She’s so dehydrated, her mouth parched, that she drinks it all in one gulp.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she replies in a faint whisper. Since they got on the boat, she and her friend haven’t once moved from those seats. Lifeless, they sleep, pray, and eat what little the traffickers give us. They sit there, stock-still, staring out at the endless expanse of sea that separates us from freedom.
I go back inside to get some water for her friend as well.
Then I try to get some sleep outside in the sun during the day, because at night I like to watch the stars and I don’t sleep. I may have rested just a couple of hours total; I’m too itchy with excitement. The sea conveys an energy I’ve never felt before; I’ve been waiting to see it since I was a little girl and went to glimpse it from afar with Alì and Hodan. I’ve been waiting for it a long time.
I keep to myself and don’t speak to anyone. Suddenly a girl comes up to me, wanting to chat.
“Are you Somali?” she asks. As I had done with Taliya. I pretend I don’t hear her. “Are you Somali?” she repeats. So I turn to her, nod my head “yes,” and motion that I don’t feel like talking. I want to be alone, just me, the sea, and the future. Just the three of us. Like me, Hodan and Alì, when we were little.
Then it happens.
Again. I can’t believe it’s really happening, but it happens.
Iblis, the devil, must have a hand in it, because the boat’s engine fails. In the middle of the third day. May a thousand pounds of stinking shit fall on your heads, so fetid you’ll never be able to wash away the stench.
We slow down and then stop.
I can’t believe it. It can’t be too much farther to the Italian coast. Yet we are stopped. We remain at a standstill for about fifteen hours.
Fifteen hours are endless if you know you are just a step away from the goal line. If, like me, you’ve been traveling for a year and a half, counting Addis Ababa. With the adrenaline I am producing, fifteen hours standing still is a time you can’t even imagine. It’s as if at the end of a race, just when there’s one step left to go, one final stride to plow through the finish line, you were to run up against a transparent wall.
Some people have started raving. Others have begun calling upon Allah. The traffickers, all six of them, come down on deck and restore calm with the use of clubs. Shut up, hawaian!
“If you shout, for sure we won’t get to Italy,” they say.
After fifteen hours an Italian boat finally comes.
All together we begin waving our arms, jumping and singing, cheering, hopping up and down and jumping some more, and in the throes of a collective, uncontrollable euphoria, we all move to the same side, where the Italians are.
Some actually scramble up on the railing, wanting to jump into the water and swim out to the boat. With all the weight on one side, the boat is in danger of listing, of capsizing in the sea. Using a bullhorn, one of the traffickers shouts at us to return to our places.
Slowly almost everyone backs off, except a few who remain clinging to the railing. Two already have their legs over the side, ready to jump.
Then we get it. Everything becomes clear.
They won’t tow us, no.
Some are saying that they’ll never rescue us and bring us to safety in Italy. We spend an hour like that, the two boats facing each other, maybe fifty yards apart, bobbing on the sea, the Italian captain speaking to our trafficker via radio.
On our boat, the rumor that they are going to bring us back circulates from ear to ear. They’re going to call the Italian police and take us back to Tripoli. Or maybe Kufra. Some of us are terrified. Others depleted.
Someone starts shouting, “Noooo, you bastaaaaaards!” at the top of his lungs, as if the sound of his voice could reach the Italian vessel. Instead it’s lost somewhere amid the surging, increasingly angry waves.
Others move back to the rail again, threatening to jump with unmistakable gestures: They don’t want to go back.
Then a decision is made on the Italian boat. The captain orders ropes to be thrown over the side, to be ready in case someone jumps.
The ropes hit the water with heavy plops, cutting cleanly through the towering, foamy waves crashing against the side of the vessel. There are about a dozen ropes in all. A dozen heavy plops, along the entire length of the hull.
Then it starts. It starts, and there’s no going back.
A man from our floating wreck suddenly jumps into the sea. Without warning. No one could have anticipated it. The plop this time is much louder, as if a refrigerator has fallen in.
