Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad (PDF)

jvi WP 2469463 0 THE ESERT NOMAD r i e Irrnqrkable courage... the most beautiful inspiration to anyone' gLTON JOHN > *4V / Waris Dirie is an i...

jvi WP 2469463 0 THE ESERT NOMAD r i e Irrnqrkable courage... the most beautiful inspiration to anyone' gLTON JOHN > *4V / Waris Dirie is an internationally renowned model and was a face of Revlon skin-care products. In 1997 she was appointed by the United Nations as special ambassador for women’s rights in Africa, in its efforts to eliminate the practice of female genital mutilation. Waris Dirie lives in Vienna with her son.  T 1 ' ' - DESERT FLOWER The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad WARIS DIRIE and Cathleen Miller  VIRAGO First published by Virago Press in 1998 This edition published by Virago Press in 2001 Reprinted 2001, 2002 (twice), 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 (twice), 2008, 2009 First published in the United States by William Morrow and Company Inc., New York Copyright © Waris Dirie 1998 The moral right of the author has been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-86049-758-2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Papers used by Virago are natural, renewable and recyclable products sourced from well-managed forests and certified in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council. &FSC Mixed Sources Product group from well-managed forests and other controlled sources www.fsc.org Cert no. SGS-COC-004081 © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council Virago Press An imprint of Little, Brown Book Group 100 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DY An Hachette UK Company www.hachette.co.uk www.virago.co.uk  FOR MAMA I realize that when one travels the road of life, weathering storms, enjoying the sunshine, standing in the eye of many hurricanes, survival is determined only by the strength of one’s will. Therefore I dedicate this book to the woman upon whose shoulders I stand, whose strength is unyielding: my mother, Fattuma Ahmed Aden. She has shown her children evidence of faith while staring into the face of unthinkable adversity. She has balanced an equal devotion to twelve children (an amazing feat on its own) and shown wisdom that would humble the most insightful sage. Her sacrifices have been many; her complaints, few. And all along we, her children, knew that she gave what she had, no matter how meager—without reservation. She has known the agony of losing a child more than once, and still she maintains her strength and courage to continue struggling for her remaining children. Her generosity of spirit and inner and outer beauty are legendary. Mama, I love, respect, and cherish you, and thank Almighty Allah for giving me you as my mother. My prayer is to honor your legacy by parenting my son as you have tirelessly nurtured your children. Oh, you are a kilt which a young dandy set out to choose Oh, you are like a costly rug for which thousands were paid Will I ever find your like—you who have been shown to me only once? An umbrella comes apart; you are as strong as looped iron; Oh, you who are as the gold of Nairobi, finely molded, You are the risen sun, and the early rays of dawn, Will I ever find your like, you who have been shown to me only once? Traditional Somali poem  AUTHORS’ NOTE Desert Flower is the true story of Waris Dirie’s life, and all the events presented are factual, based on Waris’s recollection. While all the people portrayed in Desert Flower are real, we have used pseudonyms for most of them to protect their privacy. DESERT FLOWER  1. RUNNING AWAY A slight sound woke me, and when I opened my eyes, I was staring into the face of a lion. Riveted awake, my eyes stretched wide—very wide—as if to expand enough to contain the animal in front of me. I tried to stand up, but I hadn’t eaten for several days, so my weak legs wobbled and folded beneath me. Collapsing, I slumped back against the tree where I had been resting, sheltered from the African desert sun that becomes so merciless at noon. I quietly leaned my head back and closed my eyes, and felt the rough bark of the tree pressing into my skull. The lion was so near I could smell his musty scent in the hot air. I spoke to Allah: “It’s the end for me, my God. Please take me now.” My long journey across the desert had come to an end. I had no protection, no weapon. Nor the strength to run. Even under the best of circumstances, I knew I couldn’t beat the lion up the tree, because like all cats, lions with their strong claws are excellent climbers. By the time I got halfway up—BOOM— one swipe and I’d be gone. Without any fear I opened my eyes 1 again and said to the lion, “Come and get me. I’m ready for you.” He was a beautiful male with a golden mane and a long tail switching back and forth to flick away flies. He was five or six years old, young and healthy. I knew he could crush me inst¬ antly; he was the king. All my life I’d watched those paws take down wildebeest and zebras weighing hundreds of pounds more than me. The lion stared at me and slowly blinked his honey-colored eyes. My brown eyes stared back, locked on his. He looked away. “Go on. Take me now.” He looked at me again, then looked away. He licked his lips and sat down on his haunches. Then the lion rose and paced back and forth in front of me, sexily, elegantly. Finally, he turned and walked away, no doubt deciding that I had so little flesh on my bones, I wasn’t worth eating. He strode across the desert until his tawny-colored fur was lost against the sand. When I realized he was not going to kill me, I gave no sigh of relief, because I hadn’t been afraid. I’d been ready to die. But evidently God, who has always been my best friend, had something else planned, some reason to keep me alive. I said, What is it? Take me—direct me,” and struggled to my feet. This nightmare journey began because I was running away from my father. I was about thirteen at the time, and living with my family, a tribe of nomads in the Somalian desert, when my father announced he had arranged my marriage to an old man. Knowing I had to act fast or suddenly one day my new husband would come to get me, I told my mother I wanted to run away. My plan was to find my aunt, my mother’s sister, who lived in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Of course I had never been to Mogadishu—or any other city for that matter. Nor had I ever met my aunt. But with the optimism of a child, I felt somehow things would magically work out. 2  While my father and the rest of the family were still sleeping, my mother woke me and said, “Go now.” I looked around for something to grab, something to take, but there was nothing, no bottle of water, no jar of milk, no basket of food. So, barefoot, and wearing only a scarf draped around me, I ran off into the black desert night. I didn’t know which direction led to Mogadishu, so I just ran. Slowly at first, because I couldn’t see; I stumbled along, tripping over roots. Finally, I decided to just sit down because snakes are everywhere in Africa, and I was terrified of snakes. Each root I stepped on I imagined to be the back of a spitting cobra. I sat watching the sky gradually lighten. Even before the sun came up—whoosh—I was off like a gazelle. I ran and I ran and I ran for hours. By midday Ed traveled deep into the red sand, and deep into my own thoughts. Where in the hell was I going? I wondered. I didn’t even know what direction I was heading in. The landscape stretched on to eternity, the sand broken only occasionally by an acacia or thorn tree; I could see for miles and miles. Hungry, thirsty, and tired, I slowed down and walked. Strolling along in a bored daze, I wondered where my new life would take me. What was going to happen next? As I pondered these questions, I thought I heard a voice: “W-A-R-I-S...W-A-R-I-S....” My father was calling me! Whipping around in circles, I looked for him, but saw no one. Maybe I was imagining things, I thought. “W-A-R-I-S... W-A-R-I-S...” the voice echoed all around me. The tone was pleading, but I was frightened all the same. If he caught me, he would surely take me back and make me marry that man, and probably beat me besides. I was not hearing things; it was my father, and he was getting closer. In earnest now, I started to run as fast as I could. Even though I had gotten a head start of several hours, Papa had caught up with me. As I later realized, he’d tracked me down by following my footprints through the sand. 3  My father was too old to catch me—so I had thought— because I was young and fast. To my childish thinking, he was an old man. Now I recall with a laugh that at the time, he was only in his thirties. We were all incredibly fit, because we ran everywhere; we had no car, no public transportation of any kind. And always I was fast, chasing the animals, heading after water, racing the oncoming darkness to reach home safely before the light was lost. After a while I didn’t hear my father calling my name anymore, so I slowed down to a jog. If I kept moving, Papa would get tired and go back home, I reasoned. Suddenly I looked back toward the horizon and saw him coming over the hill behind me. He’d spotted me, too. Terrified, I ran faster. And faster. It was as if we were surfing waves of sand; I flew up one hill, and he glided down the one behind me. On and on we continued for hours, until eventually I realized I hadn’t seen him for some time. He no longer called out to me. My heart pounding, finally I stopped, hiding behind a bush, and looked around. Nothing. I