Mogadishu

I

My entire family was dead.

It had all happened very suddenly, on a muggy summer morning around three o’clock, when we were all sleeping. The missiles shot through the feeble roof made of combination of termite-eaten plywood and thatch. When the ground beneath me burst into flames, I ran. I ran so hard and so fast that I dropped to my knees, unconscious, in front of the mulberry stump where the girls studied mathematics and recited the Quran.

I was too young to know anything—not more than five years old—but I later heard my aunts and uncles speak of the incidents, though infrequently. I was the youngest of eight children, and the sole survivor of Mohamed Daar’s family.

“Your father was a brave fighter in the way of the mujahideen,” they often told me. "He died a brave man, martyred by the Crusader forces."

Little else was ever said of the air strike—the anniversaries of the day on which it happened were ignored and treated as any other days. My aunts and uncles would, however, speak of the evils of the Crusaders and denounce them for killing the believers. From the age I went to the other side of the village to live with my father’s relatives, I knew to whom I was engaged to be married—a resistance fighter who trained with father and had gone to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. He was a Saudi, and I had never met him, but I had heard of him. My father had promised me to him before he died, and said we would be married as soon as I was old enough.

I passed the long days in the village watching the goats graze. I would sit on the burned out stumps and play my nay, daydreaming about the future. My cousins sat with me and we often talked and told stories. As my cousins grew older their conversations turned from idle dreams to politics – something I did not understand at all. My cousin Ahmad spoke with passion about the new government and his dislike of the West, and particularly the British. I was the youngest – and I had often been told by my aunts that I was not wanted and that I was a burden to have around.

"You are not Nur-al-Din's daughter," one of my cousins told me one day. Nur-al-Din was my uncle. "He has enough children to take care of. He doesn't care about you."

I remember sitting outside on a very overcast day late in spring when she told me that. I could see the rain clouds meld together behind the tall silhouettes of the banana trees as if to threaten rain. I looked away ashamedly pretending as though I had not heard her. I felt for one of my braids and twirled it around between my fingers. My aunt left and I stayed sitting lazily on the mulberry stump, digging into the dirt with my toes, and fidgeting with the beads I had been given by my great-aunt for our last feast. I watched the clouds and I dreamed. I dreamed about leaving the village, about seeing Mogadishu, and the rest of the world. All of those places were not real to us; they were only names we heard during our lessons.

I woke every morning at dawn with the older girls (I shared a thatch hut with three of my cousins) and we went out to the pasture to milk the goats. I hated waking early and I hardly spoke as we worked. I was tired. We were not allowed to eat until we had finished milking and taking the goats out to the field. Ahmad met us there, walking with long strides beyond the horizon of the dry, barren grass where the sun was exploding from beneath the trees, carrying his staff. He took charge of the goats and I ran back to my aunt's hut where she fed me a handful of nuts and a wedge of cheese for my breakfast.

Lessons were long and tiring. I never paid attention. The woman who taught the girls was young and widowed – a tall, black-skinned young lady who came from a poor family and had no children. Her father wanted to marry her off. Her husband had been killed fighting in the resistance. Her name was Maryan. Maryan taught us Arabic and the Quran, simple mathematics, and reading.

No one learned anything in lessons. Most of the girls missed most days because their families needed them to help with work. But our family was big enough and wealthy enough that the younger children were allowed to go to lessons. I went to lessons nearly every day, but I hardly heard a word of them most days. I ripped up grass with my toes and daydreamed.

"You are a poor student," Maryan told me once, very sharply. I was looking down at her beaded sandals and her long, slender toes. She pulled on one of my braids. "Why don't you work harder?"

I did not answer.

"You are not stupid," she told me. "Just lazy. You are lazy because your family is rich and you are going to be married off to a Saudi."

I was startled. My marriage arrangement was not something that my family ever discussed. I did not know how Maryan knew about it. I was embarrassed.

"No," I shook my head.

"No? You foolish girl."

I could feel Maryan's harsh stare upon me. I shrank back into the thistle bushes and snagged my dress on the thorns. I ran off to help with the goats. I kicked up dust as I ran, angry at Maryan and angry at the other girls. They did not even come to lessons most days. And they avoided me. I was not sure why they hated me so much; perhaps they were jealous. I caught sight of Ahmad, herding the flocks with his staff. Ahmad had done well in his lessons, and had gone to them until he was thirteen, when he had to stop to help tend the goats. But he still used his mind. He discussed politics with the men who were back from working in Mogadishu. He read whatever newspapers he came upon. Most people – even the men – could not read at all.

