by Dirie, Waris
We combed the village, asking everybody if
they’d heard of my family, or had any information about them. People were all anxious to help, and word of our mission spread quickly. Later that day, an older man walked up to me and said, “Do you remember me?”
“Well, I’m Is mail; I’m the same tribe as your father. I’m a very close friend of his.” And then I realized who he was and felt ashamed for not recognizing him, but I hadn’t seen him since I was a little girl. “I think I know where your family is. I think I can find your mother, but I’ll need money for gas.” Right away, I thought, Oh, no. How can I trust this guy? Are all these people trying to con us? If I give this guy some money, he’s just going to bugger off and we’ll probably never see him again. He went on, “I have this truck here, but it’s not much…”
Is mail pointed to a pickup truck the type you’d never see anyplace but Africa or a junkyard in America. On the passenger’s side the windshield was shattered; on the driver’s side it was missing altogether. This meant that all the sand and flies in the desert would come sailing into his face as he drove. The wheels were warped and dented from driving over rocks. The body looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. I
shook my head. “Hold on a minute, let me talk to the guys.”
I went to find Gerry and said, “This man over here thinks he knows where my family is. But he says he needs some money for gas to go look for them.”
“Well, how are we going to trust him?”
“You’re right, but we have to take a chance. We have no choice.” They agreed and gave him some cash. The man hopped in his truck and took off immediately, raising a cloud of dust. I saw Gerry staring after him with a depressed look on his face, as if to say, “There went more money wasted.”
I patted him on the back and said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to find my mother I promise you. By the third day.” My prophecy did little to ease the crew’s minds. We had eight days here before the plane would come back to pick us up. And that was it. We couldn’t say to the pilots, “Uh, yeah, we’re not quite ready, try us again next week.” Our tickets were scheduled for return from Addis Ababa to London; we would have to leave, and that would be the end of it, Mama or no Mama.
I had a good time hanging out with the villagers in their huts, sharing their food, but the English guys did not fare so well. They found a building with busted-out windows to sleep in,
and rolled out their sleeping bags. They had brought some books and a flashlight, but they couldn’t sleep at night because the mosquitoes drove them crazy. The BBC crew was living on canned beans, and complaining they were sick of their food, and there was nothing else to eat.
One afternoon, a Somali man decided he’d give them a treat and brought around a beautiful little baby goat; the guys were all petting it. Later, he brought it back skinned, and proudly presented it: “Here’s your dinner.” The guys looked shocked, but didn’t say anything. I borrowed a pot and built a fire, then cooked the goat with some rice.
When the Somali man left, they said, “You don’t think we’re going to eat that, do you?”
“Yes, of course. Why not?” “Oh, forget it, Waris.”
“Well, why didn’t you say something?” They explained they felt it would be rude, because the man was trying to be polite, but after petting the little goat, they couldn’t eat it. They never touched it again.
My three-day deadline for finding Mama passed with no sign of her. Gerry grew more anxious by the day. I tried to reassure these guys that my mother was coming, but they thought I was being ludicrous. I said, “Look. I promise you my mother will be here tomorrow evening by six o’clock.” I don’t know why I had this belief, but it just came to me, so I told them.
Gerry and the guys started ribbing me about my latest prediction. “What? Yeah? How do you know that? Oh, yes, Waris knows! She predicts everything. She knows! Just like she predicts the rain!” They were laughing because I kept telling them when it was going to rain, because I could smell it.
“Well, it did rain, didn’t it?” I demanded. “Oh, come on, Waris. You were just lucky.”
“It has nothing to do with luck. I’m back in my element now I know this place. We survived here on our instincts, my friends.” They started looking sideways at each other. “Okay. Don’t believe me. You’ll see six o’clock.”
The next day I was sitting talking to an elderly lady when Gerry jogged up at about ten minutes to six. “You’re not going to believe it!”
“What?”
“Your mother I think your mother is here.” I stood up and smiled. “But, we’re not sure. The man is back and he’s got a woman with him; he says it’s your morn. Come have a look.”
The news had spread like a brushfire through the village; our little drama had definitely been the biggest thing to happen here for God knows how long. Everyone wanted to find out: Is this Waris’s mother or just another impostor? By now it was nearly dark and a crowd gathered around us till I could barely walk. Gerry led me down a little alleyway. Up ahead was the man’s pickup truck with the hole in the windshield, and a woman was climbing down from the seat. I couldn’t see her face, but from the way she wore her scarf I could tell immediately that it was my mother. I ran to her and grabbed her. “Oh, Mama!”
She said, “I drive for miles and miles with this awful truck and oh, Allah, what a horrible ride that was! And we’re driving two solid days and nights all for this?”
I turned to Gerry and laughed. “It’s her!”
I told Gerry that they had to leave us alone for the next couple of days, and he kindly agreed. Talking to Mama was awkward; my Somali, I discovered, was pathetic. Tougher than that was the fact that we’d become strangers. At first, we just discussed little everyday things. But the gladness I felt at seeing her overcame the gap between us; I
enjoyed just sitting close to her. Mama and Is mail had driven for two days and two nights straight, and I could see she was exhausted. She had aged a great deal in fifteen years the result of a relentlessly hard life in the desert.
