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Authors: Waris Dirie

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

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BOOK: Desert Flower
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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 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.

 

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 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.

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 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.

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 live 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. 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 essential 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 out society. You simply cannot live in the desert without them. As one Somali poet put it:

A she-cared is a mother

To him who owns it

Whereas a he-cared 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 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.

 

“his constant movement was driven by the need lo 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.

BOOK: Desert Flower
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ads

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