listened closely. No sound. When I came across a flat rock outcropping, I stopped to rest. But I’d learned from my mistake the night before, and when I began to run again, I went along the rocks where the ground was hard, then changed my direction so my father couldn’t follow my footprints. Papa, I reasoned, had turned around to try to make it back home, because now the sun was setting. Still, he would never make it back before the light faded. He’d have to run back through the darkness, listening for the night-time sounds of our family, tracing his path by the voices of children screaming, laughing, the animal noises of the herds mooing, bleating. The wind carries sounds great distances across the desert, so these noises acted as a lighthouse when we were lost in the night. After walking along the rocks, I changed my direction. It didn’t really matter what direction I chose, since I had no idea 4 which was the right one to lead me to Mogadishu. I kept running until the sun set, the light was gone, and the night was so black I couldn’t see. By this time I was starving, and food was all I could think about. My feet were bleeding. I sat down to rest under a tree and fell asleep. In the morning, the sun burning my face woke me. I opened my eyes and looked up at the leaves of a beautiful eucalyptus tree stretching to the sky. Slowly the reality of my circum¬ stances came to me. My God, I’m all alone. What am I going to do? I got up and continued to run; for days I managed to keep it up. How many days, I’m not sure. All I know is that for me, there was no time; there was only hunger, thirst, fear, pain. When the evening grew too dark to see, I would stop and rest. At midday, when the sun was at its hottest, I would sit under a tree and take a siesta. It was during one of these siestas that I fell asleep and the lion woke me. By this point I no longer cared about my freedom; I simply wanted to go back home to Mama. What I wanted more than food or water was my mother. And even though it was common for us to go for a day or two without food or water, I knew I couldn’t survive much longer. I was so weak that I could barely move, and my feet were so cracked and sore that each step was agony. By the time the lion sat in front of me licking his lips in hunger, I had given up. I welcomed his quick kill as a way out of my misery. But the lion looked at the bones jutting out of my skin, my sunken cheeks and bulging eyes, and walked away. I don’t know if he took pity on such a miserable soul, or if it was simply a pragmatic decision that I wouldn’t even make a worthy snack. Or if God had interceded on my behalf. But I decided God wouldn’t be so heartless as to spare me, simply to let me die in some other, cruder way, like starving to death. He had another plan in store for me, so I called out for his guidance: “Take me—direct me.” Holding on to the tree to steady myself, I rose to my feet and called out for his help. I began to walk again, and within a few minutes came to a grazing area with camels everywhere. I spotted the animal carrying the most fresh milk, and ran to it. I nursed, sucking the milk like a baby. The herdsman spotted me and yelled out, “Get out of there, you little bitch!” and I heard a bullwhip crack. But I was desperate, and kept right on sucking, draining the milk as fast as my mouth could take it. The herdsman ran at me, yelling, loud and mean. He knew that if he didn’t scare me away, by the time he reached me, it would be too late. The milk would all be gone. But I’d had plenty, so I started to run. He chased after me, and managed to lash me with the whip a couple of times before I outran him. But I was faster than he was, and left him behind me, standing in the sand, cursing in the afternoon sun. Now I had fuel in me; I was energized. So I kept running and running until I came to a village. I had never been in a place like this before; it had buildings, and streets made from hard-packed dirt. I walked down the middle of the street, just assuming this was the spot for me to walk. As I strolled through town, gawking at the strange setting, my head swiveled in every direction. A woman passed by me, looked me up and down, then called out: “You are so stupid. Where do you think you are?” To some of the other villagers walking down the street, she cried, “Oh, my goodness. Look at her feet!” She pointed at my feet, cracked and caked with bloody scabs. Eh! Oh, my God. She must be a stupid little country girl.” She knew. This woman yelled out to me, “Little girl, if you want to live, get off the street. Get off the road!” She waved me to the side, then laughed. I knew everybody heard, and I was so embarrassed. I just hung my head down, but continued to walk in the middle of the road, because I didn’t understand what she was talking 6 about. Pretty soon, along came a truck. BEEP! BEEP! And I had to jump out of the way. I turned around to face the traffic, and as the cars and trucks headed toward me, I stuck out my hand. I can’t say I was hitchhiking, because I didn’t even know what hitchhiking was. So I just stood in the road with my hand stuck out to try and get someone to stop. A car careened past and nearly chopped my hand off, so I jerked it in. I thrust my hand out again, but this time not quite as far, moved a little farther to the side of the road, and kept walking. I looked into the faces of the people driving past me in their cars, silently praying for one of them to stop and help me. Eventually a truck stopped. I am not proud of what happened next—but it happened, so what can I say, but to tell the truth? To this day, whenever I think of that truck stopping, I wish I had trusted my instincts and not gotten in. The truck was hauling a load of stones for construction; they were jagged and the size of softballs. In front were two men; the driver opened the door and said in Somali, “Hop on, darling.” I felt helpless, sick with fear. “I’m headed to Mogadishu,” I explained. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he said, grinning. When he smiled, his teeth showed red, tobacco red. But I knew that what made them that color wasn’t tobacco, because I’d seen my father chew it once. It was khat, a narcotic plant the men in Africa chew that’s similar to cocaine. Women are not allowed to touch it, and it’s just as well; it makes the men crazy, overexcited, aggressive, and has destroyed many lives. I knew I was in trouble, but I also didn’t know what else to do, so I nodded. The driver told me to climb in the back. This brought me some relief, the thought of being away from the two men. I climbed into the truck bed and sat down in one corner, trying to make myself comfortable on the pile of rocks. It was dark now, and cool in the desert; as the truck started moving I was cold and lay down out of the wind. The next thing I knew, the man riding with the driver was 7 next to me, kneeling on the stones. He was in his forties, and ugly, ugly. He was so ugly, his hair was leaving him; he was going bald. But he’d tried to make up for this fact by growing a little mustache. His teeth were chipped and some were missing; the remaining ones were stained a nasty red with the khat, but still he grinned at me, proudly displaying them. No matter how long I live, I will never forget his face leering at me. He was also fat, as I learned when he took his pants down. His erect penis bobbed at me as he grabbed my legs and tried to force them apart. “Oh, please, please, no,” I begged. I wrapped my skinny legs around each other like pretzels and locked them shut. He grappled with me and tried to force them apart. Then, as he wasn’t successful with this attempt, he drew back his hand and slapped me hard across the face. I let out a shrill scream that the air carried away as the truck sped into the night. “OPEN YOUR FUCKING LEGS!” We struggled, with all his weight on top of me, the rough stones cutting into my back. He hauled back his hand and slapped me again, this time harder. With the second slap I knew I had to think of some other tactic; he was too strong for me to fight. This man obviously knew what he was doing. Unlike me, he was experienced, no doubt raping many women; I was simply about to become the next one. I deeply, deeply wanted to kill him, but I had no weapon. So I pretended to want him. I said sweetly, “Okay, okay. But first let me pee-pee.” I could see he was growing even more excited now—hey, this little girl wanted him!