"Hello, Ahmad," I greeted him, smiling. I liked Ahmad. He was like my brother, and he was good and hardworking.

A smile spread across his narrow black face with broad cheekbones that strained the taut, weathered skin. He rested his bony elbow on his crooked staff and swatted at one of the goats with his foot. His torn leather sandals flopped ill-fittingly on his scabbed and scarred feet.

I knelt down to pet one of the goats as she grazed – she was our main milk goat so we made sure she was taken to the lush, ungrazed pastures. Sweat spread through Ahmad's torn rough blue cloth shirt and I noticed that the summer sun was rising high above the trees for the afternoon.

"Did Nur-al-Din go to Mogadishu today?" I asked. He went nearly every month to see milk and cheese at the market and buy cloth and oil and sometimes chickens. Our last three chickens had died, and I missed the taste of the freshly boiled eggs.

"Yes, and he should return by sunset."

"You didn't go with him today."

"No. I needed to stay with the flocks."

"Ahmad, you know I could have stayed behind from lessons and watched the flocks."

He frowned. "You are always trying to get out of going to lessons. You should be grateful. Most children your age would love to be able to go to lessons every day. Knowledge is a precious gift. I can't understand why you think it is more fun to sit on that stump all day watching the goats and playing your nay."

"I like to daydream while I watch the goats," I said. "I imagine things … I wonder what the rest of the world is like."

"But you could just as well learn about the rest of the world if you paid attention in lessons."

"It isn't the same," I frowned.

"That is why women shouldn't be educated," he scowled, digging his staff into the ground. "It is a waste."

He picked up the young ewe goat and carried her over his shoulders to the next pasture. We rotated the grazing lands so that the grass was not over-grazed. I watched Ahmad angrily for a moment then ran with my bare feet pounded across the plain after him. My feet were calloused to the scratchy grass and barely felt the twigs and pebbles I trampled after me.

"I do well enough in my studies," I insisted. "Besides, lessons isn't everything. We're villagers. We herd goats. We don't expect to work in the government."

"You are wrong," Ahmad turned and shook a finger at me. I watched the crease across his forehead deepen as he spoke. "Do not tell my father anything, but with his permission I am considering joining the resistance militia in Mogadishu."

"You aren't!" I corrected him crossly. I was shocked. I had run so fast to keep up with him that I was short of breath. "Ahmad, you can't!"

"And why not? It is a noble cause."

"But you could get killed. It isn't worth getting killed for, is it?"

"To bring Somalia under the rule of a government that abides by Islamic principles? I should think so."

I stood in shock beside him as he lifted the ewe off of his shoulders and laid her in the grass. In our lessons we learned of the British occupation and the war for independence, but it was all unreal – as if something that only existed in the mind of Maryan. My heart pounded as I thought of Ahmad storming the towns and villages in a dull green uniform and a wine-colored beret, flailing a machine gun, looking just like all the skinny black young men who made up the militias. Nur-al-Din would never allow it, I convinced myself.

"Nassera," he crouched down to look me in the eyes. "It is people like the British and the governments who cooperate with them who killed your entire family. Never forget that," he shook his finger at me once more. "You ought to be angry at them: more than angry at them, you ought to want to kill them. They are imperialists and worse than that, unbelievers. The government that is fighting for power now is no more than a puppet of the British. We can't allow that – not when our faith and our people are at stake."

I jerked away from him suddenly, knowing nothing of politics and governments and not even wanting to know or care. My mind wandered during the long discourses about the government and British imperialism during lessons, or those times when my cousins and I ate at Nur-al-Din's hut and we could hear the men from the other side of the woven thatched barrier discussing the situation in Mogadishu.

"What we need is for the resistance fighters who care about true Islam to unite and take hold of the government by coup d'etat," Ahmad informed me, rising to his feet and standing proudly four or five inches taller than me. He crossed his chest with his thin arms, lithe and muscular from the years he had spent plowing in the fields and carrying the goats.

"Where do you hear all this?" I asked, puzzled.

"At the coffee houses in Mogadishu. It is what the men discuss. You wouldn’t understand."

"Well, I don't like it," I frowned. "I think it is silly at best and dangerous at worst."

"All that is silly in this matter is you," he looked down on me superiorly. "You suppose it is better to have no government at all, hmm? That is where apathy like yours would take the world," he threw his head back and laughed loudly. "Girls will never understand politics," he shook his head regrettably.

