A burning-hot day in March 2004, me and my friends Bocow and Bashi high up in the branches of a neem tree. We were looking out across the city for smoke. Where there was smoke, there was food, and we were so hungry. Then we saw it, a big fire, lots of people. Probably an arranged wedding. We climbed down, grabbed our boom box, and crashed that party. Time for some food and dancing!
With more money and more men in the city, weddings were happening almost every week in Mogadishu. For less than three hundred dollars you could put up a nice wedding, providing lots of cow meat, camel milk, fruits, and dance music. Except for very strict Muslims (who had not yet taken over the city), a wedding without dancing is considered incomplete for Somalis—like eating maize without camel milk. But most of the traditional Somali musicians had been killed or had fled during the fighting, so there was no live music; you had to use a boom box, preferably with fresh batteries so you could play it really loud. There was nothing on the radio, only cassette tapes, and people with a lot of cassette tapes were in demand for weddings, especially if they also knew how to dance and could get the party going.
By this time I had my boom box and some tapes, and everywhere I went I was twisting my body, gliding and moonwalking to the music. About once a week I would get hailed on the street to perform at a wedding. People yelled my new name, Abdi American, at every corner of my neighborhood when I passed. I would show up with my group of dancers and play music for the crowd.
One day I received a request to dance at a big wedding in the neighborhood. The groom was living in the United States. He called the girl’s family and told them that he would sponsor her to come to the United States after the wedding. The family was so excited that they put together an amazing wedding—five cows, two sacks of rice. There was a space for me and my two friends Bocow and Bashi to dance on the floor that evening. I was relieved it took place at night because by then the madrassa would be closed and Macalin Basbaas would be back in his house. I walked in with my boom box, two tapes in my hand. As the music started and my friends and I began dancing, some people walked out of the room disgusted by our sinful moves, but others were cheering and clapping. The bride was sitting in a corner; she had a smile on her face. She definitely liked the music and dancing, but I’m sure she was mostly happy to be moving with her new husband to Minnesota. “She is lucky,” I thought.
After that wedding the bride’s dad gave me a few American dollars, the first I had ever held in my hand. It was enough to buy maize and camel milk for our family. Not everyone could pay me to dance, and usually I did it for free. Most important, I got a reputation. Girls would come to my house, walking past Mom and Dhuha into my room just to chat and flirt with me. When I was out, Mom told me girls she didn’t even know were coming to our house asking for me. One girl left a message in Arabic at our door, written in charcoal on a wooden board. It said “I love you.” And wherever I went to dance, girls came, watched, and clapped. When I walked on the streets, girls shouted, “Abdi American!” I just waved and moved on.
Of course the girls always looked their best at weddings, wearing traditional Somali printed diracs but also modern Western garments of different colors. They braided their hair, painted henna tattoos on their hands, put on makeup and perfume, and showed off bracelets and other jewelry. Most of them were shy and had never danced at all, much less with men, which their parents would usually forbid. They would mostly just sit and watch us dance, ululating and applauding.
One afternoon we walked into a wedding celebration, dressed in our usual California street gang attire of head wraps, plastic bracelets, baggy jeans, and hats. I set up my boom box and played my latest tape, brand new to Mogadishu: “In da Club” by 50 Cent. The ululations and shouts from the women were so loud, they loved this new song. Then a beautiful young woman stepped onto the dance floor. She had a big smile, and her dark brown braided hair flowed down her neck from under her head scarf. She was wearing an orange dirac in a maqbal pattern of brilliant flowers. The dress fit perfectly around every curve of her body. She coyly swayed her body sideways, covering her face with her colorfully painted hands. This girl obviously did not know how to dance, but I thought she was so brave to be the first to try. Some of the wedding guests cheered her, but others booed. Another girl in the crowd yelled, “Stupid girl, sit down!”
I moved closer to encourage her. The music was loud. She leaned in to my ear to say something.
“I can’t dance,” she said.
“I can teach you,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Faisa.”
Of course I could not touch Faisa’s body, because people were watching. This was Somalia, not the movies I had seen where men and women dance while holding tight. But I could smell her perfume from where she stood. I can still smell that perfume. Then the girl who had been scolding her jumped onto the dance floor, grabbed Faisa by the hand, and dragged her outside the building, yelling at her. “I will tell Dad, I will tell Dad!” she screamed.
So there was a good sister and a bad sister. Their dad was Sheikh Omar, an important cleric in the Waberi neighborhood. You could see him everywhere, he wore a long beard dyed bright orange with henna. He led the five daily prayers at the mosque, and also the important Friday prayers. Sheikh Omar was also a judge mediating divorce, marriage, and child support cases according to the Koran, which he knew not just in Arabic but also in Somali. He had ten children from four different wives. Faisa’s half brothers ran mosques and madrassas; another brother lived in the United States and sent money to the family. Sheikh Omar also coordinated the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Fortunately, he was too busy to pay much attention to his daughters, which is how Faisa and her sister were able to dress up and go to weddings where dance music was played. But listening was one thing. Dancing was another.
I watched the door for a while. When Faisa never came back, I went out to look for her. I found her sitting by herself, fanning her face against the late afternoon heat.
