Kitabı oku: «A Woman of Firsts», sayfa 2
I loved it best when Dad came home from work at the end of the day and sat to eat with us by the light of a kerosene lamp as giant moths flapped noisily at the mosquito screens. He’d instruct that the fire be lit on cold nights and burned frankincense to fill the house with the heavenly scent that is thought to be spiritually healing and chase away evil spirits. Sadly, Dad worked so hard that he never seemed to have time to linger, running back to the hospital at the slightest emergency after a hug and a kiss. He was an unusually affectionate man in a society where men are not supposed to show affection in case it’s seen as a sign of weakness. My father loved my mother very much and put up with a lot from her. The youngest and most spoilt of two daughters raised in Aden by Somali parents who were from a small community of Catholics, she was more English than the Queen in many ways and always envisaged a better life. Her sister Cecilia had married a successful businessman from French Somaliland and the couple had moved there to raise a family. By marrying a Muslim and remaining in Somaliland, my mother had tied herself to a life that dictated she should have little of any importance to occupy her days. I know she loved my father very much and it can’t have been easy married to a workaholic who was moved from town to town every two years, but she was often depressed and never stopped complaining.
From an early age I began to appreciate that boys and girls were different, and by that I mean that girls only ever played in small groups in their own homes or back yards up until the age of about eight and the older ones were rarely spotted outside. Instead they were expected to remain inside learning how to be a good wife. That wasn’t for me, so I had no choice but to play on my own until my father erected a long rope swing in our yard, the only one in the neighbourhood, to which local boys would flock. I loved running around with these fellow children of government officials. One of these was Hassan Abdillahi Walanwal Kayd, who was two or three years older than me, taller and more handsome than the others, and one of those I was determined to keep up with. Little did I know then how our paths would collide for much of my life.
Unfortunately, most of them were embarrassed to be seen playing with a girl and chased me away whenever I tried to join in. The only exception was when it came to foraging. Near our house was a little garden that surrounded the grave of some prominent person, and it had a mighty gob tree. Gob means noble and these noble trees not only look majestic but give us shade, food, shelter and wood. The yellow berries are like sweet little cherries so the boys and I would clamber over the wall and throw stones to bring down those delicious fruits.
Neighbours and relatives would often complain to my mother that they had seen me running barefoot in the sandy streets again. ‘How can you allow that, Marian?’ they’d berate. ‘It’s not proper. A girl isn’t brought up to run wild outside and play with boys.’ But my mother couldn’t control me and my father didn’t intend to. Mum would simply chastise me constantly with, ‘Where have you been, Edna?’ Or, ‘Where are you going now? Playing with the boys again, I suppose? Ugh. Well, at least put on some shoes!’ I hated wearing shoes and one of my arguments against them was that spiders and scorpions frequently crawled inside so I was safer without. This meant that my feet were permanently dirty and grazed (along with my knees) and a daily pastime was asking my mother or a servant to pull acacia thorns from my soles.
The neighbourhood girls who’d heard their mothers complain about my inappropriate behaviour soon followed suit, insultingly calling me a ‘wiilo’, which means tomboy. My response was to fight them, which only got me into more trouble. If I couldn’t play with the boys I’d go off exploring and looking for animals in the thorn bushes, only returning to the house to eat some papaya, help myself to some tiin or prickly pear from the yard, or to water from the tank. Nature had always fascinated me and I knew every little lizard, squirrel, frog, rabbit or beetle that lived around our property. On hot languid days in the dry season I liked to sit in the shade of a tree, inhaling the scent of jasmine and listening to the chatter of the yaryaro birds. When it was cooler I’d chase the mini tornados known as sand devils that danced down our street. I was repeatedly warned against the hyenas that came at night looking for food, and wasn’t supposed to stray too far.
