Read Desert Flower Online

Authors: Waris Dirie

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Cultural Heritage

Desert Flower (10 page)

BOOK: Desert Flower
11.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

When I arrived in the neighborhood, I quickly found a market and strolled through examining the food, deciding what I would buy with the last of my precious Somali shillings. Finally, I bought some milk at a stall run by two women; I chose them because their milk was the best price. But when I took the first sip of it, I knew something was fishy it didn’t taste right. “What’s wrong with this milk?” I asked.

“Nothing! Nothing is wrong with our milk!” “Ah, come on. One thing I know about is milk. It doesn’t taste right. Did you put water in it or something?” Finally they admitted they mixed the milk with water so they could sell it cheaper. Their customers didn’t mind. Our conversation continued and I told them I’d come to the capital to find my sister, asking if they knew Aman.

“Yeah, I thought you looked familiar!” one of the

 

women cried. I laughed, because when we were little, I was the spitting image of my sister. They knew her because she came to that market every day. The milk lady called to her young son and told him to show me where my sister lived. “Take her to Aman’s house, then come straight back here!” she commanded the boy.

We walked along the quiet streets; by now it was siesta time and people were resting from the heat of midday. The boy pointed out a tiny shack. I walked inside the house and found my sister asleep. Shaking her arm, I woke her up. “What are you doing here…” she said groggily, looking at me as if I were a dream. I sat down on the bed and told her my story, that I had run away just as she did many years ago. At last I had someone to talk to who I knew would understand. She would understand that at thirteen, I just couldn’t bring myself to marry this stupid old man for Papa’s sake.

Aman told me how she had come to Mogadishu and found her own husband. He was a good, quiet man who worked hard. She was expecting their first child, which was due in about a month. But when she stood up, she certainly didn’t appear to be a woman about to give birth. At six foot two, she merely seemed tall and elegant, and in her

 

loose African dress, she didn’t even look pregnant. I remember thinking how beautiful she was, and hoped I carried my baby so well when I was expecting.

After we talked for a while, I finally worked up the courage to ask the question I’d been dying to ask: “Aman, please. I don’t want to go back can I stay here with you?”

“So you ran away and left Mama with all the work,” she said sadly. But she agreed I could stay as long as I needed. Her cramped place had two rooms: a tiny one where I slept and another room she shared with her husband. We seldom saw him, however; he left in the morning and went to work, came home for lunch, took a nap, then went back to work, returning late in the evening. When he was in the house he had so little to say that I can barely remember anything about him his name even, or what he did for a living.

Aman gave birth to a beautiful little girl and I helped take care of the baby. I also cleaned the house and carried our clothes outside and scrubbed them, hanging them on the line to dry.

I went to the market and did the shopping, learning the fine art of haggling with the vendors over prices. Mimicking the locals, I walked up to a stand and immediately demanded, “How much?”

 

The ritual might as well have been scripted, because every day it was the same: a mama places in front of me three tomatoes, one big one and two smaller ones, and quotes me the price I’d expect to pay for three camels.

“Ah, too much,” I’d respond with a bored look and a wave of my hand.

“Well, come, come, come, how much you wanna pay?”

“Two fifty.”

“Oh, no, no, no! Now come on…” At this point I’d make a great show of walking away and talking to the other vendors with keen interest, always in direct view of my target. And then I’d go back and pick up where I left off, arguing until one of us got tired and gave in.

My sister constantly mentioned her concern for our mother; she worried that since I’d run away, Mama was stuck doing all the work alone. Whenever she brought up this subject, it was as if the sole blame for the situation rested on me. I shared her worry over Mama, but Aman never mentioned that she’d run away, also. Forgotten memories of our childhood years together came back to me now. Much had changed in the five or so years since I’d last seen her, but to Aman I was still the same goofy little sister she’d left behind;

 

meanwhile, she would always, always be the oldest and the wisest. It became clear to me that even though we looked alike, our personalities were nothing alike. I grew resentful of her constant bossiness. When Papa tried to marry me off to the old man, I ran away because I thought there had to be more to life. And cooking, washing, and taking care of babies something I’d already had plenty of with my little brothers and sisters was not what I had in mind.

