Don't Tell Me You're Afraid (5 page)

F
ROM
THE
DAY
he was wounded, it was clear that Aabe would no longer be able to go to work. He had lost the use of his foot, of which little more than a stump remained. From now on, he would have to lean on a stick to walk.

He would no longer be able to pull the cart with the clothes. His future would be the house, the courtyard.

After a lifetime spent together, day after day, Yassin would get up alone and by himself walk an hour to reach the Xamar Weyne market.

The first days were tough.

Aabe had withdrawn into a silence full of suppressed anger. Every so often, in the countless hours spent sitting in the wicker chair in the courtyard, he'd be seized with rage and would hurl his stick with all his might, as if it were a javelin. It would strike the wall and end up on the ground, too far away to reach. Until Hooyo recovered it for him.

In those awful days Aabe was always mute, mortified, and
inert. It was impossible to talk to him; he chased us away; he even chased me away, his darling little girl.

Only once did he come out with words that made Hooyo's tears flow. “I'm a useless object, incapable of moving, like a car without wheels.”

Yassin was desperate. At first he did everything he could to try to help him. He'd even offered to make the trip to the market twice, once with his cart and a second time with Aabe's. Then he gave up; he saw that it would take time. A long time, an infinite time.

It took three months.

One evening, after supper, while we girls were playing
shentral,
Aabe asked Yassin to go get the cards; he wanted to play a game.

It was the first time he'd spoken to someone since it had all happened.

Yassin as usual was near the
burgico,
staring at the coals flickering and crackling.

When he heard Aabe speak, he stood up and, without saying a word, went to get the cards and table and brought them to where his friend was sitting.

They played three hands of
scopa,
a card game that the Italians had taught their fathers and that some people still knew. They played without saying a word.

Then Aabe won, or Yassin let him win (no one was ever able to say), and Aabe banged his fist on the table and said in his deep voice: “A toast! To your usual shameless good luck. I lose a foot and win at
scopa.
May a thousand liters of boiling
shaat
fall on your head.”

From that day on, slowly but surely, everything went back to being the way it had always been.

Aabe and Yassin became best friends again and, with their friendship, everything else fell into place.

One evening, when Aabe had grown used to going out and being seen in the neighborhood with the cane that he still despised, Yassin came to our parents' room.

After a while we were all called in; Yassin wanted us to hear.

In a broken voice he said that he would be indebted to our family for the rest of his life and that he would like to take care of us but didn't know how he could; his resources were barely enough for his children.

Then he took an envelope from a pouch and handed it to Hooyo.

She looked at Aabe, who nodded; then she opened it. It contained money.

“It's all I have,” Yassin said, “but I beg you to accept it in front of your family as a symbol of my gratitude for having saved me, brother Yusuf.”

Aabe looked at him in silence with a faint smile on his lips. “Call your children in, but first dry those tears,” he told him as he settled himself comfortably in the wicker chair.

When Alì and his brothers arrived, Aabe cleared his throat. “It is thanks to you, my friend,” he began, “that I am still alive to realize that this war cannot be right.”

Yassin's sons looked at one another.

Nassir had sat down on the ground and Alì had gone to sit between his legs; he looked up at Aabe, not understanding what was happening.

“How is it possible that my brothers can almost kill an Abgal like themselves?” Aabe went on, drawing Alì's attention. “This stump is testimony to the fact that the war cannot be right.”

Then Aabe called me and Alì into the center of the room.

He ordered us to shake hands and hug each other.

We were bewildered. Alì, withdrawn as usual, didn't tear his eyes away from his bare feet.

Then he obeyed. He held out his hand without looking at me.

I shook it.

“Now promise me,” Aabe continued, “that you, an Abgal, and you, a Darod, will live forever in peace. That you will never hate each other and never hate the other clans.”

Hands still tightly clasped, we promised.

Then Aabe asked if we knew that war was the result of hatred that makes people blind and content only with blood.

Together we said yes.