—and he let me up. I went to the opposite corner of the truck and pretended to squat and pee in the darkness. This bought me a few minutes to think of what to do next. By the time I finished my little charade, I had formed my plan. I picked up the largest stone I could find and, holding it in my hand, went back and lay down beside him. 8  He climbed on top of me and I squeezed the stone in my hand. With all my strength I brought it up to the side of his head and hit him squarely in the temple. I hit him once and saw him go dizzy. I hit him again and saw him go down. Like a warrior, I suddenly had tremendous strength. I didn’t know that I had it, but when someone is trying to attack you, kill you, you become powerful. You don’t know how strong you can be until that moment. As he lay there I hit him again and saw the blood flowing out of his ear. His friend who was driving the truck saw all this happening from inside the cab. He started yelling, “What the fuck is going on back there?” and looked for a place to pull the truck into the bushes. I knew it was over for me if he caught me. As the truck slowed down, I crawled to the back of the bed, and poised on the rocks, I jumped to the ground like a cat. Then I ran for my life. The truck driver was an old man; he jumped out of the cab and screamed in a raspy voice, “You killed my friend! Come back! You killed him!” He chased me through the scrubby bushes for a short distance, then gave up. Or so I thought. The driver went back, crawled inside his truck, fired it up, and started driving through the desert after me. The twin headlight beams illuminated the ground around me; I heard the roar of the truck behind me. I was running as fast as I could, but of course the truck was gaining on me. I zigzagged and circled back through the darkness. He couldn’t keep me in sight, so finally he gave up and headed back to the road. I ran through the desert like a hunted animal; I ran through desert, then jungle, then desert again, with no idea of where I was. The sun came up and I continued to run. Finally I came upon another road. Even though I was sick with fear at the thought of what might happen, I decided to hitchhike again, because I knew I needed to get as far away as possible from the truck driver and his friend. What happened to my attacker after I hit him with the stone, I’ve never known, but the last 9 thing I wanted was to meet up with those two men again. Standing on the side of the road in the morning sun, I must have been a pretty sight. The scarf I was wearing was now a filthy rag; I had been running through the sand for days and my skin and hair were coated with dust; my arms and legs looked like twigs that might snap in a hard wind and my feet were covered with sores that would rival a leper’s. Holding my hand out, I flagged down a Mercedes. An elegantly dressed man pulled the car to the side of the road. I crawled onto the leather seat and gaped at the luxury of it. “Where are you going?” the man asked. “That way,” I said, and pointed straight ahead, in the direction the Mercedes was already traveling. The man opened his mouth, showing his beautiful white teeth, and started to laugh. 10  2. GROWING UP WITH ANIMALS Before I ran away from home, my life had been built around nature, family, and our strong bond with the animals that kept us alive. Stretching back to my earliest days, I shared a common trait with children the world over: my love of animals. In fact, my earliest memory is of my pet goat, Billy. Billy was my special treasure, my everything, and maybe I loved him most because he was a baby, like me. I used to sneak him all the food I could find, until he was the plumpest, happiest little goat in the herd. My mother constantly questioned, “Why is this goat so fat, when all the rest are so skinny?” I took perfect care of him, grooming him, petting him, talking to him for hours. My relationship with Billy was representative of our lives in Somalia. My family’s fate intertwined with that of the herds we tended daily. Dependence on the animals created our great respect for them, and those feelings were present in everything we did. All the children in my family tended our animals, a task we began helping with as soon as we were able to walk. 11 We grew up with the animals, prospered when they prospered, suffered when they suffered, died when they died. We raised cattle, sheep, and goats, but while I dearly loved my little Billy, there was no doubt that our camels were the most important animals we owned. The camel is legendary in Somalia; Somalia boasts more camels than any country in the world; there are more camels in Somalia than people. In my country we have a long tradition of oral poetry, and much of it is devoted to passing along the lessons of the camel from one generation to the next, telling of its essen¬ tial value to our culture. I remember my mother used to sing us a song, which basically said, “My camel has gone away to the bad man, who will either kill it or steal it from me. So I’m begging, I’m praying, please bring back my camel.” From the time I was a baby, I knew of the great importance of these animals, because they’re absolutely gold in our society. You simply can¬ not live in the desert without them. As one Somali poet put it: A she-camel is a mother To him who owns it Whereas a he-camel is the artery Onto which hangs life itself... And it’s true. A man’s life is measured by camels, with one hundred camels being the price for a man who has been killed. A hundred camels must be paid by the killer’s clan to the surviving family of the victim, or the dead man’s clan will attack the killer in retribution. The traditional price for a bride is paid in camels. But on a daily level, the camels kept us alive. No other domestic animal is so well suited for life in the desert. A camel wants to drink once a week, but can go as long as a month without water. In the meantime, however, the female camel gives milk to nourish us and quench our thirst, an enormous asset when you’re far from water. Even in the hottest temperatures, camels retain liquid and survive. They graze on 12 the scrubby bushes found in our arid landscape, leaving the grasses for the other livestock. We raised them to carry us across the desert, haul our meager belongings, and pay our debts. In other countries, you might hop in your car and go, but our only transportation, other than walking, was our camels. The animal’s personality is very similar to that of a horse; a camel will develop a close relationship with his master, and do things for him that he wouldn’t do for anybody else. Men break the young camels—a dangerous practice—and train them to be ridden and follow a lead. It’s important to be firm with them, because otherwise, when they sense a weak rider, they’ll buck him off, or kick him. Like most Somalis, we lived the pastoral lifestyle of herdsmen. Even though we struggled constantly for survival, our large herds of camels, cattle, sheep, and goats marked us as wealthy by the standards in my country. Following tradition, my brothers usually tended the large animals, the cattle and camels, and the girls watched over the smaller ones. As nomads we traveled constantly, never staying in one place for more than three or four weeks. This constant movement was driven by the need to care for our animals. We were seeking food and water to keep them alive, and in the dry Somalian climate these necessities were seldom easy to find. Our home was a hut woven from grass; being portable, it served the same purpose as a tent. We built a framework from sticks, then my mother wove grass mats that we laid over the bent twigs to form a dome about six feet in diameter. When it came time to move on, we dismantled the hut and tied the sticks and mats, along with our few possessions, to the backs of our camels. They’re incredibly strong animals, and the babies and small children would ride on top, while the rest of us walked alongside, herding the animals to our next home. When we found a spot with water and foliage for grazing, we’d set up our camp again. 13  The hut provided shelter for the babies, shade from the midday sun, and storage space for fresh milk. At night, the rest of us slept outside under the stars, with the children cuddled together on a mat. After the sun went down, the desert was cold; we didn’t have enough blankets for each child to have his own, and since we had very little clothing, we used the heat from our bodies to keep us warm. My father slept off to one side, as our guardian, the protector of the family. In the morning we got up with the sun. Our first chore was to head out to the pens where we kept the herds, and milk them. Wherever we went we cut saplings to make pens for the animals, to keep them from straying at night. The baby animals were kept in a pen separate from the mothers so they wouldn’t take all the milk. One of my tasks was to milk the cows, taking some of the fresh milk to make butter, but leaving enough for the calves. After the milking, we’d let the babies come in and nurse. Then we had our breakfast of camel’s milk, which is more nutritious than other animals’ milk as it contains vitamin C. Our region was very dry, without enough water to grow crops, so we had no vegetables or bread. Sometimes we followed warthogs, large wild African pigs, tracking them to plants. They sniffed out edible roots, digging down with their hooves and snouts to feast on them. Our family shared in their bounty by taking some home to add to our diet. We looked at slaughtering animals for meat as wasteful, and only resorted to this in case of emergency, or for special occasions, such as a wedding. Our animals were too valuable for us to kill and eat, as we raised them for their milk and to trade for the other goods we needed. For everyday sustenance, we had only camel s milk for breakfast, and again in the evening for supper. Sometimes there wasn’t enough for everybody, so we fed the smallest children first, then the older ones, and so on. My mother never took a bite of food until everyone else had eaten; in fact, I don t remember ever seeing my mother eat, although I 14 realize she must have. But if we didn’t have anything for supper at night, it was no big deal, nothing to panic about. No need to cry or complain. The little babies might cry, but the older children knew the rules, so we just went to sleep. We tried to remain cheerful, kept calm and quiet, and tomorrow, God willing, we’d find a way. In’shallah, which means it will happen “if God is willing,” was our philosophy. We knew our lives were dependent on the forces of nature, and God controlled those forces, not us. A big treat for us-—as people in other parts of the world might regard a holiday feast—was when my father