One day I left Aman’s to find out what else fate had in store for me. I didn’t discuss it with her; I didn’t tell her I was leaving I simply walked out one morning and never came back. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I didn’t know then that I’d never see her again.

 

o

MOGADISHU

While I was living with Aman, she took me to visit some of our other relatives who were living in Mogadishu. For the first time in my life, I was able to meet some of my mother’s family. She grew up in the capital with her mother, four brothers, and four sisters.

I’m grateful I got to know my grandmother while I was in Mogadishu. Today, she’s around ninety years old, but when I first met her, she was in her seventies. Granny is a complete mama. Her face is light-skinned, and shows that she’s a tough cookie, a woman of character and strong will. Her hands look like she’s been digging in the

 

earth so long that they’ve developed crocodile hide.

My grandmother grew up in one of the Arab countries, but I don’t know which one. She’s a devout Moslem, prays five times a day facing Mecca, and always wears a dark veil over her face when she leaves the house; she’s covered up from head to toe. I used to tease her: “Granny, are you okay? You sure you know where you’re going? Can you see through that thing?”

“Oh, come, come, come,” she’d bark. “This thing is completely see-through.”

“Good so you can breathe and everything?” I’d laugh.

Staying at my grandmother’s house, I realized where Mama got her strength. My grandfather had been dead many years, and Granny lived alone, taking care of everything by herself. And when I went to visit her, she’d wear me out. As soon as we got up in the morning she was ready to go. She’d start in on me right away: “Get going. Come on, Waris. Let’s go.”

Granny lived in a neighborhood of Mogadishu that was a good distance from the market. Each day we’d shop for food, and I’d say, “Come on, Granny let’s take it easy and ride the bus. It’s hot and the market’s too far from here to walk.”

 

“What!? Bus! Now, come, come, come. Let’s go. Young girl like you, wanting to take the bus. What are you complaining about? You’re getting lazy these days, Waris. All you children today I don’t know what’s wrong with you. When I was your age, oh, I’d walk for miles and miles..” girl, are you coming with me or not?” So off we went together, because if I dawdled, she was obviously going to go without me. On the way home, I’d come trudging along behind her, carrying the bags.

After I left Mogadishu, one of my mother’s sisters died, leaving nine children. My grandmother took care of these kids, raising them just as she did her own. She’s a mama and she did what had to be done.

I met another one of her sons, Mama’s brother Wolde’ab. I had gone to the market one day, and when I returned, he was sitting at my grandmother’s with one of my cousins on his lap. Even though I’d never seen him before, I ran to him, because suddenly here was this man who looked exactly like my mother and I was desperate for anything that reminded me of Mama. I ran to him, and since I also look very much like my mother, it was a wonderful but strange moment, like looking in some sort of crazy, distorted

 

mirror. He had heard that I’d run away and was staying in Mogadishu. As I came closer to him, he said, “Is this who I think it is?” That afternoon I laughed more than I had since I left home, because not only did Uncle Wolde’ab look like my mother, he had her silly sense of humor. The brother and sister must have been quite a team growing up, cracking everyone in the family up till they cried, and I wish I could have seen them together.

But it was to Aunt L’uul’s home that I went the morning I ran away from my sister’s. Shortly after I arrived in Mogadishu, we had gone there together for a visit. The day I left Aman’s, I decided that I would go to Aunt L’uul’s house and ask if I could stay with her. She was my aunt by marriage, since she was married to my mother’s brother, Uncle Sayyid. However, she spent her days raising their three children alone, as he was living in Saudi Arabia. Because the economy in Somalia was so poor, Uncle worked in Saudi and sent money back home to support his family. Unfortunately, he was away the whole time I lived in Mogadishu, so I never got to meet him.

When I arrived, Aunt L’uul was surprised, but she seemed genuinely glad to see me. “Auntie, things aren’t working out very well between

 

Aman and me, and I wondered if I could stay here with you for a while.”

“Well, yes, you know I’m here by myself with the children. Sayyid is gone most of the time and I could use a hand. That would be nice.” Immediately I felt relieved; Aman had grudgingly let me stay with her, but I knew she didn’t like the situation. Her place was too tiny, and she was still a relative newlywed. Besides, what she really wanted was for me to go back home, to ease her conscience about running away from Mama all those years ago.