Papa wasn’t with her. He was off searching for water when the truck came. My mother said Papa was getting old, too. He would go off chasing the clouds looking for rain, but he desperately needed glasses because his eyesight was terrible. When Mama left, he’d been gone for eight days, and she hoped he hadn’t gotten lost. I thought back to how I remembered Papa, and realized how much he’d obviously changed. When I left home, he’d been able to find us even if the family moved on without him, and even on the blackest night with no moon.
My little brother, All, was also with her, along with one of my cousins, who happened to be visiting my mother when Is mail came. All wasn’t my little brother anymore, however. At six four he towered over me, which pleased him no end. I kept holding All, and he would cry, “Get off now!
I’m not a baby no more. I’m getting married.” “Married! How old are you?”
“I don’t know. Old enough to get married.” “Well, I don’t care. You’re still my baby brother.
Come here’ And I’d grab him and rub his head. My cousin laughed at this. I said to him, “I used to whip your ass!” – I used to babysit him when he was little and his family came to visit us.
“Yeah? Well, come try it now.” He started shoving me and dancing around.
“Oh, no, don’t!” I cried. “Don’t even try. I’ll beat you up.” My cousin was getting married soon, too. “If you want to make it to your wedding day, boy, don’t mess with me.”
At night, Mama slept in the hut of one of the families there in Galadi who had taken us in. I slept outside with Ali just like in the old days. As we lay there at night, I felt such a state of peace and happiness. We’d stare at the stars and talk deep into the night: “Remember the time we tied up Papa’s little wife?” and then both of us would roar.
All was so shy at first, but he confided, “You know, I really miss you. You’ve been gone for so long
. It’s so strange to think you’re a woman now and I’m a man.” It felt wonderful to be back with my family again, and talk and laugh and argue in my language about familiar things.
All the villagers were incredibly generous to us. We had invitations to a different home each day for lunch and dinner. Everybody wanted to spoil us and show us off, and hear all the stories about where we’d been. “Oh, come on, you’ve got to meet my child, meet my granny’ and they’d drag us off and introduce us. And none of this was about my being a ‘super model,” because they had no idea about any of that. I was one of them a nomad and I’d come back home.
My mother, bless her heart, couldn’t understand what I did for a living, no matter how hard I tried to explain. “Now, what is it again? What’s modeling? You do what? What does that mean exactly?” At some point, someone traveling through the desert brought my mother a copy of The Sunday Times of London with my picture on the cover. Somali people are fiercely proud, and they were delighted to see a Somali woman on the cover of this English newspaper. Mama looked at it and said, “It’s Waris! Oh, my daughter!” She carried it around showing all the villagers.
She got over her shyness after that first night, and quickly warmed up enough to boss me around: “You don’t cook like that, Waris! Tsktsk, come, now! Let me show you. Don’t you cook in that place where you live?”
Next, my brother started asking me what I thought about this and that. I’d tease him, “Oh please shut up, All. You’re just stupid, ignorant bush people. You’ve lived here too long and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re famous, so you come home and put on your bullshit Western attitude? Now you live in the West and you know everything?”
We argued back and forth for hours. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, but I figured if I didn’t tell them certain things, who else was going to? “Well, I don’t know everything, but I’ve seen a lot and learned a lot I didn’t know living back in the bush. And it’s not all about cows and camels. I can tell you other things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for one thing you’re destroying your environment by cutting all the trees. You cut all the little trees before they have a chance to grow, using the saplings to make pens for these stupid animals.” I pointed at a nearby goat. “It’s not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the whole land is a desert now because we’ve cut all the trees.”
“The land is a desert because it doesn’t rain, Waris! It rains in the north and they’ve got trees.”
“That’s why it rains there! It rains because there’s a forest there. And every other day you’re cutting any little twig, so no forest ever has a chance to grow here.” They didn’t know whether to believe this bizarre idea or not, but there was one topic they felt confident I couldn’t argue with.
My mother started. “Why are you not married?” This subject was still an open wound with me after all these years. As far as I was concerned it was the issue that had cost me my home and family. I know my father had meant well, but he’d offered me a terrible choice: do what he said, and ruin my life by marrying that old man, or run away, and give up everything I knew and loved. The price I paid for my freedom was enormous, and I hoped I’d never have to force a child of mine to make such a painful decision.
“Mama, why must I marry? Do I have to be married? Don’t you want to see me a success strong, independent? I mean, if I’m not married, it’s just because I haven’t found the right man yet. When
I find him, then it will be time.”
“Well, I want grandchildren.”
Now they decided to all gang up on me. My cousin joined in: “Too old now. Who’d want to marry you? Too old.” He shook his head at the horror of anybody marrying a twenty-eight year-old woman.
I threw my hands up. “And who wants to get married if you’re going to force them to? Why are you two getting married?” I pointed at All and my cousin. “I bet somebody pushed you into it.” “No, no.” They both agreed.
“Well, okay, but just because you’re boys. But as a girl, I have no say. I’m supposed to marry who you tell me to, when you tell me to. What is that shit? Who came up with that idea?”
