Amina

by J. L. Powers

  Hooyo and Ayeeyo were running around the bedroom with a half-packed bag of clothes and food.

  ‘Samatar,’ Hooyo said. She flew across the bedroom, wretched in her fear. ‘They have come for you. You must go.’

  ‘Where will he go?’ Amina asked.

  Her words fell into the thick silence and nobody answered.

  Aabbe took Hooyo’s hands in his and raised them to his lips. He kissed them and placed one on each cheek, his hands covering hers. He repeated Amina’s words. ‘My heart, where will I go?’

  Tears streamed down Hooyo’s cheeks. ‘To your brother’s,’ she said.

  ‘I am sure they have already been there,’ Aabbe said, ‘and they will return.’

  ‘Go to Ibrahim’s house,’ Roble said. ‘He’s your friend. He’ll help you.’

  Amina watched her father carefully as he considered Roble’s suggestion then rejected it.

  ‘They will go there also,’ he said.

  ‘You know what will happen when they come back,’ Hooyo said. Her shoulders were already sinking in regret and frustration.

  ‘I don’t know what will happen,’ Aabbe said. ‘Insha’Allah, God willing, perhaps they will forget all about me.’

  ‘Are you talking about al-Shabaab, Aabbe?’ Amina asked, though she already knew what his answer would be. ‘Are they looking for you because of your paintings?’

  Aabbe placed a hand tenderly on her arm. ‘Yes, Amina. They have decided I am a threat to their version of Islam.’

  Ayeeyo came forward now. ‘Son,’ she said. ‘Son, you should listen to your wife. If you go, there is a chance you will escape.’

  ‘A chance, Hooyo,’ Aabbe said to his mother, ‘but also the chance that I will fall into even worse hands.’

  ‘Worse than al-Shabaab?’ Roble asked.

  ‘You know what it’s like out there,’ Aabbe said. ‘There is nowhere safe, not unless Allah wills it. No, let’s pray and hope for the best.’

  He turned as if to go to the small alcove where the family liked to pray. But his motion was interrupted when the front door banged open. The soldiers who had come earlier looking for Aabbe had returned.

  Amina shrank back against the wall.

  Roble stood in their path, as though to protect Aabbe, but one of the soldiers took the butt of his AK-47 and slammed it into his face. Roble’s entire body smacked against the wall. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  All three men crossed the room. One held a machine gun to Ayeeyo’s head and another to Hooyo’s chest. The third seized Aabbe. They were shouting, all at once, and it was impossible to understand what they were saying.

  Ayeeyo cried out, ‘Don’t hurt an old woman, I beg you.’ She bent over, crying, hiding her face. The man jerked her by the arm and thrust her into the kitchen. He joined the man holding on to Aabbe and pointed his gun at Aabbe’s forehead.

  Hooyo was openly sobbing. The man grabbed her arm roughly. ‘Please,’ she cried. ‘Leave him. Can’t you see he’s needed? What will we do if you take him?’

  ‘Shut up!’ The man holding her swung his gun around the room, finally pointing it at Amina. ‘Infidels have no rights.’

  ‘No!’ Aabbe said. ‘Leave my daughter alone! I’m the person you want.’

  Silent and swift, the two men holding Aabbe dragged him across the tiles and outside the house.The remaining man continued to point the gun at Amina as he released Hooyo and backed up, following them.

  The door slammed shut behind them. The sound reverberated and echoed through the house, suddenly cavernous and empty.

  Amina’s legs felt wobbly and she stared at the door from where Aabbe had disappeared. She could only watch as Ayeeyo ran to Roble’s side, bending over and putting a hand over his mouth.

  ‘Thank Allah, he’s breathing,’ Ayeeyo said.

  Hooyo began to wail.

  But Amina’s eyes were dry. She couldn’t believe it. Aabbe’s disappearance was so sudden, it seemed impossible that it had even happened.

  Chapter 5

  Hooyo and Ayeeyo argued after the men left, the house tense with the sound of their bickering.

  Hooyo was convinced they should stay put until they could find out what had happened to Aabbe, while Ayeeyo said, ‘No, Khadija, we must leave Somalia and go somewhere safe. We have lost enough by staying here.’

  ‘I may be Somali, but I’m not a nomad,’ Hooyo said.

