Desert Flower (6 page)

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 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 I

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 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.

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 grownup 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, 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 circumcision. 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 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.

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, I 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, 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.”

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.