My parents never once gave me any pocket money to spend but they did buy me toys, usually blonde blue-eyed dolls, which were fun for a short while. I also had a wooden camel on wheels made by a kind British carpenter. I soon grew tired of these playthings, though, because they didn’t move or interact like my cat or my pet goat Orggi or the wild creatures out in the yard. Something that amused me for hours was making drinking glasses from empty bottles, and little lanterns out of old Player’s cigarettes tins, with a kerosene-soaked wick stuffed inside and a hole in the lid for it to poke through. There were severe shortages after the war and many household items were no longer available in the market, so we learned to improvise. The lanterns were easy to make but their wicks smelled even more noxious than the usual paraffin lamps and were a fire hazard, plus they stained Mum’s white walls with black smoke. I much preferred these kinds of activities to peeling onions or potatoes or beating the dust from the rugs.
From the earliest age I longed for a sibling and, although I was thrilled when my brother Farah arrived, I was crushed when I realized that he was too little to play with. Then my mother fell pregnant again. It is only with the wisdom of hindsight that I have come to understand why she chose to have this child at home with a traditional ‘midwife’ rather than in the safety of a hospital run by her husband. In spite of her cosmopolitan upbringing, in the nine years since her marriage to my father she’d remodelled herself into the archetypal Somali housewife who kept close counsel with her female friends and took too great a heed of their scaremongering. ‘Don’t tell your husband when you go into labour,’ they warned her. ‘He will only take you to hospital and put things inside you. The British doctors already killed one daughter and put a scar on Edna’s face. Call us instead. We’ll bring the midwife and she’ll help you deliver naturally at home.’
The morning that Mum’s waters broke she didn’t say a word to Dad as he completed his customary 6 a.m. ablutions, shaved, and slicked back his hair. As the head of the household, he always had priority in the bathroom. While experiencing labour pains, she cooked his laxoox pancakes made from sorghum flour for breakfast, which we smothered in ghee, honey or jam. She waited for him to dress in his regulation white shorts, white shirt, white socks and polished shoes, knowing that he would then walk to work to arrive punctually at 7 a.m. His hospital was really only a series of Army tents around two brick buildings, one of which was the operating theatre, but whenever I could, I’d walk with Dad all the way down the sandy street to the hospital gate, immensely proud of the meticulously dressed man holding my hand who commanded so much respect in our community. The only thing that would tempt me to break from his side was if I saw the local boys running somewhere, then I’d kiss him goodbye and hurtle off in their direction while he laughed.
Back at home that morning, my mother’s labour pains intensified so she summoned her girlfriends as instructed and they called an umulisso, an elderly woman known as a ‘traditional midwife’ who had no nursing training or qualifications. The servants kept me out of the way as I listened in horror to my mother wailing and grunting for hours, wondering what on earth they were doing to her. The ‘midwife’ finally delivered Mum of a healthy baby boy, but then accidentally dropped the slippery baby, killing him instantly when he landed on his head. I was six years old and will never forget my mother’s screams. The women tried to calm her as the midwife wrapped her otherwise perfect baby boy in the tiny blanket that would become his shroud.
‘He’s so beautiful!’ I declared, when I crept into the room and stood over the tiny body in the crib, not much bigger than my doll. ‘Can I keep him?’ Someone pushed me out of the room and told a servant to run to the hospital and tell my father the news. The message Dad received was, ‘Come home and bury your son.’ In the Muslim faith, a body is buried within twenty-four hours of death. As my father knew nothing of the birth he immediately assumed that Farah had been killed in an accident and half-expected to find his mangled body. Running home, a thousand possibilities raced through his mind, he was overwhelmed with relief when – in a house of weeping women – he discovered Farah alive and well, but then shattered to learn that the infant son he didn’t know he had was dead because of the carelessness of an untrained woman.
At such a tender age, I was appalled at the idea of my baby brother being taken away to be buried in the ground, and created quite a scene at the house. ‘Why do you have to take him? Don’t take him away! I want to keep him!’ I cried, until my grandmother Baada pulled me away and the burial proceeded as planned.