“Oh, shut up, Waris,” my brother groaned. “You shut up, too!”
When we had two days left, Gerry said we had to start filming. He got several scenes of me with my mother. But Mama had never seen a camera before and she hated it. She said, “Get that thing out of my face. I don’t want that,” and she’d swat at the cameraman. “Waris tell him to get that thing out of my face.” I told her it was okay. “Is he looking at me Or is he looking at you?”
“He’s looking at both of us.”
“Well, tell him I don’t want to look at him. He’s not going to hear what I say, is he?” I tried to explain the process to her, but I knew it was hopeless.
“Yeah, Mama. He hears everything you say,” I said with a laugh. The cameraman kept asking me what we were laughing about. “Just the absurdity of it all…” I answered.
The crew spent another day filming me, as I walked through the desert alone. I saw a little boy watering his camel at a well, and I asked him if I could feed it. I held a bucket up to the animal’s mouth for the crew. Throughout all this, it was hard for me to hold back my tears.
The day before we left, one of the women in the village did my fingernails with henna. I held my hand up to the camera, and it looked like I had mushy cow poop glob bed on the tip of each finger. But I felt like a queen. These were the ancient beauty rituals of my people the type they normally save for a bride. That night we had a celebration and the villagers were all dancing, clapping, and singing. It was like old times I remembered from childhood, when everyone would rejoice over the rain such an uninhibited feeling of freedom and joy.
The next morning before the plane came to get us, I got up early and had breakfast with my mother. I asked her if she would like to come back and live with me in England or the States.
“But what would I do?” she said.
“That’s precisely it. I don’t want you to do anything. You’ve done enough work in your time. It’s time for you to rest put your feet up. I want to spoil you.”
“No. I can’t do that. First of all, your father’s getting old. He needs me. I need to be with him. And second, I have to take care of the children.”
“What do you mean, children? All of us are grown!”
“Well, your father’s children. Remember what’sher-name, that little girl he married?”
“Ye-s-s.”
“Well, she had five kids. But she couldn’t take it anymore. I guess our life was too tough for her, or she couldn’t handle your father. Anyway, she ran away disappeared.”
“Mama… how dare you. You’re getting too old for that kind of stuff! You shouldn’t be working that hard chasing kids around at your age.”
“Well, your father’s getting old, too, and he needs me. Besides, I can’t just sit around. If I sit down, I’m going to be old. I can’t stay still after all these years that would drive me crazy. I have to keep moving. No. If you want to do something for me, get me a place in Africa, in Somalia, that I can go to when I’m tired. This is my home. This is all I’ve ever known.”
I gave her a big hug. “I love you, Mama, and I’m coming back for you, don’t you forget that. I’m coming back for you…”
She smiled and waved goodbye.
Once we got aboard the plane, I broke down. I didn’t know when or if I’d ever see my mother again. While I was staring out the window crying, watching the village, then the desert, slip away, the crew was filming a close-up shot of me.
The Big Apple
In the spring of 1995, I finished the documentary with the BBC, which they titled A Nomad in New York. And I was indeed a nomad after all these years, since I still didn’t have a real home. I moved around, following the work: New York, London, Paris, Milan. I’d
stay with friends, or in hotels. What few things I owned a few photos, some books and CDs were stashed away at Nigel’s house in Wales. Since most of my work was in New York, I spent more time there than anywhere. At one point I actually rented my first apartment a studio in SoHo. Later, I had a place in the Village, then a house on West Broadway.
But I didn’t like any of these places. The place on Broadway was total madness it drove me crazy. Every time a car passed by, it sounded like it was inside my house. There was a firehouse on the corner, and I heard sirens going off all night. I couldn’t get enough rest, and after ten months I gave up and went back to my nomadic existence.
That fall I did the runway shows in Paris, then decided to skip the shows in London and come straight to New York. I felt it was time to get my own place and settle down a bit, and while I apartment hunting, I stayed in the Village one of my closest friends, George. While I was there one night, another friend of George’s, had a birthday. She wanted to go out on the to celebrate, but George announced he was tired, and he had to get up early in the for work. I volunteered to go out with Lucy.
We walked out of the house, with no idea where we were going. On Eighth Avenue, J stopped and pointed out my old apartment. used to live up there, above that jazz place. always played good music, but I never went As we stood there, I listened to the music out the door. “Hey, come on, let’s go in. You to)’
“Nah. I want to go to Nell’s.”
“Oh, come on. Let’s go in and just check it out. I really like this music they’re playing I feel like dancing.”
Reluctantly, Lucy agreed to go in. I walked down the steps into a tiny little club, and straight ahead was the band. I walked up to the stage and stopped. The first person I saw was the drummer; the light was shining on him in the otherwise dark room. He was banging away, and I just stood there staring at him. He had kind of a big seventies Afro, with a funky style. When Lucy caught up to me, I turned to her: “No, no, no. We’re staying. Sit down, have a drink. We’re staying for a little bit.” The band was really jamming and I started dancing like crazy. Lucy joined in, and soon all the other people, who had been kind of subdued, sitting around just watching, got up and started dancing with us.