Finally he asked: “Do you know that we are all Somali brothers, regardless of tribes and clans? Well, Samia? Alì?” he thundered like when he was angry. “Do you know that?”

“Yes,” Alì said in a faint voice, still staring at the floor.

“Yes,” I echoed him.

Then Aabe asked Hodan to sing us a song, there in the bedroom.

There were so many of us, packed in tightly. Fourteen people crowded in a small room with two mattresses on the floor and mud walls, talking about peace and hope while outside there was a war.

This too was Aabe.

 • • • 

M
Y
MOTHER
HAD
already made up her mind, and in any case there weren't many alternatives.

She didn't like the idea of selling men's clothes; she said it wasn't a proper job for a woman. So, after repeated urging by Yassin, she decided that she would start selling fruits and vegetables.

At first Yassin gave her his produce to sell.

Then she gradually began to acquire it on her own, buying it in the evening from the farm workers in the area, at the same prices Yassin paid after twenty years of work.

Some weeks later, Hooyo went along with a woman friend who had a stall in another district, off limits to the Darod but even busier than Xamar Weyne: Abde Aziz.

And she became a fruits and vegetables vendor.

We lived that way for more than a year, poorer than we'd ever been, until everything changed in my life and Hodan's.

I won my first race and she got engaged to Hussein, a Darod boy from a good family who played in her band.

T
HE
DAY
I
TURNED
T
EN
was also the day of the race through the city's districts. The war was increasingly violent, and everything was becoming more difficult, even organizing the annual race, which for me was the most important thing in the world: In fact, sixteen months had passed since the previous one, rather than twelve. With the war, even the length of a year changed: Time stretched out as the violence dragged on.

Throughout that period Alì was a good coach.

He knew when to force me to go on exercising even though I'd had enough, and at the same time he understood how to motivate me.

I trained and trained during those months; I wanted to win at all costs.

To win for me. To win to prove to myself and everyone else that the war could put an end to some things but not everything. To win to make Aabe and Hooyo happy.

Aabe must have sensed my agitation because that morning he called me over to him and told me that he knew one day I would become a champion. He had never said anything like that before.
He'd been tender at times, but he had never gone so far as to encourage me.

From the pocket of his khaki pants he pulled out a white Nike headband, the kind you wear over your forehead to absorb the sweat.

It must have been left over from the clothes that he was no longer able to sell, piled up along with a thousand other odds and ends in the big room next to that of Alì and his brothers.

I hugged him tightly. His cane, leaning against the back of his wicker chair, almost fell over.

“Samia, if you win today, I promise you that the next race you run will be with a pair of new sneakers,” he said, settling the band on my head as if it were a crown.

I couldn't believe my ears.

A new pair was something I had never even dreamed of owning. I was running with sneakers that no longer fit Said and that had already been worn by Abdi and Shafici. This meant that the right shoe had a hole at the toe and the left had a sole so worn that it was like running barefoot. I felt everything I stepped on: pebbles, seeds, branches, twigs, everything. And I lost my concentration, because I had to be careful to steer clear of animal bones or cans of motor oil tossed along the street and watch out for crevices or deep, gaping holes in the ground.

“I promise I'll do everything I can to deserve the shoes, Aabe,” I vowed, touching the terrycloth headband with my fingers to convince myself it was real.

“Just how far do you hope to go, hmm?” he asked me, squeezing my cheeks with his big hand and wagging my face from side to side. He was joking, but I took it seriously, as always when it came to running.

“Aabe, I'm ten years old now.”

“Yes, and that's another reason why if you win . . .”

I didn't let him finish. “I'm ten and you'll see, when I'm seventeen I'll run in the Olympics. That's how far I want to go.”

He started laughing.

“Aabe, I'm going to run in the 2008 Olympics, when I'm seventeen. That's my goal,” I repeated that morning. “You'll see.” I paused. “In fact, one day I'll even win.”