My paternal grandmother Baada was kindness itself and I learned so much from her. She was an eloquent woman who taught me my first words and the names of plants, as well as songs, rhymes and stories. She lived close by all her life and would come to our house every morning, bringing me treats she hid from my mother. One look at her face and I’d know she was carrying something – most likely sweets made out of caramel with lumps of sugar and nuts. She also taught me how to be curious, offering me a choice between something I knew or something I didn’t. I’d almost always opt for the thing I didn’t know. I still do.
My disapproving mother frequently guessed that she had given me something and would protest, but I didn’t care. I loved my grandmother. We had a conspiracy together behind my mother’s back. It was our little secret. What I didn’t yet know was how many other secrets there were in female Somali society, the darkest of which was being kept from me.
CHAPTER TWO
Borama, British Somaliland, 1945
Some of my happiest childhood memories are of drinking fresh cow’s milk during our long summer holidays in Borama, near the border with Ethiopia, where my grandmother Clara and grandfather Yusuf lived. I remember going with the maid to collect the frothy warm nectar from Granddad’s cows and helping myself to as much as I liked. I’m sure my father would have disapproved. He always insisted – as I do now – that any milk intended for his children had to be boiled first to avoid contamination. To this day, though, and even after all my years of training as a nurse and public health practitioner, I occasionally sneak a drink of fresh, unboiled camel milk.
The reason we spent so much time in Borama in the northwestern Awdal province was because the British had posted my grandfather there after the Italians left Somaliland. Having trained as a signalman and radio operator Yusuf had served the British in both wars and was awarded a military medal for ‘meritorious service to the Crown’. Then he became Somaliland’s Postmaster-General. Although our country was liberated, the war was still raging elsewhere and his expertise in logistics was needed to facilitate the East Africa Campaign. He soon fell in love with the lush green meadows of Borama fringed by purple mountains and decided to buy a farm and some milking cows, summoning Clara to join him.
My mother would leave us with our grandparents for two months each summer so that she could visit friends in Aden, or her sister Cecilia in Djibouti City in French Somaliland. She may have become a good Muslim and embraced all the traditions and rituals, but she sorely missed the country and lifestyle of her childhood in Aden. Sending us away each year must have been a welcome respite from the nuisance I’d become. Not that I was any less of a problem for my grandparents. Borama was a holiday town and kids from all over Somaliland and from Djibouti City descended for the summer months. I sometimes hung out with girls, but it was still the company of boys that I liked the best. When one time the local gang wouldn’t let me play football with them I retaliated by snatching their ball made of bound rags and ran home with it. I locked myself in the toilet and threatened to throw their ball into the pit unless they agreed to let me join in. My mother was still there then and she had to intervene. After much pleading, she got me to open the door and give back the ball. From then on, one of the boys would grab it whenever I approached their game, afraid that I’d snatch it once more.
One day these boys came to me with an unusual gesture of friendship and asked if I wanted to join them. This was too good to be true and I jumped at the chance. A few minutes after our game of football started on a patch of waste ground, they told me they were going to pick some watermelons from a nearby field and that if I helped carry some home, we’d return to our game sooner. Naturally I agreed, hoping that I’d finally been accepted. I innocently followed them through a gap in a fence and offered to carry the largest of the watermelons in my upturned skirt, as it was too heavy to carry in my arms. As I was tottering back with a fruit that weighed almost as much as I did, the farmer suddenly grabbed me by the scruff of my dress.
The boys melted away, leaving me to face the irate landowner who marched me back to my grandparents’ house carrying the melon as proof of my guilt. I tried to explain and swore that I’d never stolen anything, but my grandparents almost died of shame. When he complained that kids trespassed almost daily to help themselves to his crop, they had no option but to compensate him for the loss of God knows how many melons he claimed I’d taken. The disappointment on my grandparents’ faces was worse than any punishment they could have meted out. I had to listen to them telling me over and over that they couldn’t understand why I’d steal when everything I could want to eat was available on our own table.
In spite of this salutary lesson, as the oldest in our group of neighbourhood friends and the big sister to Farah, I was the Pied Piper for all our adventures. These included the time a group of us unknowingly picked poisonous berries and all returned home with swollen lips. I took the blame for not supervising the others carefully enough, and from then on we weren’t allowed to eat anything we picked until we’d brought it home for adults to inspect and either confirm or confiscate.