  Amina listened to them argue. They repeated the same ideas over and over, neither one changing their mind, neither one listening to the other.

  They were sitting in the front room. The sun had set but nobody had eaten. Dinner had long since burned and then cooled. Amina’s stomach rumbled but she didn’t dare mention it, even though she felt weak from hunger. How could she be hungry after what had just happened?

  ‘What do you think?’ she whispered to her brother, partly to get her mind off the hunger.

  ‘Ayeeyo’s right, we should leave,’ Roble whispered back. A bruise was swelling on his cheek where the soldier had hit him with the gun. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Amina asked.

  ‘She also says that if Allah wills something, it doesn’t matter where you are, you’ll go to meet your fate.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘If that’s true, what’s the point of leaving?’

  Amina didn’t know what to say. Her stomach hurt. She didn’t want to leave. What if they never saw Aabbe again?

  ‘But how can we possibly leave Somalia?’ Hooyo suddenly exclaimed, jumping up, her loud frustration breaking through their whispered conversation. ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘That’s exactly why we should leave,’ Ayeeyo argued. ‘Do you want the baby to be born into this?’

  ‘No!’ Hooyo said. ‘But what if Samatar escapes and comes back? We would be gone. How would he ever find us?’

  ‘We could leave a message with the neighbours,’ Roble said. ‘We could tell them where we plan to go and if Aabbe returns, they could let him know. Anyway, there’s only one choice, right? If we go, we’ll go to Kenya.’

  ‘You’re a nurse, Khadija,’ Ayeeyo said. ‘They need nurses everywhere. We don’t have to go to Kenya. We can go to Norway or Canada or – Australia.’

  Hooyo put a hand to her forehead suddenly, as if she were about to faint. Roble stood swiftly and strode to where she was, placing his arm on her shoulder. She sat down in a nearby chair, gripping his hand so hard the wrinkles on her knuckles became white lines.

  ‘Oh, what does it matter?’ she said. ‘He’s gone and we don’t know where to look for him.’

  Amina stood then and joined Roble at her mother’s elbow. She knelt down in front of the chair. ‘Hooyo,’ she said. ‘The neighbours could help us. They might know something that could help us find Aabbe.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Roble agreed. ‘Remember when Omar Ahmed disappeared? His family was able to find him by talking to people at Bakaara Market.’

  But Hooyo said no. ‘Stay near me tonight,’ she murmured, reaching out. Her soft fingers wrapped around Amina’s and held them tight, suffocating the itch Amina suddenly felt – the desire to go out and draw something. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose the two of you as well as Aabbe, all in one day.’

  ‘What about tomorrow, Hooyo?’ Roble asked.

  ‘If we’ve heard nothing by tomorrow afternoon,’ Hooyo said, ‘then the two of you may go out and see if anybody has heard something. We will try to reach your uncle Ahmed on his phone. If he doesn’t answer by tomorrow, you may go to his house. Perhaps he’ll know something that will help us.’

  She put her face in her hands and began to weep. It was a hopeless sound that filled the room.

  A tear rolled down Amina’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away.

  As soon as possible, she fled upstairs. She stood with one hand on the crumbling wall and looked at the waves rollicking in the distance. Night had fallen and the last rays of red and pink light shot across the quickly darkening sky.

  It was
selfish but she wished Hooyo was offering her comfort instead of the other way around. It was true Hooyo had lost her husband – and she was expecting a baby – but Amina had lost her father. Which was worse?

  She felt hollowed out of anything good and right, a deep dread skulking within. The loneliness gathered and bunched inside, a hard stone. One or two lights twinkled in the vast darkness.

  She didn’t want to leave.

  She didn’t want to stay.

  She was so very afraid that she would never see Aabbe again.

  She startled at a noise from behind, but it was just Roble, climbing the stairs. He kept to the edges – avoiding the danger of the floor caving in – and joined her by the wall.

  She was grateful that he didn’t speak but he smiled at her, gently and sadly. They stood together, watching the city – the only place they had ever known – until Amina felt the hard knot inside her begin to lessen. At least she had Roble.

  As usual, Amina slept with Ayeeyo in her bedroom, sharing the joodari.

