still out with the animals. “Well, hey-hey, everyone
,” he said, grinning, “I want you to meet my wife.” He pulled forward this little girl, about seventeen years old not much older than I was. We all just stared at her, because we weren’t allowed to say anything; besides, we didn’t know what to say.
When my mother came home, it was a horrible moment. All the children waited tensely to see What would happen. Mama glared at my father, not noticing the other woman in the darkness, and said, “Oh, you decided to show up, did you?”
Papa shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and looked around. “Yeah, well, yeah. by the way, meet my wife,” and he put his arm around his new bride. I can never forget my mother’s face in the firelight. It just fell to the ground. Then she realized, “Damn, I lost him now to this little, little girl!” Mama was dying from jealousy, although, bless her heart, she tried so hard not to show it.
We had no idea where my father’s new wife was from, nor did we know anything about her. But that didn’t stop her from immediately bossing all his children around. Next this seventeen-year-old girl started bossing my mother around telling Mama to do this, get me that, cook me this. Things were already growing very tense when one day she made a fatal mistake: she slapped my brother Old Man.
The day this happened all we kids were in our hangout (each time we moved, we found a tree close to the hut that was the children’s ‘room’). One day I was sitting under this tree with my brothers and sisters when I heard Old Man crying. I stood up and spotted my little brother walking toward me. “What’s wrong with you? What happened?” I said, bending over to wipe his face.
“She slapped me she slapped me so hard.” I didn’t even have to ask who, because no one in our family had ever hit Old Man. Not my mother, not any of his older siblings, not even my father, who beat the rest of us on a regular basis. There was no need to hit Old Man, since he was the wisest one among us and always did the right thing. Slapping my brother was the breaking point; this was more than I could stand, and I went looking for this foolish girl.
“Why did you slap my brother?” I demanded. “He drank my milk,” she said in her haughty way, as if she were the queen and owned all our milk from our herds.
“Your milk? I put that milk in the hut, and if he wants it, if he’s thirsty, he can have it. You don’t need to hit him!”
“Oh, shut the hell up and get away from me!” she yelled, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. I stared at her and shook my head, because even though I was only about thirteen, I knew she’d made a big mistake.
My brothers and sisters sat waiting under the tree, straining to hear the conversation between Papa’s wife and me. As I approached them, I pointed at their questioning faces and said, “Tomorrow.” They nodded.
The next day luck was with us, because my father said he was leaving for a couple of days. When it was time for siesta I brought my animals home and found my sister and two brothers. “Papa’s new little wife is taking over,” I began, stating the obvious. “We’ve got to do something to teach her a lesson, because this has to stop.”
“Yeah, but what are we going to do?” asked Ali. “You’ll see. Just come with me, and help me out.” I got a thick, tough rope, the rope we used to tie our belongings onto the camels when we were traveling. We led Papa’s scared wife away from our camp, took her into the bushes, and forced her to take off all her clothes. Then I threw one end of the rope around the limb of a huge tree and tied it around Little Wife’s ankles. She alternated between cussing us, screaming, and sobbing while we pulled the rope and hauled her up off the ground. My brothers and I played the rope back and forth to position her head dangling about eight feet from the dirt, ensuring no wild animals could eat her. Then we tied the rope off and returned home, leaving her there twisting and screaming in the desert.
The next afternoon, my father showed up a day early. He asked us where his little woman was. We all shrugged and said we hadn’t seen her. Fortunately, we’d taken her far enough away so no one could hear her screaming. “Hmmm,” he said, and looked at us suspiciously. By dark he still hadn’t found any trace of her. Papa knew something was very, very wrong, and began questioning us: “When did you see her last? Have you seen her today? Did you see her yesterday?” We told him she hadn’t come home the night before, rhich was, of course, true.
My father panicked and began frantically searching for her everywhere. But he didn’t find her until the next morning. Father’s bride had been hanging upside down for nearly two days by the time he cut her down, and she was in bad shape. By the time he came home he was furious. “Who’s responsible for this?” he demanded. We all went quiet and looked at each other. Of course she told him. She said, “Waris was the leader. She attacked me first!” Papa came after me and started beating me, but all the kids jumped on him. We knew it was wrong to hit our own father, but we simply couldn’t take it anymore. After that day, Papa’s new little wife was a c hanged person. We had set out to teach her a lesson and she learned it well. After having the blood rush to her head for two days, I guess her n was refreshed and she turned sweet and on. she kissed my mother’s feet and waited on her like a slave. “What can I get you? What can I do for you? No, no I’ll do that. You sit down and relax.”