Then there was the day that nine of us wandered into the bush and completely lost our way. Boy, I never lived that one down. Even though we’d eaten a full breakfast, we always had room for delicious wild berries. As we picked more and more, we wandered near the path of the donkey caravans on their way to collect water at the wells on the outskirts of town. The herders instantly identified us as town kids because of the way we dressed, and were surprised to find us still in the forest several hours later when they returned.
Seeing that some of the younger ones were crying, and others had slumped down through exhaustion and thirst, they stopped to ask what we were doing there so late in the afternoon. ‘Who brought you here? Why aren’t you at home?’ they asked, clearly concerned. I told them that although I knew where the sun rose and set, I couldn’t tell in the woods and none of us had a clue how to get back to town. With night falling and knowing that hyenas or lions could start to pick us off, the donkey herders scooped up the youngest children and sat them on their beasts while telling we older ones to walk fast, stick together, and follow their caravan. We trudged along the dusty track used by generations of nomads, past colonies of noisy baboons, and finally reached town just before sunset. We found the whole district in a state of panic, and distressed parents who’d been searching everywhere for us berated me. ‘How could you be so stupid to stray so far?’ As the eldest child, I was given the harshest scolding but the worst punishment was that our neighbours warned their kids never to follow ‘crazy Edna’ again if I ever tried to lead them beyond the trees they then set as landmarks at the edge of the forest.
Despite these occasional mishaps, Farah and I loved it in Borama far from the heat of a city, especially when we were able to have as much fresh milk as we liked. My grandmother made the most delicious butter, boiling the milk then skimming off the cream and churning it just like Mohammed the Indian had done with ice cream. When she wasn’t cooking or caring for us, Clara worked in the local hospital, interpreting for the English-speaking medical staff, so I would happily tag along with her in her long Somali dress, eager to hear their cries when we approached of ‘Ayeeyo timid!’ (Grandma is here!). I watched as she’d sit with the patients before translating for the staff. It was painstaking work but she was caring, kind and gentle. How could I not go into medicine with such remarkable role models?
Her only sadness, I think, was the way my grandfather treated her. She was unusually meek in his presence and still he picked on her. He’d complain, ‘Why is lunch cold?’ or ‘Where’s my coat, woman?’ My mother took after him far more than she did Clara. If ever I had a problem, I’d go to my grandmother, who was my ally and my friend.
***
Coming from a household of two different religions was an interesting experience for a child. My father was very religious and at every call to prayer he would stop what he was doing to kneel on his mat. He also attended the mosque every Friday and, as a family, we marked Ramadan and Eid.
My grandparents – and occasionally my mother – would go to mass, sing hymns and receive a blessing from the priest, and we also celebrated Christmas and Easter, showing respect for all. Then for the Islamic feasts the cook Ali would slaughter a sheep and people would come to our house to help break the fast. My father was always extremely generous to those who had less than us and usually invited six or seven poor families to take away packages of meat, dates and bread – food many of them came to rely on.
One day when we were expecting guests for lunch, I came upon Ali about to carve up my pet goat Orggi, which he’d already caught and slaughtered. When I became hysterical and tried to stop him, he told me that my kid was to be cooked for the feast. I was eventually pulled away from the scene kicking and screaming, but continued to howl until Dad came home. ‘They killed my friend and are going to feed him to the guests!’ I wailed. Goodness alone knows what he thought. In spite of his attempts to comfort me, I couldn’t understand how Dad could allow them do such a thing to my playmate. I never got over it.
Even though my father worked every day and stayed late, people who needed him out of hours would still seek him out, so there was often someone knocking at the door with a problem. No matter if he was hungry and about to put a spoon to his mouth, if someone called he’d put it down, rise from his chair and tend to their needs. My mother hated that. She often claimed that the hospital was his first wife and that he spent more time there than with us. ‘Where are you running off to again? Why even bother to come home?’ she’d say, or ask, ‘Why do you have to do this? Why can’t someone else do it?’ She considered the patients who called at our house trespassers on our privacy and complained bitterly that this was our home, not a hospital. ‘Besides, what if one of them brings disease into our house?’ she’d cry, exasperated.