Everything halts, suspended; no one dares breathe a word. Time expands in that silence, on the brink. It’s a state of waiting. Pure waiting. For something to happen. Whatever it is.
Very soon another man follows the first one.
Someone yells at him not to jump. “The sea is rough; the waves will swallow you,” somebody else shouts.
Only at this point do a lot of us wake up and hurry over to the rail; the decrepit tub lists again.
Then yet another dives.
There’s no way of knowing where the next person will jump from; everyone looks around to see if there will be another one. They look like fish dazzled by an intense, million-watt light, heads snapping left and right.
Now suddenly it’s a woman who jumps.
No one can really believe it, but there are four people in the water who are struggling as hard as they can to reach the ropes. Two are swimming like mad, with broad, noisy strokes. The other two, including the woman, wrapped in veils that billow and swirl as she enters the water and resurfaces, are moving convulsively, their gestures spasmodic; it’s clear to everyone that they don’t know how to swim.
The water is choppy: It’s an angry sea.
“Come back!” someone shouts.
“Don’t be crazy; get back here!” somebody else yells.
Since the four bodies went into the sea, the waves seem even more towering, even rougher than before. I’m up against the rail like everyone else and I glance back at my aunt, who has come out on deck.
Then I look at the sea.
My sea.
She immediately understands and moves toward me.
Maybe it’s written in my eyes, but somehow she understands.
“No!” is all she says.
“Nooo!” she says again.
She says it, but I can’t hear her voice. I only see her lips moving.
Maybe I say something to her; maybe I tell her, “I’m not going back. Ever.” But I’m not sure my voice really comes out.
Then a force greater than me makes me climb onto the rail. I don’t know where it comes from; I don’t know anything. It’s that force that seizes me and makes me straddle the rail. It’s not me, it’s that force.
Aunt Mariam tries to tug me back, gripping my T-shirt, “Nooo! Samia, no!”
I swing one leg over.
Then the other.
Down below me is the sea. At last, the sea. And I can go in, and no one can stop me. For the first time in my life I can be embraced by all that water, I can swim in it, as I’ve always wanted to do.
Now I’m sitting on the edge of the rusty old tub, gazing at that infinite expanse, at the sea. I look at the ropes. I look at the sea.
I turn around.
I didn’t even realize what I was doing. Aunt Mariam is behind me; she keeps pulling at my T-shirt and crying; I see her lips form a sound that I can’t hear.
Then it happens. Again it happens.
I’m driven to life by this force that’s seized me and decided to take me in hand.
It’s a long way down, as every leap to freedom should be.
The water is icy cold and even rougher than it seemed from above.
I slice through the surface and reach the lowest point before the natural reascent. I open my eyes. There’s a world of bubbles above me. There are slow, larger ones close to my head and small, very tiny ones racing swiftly toward the light, up to the surface. Hsss h
sss hsss hsss. To my right and to my left, the dark shapes of the two vessels.
I thrust with my feet and rise back up. I emerge into the air and look around for the ropes.
I don’t know which is our boat and which is the Italian one. I try to stay calm, while all around the sea is breaking over me, wave after wave.
The Italian boat is the one on the left.
I go under and come up, under and up. The water cradles me and takes hold of me. I swim a few vigorous strokes as forcefully as I can. I try to stay up and head for the ropes.
The ropes. The ropes are my goal, my finishing line.
As I slam my arms against the waves, I sing Hodan’s song in my head: our song about freedom. I sing it to myself as I go under and come up; I try to sing it with my mouth but I can’t, so I keep singing it in my mind.
Fly, Samia, fly, like a winged horse through the air….
Dream, Samia, dream, like the wind playing among the leaves….
Run, Samia, run, as if there were no particular reason….
Live, Samia, live, as if everything were a miracle….
…
…
…
Then, finally, something happens.
Someone grabs me by the hand and pulls me to the rope. I don’t know how I do it, but thanks to this person whom I don’t recognize but for whom I feel an infinite love, I manage to grasp the line. The contact with the water becomes more gentle, horizontal, now.
I’m swimming.