“So tell me . . . where will the 2008 Olympics be held, here in Somalia?” he asked wryly, knowing full well that wasn't possible.

“No. In China,” I said, still fingering the headband.

“Ah, in China. So you're going to China, then?”

“Of course, I can't run in the Chinese Olympics from here, Aabe.”

At that point he looked at me seriously. He'd finally realized that I wasn't joking.

“All right, Samia, I believe you,” he said, stroking my hair. “If you're so determined, then you'll get there for sure.”

Then he shifted in his chair as if to look at me more closely, for the first time seeing me with new eyes. “You're a little warrior running for freedom,” he said. “Yes, you're a real little warrior.” As he spoke he started adjusting the elastic band on my forehead. Our fingers touched. “If you really believe it, then one day you will lead Somali women to liberation from the bondage in which men have placed them. You will be their leader, my little warrior.”

It was the first time I'd said that about the Olympics and also the first time it had popped into my head. I had never thought of it before. Yet as soon as I said it, nothing seemed more real to me.

Aabe's promise of a gift must have been enough to spark something inside of me that I didn't even know I had. His words had officially sealed my heart.

That day Alì took me to the start of the race in a wheelbarrow so I wouldn't get tired. I tried to get out of it every way I could, but he insisted, saying he was my coach and that I had to do whatever he ordered. And so I arrived at the start on that throne.

Alì had planned it all out: He left me there and rode a neighborhood boy's bike up to the stadium to get there early and be waiting for me at the finish line.

It was the usual seven-kilometer route that I had run a thousand times, not a short-distance speed race, which I was better at. But I was thin as a rail and weighed little more than a feather, as Alì said, so I had some advantage over the others.

“You have to learn to fly, Samia,” he kept telling me. “If you learn to fly, you'll beat them all.”

I was so light that if I learned to catch the wind I would easily be as fast as a rocket; that was his theory.

At first it sounded silly, but then I thought more about it. Maybe he was right. I had to try to make myself as light as possible, direct my weight upward. And try to stay on the outer edge, so I wouldn't have anyone in back of me and could let the wind push me from behind. Then, once I was out in front, it would all be easier. No one would steal my air.

What I had to do was minimize the contact my feet made with the ground.

I had to learn to fly.

That day, when the starter pistol went off, I forgot everything.
It had never happened to me before, but since then it hasn't failed to happen, every time I've won. My mind was able to create a blank and focus only on positive things.

On the day of my tenth birthday I realized that running freed me from my thoughts. And so, meter by meter, kilometer after kilometer, the skinny little girl was able to overtake the majority of the group and get behind the four fastest runners.

In my head were Aabe's words and the way he had tugged the terry headband down over my forehead.

“One day you will lead Somali women to liberation from the bondage in which men have placed them. You will be their leader, my little warrior.”

From that day on, every time I raced I clocked off meter after meter mulling over those redemptive words of my father, the words of Yusuf Omar Nur, son of Omar Nur Mohamed.

The liberation of my people and of the women of Islam.

That day I won.

For the first time. My first victory.

The race ended with a lap in front of a large crowd of onlookers.

The CONS stadium, used for all sporting events, was old, hammered by bullets, its rickety stands shored up with planks to reduce the risk of collapse, the track riddled with shrapnel from grenades.

Since the start of the war, the new stadium has been used as a depository for the army. Instead of athletes, there were tanks and soldiers on the field. Officers rather than spectators in the stands.

From a distance, as I neared the old stadium, exhausted, I realized how decrepit it was, mutilated by bombs.

At five hundred meters from that ruined structure I was still in fourth place.

When I turned onto Jidka Warshaddaha, with the stadium's irregular shape on the horizon, I heard Alì's voice in my head urging me to put the wind at my back and go on to win.

I don't know where I got the strength, but I began to fly. I passed the two guys in front of me, one after the other.

At the entrance to the stadium my legs nearly started shaking when I saw the multitude of people sitting in the stands. You could feel their excitement, their expectations, the fact that they were there to see someone win.