  Ayeeyo was a restless sleeper, moaning, sighing, even angry sometimes. She had flung her arms out and hit Amina in the face more than once. One time, she screamed, long and low, and continued screaming until Amina shook her awake.

  She often talked in her sleep. Once Amina had heard her talking to her grandfather, Awoowe. ‘Everything’s gone now,’ Ayeeyo said, and Amina wondered what she was talking about.

  Tonight, Ayeeyo was silent and still. Amina lay beside her, staring up at the ceiling, listening to make sure Ayeeyo was still breathing. She kept still too so she wouldn’t disturb her, but she wondered how Ayeeyo could possibly be asleep. They had gone to bed without breaking the Ramadan fast and Amina’s stomach hurt from hunger. She grabbed her stomach muscles, hoping to staunch the pain, a deep weariness in her chest.

  Everything seemed worse at night – scarier, more hopeless. During the day, it was possible to pretend that things weren’t so bad, but at night, the constant pop pop pop of gunfire reminded Amina that Somalia was in the middle of a war that had been going on for a very long time.

  Aabbe used to joke that gunfire was Mogadishu’s lullaby. He said he no longer knew how to sleep without the chatter of machine guns echoing in the streets.

  ‘I do not understand how it has all come to this,’ Ayeeyo said, suddenly, her voice breaking the heavy silence.

  Amina turned on her side, only to find her grandmother’s dark eyes fixed on her.

  ‘Somalia was once the jewel of East Africa,’ she added. ‘People called us the pearl of the Indian Ocean. It has taken my husband and now my youngest son.’

  ‘Aabbe will be all right,’ Amina said. She could imagine no other possibility. If she stepped anywhere near the thought that he might not return, she knew she would fall into a fathomless abyss. She had to stay strong for Hooyo and for Aabbe and even for Roble, who was already brave but would need her to be brave with him.

  ‘Who else will it take before this is over?’ Ayeeyo’s voice was relentless.

  ‘Nobody,’ Amina said. ‘There is only me and Roble and Hooyo left and we go nowhere. We will be safe here, with you.’ She knew that staying home didn’t mean they were safe – after all, the second storey was proof of the house’s vulnerabilities. And, of course, somebody had to leave every day to buy food and other necessities. And there was school and dugsi. But she wanted to stop the onslaught of Ayeeyo’s hopelessness.

  Ayeeyo sighed. ‘How did al-Shabaab trick our men into thinking it is Allah’s will that they kill each other? Why do they now believe the way of Islam is war and hate?’

  Amina had no answer. Her eyes burned like she’d walked through a sandstorm, like tiny particles of rock were grinding against her eyeballs.

  ‘It will be up to the young ones – you and Roble and your friends – to set things right,’ Ayeeyo said. ‘We older ones have made such a mess of our world.’

  After a while, Ayeeyo must have thought Amina was asleep. She turned away and began to cry silently, her back shaking gently.

  Amina didn’t know what to do. She gripped the blanket tight and screwed her eyes shut, keeping perfectly still, stifling her own tears with her pillow.

  Hooyo shook Amina and Ayeeyo awake. Half-asleep, Amina splashed water on her face, hands and feet in the darkness, then joined the family in the alcove for Fajr prayers, offered just before sunrise, as the world first began to get light. ‘Allah is the greatest,’ she murmured. She tried to concentrate on the words but her mind was on her father and the meal they hadn’t eaten last night.

  She was starving.

  After prayers, she shuffled into the kitchen. Suhuur, the morning meal during Ramadan, had to be eaten before the sun rose. Nobody mentioned Aabbe. Amina wished they would, but then she was glad they didn’t. She didn’t know what she wanted – except to rewind the clock.

  They sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the fireplace where they cooked while Hooyo reheated the burnt food from the night before and dished it out. Soot from the cooking fires stained the walls and the ceiling above them. Amina found it easier to rest her eyes on the stains than on her family members.

  Everything felt wrong. A dull ache burrowed itself in the pit of Amina’s stomach. She wanted to cry but knew she mustn’t.

  She sopped the maraq up with the flat canjeero bread until there was nothing left, then gulped down a bowl of soor, the corn meal plain but filling. She drank two glasses of water and then a third, even though it made her feel full to bursting and she had to force it down. She hated getting thirsty during the long Ramadan days and having to wait until the sun set before she could drink again.