“Asalaamu aleikum,” I greeted her. Peace be upon you.
“Wa’aleikum salaam,” she replied. And unto you, peace.
She stood up, smiled, and said she was happy to see me. Sweat was running down my head to my back, partly from dancing but also because I was so nervous. She told me she had to go home before sunset, and it was already five o’clock.
“I want to see you again,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, offering to meet up the next day and adding that she hoped I could teach her to dance.
“Could you come to Aargada Arch tomorrow at four o’clock?” I asked.
I knew I would not be able to teach her to dance, because we had no private place to hang out. She would never come to our house, because her dad would never allow it, and Omar would certainly not invite me to their house. And in Mogadishu, even what happens inside is not private, everything can be heard behind tin or mud walls. A boy and a girl cannot date; only marriage is allowed. So what Faisa and I wanted to do was strange. Still we could try.
The next day at four o’clock I was standing under the Aargada Arch in my new denim jeans, a new T-shirt with an American flag, and a new taper-fade haircut inspired by the U.S. Marines in Mogadishu back in 1993. The arch, at the KM4 circle, was built by the Italians during their colonial occupation of Somalia. Surrounding the circle were once landmarks such as the Cinema Ecuatore, the former embassy of Egypt, and the Naasa Hablood hotel. Now most had been destroyed, but the arch remained. Faisa appeared walking down Maka al-Mukarama Street with a smile, looking happy to see me.
We walked together enjoying a cool breeze from the sea. Of course we could not hold hands, we just walked side by side. I could not take her to a tea shop or a restaurant; all I could do was take her to Hamarweyne for a walk through the old part of Mogadishu, down the streets with coconut trees on each side and the Indian Ocean beyond. I talked to her about my dad’s basketball games, how life had been good for us before the war. She talked about how they survived during the mass displacement in 1991 by fleeing to Jigjiga in Ethiopia, then returning six years later. Now she was curious about the music of 50 Cent I had played at the wedding. “How did they create such a sweet thing?” she asked. “Where do those people live?”
I told her they live in America, the same place as my nickname. She started calling me Abdi American. We talked about how she could join my dance club, but our conversation was cut short when Faisa realized it was five thirty and again she had to be home before sunset.
Our next meeting was the day before Ramadan. She had prepared bajiyas and samosas specially for me. We walked again down the street, me taking bites of the bajiya as Faisa talked about her family. Faisa did not eat anything while we were walking; Somali girls are too shy to eat on the streets. Her story was interrupted by a group of hungry street kids who had followed the smell of the fresh snacks and begged for some. I gave everything to them.
Faisa looked me in the eyes and said, “You are so generous.”
I told her that the kids reminded me of my childhood, when hunger was an enemy that can make you eat anything. There was no way I could not give it to them.
We talked about fun things we could try to do together. There were not many options. Men could go to restaurants or sit in tea shops. Faisa could not do any of that, but we decided to walk on Uruba beach. Hundreds of young men came to that beach to swim every day, but there were never girls there. Unlike the restaurants it was not strictly forbidden for women to go to the beach; mostly they stayed away because it could be dangerous for a woman around all those rough boys.
I felt I had to take Faisa to the beach. In movies I had seen a place called Venice Beach in Los Angeles, where people in love could walk and swim and have fun. Mogadishu was no Los Angeles, and we did not enjoy the carefree life of those actors, but this war had gone on for thirteen years, and I was sick of it. I wanted life. I already danced on the streets and spoke English; why not go to the beach with my girl? I knew the dangers that could come from bringing a girl in a crowd of boys who had been raised in the war and thought assaulting girls was fun. So I organized my posse of friends as bodyguards. They followed us with machetes, rocks, and sticks. In this way I found myself in heaven, walking down the beach, shirtless, side by side with Faisa. It didn’t take long for crowds to build and stare at us.
Faisa trusted in me and stayed very close to my side as she waded into the ocean in her clothes. Every time I saw guys moving close to her in the water, I jumped up and used my best Mogadishu gangster dialect to shout, “Stay away, motherfucker!” I had perfected a good Mogadishu accent, so everyone thought I was from the Hawiye tribe and probably had militia connections. It was Faisa’s first time in the ocean, and whenever the waves rolled in toward us, she would race back to the shore in terror, like it was something alive chasing her. But her shock turned to excitement. Going to the beach would become our favorite thing to do. I would write her name on my arm with a piece of charcoal, like a tattoo. She wrote my name on her arm too, but she always made sure the ocean had erased it before she went home.
Faisa was not a movie buff like myself, but sometimes during the day (never after dark) she came to the movies with me anyway, sitting close as I translated. Sometimes I think she was bored. Girls like different movies from guys, I was learning.
Many times Faisa was not allowed to go out of her house, especially when her dad was around. I tried to go see her, but it was impossible; he would sit near the door and watch who came in and out. Sometimes I worked up the courage to sneak around the side of their house and come to the window of Faisa’s room. She would stand there whispering to me to leave, it was too dangerous for her if anyone found out she was talking to me from the window. I insisted I wanted to talk to her, that I missed her presence.