Dad never argued with her and tried to explain that people couldn’t help it if they got sick at all times of the day and night. He was passionate about his work and he loved to be needed. With an open face and an open heart, smiling and happy, he’d never turn someone away or tell them, ‘I’m too busy, come and see me tomorrow.’ Instead, he’d sit and listen to their problems. My father was just as generous with his money. There were so many people on his list of charitable donations each month that he must surely have lost count. People I thought were relatives often turned out to be the orphans of a school friend or the wife of a football teammate who was on hard times whose bills were being paid for by Dad.
Everyone assumed he was extremely wealthy, which only led to more name calling by some of the kids in my neighborhood, who’d say, ‘Why do you want to play with us, rich girl?’ I remember running home to ask my mother what their insult meant. She explained that we weren’t as poor as many others, adding somewhat bitterly that we’d be even richer if my father wasn’t quite so generous with our money.
In the same magnanimous way, Dad decided to help improve the education of some local boys and our younger male cousins by hiring a teacher to come to our house every afternoon, except Friday. These boys already attended the local school – forbidden for girls – but the teaching there was limited and Dad hoped to expand their horizons. He paid for a blackboard, chalk and textbooks, and set everything up on our verandah where the pupils squatted on the cement floor with their books on their knees. Many of them were the boys I tagged along with, including Hassan Kayd, so whenever they stopped kicking an old tennis ball around in the dust to hurry to lessons at my house, I would follow. I think now that this was my father’s intention all along.
It was for me to choose whether to carry on playing outside or be curious enough to see what the boys were doing. He knew I had an enquiring mind and hoped that this would pull me in the right direction. So, from the age of six or seven I’d sit on the edge of the verandah listening in or writing out my alphabet as I learned English, how to do calculations, and discovered a bit more about the world. The teacher never told me that I couldn’t be there, but if I ever tried to answer a question he’d shush me and tell me not to interfere. I knew my place; I was allowed to stay because it was my father’s house but I couldn’t take part – even if I knew more of the answers than the rest. My mother didn’t mind me joining in either because it meant a couple of hours’ peace, and stopped me from running wild in the streets.
Those lessons were such a revelation to me. In a colonial region where people spoke and wrote in either Arabic, English, Italian or French, we Somalis didn’t yet have a written language of our own, just an oral one. It seemed like magic then that I could put letters from the English alphabet together to make a word, and then words together to make a sentence. Newly inspired, I’d pick up a book from my father’s bookcase and flick through the pages looking for a ‘T’ or an ‘S’ and then – oh my gosh – there they were! Every day brought a new discovery and I remember the moment I spelled out the word for cat, and was so excited because I had one of those. Reading opened up the miracle of forming something meaningful in my head. I’d always spoken a little English, but now I was able to decipher the mysteries of the alphabet and the secret language between my parents.
‘Could you leave me some M-O-N-E-Y before you go?’ Mum would ask my dad, and I could finally understand what she was asking for. Enthused with my newfound knowledge, I began to read my mother’s Illustrated London News, Woman, and Woman’s Own magazines, which had to be read with the greatest care and passed on unspoiled to the next woman whose name was listed on the cover. I loved those 1940s magazines with their Western fashions, hats and colourful clothes. The lives they depicted seemed like a million miles away from my own in hot, dusty Somaliland.
I wanted to read everything I could after that. I still do. My brain was hungry for knowledge and information. I needed to feed that hunger and when my parents saw me staring intently at the pages of a book, they asked what I was doing. ‘Reading, of course,’ I replied.
