My uncle Billeh’s story began in the village of Erigavo, an old highlands town thirty-eight miles from the Gulf of Aden in what was then the British Protectorate of Somaliland. His given name was Yusuf, but, like many Somalis, he was rarely referred to by his given name. Rather, he was known by a meaningful casual name, in his case Billeh, Somali for “crescent moon.” The crescent moon represented the new beginning of the lunar cycle, and a new beginning was how Billeh’s mother viewed his arrival. She had given birth to a half-dozen daughters before she gave birth to her first son.
Billeh was one of his mother’s nine children. His father had been in the Camel Corps, a legendary group of mounted police who kept order among the Somali clans on camelback. Billeh’s mother was his fourth wife. In this Islamic patriarchal society, polygamy was widespread. The religion allowed for up to four wives simultaneously, although Billeh’s father had only once been married to two women at the same time. There were advantages to an expansive family, as the number of wives a man had directly impacted the number of children, and children ultimately translated to a family’s power. Billeh’s father had fifteen children, who have multiplied to an extended family of more than two hundred.
Billeh was the first son to this wife, a revered position in Somali society. When he was born, clansmen came from far and wide to celebrate his birth, which, after six girls, was considered miraculous. Two more boys followed, but Billeh was the honored firstborn son.
Billeh did have a second part to his name—Osman—which was his father’s first name. Nobody had a family name in the American sense. Osman told people which father he came from and the rest of his name comes from his paternal lineage. The limitation on the number of names depends purely on how far back one remembers. For example, I might say, “Mohamed is a tenacious little ball player.” If someone asked me, “Mohamed who?” I could respond, “Mohamed Saeed.” “Oh, you mean Mohamed Saeed Abokor, the one from Berbera.” “No, I’m talking about Mohamed Saeed Abdulkadir Hashi.” “Of course! Mohamed Saeed Abdulkadir Hashi Elmi Duale is a tenacious little ball player.”
The longest name Billeh knew for himself was Yusuf Osman Abdi Mohamed Mohamud Ahmed Omer Deria Adan Mohamed Abulla Hamud Osman Saleh Musa Ismail Areh Said Garhagis Sheikh Isaaq Ben Ahmed. By Sheikh Isaaq we should be back six hundred years. Along the way, Billeh might have missed a few patriarchs, but he knew that somewhere around AD 1500, he came from Musa, who came from Ismail, who came from Yoonis, who came from Sheikh Isaaq. That’s how he knew he was from the Musa Ismail clan, which is a subclan of the Habar Yoonis, which ultimately is a subclan of the Isaaq, one of the five original major Somali clan patriarchs.
In 1947, when Billeh was four, his father died, leaving his mother and all of her children to fend for themselves. He and his younger brother went to live with their eldest sister, who had a permanent house in Erigavo village. His mother and the other children settled at a little farm three miles outside of town, although, being nomads, they were often moving with the livestock. The following year, Billeh had his first go at education at a Quranic school for the youngest children in the area. These schools existed pretty much wherever there was a religious scholar willing to teach Arabic and the Quran, and Erigavo had a number of such schools.
The day Billeh’s mother signed him up, she came in from the farm and took him to a park, where a group of children and their parents were lined up in front of a man who was seated on a small folding chair. Billeh’s mother pointed to the children and told him that the man was an official from the government, and the reason he commanded such a crowd was he was offering the chance for an education. She said education brought with it respect and power, and Billeh would never regret being in school. She pushed him toward the end of the line, and the next thing he knew she was gone. He didn’t see her again for a long time. But he still credits his mother who, with that one push, changed the direction of his life. He says if not for her, he would be a nomad today.
After the Quranic school, Billeh went to a small public elementary school that taught English, Arabic, and other subjects. Somali was not yet a written language, so it could not be a language of instruction. Classes were held in a tent, as there was no proper school building. There was a small tuition, which Billeh had to earn. He made money by selling kidar, a round flatbread about the size of a palm and made of sorghum. His sister would get up each morning at four a.m. to make it, and then Billeh would sell it at the coffee shop next door before going to school.
In this area, public schooling went only to third grade. The few children who wanted to continue their education had to choose from a handful of intermediate schools spread around the country, but far from Erigavo. Billeh took a standardized test administered to all third graders across the country and gained admission to the most respected school in Somaliland, Sheikh Intermediate School, a British-run boarding school for boys, where only the top scorers were admitted. After his acceptance, Billeh had to figure out how to physically get there and how to pay the private school tuition. The only way there from Erigavo was to hitch a ride on a truck following a desert track to Burao, then make his way forty miles northwest to Sheikh.
For tuition, his mother made a great sacrifice and sold some of her livestock. She diminished her herd of sheep for the sake of Billeh’s education—it was that important to her. A first cousin of Billeh’s, married to an English woman and living in Durham, England, sometimes sent him twenty pounds sterling to help with school fees. That’s what Somali families did, they took care of each other. The clan support system was and still is the hallmark feature of Somali society.
The school had just opened when Billeh arrived. The teachers were former British army officers or Indian, a legacy of British colonial rule. After four years at the intermediate school, Billeh went to Sheikh Secondary School in the same town. With its elegant, two-story stone buildings in British colonial fashion, it was hailed as the most beautiful school from Berbera in Somaliland to Beitbridge in Zimbabwe, two thousand miles south. The headmaster, Mr. Richard R. Darlington, had been in Somaliland for years. He was a captain in the Somaliland battalion that saw action in Burma in World War II.
Billeh adored Mr. Darlington, who wore his glasses on the tip of his nose. The older kids didn’t relate to him much, but Billeh saw him as a father figure, in part because Billeh had lost his own father and in part because he appreciated how Mr. Darlington prepared him for the world. Mr. Darlington taught the kids etiquette, such as how to use a fork and knife. Somalis didn’t use utensils at home; everybody ate with their hands. Mr. Darlington wanted the students to know how to use silverware in case they went on to higher education outside the country.
Top graduates of the Sheikh Secondary School were being admitted to universities in England on full scholarships. However, during Billeh’s third year, in 1960, Somaliland gained independence and the British left the country. Fortunately for Billeh and his classmates, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) stepped in and offered them scholarships to American colleges.
Thirteen students from Billeh’s graduating class matriculated to American universities, and he was one of them. No kid from Sheikh School had ever gone to college in the United States, so this class had an extraordinary opportunity. Billeh had never been out of the country, let alone on a plane. The honor of being one of the chosen few was a huge deal in Erigavo. Billeh had gone from nomad to scholar and, in so doing, elevated the status of his mother, too. She was no longer viewed as simply a nomad; she was now the mother of an educated young man who had made it to the United States.
Billeh went first to Kent State in Ohio, then transferred to Boston University, where he met Marjorie Starr, an American woman from Worcester, Massachusetts. A contingency for his educational subsidy was that he return to Somalia after graduation to work for a year, which he did. He then returned to the United States to complete a master’s degree in political science at Syracuse University. That’s when he married Marjorie, who had a brother, Alan. Alan married a woman named Susan, who gave birth to me.