That evening we sat on the floor of Nur-al-Din's hut and ate corn meal and beats, goat milk and shrubs. My cousins and I were sitting cross-legged on a woven rug Nur-al-Din had bought at the market in Mogadishu, emblazoned with a myriad of colors. One of my cousins looked at me, her golden nose ring catching the light in kerosene lamp and she smiled as though she was containing a secret.

"I hear Ahmad say today that he wants to go to Mogadishu and join the militia," I blurted out.

"Ahmad is all talk and no action," another one of my cousins said. She was recently married and very beautiful, I thought, blessed with a hardy, plump figure and round, soft cheeks. "He talks of politics and the resistance because it makes him feel important, not because he plans to do anything."

For a moment I was reassured.

"He is proud," she continued. "He loves to impress the rich men in the big cities who understand those kinds of things, but really he does not know much. He was born to herd goats and plow fields. He will realize that soon enough."

"I think you are right," I nodded hopefully. Silly Ahmad, I thought to myself, cursing him in my mind for his arrogance and foolhardiness. Suddenly the cousin who had been smiling at me said,

"I hear father discussing your wedding."

"My wedding?" I was startled.

"He is coming for you soon," she nodded slowly.

"What?" I was bewildered. I knew that my cousins and I always gossiped over dinner, sharing the things we had heard being discussed that day, and most were of no importance. I had not expected my wedding to be brought up. "What do you mean?"

"The Saudi is going to come for you."

My face turned hot. It seemed as though everyone knew about the Saudi, and yet I bore it as something horribly shameful and personal. When it was brought up it was as though it was my most private secret. I did not know why I felt like that – none of it was my fault and I knew that the other girls were jealous of me. Saudis, it was well-understood, had money.

"When?" I wanted to know.

"I don't know. But I heard today that he is a businessman. A rich businessman," she grinned, as though happy for me. But I was not happy for myself. I could feel tears forming in my eyes at the thought. I would be married off to a foreign man I did not know. I would leave the village for good. I would never see my family again.

"What else do you know about him?" my voice shook.

"Not much," she shook her head. "But that he is a good man. Very religious. Very hard-working. Very honorable."

That night I lay on my stiff, flat mattress rolled out of twigs and straw thatch. I turned from one side to the other, and shivered despite the warmth. I listened to the sounds of the thudding of jackals' feet across the plains and the calling of hawks as they preyed upon the field mice. Our hut smelled of old, unwashed clothes and the goat manure that we tracked in on our leather shoes.

I remembered going on hajj the year after my family was killed – the only time I had been out of Somalia. We crowded onto a plane with a vast number of other pilgrims, all dirty farm workers who smelled of perspiration and animal dung, speaking Somali and other languages I did not know. In Saudi Arabia the heat was oppressive and scorching, and when we were herded onto the old metal bus like animals we were packed even tighter. I nearly lost sight of my aunts and uncles. I remember little else but the early rising for dawn prayers and the pushing through the crowds to buy souvenirs from the vendors who had set up shop where the vast multitudes of pilgrims had camped. I remember wanted to buy a plastic spinning top, and I remember Ahmad speaking in Arabic to the vendors to get it for me.

"We are all brothers on hajj," Ahmad had told me. "Whether we are black or white or rich or poor."

I remember looking around at the men all wearing the same seamless white garment. It was true that all the pilgrims were the same – one massive wash of white – but we knew there were differences. We were African, and compared to the Saudis we were poor.

I tossed fitfully on my mattress, watching my cousins sleep. I was annoyed because they were sleeping and I was not. I waited. The hours passed slowly as I longed for sleep. The radiance of the moon reflected through a hole in the thatch, casting a still glow on my cousins. Finally, I slept.

The next morning I awoke from a dream. I could not remember it very well, but in it I saw a man coming for me: my husband. I could not see him in the dream, but I knew he was there. He was taking me away … far, far away from my family. I saw myself riding in the back of a dark car and crying.

I walked slowly to lessons, purposefully tripping over the rocks and twigs and letting them pierce my bare feet. One of the other girls turned around and looked at me and laughed.

"Silly, Nassera," she teased me. "You are trying to be late for lessons'

and make Maryan mad, aren't you?"

"No," I shook my head quickly. "I don't want to make Maryan mad."

"She thinks you're always trying to upset her. She thinks you are impertinent."

"I am not," I insisted.

"I heard her talk to my mother," she continued, gossiping. "She doesn't like you."

I frowned at her, straying behind as she and the other girls hurried ahead to lessons. I kicked up the dust and pulled on one of my braids. I was not impertinent. I was not a poor student. I just believed that lessons were silly. I was going to be a goat herder. I did not need to know Arabic and mathematics.