And I thought, “There you go. You should have acted like this from the beginning, you little bitch, and saved us all that unnecessary grief.” But the nomad’s life is a harsh one, and even though she was twenty years younger than my mother, father’s new wife wasn’t as strong. In the end Mama learned she had nothing to fear from this little girl.
The nomad’s life is a harsh one, but it is also full of beauty a life so connected to nature that the two are inseparable. My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive. Sometimes it doesn’t rain in my country for over a year. But finally the water pours down, cleansing the dusty landscape, and then like a miracle the blooms appear. The flowers are a brilliant yellowish orange, and for this reason, yellow has always been my favorite color.
When a girl marries, the women from her tribe go out into the desert and collect these flowers.
They dry them, then add water to them and make a paste to spread on the bride’s face that gives her a golden glow. They decorate her hands and feet with henna, drawing ornate designs. They rim her eyes with kohl, so they look deep and sexy. All these cosmetics are made from plants and herbs, so they’re completely natural. Next the women drape her in brightly colored scarves reds and pinks and oranges and yellows the more the better. Maybe they don’t own much; many families are incredibly poor, but there is no shame over this fact. She’ll simply wear the best she or her mother or sisters or friends can find, and carry herself with fierce pride a trait all Somalis bear. By the time her wedding day comes, she walks out to greet her groom as a stunning beauty. The man doesn’t deserve it I
For their wedding, the people in the tribe bring gifts; again, there’s no need to feel pressured to buy certain things, or worry that you can’t afford something better. You give whatever you have: weave a mat for them to sleep on, or give them a bowl, or if you have none of these, bring some food for the celebration after the ceremony. There’s no such thing in my culture as a honeymoon, so the day after the wedding is a workday for the newlyweds, and they will need all their gifts to start their married life together.
Other than weddings, we have few celebrations. There are no holidays arbitrarily marked by a calendar. Instead, the other major cause for rejoicing is the long-awaited rain. In my country water is so scarce, yet it is the very essence of life. Nomads living in the desert have a deep, deep respect for water, regarding every drop as a precious commodity, and to this day I love water. Simply looking at it gives me great joy.
After months and months of drought, sometimes we would grow desperate. When this happened, the people would gather together and pray to God for rain. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. One year we had passed int
o what was supposed to be the rainy season, but still not a drop had fallen. Half our animals were dead and the other half were weak from thirst. My mother told me that we were all going to gather to pray for rain. The people converged, seemingly from out of nowhere. We were all praying and singing and dancing, trying to be happy and lift our spirits.
The next morning the clouds gathered, and the rain began to pour. Then, as always when it rains, the true rejoicing began. We would strip off our clothes and run into the water, splashing, and washing for the first time in months. The people celebrate with our traditional dancing: the women clapping their hands and chanting, their low sweet voices humming across the desert night, and the men leaping high into the air. Everyone contributes food, and we eat like kings to praise the gift of life.
In the days after the rains, the savannahs blossom with golden flowers, and the grasslands turn green. The animals are able to eat and drink their fill, offering us a chance to relax and enjoy life. We can go to the lakes newly created by the rain and bathe and swim. In the fresh air, the birds begin to sing and the nomads’ desert becomes paradise.
Becoming a Woman
The time had come for my oldest sister, Aman, to be circumcised. Like all younger siblings, I was envious, jealous that she was entering this grownup world that was still closed to me. Aman was a teenager, much older than the normal age for circumcision, but so far the timing had never been right. As my family traveled Africa in our endless cycle, we had somehow missed the gypsy woman who performed this ancient ritual. When my father finally found her, he brought her to circumcise my two oldest sisters, Aman and Halemo. But when the woman came to our camp, Aman happened to be off searching for water, so the gypsy circumcised only Halemo. My father was growing concerned, because Aman was reaching marriageable age, but no marriage could take place unless she had been properly ‘fixed.” The prevailing wisdom in Somalia is that there are bad things between a girl’s legs, parts of our bodies that we’re born with, yet are unclean. These things need to be removed the clitoris, labia minora, and most of the labia majora are cut off, then the wound is stitched shut, leaving only a scar where our genitals had been. But the actual details of the ritual cutting are left a mystery it’s never explained to the girls. You just know that something special is going to happen to you when your time comes.