brought home a sack of rice. Then we’d use the butter we made by shaking cow’s milk in a basket that my mother had woven. Occasionally we’d trade a goat for corn grown in the wetter regions of Somalia, and grind the corn into meal and make porridge, or pop it in a pan over the fire. Or, when other families were around, we always shared whatever we had. If one of us had some food-—dates or roots—or maybe killed an animal for meat, we’d cook it and divide the meal among us. We shared our good fortune, because even though we were isolated most of the time, traveling with one or two other families, we were still part of a larger community. On the practical side, since there were no refrigerators, meat or anything fresh needed to be consumed right away. Each morning after breakfast, it was time to take the animals from their pen. By the age of six, I was responsible for taking herds of about sixty or seventy sheep and goats into the desert to graze. I got my long stick and headed off alone with my herd, singing my little song to guide them. If one strayed from the group, I used my staff to guide it back. They were eager to go, because they realized coming out of the pen meant that it was time to eat. Getting an early head start was important, to find the best spot with fresh water and lots of grass. Each day I quickly searched for water, in order to beat the other herders; otherwise their animals would drink what little there was. In 15 any case, as the sun grew hotter, the ground became so thirsty that it would suck it all up. I made sure the animals drank as much water as they could, because it might be another week before we found more. Or two. Or three—who knows? Sometimes during the drought the saddest thing was to watch all the animals die. We traveled further and further each day looking for water; the herd tried to make it, but eventually they couldn’t go anymore. When they collapsed, you had the most helpless feeling in the world, because you knew that was the end and there was nothing you could do. No one owns the grazing land in Somalia, so it was up to me to be cunning, and discover areas with lots of plants for my goats and sheep. My survival instincts were honed to look for signs of rain, and I scanned the sky for clouds. My other senses also came into play, because a particular smell or a certain feeling in the air predicted rain. While the animals grazed, I watched for predators, which are everywhere in Africa. The hyenas would sneak up and snatch a lamb or kid that had wandered off from the herd. There were lions to worry about and wild dogs; they all traveled in packs, but there was only one of me. Watching the sky, I carefully calculated how far I had to travel to return home before night fell. But many times I miscalculated, and that’s when trouble began. As I was stumbling along in the dark, trying to get home, the hyenas would attack, because they knew I couldn’t see them. I’d swat one here, and another would sneak up behind me. As I chased that one away, another would run up while I wasn’t looking. The hyenas are the worst, because they’re relentless; they never quit until they get something. When I got home each evening and put the animals in the pen, I counted several times to see if any were missing. One night I returned home with my herd, and as I counted my goats, I noticed I was one short. I counted again. And again. Suddenly I realized I hadn’t seen Billy, and hurried through the goats checking for him. I ran to my mother 16 screaming, “Mama, Billy’s missing—what should I do?” But of course it was too late, so she simply stroked my head as I cried when I realized that the hyenas had eaten my fat little pet. N^hatever else happened to us, the responsibility of taking care of our livestock went on and was always our first priority, even in times of drought, sickness, or war. Somalia’s constant political turmoil caused enormous problems in the cities, but we were so isolated that for the most part no one bothered us. Then, when I was about nine years old, a large army came and camped close by. We’d heard stories about soldiers raping girls they caught out alone, and I knew a girl this had happened to. It didn’t matter if they were the Somalian army or the Martian army, they were not part of our people; they were not nomads, and we avoided them at all costs. One morning my father had given me the chore of watering the camels, so I headed off with the herd. Evidently, during the night, the army had arrived, and now sat encamped all around the road, their tents and trucks stretching as far as I could see. I hid behind a tree and watched them milling about in their uniforms. I was frightened, remembering the other girl’s story; certainly I had no one around to protect me, so the men were free to do whatever they pleased. At first sight I hated them. I hated their uniforms, I hated their trucks, I hated their guns. I didn’t even know what they were doing; for all I knew they could have been saving Somalia, but I didn’t want any part of them all the same. Yet my camels needed water. The only route I knew that would avoid the army camp was too long and circuitous for me to travel with my herd, so I decided to turn the camels loose, and let them walk through the camp without me. They marched right through the middle of the soldiers, making straight for the water, as I had hoped they would. I scurried around the camp, ducking behind bushes and trees, until I joined the camels on the other side at the watering hole. 17 Then, as the sky grew dark, we repeated the procedure and headed home safely. Each evening, when I returned home at sunset and secured my herd back in the pen, it was time to start the milking again. Around the camels’ necks we hung wooden bells. The sound of these bells is indeed music to the nomad, who listens to their hollow clunk at twilight as the milking begins. The bells always act as a beacon to the traveler searching for home as the light fades. During the ritual of our evening chores, the great curve of the desert sky darkens, and a bright planet appears, a signal that it’s time to herd the sheep into their pen. In other nations this planet is known as Venus, the planet of love, but in my country we call it maqal hidbid, meaning “hiding the lambs.” Frequently, it was around this time I would get into trouble, because after working since sunup, I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. Walking through the dusk, I’d fall asleep and the goats would bump into me, or as I squatted milking, my head would begin to nod. If my father caught me dozing off, watch out! I love my father, but he could be a son of a gun; when he caught me sleeping on the job he’d beat me, to make sure I took my work seriously and paid attention to my business. After we finished our chores, we’d have our supper of camel’s milk. Then we’d gather wood for a big fire and sit around its warmth talking and laughing until we went to sleep. Those evenings are my favorite memories of Somalia: sitting around with my mother and father, sisters and brothers, when everybody was full, everybody was laughing. We always tried to be upbeat, optimistic. Nobody sat around complaining or whining or saying, “Hey, let’s have a conversation about death.” Life there was very hard; we needed all our strength just to survive and being negative sapped our vital energy. Even though we were far from any village, I was never lonely, 18 because I played with my sisters and brothers. I was a middle child, with an older brother and two older sisters and several younger siblings. We chased each other endlessly, climbed trees like monkeys, played tic-tac-toe in the sand by drawing lines with our fingers, collected pebbles, and dug holes in the ground to play an African game called mancala. We even had our own version of jacks, but instead of a rubber ball and metal pieces, we threw up one rock and grabbed other rocks in place of the jacks. This was my favorite because I was very good at it, and I always tried to get my little brother, Ali, to play it with me. Our greatest pleasure, though, was pure joy at being a child in the wilderness, the freedom to be part of nature and experience its sights, sounds, and smells. We watched packs of lions lie around all day, baking in the sun, rolling onto their backs, sticking their feet up in the air and snoring. The cubs chased each other and played just as we did. We ran with the giraffes, the zebras, the foxes. The hyrax, an African animal that’s the size of a rabbit but is actually a descendant of the elephant, was a particular favorite. We waited patiently outside their burrows for their little faces to appear, then chased them through the sand. Once, on an excursion, I discovered an ostrich egg. I decided to take it home with me because I wanted to watch the baby ostrich hatch, then keep it as a pet. The egg is about the size of a bowling ball, and I hoisted it up from its hole in the sand and was carrying it away when Mama Ostrich came after me. She chased me—and believe me, ostriches are fast; they can run forty miles an hour. She quickly caught me and started pecking my head with her beak, ka-ka-ka. I thought she was going to crack my skull like an egg, so I put down her baby and ran for my life. Seldom were we close to forested areas, but when we were, we loved to see the elephants. From a great distance we’d hear their thundering roar and climb a tree to spot them. Like lions, monkeys, and humans, elephants live in communities. If they 19 had a baby in their midst, every adult elephant, the cousin, the uncle, the auntie, the sister, the