No, someone is pulling me up. They’re lifting me on board the Italian boat.
… Fly, Samia, fly, like a winged horse through the air….
Now I can breathe finally. I’m able to breathe.
Once I’m on board they’ll take care of me.
They’ll dry me and warm me up.
How nice to be warm; the sea is so cold.
After a short time, just a little while, not more than a few hours of sailing, we’re in Lampedusa. In Italy.
It can’t be true: I’m finally in Italy.
I realized my dream; I made it.
… Dream, Samia, dream, like the wind playing among the leaves….
In Lampedusa I’m cared for.
They keep me in the hospital for two days. I tell them that I have to meet my coach in England, so they release me and take me to the airport.
From Lampedusa I take a plane to Rome.
From Rome another one to London.
In London, at Stansted, Mo Farah himself is waiting for me with his coach.
The first thing they do is complain about how long it took me to get there.
I apologize and we laugh; then all three of us head straight to the training field. I have a lot of time to make up, I know; I’m aware of it. I’ll have to work hard.
I recover quickly; I respond well.
In a few weeks I’m as strong as I was before, even stronger than I was.
… Run, Samia, run, as if there were no particular reason….
I just manage to make it in time to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics.
I’m in seventh heaven. I’ve never been more ecstatic.
I get through all the preliminary phases and, against all odds, make it to the finals.
The fans are with me.
On the starting blocks, televised worldwide, I’m in the fourth lane.
To my right is Veronica Campbell-Brown, to my left Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest woman in the world.
… Live, Samia, live, as if everything were a miracle….
Boom.
There’s the start.
Now we run.
SAMIA YUSUF OMAR died in the Mediterranean Sea on April 2, 2012, while trying to reach ropes tossed out from an Italian vessel.
At the 2012 London Olympics, Mo Farah won the five-thousand-and ten-thousand-meter races, becoming a national hero in England and Somalia. A picture of him with Usain Bolt was viewed around the globe: the world’s swiftest sprinter and strongest long-distance runner in the same photograph.
Mannaar is five years old and still looks a lot like her aunt. It seems she is one of the fastest girls her age.
Samia
Mannaar. Helsinki, February 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK IS THE RESULT of the efforts of a great many people— those who in various ways helped me write it or played a part in improving it once written or, even before that, gave me needed support to find the determination to write it.
First of all, thanks to my parents, who have always been there for me and who are a mainstay at even the most difficult moments, times when you’re not sure which way to go. Thanks to my nonna Michelina, who I know is smiling down from somewhere, watching me as I tap this keyboard. A big thanks to everyone at the Feltrinelli publishing house. Thanks to Carlo Feltrinelli for having loved the project from the start. Thanks to Gianluca Foglia for wanting to see it realized and for taking such care with it. Thanks to Alberto Rollo for having played a role in developing the emotional sensibility in me to “hear” Samia’s voice and for having been the first to tell me, “It’s beautiful.” Thanks to Alessandro Monti for his attentive, profound words after reading the book. Thanks to Giovanna Salvia for her invaluable work on the text. Thanks to Chiara Cardelli and Bettina Cristiani for having caught many things that still weren’t right. Thanks to Theo Collier and Bianca Dinapoli for having promoted this story to so many people around the world. Thanks to Alberto Schiavone, one of the first whom I let read this book. A collective thanks to Francesca Cappennani, Annalisa Laborai, Silvia Cassoni, Benedetta Bellisario, Rossella Fancoli, Francisco Lopez, and Ludovica Piccardo and Agnese Radaelli of the Association Il Razzismo è una brutta storia for agreeing to read the first draft and for the enthusiasm they expressed to me. Thanks to Andrea Vigentini and Salvatore Panaccione for their words, on more than one occasion. Thanks to Rodolfo Montuoro for his support and energy throughout. Thanks to Rosie Ficocelli for her precision on each of the drafts. Thanks to Raf Scelsi, who was able to listen at times when I was at a loss. Thanks to Giulia Romano, who shared many talks with me. Thanks to Gomma for the constant encouragement from afar. Thanks to Ana Díaz Ramírez for the photo. Thanks to Cristiano Guerri and Duccio Boscoli for all the work I made them do on the cover.