And I wanted to be that someone.

I entered the stadium second. Meter by meter on the pitted tartan track, I realized that the runner in first place had not measured out his energies well. I felt I still had some in reserve, while he was plodding along, worn out, losing ground with every step.

Then the miracle happened: The people in the stands began yelling and calling me
abaayo
. Sister.

They'd seen that I was faster and they wanted me to win.

They were cheering me on:
abaayo
,
abaayo
.

Every word gave me an extra boost.

After the first curve I had already caught up to the front runner, and in four strides I passed him.

At that point the fans rose to their feet, incredulous and excited. They were all applauding the little
abaayo
.

A rhythmic applause spurred me on.

Clap-clap. Clap-clap. Clap-clap.

My legs flowed ahead like waves driven by an energy that wasn't mine; the spectators were the ones pulling me along, like a tractor towing a trailer or like the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the sea's tides.

I crossed the finish line first.

It seemed unbelievable to me.

I ran the last few meters after the finish with arms raised, carried along by the rush of all those kilometers.

Then I bent over my legs and felt a strange warmth on my cheeks: unwanted tears on the little warrior's face.

I quickly wiped them away before standing up, dead tired but brimming with energy. I could have turned around and retraced the entire course, from start to finish.

Around me the crowd was cheering and shouting, jubilant and ecstatic.

As they went wild with applause, I could read their thoughts:
It's incredible that she won, she's little more than a child.

It was incredible to me too.

But after a few stunned minutes, a medal was slipped around my neck.

Which told me that it was all true.

Alì and I waited in the locker room for the crowd to leave the stadium. He talked to a lot of people who asked him who I was.

He introduced himself as my coach, and it made everyone laugh, because he was only ten years old. He was tall for his age, tall and skinny, but he too was little more than a child. Yet for years he'd been acting like a grown man.

To get home we retraced the route of the race.

Alì told me how he'd felt when he saw me enter the gate of the stadium and how excited the crowd had been when I passed the other runners. He was all keyed up.

Now and then, as often happened, we'd run into someone who would look me up and down and, seeing me dressed as a
boy, would shake his head or mutter a few words under his breath before moving on.

About halfway home we were stopped by an old man with a long beard and bony face.

After looking at me disapprovingly, he started in with the same old story. “Where are the
qamar,
the
hijab,
and the
diric,
huh, girlie? Did you perhaps forget to get dressed today?”

“She's an athlete, sir,” Alì answered for me. “And she just won a race. She commands the respect that athletes deserve.”

It was the first time I heard it said publicly that I was an athlete.

The old man looked at us and rolled his eyes, not knowing what to say. “And you? If she's an athlete, who might you be?” he asked.

“I'm her coach. And her spokesman. When this athlete becomes known throughout the world someday, you, sir, will remember this conversation.”

At that point we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

The man muttered something and walked away, shaking his head.

I had become an athlete. For the second time, from the day Alì decided that he would be my coach. But this time it was more real.

By now it was late afternoon and the wind had suddenly risen, and when the wind starts blowing, there are only two things you can do in Mogadishu: keep your mouth shut to prevent the dust from drying out your throat for the rest of your days and quickly look for shelter somewhere so you won't get coated from head to toe.

We filled our lungs and started running home.

I wasn't tired at all. I could have run for another ten hours straight.

All of a sudden, at the intersection with the big avenue, a copy of the newspaper
Banadir
plunged down from the sky like a dive-bombing meteorite, carried from somewhere by the wind.

It hit me right on the shoulder, then fell to the ground, open to a full-size photo of a young man who immediately looked familiar.

Curious, I bent to grab the paper before it flew away again.

It was the face of Mo Farah, the runner who'd left Mogadishu when he was more or less my age to seek refuge in England; there a proficient coach was leading him to win numerous major races.

He had always been one of my heroes, someone to look up to. Born in Somalia like me, he had gone on to run and win throughout the world.