mother, the grand—all of them would watch after that baby, to make sure nobody touched it. All of us children would stand high in the top of a tree and laugh, watching the elephant world for hours. But gradually all those happy times with my family disappeared. My sister ran away; my brother went to school in the city. I learned sad facts about our family, about life. The rain stopped coming, and taking care of our animals was more and more difficult. Life became harder. And I became harder with it. Part of that hardness formed watching my brothers and sisters die. Originally there were twelve children in my family, but now there are only six of us left. My mother had a set of twins who died right after they were born. She had another beautiful baby girl who was about six months old. One day the baby was strong and healthy, the next my mother called to me, “Waris!!!” I ran to her and saw her kneeling over the baby. I was just a little girl, but I could tell something was terribly wrong, the baby didn’t look right. “Waris, run get me some camel’s milk!” my mother commanded. But I couldn’t move. “Run, hurry!” I stood staring at my sister in a trance—in terror. “What’s wrong with you?” Mama screamed at me. Finally, I tore myself away, but I knew what would be waiting for me when I got back. I returned with the milk, but the baby was totally still, and I knew she was dead. When I looked at my sister again, Mama slapped me hard. For a long time she blamed me for the baby’s death, feeling that I had some sort of sorcerer’s powers, and when in my trance I stared at the baby, I caused its death. I had no such powers, but my little brother did have supernatural gifts. Everyone agreed he was no ordinary child. We called him Old Man, because when he was roughly six, his 20 hair turned completely gray. He was extremely intelligent, and every man around us came to ask for his advice. They would walk up and say: “Where’s the Old Man?” Then, by turns, they would sit this little gray-haired boy on their laps. “What do you think about the rain this year?” they would ask. And honest to God, even though in years he was a child, never did he act like a child. He thought, talked, sat, and behaved like a very wise elderly man. While everyone respected him, they were frightened of him, too, because he was so obviously not one of us. While he was still technically a young boy, Old Man died, as if in a few short years he’d crammed in an entire lifetime. No one knew the cause, but everyone felt his passing made sense, because: “There’s no way he belonged to this world.” As in any large family, each of us developed a role. Mine became the role of rebel, a reputation I earned in a series of actions that to me seemed perfectly logical and justified, but to my elders— particularly my father—seemed outrageous. One day my younger brother, Ali, and I sat under a tree eating white rice with camel’s milk. Ali wolfed his down greedily, but because this was a rare treat for us, I took each bite slowly. Having food was not something we took for granted; I always appreciated mine, savoring each bite with pleasure. Only a small amount of rice and milk remained in my bowl, and I anticipated it eagerly. Suddenly Ali stuck his spoon in my dish and scooped out my last bite, taking every last grain of rice. Without thinking, I retaliated by grabbing up a knife lying next to me and burying the blade in Ali’s thigh. He shrieked, but took it out and sunk the knife in exactly the same spot in my leg. Now both of us sat with wounded legs, but because I was the one who had struck first, the blame went to me. Today, we carry matching scars from this meal. One of the earliest outbursts of my rebel behavior centered on my longing for a pair of shoes. All my life I’ve been obsessed 21 by shoes. Today even though I’m a model, I don’t own many clothes—a pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts—but I have a cup¬ board stacked full of high heels, sandals, tennis shoes, loafers, and boots, even though ironically I have nothing to wear them with. As a child I desperately wanted shoes, but not all the children in my family had clothes, and certainly there was no money to buy shoes. Yet it was my dream to wear beautiful leather sandals like my mother wore. How I wished to put on a pair of comfortable shoes and look after my animals, walk without worrying about rocks and thorns, snakes and scorpions. My feet were always bruised and marked, and I still carry the black scars today. Once a thorn came all the way through my foot; sometimes they would break off in my feet. We had no doctors in the desert, or medicine to treat the wound. But still we had to walk, because we had to look after the animals. No one said, “I can’t.” We just did it, went out each morning and limped along as best we could. One of my father’s brothers was a very wealthy man. Uncle Ahmed lived in the city, in Galcaio, but we looked after his camels and the rest of his animals. I was the favorite to care for his goats, because I always did a thorough job, making sure they were well fed and watered, and I did my best to keep them safe from predators. One day, when I was about seven years old, Uncle Ahmed visited us and I said, “Look, I want you to buy me some shoes.” He looked at me and laughed. “Yeah, yeah, all right. I’ll get you shoes.” I knew he was surprised, because it was very unusual for a girl to ask for anything, let alone anything as extravagant as shoes. The next time my father took me to see him, I was excited, because today would be the day I got my first pair of shoes. At my earliest opportunity I said eagerly, “Well, did you bring them?” He said, “Yeah, I have them right here,” and handed me a parcel. I took the shoes in my hand and examined them; they were rubber sandals, flip-flops. Not beautiful leather sandals 22 like Mama’s, but cheap, yellow flip-flops. I couldn’t believe it. “These are my shoes?/” I cried, and threw them at him. When the flip-flops bounced off his brother’s face, my father tried to be upset, but this time he couldn’t help himself—he doubled over laughing. My uncle said to him, “I don’t believe it. How are you raising this child?” I started fighting with my uncle, swinging at him, because I was so disappointed, I was furious. “I worked so hard for this shit!” I screamed. “I did all this work for you, and this is it? I get a pair of cheap rubber sandals? Fah!! I’d rather go barefoot— I’ll go barefoot till my feet bleed before I wear this garbage!” and I motioned toward his gift. Uncle Ahmed just looked at me, then raised his eyes to heaven and moaned, “Oh, Allah.” He stooped with a sigh, picked up his flip-flops, and took them back home. I was not content to give up so easily, however. After that day I kept sending my uncle messages by every relative, friend, or stranger heading to Galcaio: “Waris wants shoes!” But I had to wait many years until I realized my dream of owning a pair. In the meantime, however, I continued to raise Uncle Ahmed’s goats, and help my family care for our herds, walking thou¬ sands of miles barefoot. Several years before the shoes episode with Uncle Ahmed, when I was a tiny girl, around four years old, we had a visitor one day. The man, Guban, was a good friend of my father’s and frequently came to see us. At twilight he stood talking with my parents, until finally my mother, staring at the sky, watching the bright planet maqal hidhid emerge, said it was time to bring in the lambs. Guban said, “Oh, why don’t you let me do that for you? Waris can help me.” I felt important at being chosen over the boys to help Papa’s friend with the animals. He took my hand and we walked away 23 from the hut and began to round up the herd. Normally I would have been running everywhere like a wild animal myself, but it was getting dark now, and since I was frightened, I stayed close to Guban. Suddenly he took off his jacket and laid it on the sand and sat down on top of it. I stared at him, confused, and protested: “Why are you sitting down? It’s getting dark— we have to get the animals.” “We have time. We’ll do that in a minute.” He rested on one side of his jacket and patted the empty space next to him. “Come sit down.” Reluctantly I came to him. Since I always loved stories as a kid, I realized this might be a good opportunity to hear one. “Will you tell me a story?” Guban patted his coat again. “If you sit down, I’ll tell you one.” As soon as I sat next to him, he started trying to push me back onto his coat. “I don’t want to lie down. I want you to tell me a story,” I insisted stubbornly and squirmed upright. “Come, come.” His hand pushed my shoulder firmly. “Lie down and look at the stars and I’ll tell you a story.” Stretching out with my head on his jacket, I stuck my toes in the cold sand and stared at the phosphorescent Milky Way. As the sky deepened from indigo to black, the lambs ran in circles around us, crying in the dark, and I waited anxiously for the story to begin. Abruptly, Guban’s face came between me and the Milky Way; he squatted between my legs and yanked up the little scarf wrapped around my waist. Next I felt something hard and wet pressing against my vagina. I froze at first, not understanding what was happening, but I knew it was something very bad. The pressure intensified until it became a sharp pain. “I want my Mama!” Suddenly I was flooded with a warm liquid and a sickening acrid odor permeated the night air. “You pee-peed on me!” I screamed, horrified. I jumped up and rubbed my scarf against my legs, mopping off the foul¬ smelling liquid. 