Staying first at Aman’s, then Auntie L’uul’s, I got accustomed to life indoors. At first, the confinement of living in a house seemed strange to me having my view of the sky blocked by a ceiling, the space I could move around in limited by walls, the brush and animal smells of the desert replaced by the sewage and carbon monoxide smells of a crowded city. Auntie’s place was somewhat bigger than Aman’s, but still not spacious by any means. And even though the facilities offered me new luxuries keeping warm at night and dry when it rained they were primitive by contemporary Western standards. My respect for water

 

continued, as it remained a precious commodity. We purchased it from a vendor who transported his wares through the neighborhood by donkey, then we stored the water outside in a barrel. The family dipped it out sparingly for bathing, cleaning, making tea, cooking. In the small kitchen, Auntie prepared meals on a camp stove using bottled gas. In the evening, we sat around the house and talked by kerosene lamps, as there was no electricity. The toilet was typical of this part of the world: a hole in the floor where the waste fell and remained stinking in the heat. Bathing meant carrying a bucket of water in from the barrel outside, and sponging off, letting the excess run down the hole into the toilet.

Soon after I arrived at Auntie Uuul’s, I realized I was getting more than I’d bargained for when I asked for a place to stay. I was also getting a full time job as babysitter for her three rotten children. Well, I guess I couldn’t really categorize the little baby as rotten, but its behavior distressed me all the same.

Each morning Auntie got up around nine, and right after breakfast she gleefully left the house to visit her friends. Then she spent the entire day with these women, gossiping endlessly about their friends, enemies, acquaintances, and neighbors.

 

Eventually she meandered back home in the evening. While she was gone, the three-month old baby cried constantly, wanting to be fed. When I held it, it started sucking me. Every day I would say, “Look, Auntie for God’s sake you’ve got to do something. The baby’s trying to suck me every time I pick it up, and I don’t have any milk. I don’t even have any breasts!”

“Well, don’t worry. Just give him some milk,” she said pleasantly.

Besides cleaning the house, and taking care of the baby, there was a nine-year-old and a six-year old to look after. And these two were like wild animals. They had no idea how to behave, because obviously their mother never taught them anything. I tried to rectify this situation immediately by whipping their ass every chance I got. But after years of running around like hyenas, they were not going to become little angels over night.

As the days passed, I got more and more frustrated. I wondered how many more of these hopeless situations I was going to have to go through before something positive happened. I was always looking for a way to make things better, push myself forward, and find whatever that mysterious opportunity was that I knew was waiting for me. Every day I wondered, “When is it

 

going to happen? Is it today? Tomorrow? Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?” Why I thought this, I’ve never known. I guess at that time I thought everyone had these voices inside them. But as far back as I can remember, I always knew my life was going to be different from those around me; I just had no idea how different.

My stay with Aunt L’uul reached a crisis after I’d been there about a month. Late one afternoon, as Auntie was off making her rounds of the gossip mill, the oldest child, her nine-year old daughter, disappeared. First I went outside and called her. When she didn’t reply, I started walking through the neighborhood looking for her. Finally, I found her in a tunnel with a young boy. She was a strong-minded, inquisitive child, and by the time I caught up to her, she had become very inquisitive about this little boy’s anatomy. I marched into the tunnel, grabbed her arm, and jerked her to her feet; the boy took off running like a frightened animal. All the way back to the house I whipped my cousin with a switch, as I had never been so disgusted with a child in my life.

That evening when her mother came home, the daughter cried about the spanking I had given her. Aunt L’uul was furious. “Why are you spanking this child?” she demanded. “You keep your

 

hands off my baby or I’m going to beat you up and see how you like it!” she shouted, and came toward me menacingly.

BOOK: Desert Flower
11.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Ghosts of Athens by Richard Blake
Coaching Missy by Ellie Saxx
Tug of Attraction by Ashlyn Chase
The Galloping Ghost by Carl P. LaVO
Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham
Un mal paso by Alejandro Pedregosa
The Four Million by O. Henry
Dark Frame by Iris Blaire