‘Let’s see what you’re reading,’ my father said, thinking I was just pretending but, to his amazement, he found that I was reading and learning to pronounce new words. There then began an ongoing family discussion about what to do with a girl who was teaching herself to read in a country where there were no schools for girls. Both my parents had been educated and recognized my yearning. After much debate, they decided to send me to a mission school. I think my mother hoped that the discipline would be the making of me, while my father hoped it would open the door to higher education and eventually nursing. Little did he know.
***
Djibouti City was four hundred kilometres away from Hargeisa, but it was the natural choice for my schooling rather than Aden because I could lodge with my Aunt Cecilia. Her businessman husband had been killed several years earlier in a road accident while she was pregnant with her fourth child. When the shipment he was transporting to Ethiopia was looted after the accident, she lost the income from it too. Widowed and penniless, she never remarried and single-handedly raised all her children – Rita, Sonny, Tony and Madeleine who were older than me but familiar from family visits.
The first I knew that I was going to be educated was when my parents asked me if I’d like to go home with my cousins after their summer holiday that year. It must have been 1945, and although the war was still going on elsewhere, our corner of Africa was safe.
‘Really?’ I asked, astonished.
‘Yes, really,’ my father confirmed. ‘Well, you want to go to school, don’t you?’
This momentous event happened in my eighth year, which proved to be the most significant of my entire life. Going to a proper school for the first time felt like such a milestone. I had never been out of Somaliland, so from the moment I left my eyes were like saucers at the wonder of it all. To make ends meet, Aunt Cecilia worked as a dressmaker and a teacher in a domestic science school. For extra income, she took me in and, later, my brother Farah. She also homed my cousins Gracie and her brother Maurice – the motherless children of an uncle whose wife had died in childbirth – all of us sharing one large apartment that was permanently filled with music, chatter and noise. My aunt was a most resourceful woman and another powerful role model. She had the energy of twenty horses and her determination helped shape me.
Cecilia ran our lives like a military operation. Speaking only English and French so that I’d learn my two new languages quickly, she paired me up with the older kids to do chores such as polish our shoes and make our own beds. We sat at the big table in the living room to do our homework after school, and in the evenings we learned how to crochet or knit by the light of Tilley lamps. If we wanted her to make us something to wear then we had to hem it ourselves, sew the buttons on, and fold it neatly for her – or there would be no garment. My mother never taught me things like that, so I didn’t take to everything at first but soon got the hang of it.
My first day at the École de la Nativité run by Franciscan nuns in white habits was overwhelming chiefly because it was full of white kids, and most of them boys. I had only ever seen one or two white people before – men who sometimes worked with Dad – but I don’t think I’d ever seen white children. There must have been over a hundred pupils in the school – French, Somali, American, Italian, Greek, Jewish, Armenian, Ethiopian, and a few Arabs from Yemen. I was the only girl from Somaliland. Boys and girls sat together in the same class, a fact that further inflamed my relatives back in Somaliland who considered this lack of segregation scandalous. My mother Marian, already the target of their criticism, could only sigh and blame my father once more. How she must have longed for a ‘normal’ daughter who’d stay home, learn to cook, marry young and produce a healthy brood of grandchildren.
There was so much to take in at the École and my brain was like a sponge, soaking up everything. My cousin Madeleine, who was four years my senior (and my childhood heroine), attended the same school, so I didn’t have to face it alone. The hardest thing to deal with was that overnight my world suddenly became French and I learned about Napoleon, Jeanne d’Arc, the three Louis’ and Charlemagne in a language that was foreign to me. I studied the geography of France, recited the prayers of the French catechism and learned more about Islam. I was taught respect for all beings, all faiths. After a faltering start, I did well enough to jump up a year in my class and then again.
Life in Djibouti City opened up a whole new world to me. I couldn’t wait to start my day and learn something new; I wanted to experience all that life had to offer. I was forever running around with loads of energy and few, if any, inhibitions. The nuns, each known as Sister (or in French Soeur) were all very different. I met one of them, Marie Thérèse who taught us maths and became Mother Superior, again in 1991 and asked if she remembered me. She grimaced, ‘Of course, Edna – you were toujours turbulente!’
Little did she know just how turbulent I would become.
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