24  “No, no, it’s okay,” he whispered soothingly and grabbed my arm. “I was just trying to tell you a story.” Jerking free, I ran back to my mother, with Guban chasing after me, trying to catch me. When I saw Mama standing next to the fire, the orange light glowing off her face, I ran up and threw my arms around her legs. “What’s wrong, Waris?” Mama said in alarm. Guban ran up behind me panting, and my mother looked at him. “What happened to her?” He laughed casually and waved his arm at me. “Oh, I was trying to tell her a story and she got scared.” I held on to my mother with a grip of iron. I wanted to tell her what Papa’s friend had done to me, but I didn’t have the words—I didn’t know what he’d done. I looked at his smiling face in the firelight, a face I would have to see again and again over the years, and knew I’d hate him forever. She stroked my head as I pressed my face into her thigh. “Waris, it’s okay. There, there, it was only a story, baby. It’s not real." To Guban, she said, “Where are the lambs?” 25  3. A NOMAD’S LIFE Growing up in Africa I did not have the sense of history that seems so important in other parts of the world. Our language, Somali, did not have a written script until 1973, so we did not learn to read or write. Knowledge was passed down by word of mouth—poetry or folktales—or, more important, by our parents teaching us the skills we needed to survive. For example, my mother taught me how to weave from dried grass containers tight enough to hold milk; my father taught me how to care for our animals and make sure they were healthy. We didn’t spend much time talking about the past—nobody had time for that. Everything was today, what are we going to do today? Are all the children in? Are all the animals safe? How are we going to eat? Where can we find water? In Somalia, we lived the way our ancestors had for thousands of years; nothing had changed dramatically for us. As nomads we did not live with electricity, telephones, or automobiles, much less computers, television, or space travel. These facts, combined with our emphasis on living in the present, gave us 26 a much different perspective on time than the one that dominates the Western world. Like the rest of my family, I have no idea how old I am; I can only guess. A baby who is born in my country has little guarantee of being alive one year later, so the concept of tracking birthdays does not retain the same importance. When I was a child, we lived without artificial time constructions of schedules, clocks, and calendars. Instead, we lived by the seasons and the sun, planning our moves around our need for rain, planning our day around the span of daylight available. We told time by using the sun. If my shadow was on the west side, it was morning; when it moved directly underneath me, it was noon. When my shadow crossed to the other side, it was afternoon. As the day grew longer, so did my shadow—my cue to start heading home before dark. When we got up in the morning, we decided what we’d do that day, then did that task the best we could until we finished or the sky grew too dark for us to see. There was no such notion of getting up and having your day all planned out for you. In New York, people frequently whip out their datebooks and ask, “Are you free for lunch on the fourteenth—or what about the fifteenth?” I respond with “Why don’t you call me the day before you want to meet up?” No matter how many times I write down appointments, I can’t get used to the idea. When I first came to London, I was mystified by the connection between people staring at their wrist, then crying, “I’ve got to dash!” I felt like everyone was rushing everywhere, every action was timed. In Africa there was no hurry, no stress. African time is very, very slow, very calm. If you say, “I’ll see you tomorrow around noon,” that means about four or five o’clock. And today I still refuse to wear a watch. During my childhood years in Somalia, it never occurred to me to fast-forward into the future, or delve into the past enough to ask, “Mama, how did you grow up?” As a conse¬ quence I know little of my family history, especially since I left 27 home at such an early age. I constantly wish I could go back and ask those questions now—ask my mother what her life was like when she was a little girl, or ask where her mother came from, or how her father died. It disturbs me that I may never know these facts. However, one thing I do know about my mother is that she was very beautiful. I know I sound like the typical adoring daughter, but she was. Her face was like a Modigliani sculp¬ ture, and her skin so dark and smooth, that she looked as if she’d been perfectly chiseled from black marble. Since Mama’s skin was jet black and her teeth dazzlingly white, at night when she smiled all you could see were her teeth glowing, as if they floated all by themselves in the night. Her hair was long and straight, very soft, and she’d smooth it with her fingers, since she never owned a comb. My mother is tall and slender— traits that all her daughters inherited. Her demeanor is very calm, very quiet. But when she starts talking, she’s hysterically funny and she laughs a lot. She tells jokes, and some of them are funny, some are really dirty, and some are just stupid little things she’d say to crack us up. She’d look at me and say, “Waris, why are your eyes dis¬ appearing into your face?” But het favorite silly joke was calling me Avdohol, which means “small mouth.” Mama would look at me for no reason and say, “Hey, Avdohol, why is your mouth so small?” My father was very handsome, and believe me, he knew it. He was about six feet tall, slim, and lighter than Mama; his hair was brown, and his eyes were light brown. Papa was cocky because he knew he was good-looking. He always teased Mama, “I can go and get another woman if you don’t—” and then he’d fill in the blank with whatever he was after. Or, “Look, I’m getting bored around here. I’m getting me another woman....” My mother would tease back, “Go ahead. See what you can do.” They really loved each other, but unfortunately one day these taunts came true. 28  My mother grew up in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. My father, on the other hand, was a nomad and had always lived roaming the desert. When she met him, my mother thought Papa was so handsome that a life wandering with him as nomads sounded like a romantic idea; they quickly decided to get married. Papa went to my grandmother, since my grandfather was dead, and asked permission to marry my mother. My grandmother said, “No, no, no, absolutely not.” To my mother she added, “He’s just a playboy!” Grandmother was not about to allow her beautiful daughter to throw her life away raising camels in the wilderness with this man, this desert man! However, when my mother was about sixteen, she ran away and married Papa anyhow. They went to the other side of the country and lived with his family in the desert, which created a whole series of problems for my mother. Her family had money and power, and she had never known this type of harsh nomadic life. Greater than that dilemma, however, was the fact that my father was from the Daarood tribe, and my mother was from the Hawiye tribe. Like Native Americans, the citizens of Somalia are divided into individual tribes, and each has a fanatical loyalty to its own group. This tribal pride has been the source of wars throughout our history. A great rivalry exists between the Daaroods and Hawiyes, and my father’s family always treated my mother badly, assuming she was a lesser mortal by virtue of being from a different tribe than their own. Mama was lonely for a very long time, but she had to adapt. After I ran away from home and was separated from my family, I realized what life must have been like for her, living all alone among the Daaroods. My mother started having babies, and raising her children gave her the love she missed being away from her own people. But again, now that I’m grown, I look back and realize what she went through having twelve children. I remember when Mama was pregnant, she would suddenly disappear, and we 29 wouldn’t see her for days. Then she would show up—carrying a tiny baby. She went off into the desert alone and gave birth, taking along something sharp to cut the umbilical cord. Once after she disappeared we had to move our camp in the endless search for water. It took her four days to find us; she walked across the desert carrying the newborn baby while she looked for her husband. 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 30 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 I960, 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 cusswords. “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 ambas¬ sadors 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 31 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 frankin¬ cense, 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 ax 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. 32 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.” 33 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 meant 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 34 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. 35 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, which 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 36 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 changed 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 brain was refreshed and she turned sweet and polite. From that point 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 37 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! 