A huge thank-you also goes to my agent, Roberto Santa-chiara, a pillar of support and the second person ever with whom I shared this story, for having immediately encouraged me to write it.
Thanks to Roberto Saviano for having told me at what for me was a difficult moment: “Write!”
Thanks again to Igiaba Scego, with whom it all started.
Thanks to Francesco Polimanti for being responsive and open during the talk I gave about Samia’s story at the University of Miami in October 2013.
Thanks to someone who is always there for me: my sister Nicoletta.
And finally, my thanks to Chiara: There’s no need to reveal here how much you helped me before, during, and after.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I CAME UPON THE STORY of Samia Yusuf Omar by chance, on August 19, 2012, in Lamu, Kenya. It was morning, and Al Jazeera’s news report had briefly mentioned her at the conclusion of the London Olympics. The story struck me. A few days later I returned to Italy, where the writer Igiaba Scego had written about it in Pubblico. It is thanks to Igiaba and to Zahra Omar, far more than a mediator and interpreter, that I was able to meet Hodan and Mannaar in Helsinki during the frigid February of 2013. It is thanks to Zahra that Hodan and I were able to communicate in what immediately seemed like the same language. It is only thanks to Igiaba and to Zahra, therefore, that this book exists.
I can never thank Hodan enough for those lengthy talks during endless days of seclusion in a hotel room, for her tears and sobs, for her laughter and her songs, and for giving me the courage and strength to tell her sister’s story. My gratitude to her for having entrusted me with this story, which I hope I have been able to re-create in some small way at least. And my thanks for the deli
cious Somali food that she brought me at the hotel when every restaurant nearby was closed.
Thanks also to Mannaar, who in the hours we spent together filled me with energy and vitality.
I also want to thank the young woman who in the book is called Nigist— who wishes to remain nameless, still afraid of what the Libyan police could do to her if they found her— for telling me about her endless conversations with Samia in the thirty days they spent together in Tripoli, in the same house with forty other women.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
THIS IS A MOVING STORY about an extraordinary, spirited young woman. We first meet Samia in the setting of her childhood years, where two Somali families— hers and that of her childhood “brother” Alì— share meager rented quarters. Their courtyard with its giant eucalyptus tree is an island of normality in a country racked by poverty and brutal warring among clans, and it is these conditions that Samia is determined to overcome.
A word about the time line. Samia was born March 25, 1991, in Mogadishu, Somalia, and died August 19, 2012, in the Mediterranean. The narrative opens in 1999, when Samia and her best friend, Alì, are eight years old. By 2005, when Alì and his family are driven to move away, Samia is fourteen. In 2008 Samia travels to China to represent Somalia at the Summer Olympics in Beijing. When she turns twenty in 2011, she undertakes the long, harrowing Journey out of Somalia, hoping to eventually take part in the London Olympics in 2012. She drowns at sea trying to reach Italy in 2012, at twenty-one years of age.
The setting of the novel— the war-torn country of Somalia and, in particular, Samia’s beloved Mogadishu— acts as a character in its own right, the nemesis that Samia both loves and opposes and from which she is forced to reluctantly flee.
Born the same year Major General Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown as president of Somalia and the government collapsed, Samia grows up with war as an “older sister.” Barre had ruled the impoverished country for more than twenty years, after seizing power in 1969 and establishing the Somali Democratic Republic. Under his dictatorship Somalia had been a relatively stable nation. Barre’s government collapsed in 1991 as civil war broke out. His departure from the scene (preceding his death in exile in Nigeria in 1995) left Somalia without a central authority and with a government in disarray: Chaos broke out as local warlords battled for territory. As civil war raged among feuding clans and their militias, municipal services ceased and the country was left on the brink of destruction, with no food, no clean water, and no power. In a city where the parched soil had crumbled to white dust and ruins dominate the landscape, the atmosphere was one of inevitability.
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