  After, she waited her turn to use the toilet, near the stairs at the back of the house. Hooyo and Ayeeyo could be agonisingly slow in there. Hooyo had once explained to Amina that it was because they had both been circumcised when they were young and this had created problems. Because she was a nurse, Hooyo had decided that Amina would not undergo the surgical procedure. ‘It isn’t demanded by the Quran and Sunnah,’ she had told Amina. ‘It’s our culture that demands it. But culture can be wrong.’

  Amina wasn’t sure what she thought about it. Like her artwork, it was yet another thing that made her different from the other girls at school, another thing that she had to keep hidden. She hoped it wouldn’t create problems when it was time to get married. Somali men wouldn’t want to marry a woman if she hadn’t undergone the ritual. For now, she refused to mention it to anybody and hoped her parents, and Roble, kept quiet as well.

  The family assembled in the front room as the sun’s early morning rays broke through the window and flooded the room with bright light. Amina felt her heart lift. Surely they would find Aabbe today. They would talk or bribe their way out of the problem – even though nobody was sure who to talk to and they didn’t have much money for bribes – and he would come home to them. Then life could go back to normal.

  ‘Hooyo?’ Roble stood in front of their mother.

  Hooyo was looking out the window. When she turned around to face Roble, Amina caught a glimpse of her worried eyes. She looked old and tired.

  Amina’s hopes evaporated.

  ‘Should we call Adeer?’ Roble asked.

  Hooyo shook her head. ‘I’ve already tried calling Ahmed several times. There’s no answer.’

  Amina tried to remember the last time they had seen or heard from Aabbe’s brother. It had been months. He lived all the way across the city.

  They couldn’t be sure Ahmed was alive or that he was still in Mogadishu. He had talked about leaving with his wife and children the last time the family had gathered together. It was likely that by now they had fled and were refugees in Kenya or Ethiopia.

  ‘Then I will go and see if he’s there,’ Roble said. ‘I will also ask around on the street to see if anybody knows anything.’

  Hooyo nodded her assent and Amina leapt up. ‘Can I go too, Hooyo?’

  It looked as though Hooyo was about to say no but she paused. �
�The boy will be safer if she goes,’ Ayeeyo said.

  ‘I’d like her to come,’ Roble said. His voice was strong – nobody would ever accuse him of being a coward – but it was also quiet. He rarely expressed his desires so clearly.

  ‘Yes, you may go,’ Hooyo said at last.

  Amina was already winding the scarf around her head and following Roble out the door. How could Hooyo and Ayeeyo stay hidden indoors when Aabbe was out there somewhere?

  ‘We won’t be stopping so you can draw,’ Roble warned as they stepped out of the gate.

  Amina automatically looked in each direction, scanning the horizon for possible signs of danger. Everything looked absurdly normal.

  ‘I can’t believe you think I would want to draw when Aabbe’s—’ Amina choked back the word. Missing. In truth, the itch was back. She would pretend it didn’t exist, for now. But when she had the time, she would plaster the city with messages about her missing father. Nobody would be able to forget who he was. She would draw his face on every blank wall until somebody could help her, until she found him.

  She followed Roble down the street. They cut through an alley. They climbed over a large pile of asphalt and dirt where a grenade had exploded, leaving a ditch in the middle of the road. Amina slipped on the way down, scattering pebbles, which ricocheted off the walls nearby and echoed, sharp and sudden, like a series of gunshots. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

  The sound made Roble wince. ‘Careful,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Amina said. She hated it when he made her feel like she was in his way. And yet she did get in his way, she knew it. She couldn’t glide, silent and quick, the way so many Somali women seemed to do, keeping themselves away from trouble. She was trouble, from the tips of her itchy fingers all the way down to her toes.

  ‘I just don’t want you to sprain an ankle or break your leg,’ he explained and his voice was gentler.

  Amina felt guilty for thinking the worst of him. ‘I won’t,’ she promised. Then, ‘Do you think Aabbe is all right?’

  Roble sighed. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Roble!’ It was Keinan, shouting as he ran towards them, forgetting the rule they kept whenever they were on the streets: to be as silent as possible and not call attention to the fact that they were there. ‘Roble!’