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 into 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 38 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. 39  4. 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 grown-up 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, 40 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. As a result, all young girls in Somalia anxiously await the ceremony that will mark their transformation from being a little girl to becoming a woman. Originally the process occurred when the girls reached puberty, and the ritual had some meaning, as the girl became fertile and capable of bearing her own children. But through time, female circumcision has been performed on younger and younger girls, partially due to pressure from the girls themselves, since they eagerly await their “special time” as a child in the West might await her birthday party, or Santa Claus’s arrival on Christmas Eve. When I heard the old gypsy was coming to circumcise Aman, I wanted to be circumcised, too. Aman was my beautiful older sister, my idol, and anything she wanted or had, I wanted, too. The day before the big event, I begged my mother, tugging at her arm, “Mama, do both of us at the same time. Come on, Mama, do both of us tomorrow!” Mother pushed me away. “Just hush, little girl.” However, Aman was not so eager. I remember her muttering, “I just hope I don’t wind up like Halemo.” But at the time I was too young to know what that meant, and when I asked Aman to explain she just changed the subject. Very early the next morning my mother and her friend took Aman to meet the woman who would perform the circum¬ cision. As usual, I pleaded to go, too, but Mama told me to stay home with the younger children. But using the same sneaky techniques I used the day I followed my mother to meet her friends, I followed along, hiding behind bushes and trees, staying a safe distance behind the group of women. The gypsy woman arrived. She is considered an important person in our community, not only because she has specialized knowledge, but because she earns a great deal of money from 41 performing circumcisions. Paying for this procedure is one of the greatest expenses a household will undergo, but is still considered a good investment, since without it, the daughters will not make it onto the marriage market. With their genitals intact, they are considered unfit for marriage, unclean sluts whom no man would consider taking as a wife. So the gypsy woman, as some call her, is an important member of our society, but I call her the Killer Woman because of all the little girls who have died at her hand. Peering from behind a tree, I watched my sister sit on the ground. Then my mother and her friend both grabbed Aman’s shoulders and held her down. The gypsy started doing something between my sister’s legs, and I saw a look of pain flash across Aman’s face. My sister was a big girl, and very powerful, and suddenly—phoom! She raised her foot and shoved against the gypsy’s chest, knocking her over on her back. Then my sister struggled free from the women holding her down, and leaped to her feet. To my horror, I saw blood pouring down her legs and onto the sand, leaving a trail as she ran. They all ran after her, but Aman was far ahead of them until she collapsed and fell to the ground. The women rolled her over on the spot where she had fallen, and continued their work. I felt sick and couldn’t watch anymore, so I ran home. Now I knew something I really wished I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what had happened, but was terrified at the thought of going through it myself. I couldn’t very well ask my mother about it, because I wasn’t supposed to have witnessed it. They kept Aman separated from the rest of the children while she healed, and two days later I took her some water. I knelt beside her and asked quietly, “What was it like?” Oh, it was horrible...” she began. But I guess she thought better of telling me the truth, knowing that I would have to be circumcised, and then I’d be frightened, instead of looking forward to it. “Anyway, you’re not far from it; they will do it to you soon enough.” And that’s all she would say. 42  From then on, I dreaded the ritual that I would pass through on the way to womanhood. I tried to put the horror of it out of my mind, and as time passed, so did my memory of the agony I had witnessed on my sister’s face. Finally, I foolishly convinced myself that I wanted to become a woman, too, and join my older sisters. A friend of my father’s and his family always traveled with us. He was a grouchy old man, and anytime my younger sister or I pestered him, he would wave us away as if shooing flies, and tease us by saying, “Get away from me, you two unsanitary little girls—you dirty little girls. You haven’t even been circumcised yet!” He always spat the words out as if the fact we weren’t circumcised made us so disgusting that he could barely stand to look at us. These insults agitated me until I vowed to find a way to make him shut his stupid mouth. This man had a teenage son named Jamah, and I developed a crush on this boy, even though he always ignored me. Instead of me, Jamah was interested in Aman. Through time I got the idea that his preference for my older sister revolved around the fact she was superior to me since she’d been circumcised. Like his father, Jamah probably didn’t want to associate with dirty, uncircumcised little girls. When I was about five years old, I went to my mother and nagged, “Mama, just find me this woman. Come on, when are you going to do it?” I thought, / have to get it over with—get this mysterious thing done. As my luck would have it, only a few days passed until the gypsy woman showed up again. One evening my mother said to me, “By the way, your father ran into the gypsy woman. We’re waiting for her; she should be here any day now. ” The night before my circumcision, Mama told me not to drink too much water or milk, so I wouldn’t have to pee-pee much. I didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t question her, 43 only nodded my head. I was nervous but resolved to get it over with. That evening the family made a special fuss over me and I got extra food at dinner. This was the tradition I’d witnessed through the years that made me envious of my older sisters. Just before I went to sleep, my mother said, “I’ll wake you up in the morning when the time comes.” How she knew when the woman was coming I have no idea, but Mama always knew these things. She simply sensed intuitively when someone was coming, or the time was right for something to happen. I lay awake with excitement that night until suddenly Mama was standing over me. The sky was still dark, that time before dawn when the black has lightened imperceptibly to gray. She motioned for me to be silent and took my hand. I grabbed my little blanket, and still half asleep stumbled along after her. Now I know the reason they take the girls so early in the morning. They want to cut them before anybody wakes up, so nobody else will hear them scream. But at the time, even though I was confused, I simply did as I was told. We walked away from our hut, out into the brush. “We’ll wait here,” Mama said, and we sat down on the cold ground. The day was growing faintly lighter; I could barely distinguish shapes, and soon I heard the click-click of the gypsy woman’s sandals. My mother called out the woman’s name, then added, “Is that you?” “Yes, over here,” came a voice, although I still could see no one. Then, without my seeing her approach, she was right beside me. “Sit over there.” She motioned toward a flat rock. There was no conversation, no hello. No “How are you?” No “What’s going to happen today is going to be very painful, so you must be a brave girl.” No. The Killer Woman was strictly business. Mama grabbed a piece of root from an old tree, then positioned me on the rock. She sat behind me, and pulled my head back against her chest, her legs straddling my body. I circled my arms around her thighs. My mother placed the root between my teeth. “Bite on this.” 44  I was frozen with fear as the memory of Aman’s tortured face suddenly flooded back before me. “This is going to hurt!” I mumbled over the root. Mama leaned over and whispered to me, “You know I can’t hold you. I’m on my own here. So try to be a good girl, baby. Be brave for Mama, and it’ll go fast.” I peered between my legs and saw the gypsy woman getting ready. She looked like any other old Somali woman—with a colorful scarf wrapped around her head and a bright cotton dress—except there was no smile on her face. She looked at me sternly, a dead look in her eyes, then foraged through an old carpet bag. My eyes were fixed on her, because I wanted to know what she was going to cut me with. I expected a big knife, but instead, out of the bag she pulled a tiny cotton sack. She reached inside with her long fingers, and fished out a broken razor blade. Turning it from side to side, she examined it. The sun was barely up now; it was light enough to see colors but no details. However, I saw dried blood on the jagged edge of the blade. She spat on it and wiped it against her dress. While she was scrubbing, my world went dark as my mother tied a scarf around my eyes as a blindfold. The next thing I felt was my flesh, my genitals, being cut away. I heard the sound of the dull blade sawing back and forth through my skin. When I think back, I honestly can’t believe that this happened to me. I feel as if I were talking about somebody else. There’s no way in the world I can explain what it feels like. It’s like somebody is slicing through the meat of your thigh, or cutting off your arm, except this is the most sensitive part of your body. However, I didn’t move an inch, because I remembered Aman and knew there was no escape. And I wanted Mama to be proud of me. I just sat there as if I were made of stone, telling myself the more I moved around, the longer the torture would take. Unfortunately, my legs began to quiver of their own accord, and shake uncontrollably, and I prayed, Please, God, let it be over quickly. Soon it was, because I passed out. 43  When I woke up, I thought we were finished, but now the worst of it had just begun. My blindfold was off and I saw the Killer Woman had piled next to her a stack of thorns from an acacia tree. She used these to puncture holes in my skin, then poked a strong white thread through the holes to sew me up. My legs were completely numb, but the pain between them was so intense that I wished I would die. I felt myself floating up, away from the ground, leaving my pain behind, and I hovered some feet above the scene looking down, watching this woman sew my body back together while my poor mother held me in her arms. At this moment I felt complete peace; I was no longer worried or afraid. My memory ends at that instant, until I opened my eyes and the woman was gone. They had moved me, and I was lying on the ground close to the rock. My legs had been tied together with strips of cloth binding me from my ankles to my hips so I couldn’t move. I looked around for my mother, but she was gone, too, so I lay there alone, wondering what would happen next. I turned my head toward the rock; it was drenched with blood as if an animal had been slaughtered there. Pieces of my meat, my sex, lay on top, drying undisturbed in the sun. I lay there, watching the sun climb directly overhead. There was no shade around me and the waves of heat beat down on my face, until my mother and sister returned. They dragged me into the shade of a bush while they finished preparing my tree. This was the tradition; a special little hut was prepared under a tree, where I would rest and recuperate alone for the next few weeks until I was well. When Mama and Aman had finished working, they carried me inside. I thought the agony was over until I had to pee, then I understood my mother’s advice not to drink too much milk or water. After hours of waiting, I was dying to go, but with my legs tied together I couldn’t move. Mama had warned me not to walk, so that I wouldn’t rip myself open, because if the wound V- 46 is ripped open, then the sewing has to be done again. Believe me, that was the last thing I wanted. “I have to pee-pee,” I called to my sister. The look on her face told me this was not good news. She came and rolled me over on my side and scooped out a little hole in the sand. “Go ahead.” The first drop came out and stung as if my skin were being eaten by acid. After the gypsy sewed me up, the only opening left for urine and menstrual blood was a minuscule hole the diameter of a matchstick. This brilliant strategy ensured that I could never have sex until I was married, and my husband would be guaranteed he was getting a virgin. As the urine collected in my bloody wound and slowly trickled down my legs onto the sand—one drop at a time—I began to sob. Even when the Killer Woman was cutting me to pieces I had never cried, but now it burned so badly I couldn’t take any more. In the evening, as it grew dark, my mother and Aman returned home to the family and I stayed in the hut by myself. But this time, I wasn’t scared of the dark, or the lions or the snakes, even though I was lying there helpless, unable to run. Since the moment when I floated out of my body and watched that old woman sewing my sex together, nothing could frighten me. I simply lay on the hard ground like a log, oblivious to fear, numb with pain, unconcerned whether I would live or die. I couldn’t care less that everyone else was at home laughing by the fire while I lay alone in the dark. As the days dragged on and I lay in my hut, my genitals became infected and I ran a high fever. I faded in and out of consciousness. Dreading the pain of urination, I had held back the urge to pee until my mother said, “Baby, if you don’t pee, then you’re going to die,” so I tried to force myself. If I had to go, and no one was around, then I scooted over an inch or so, rolled myself onto my side and prepared myself for the searing 47 pain I knew was coming. But my wound became so infected for a time that I was unable to urinate at all. Mama brought me food and water for the next two weeks; other than that I lay there alone with my legs still tied together. And waited for the wound to heal. Feverish, bored, and listless, I could do nothing but wonder: Why? What was it all for? At that age I didn’t understand anything about sex. All I knew was that I had been butchered with my mother’s permission, and I couldn’t understand why. Finally, Mama came for me and I shuffled home, my legs still bound together. The first night back at my family’s hut, my father asked, “Flow does it feel?” I assume he was referring to my new state of womanhood, but all I could think about was the pain between my legs. Since I was all of five years old, I simply smiled and didn’t say anything. What did I know about being a woman? Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I knew a lot about being an African woman: I knew how to live quietly with suffering in the passive, helpless manner of a child. For over a month my legs were tied together so my wound would heal. My mother constantly admonished me not to run or jump, so I shuffled along gingerly. Considering I had always been energetic and active, running like a cheetah, climbing trees, jumping over rocks, this was another kind of agony for a young girl—sitting around while all my siblings were playing. But I was so terrified of having to go through the whole process again that I barely moved an inch. Each week Mama checked me to see if I was healing properly. When the ties that bound me were removed from my legs, I was able to look at myself for the first time. I discovered a patch of skin completely smooth except for a scar down the middle like a zipper. And that zipper was definitely closed. My genitals were sealed up like a brick wall that no man would be able to penetrate until my wedding night, when my husband would either cut me open with a knife or force his way in. 48  As soon as I could walk again, I had a mission. I’d been thinking about it every day as I lay there, for all those weeks, ever since the day that old woman butchered me. My mission was to go back to the rock where I’d been sacrificed and search to see if my genitals were still lying there. But they were gone—no doubt eaten by a vulture or hyena, scavengers who are part of the life cycle of Africa. Their role is to clear away carrion, the morbid evidence of our harsh desert existence. Even though I suffered as a result of my circumcision, I was lucky. Things could have been much worse, as they frequently were for other girls. As we traveled throughout Somalia, we met families and I played with their daughters. When we visited them again, the girls were missing. No one spoke the truth about their absence, or even spoke of them at all. They had died as a result of their mutilation—from bleeding to death, shock, infection, or tetanus. Considering the conditions in which the procedure is performed, that isn’t surprising. What’s surprising is that any of us survived. I barely remember my sister Halemo. I was around three, and I remember her being there, then she wasn’t there anymore, but I didn’t understand what had happened to her. Later I learned that when her “special time” came, and the old gypsy woman circumcised her, she bled to death. When I was around ten, I heard the story of my younger cousin’s experience. At the age of six she was circumcised, and afterward one of her brothers came to stay with our family and told us what had happened. A woman came and cut his sister, then she was placed in her hut to recuperate. But her “thingy,” as he called it, began to swell, and the stench coming from her hut was unbearable. At the time he told this story, I didn’t believe him. Why should she smell bad, as this had never happened to me or Aman? Now I realize he was telling the truth: as a result of the filthy conditions the practice is 49 performed in, hacking girls up in the bush, her wound became infected. The awful smell is a symptom of gangrene. One morning, their mother came in to check on her daughter who, as usual, had spent the night alone in her hut. She found the little girl lying dead, her body cold and blue. But before the scavengers could clear away the morbid evidence, her family buried her. 50  5. THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT One morning I woke to the sound of people talking. I stood up from my mat and saw no one, so I decided to investigate. Through the early stillness I tracked the voices, jogging about half a mile to where my mother and father were waving good¬ bye to a group of people walking away. “Who is that, Mama?” I asked, pointing at the back of a slight woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. “Oh, that’s your friend, Shukrin.” “Is her family moving from here?” “No, she’s getting married,” came my mother’s reply. Stunned, I stared at the figures disappearing. I was around thirteen, and Shukrin was only slightly older than me, about fourteen, and I couldn’t believe she was getting married. “To whom?” No one answe