One day her sister learned that I was stalking Faisa at her window. When she told her dad about this, all hell broke loose. Sheikh Omar marched over to our house and found my mom.
“Your son is faasiq!” he told her. That means a dissolute person who commits sins. “He will end up in hell!”
He went on to tell her he did not like the way I dressed, the way I talked, and the dancing. To him, everything about my life was just an evil act.
“Where is this bastard boy’s dad?”
Mom felt embarrassed that she had no husband in her house.
“If you can’t stop this boy from stalking our girl, we will take measures against him!” Then he stormed out.
When I came home that evening, Mom was waiting for me at the door. She hit me with a broom, then her sandals. She was so angry that she started pinching and biting me. “Stay away from Faisa!” she said. “Her dad came here threatening me!”
Soon my relationship with Faisa was known on every corner in the neighborhood. I found myself in the same situation as Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. I did not know where this would end, but I knew I would have to fight for Faisa. She had been under surveillance from her family, so we could not meet. Weeks passed and there was no sight of her until one day she was allowed outside when her parents traveled to visit family. She was at the market buying bananas and tomatoes when I ran into her.
“I miss you so much,” she said.
“I miss you too.”
Against all odds we agreed to meet at Aargada Arch again, before her parents returned to town. She told her sisters she was going to do shopping. This time she did not bring any snacks. She told me she had twenty minutes to chat and then she would have to go back. But she had an idea. Her parents were on their way back to Mogadishu in two days, and she had been told by her sisters to go gather fruits in Afgooye, where I had seen the scary blue monkeys as a boy fleeing the war. They needed to welcome their parents back with fresh food. So we agreed to meet in Afgooye.
I took a bus by myself. It was the first time I had been down that road since our flight to Baidoa a few days after the war erupted in 1991, and it brought back terrible memories. This time the road was much different. There were about sixty roadblocks where militias robbed travelers, including bus drivers and their passengers, but it was not as crazy as the last time. By now the rebels were experts on how to use guns and shoot people, so they didn’t need to practice randomly on innocent travelers.
But I didn’t care; all I could think about was Faisa. I had seen enough movies; I knew what I would do when we met.
I would kiss her for the first time.
Of course it would not be like a Hollywood kiss, long and with hugging. That would scandalize her. Faisa did not believe in kissing on the lips, because she had never seen people do that. I told her people in the movies do it. “Stop, Abdi American, those are not Muslims,” she would say.
I was standing under an acacia tree close to the river when Faisa got off her bus. When she saw me, her eyes widened with her smile, and I saw she was wearing eyeliner. We greeted and walked along the riverbank. Blue monkeys chattered in the trees above us.
“Faisa, I want to kiss you,” I said. My heart was beating so fast as I waited for an answer. She coyly giggled, covered her smile with her hand, then shyly turned and walked toward the river. I knew that meant okay, so I took her hand, but she resisted.
I was walking behind her, begging, “Just one time,” when suddenly she turned and came running toward me, stumbling on her feet and throwing herself in my arms. I was sure she had changed her mind, but actually she had just seen a crocodile in the river.
“I thought the croc was coming for me!” she said, pulling away when she realized there was no danger.
I guess not all the monkeys and crocs had been killed in the early days of the civil war, so this was a new generation of war wildlife. We kept walking, me shooing away the monkeys and throwing rocks at the crocs as she collected papayas, mangoes, and bananas hanging from the trees. The fruit trees along the river were like “pick your own” at an American farm stand. You gathered fruits in a basket, then paid when you left. It was a beautiful spot; it felt like a peaceful world with no civil war. Best of all, it was a private place, out of sight of people, especially her family. The only sounds we heard were the splashes of the crocs and the squealing of the monkeys jumping from tree to tree. A perfect day for a kiss. Faisa was standing there, still protesting, but I felt she was showing enough shyness to suggest it was okay. I came close and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Her skin was soft and she smelled like heaven.
Kissing Faisa on the cheek that day was a moment in my life that I will never forget. First kiss, first time. I know she liked it, but she told me I would have to wait for the next kiss until the day of our marriage.
“When will that be?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Only Allah knows.”
Maybe only Allah knew, but I had a pretty good sense that marrying Faisa would be a challenge. Her dad might get over his hatred of me if I came up with enough of a dowry, but the bigger problem was that we were not even from the same tribe. It was not impossible for a Hawiye girl to marry a Rahanweyn boy, but it would have been very hard. In fact it would be a long time before I saw Faisa again.
Someone returned from Kenya who had seen Hassan in the refugee camps in Wajeer, which our dad’s sister Amina had also reached. This person carried a letter to me from Hassan. It was handwritten in English:
Abdi it is Hassan I am doing well. I am in Wajeer Kenya. Our car broke down somewhere near the border with Kenya and I had to walk three days to get to the border. I met lions and hyenas on the streets, scary and remembered Mom’s stories. Anyway, everything is good with me. I am trying to get to Nairobi. The refugee camp here in Wajeer is very hard, really tough like Somalia people are dying from hunger. I heard Nairobi is a good place that I can work at least. Abdi there is something called Hotmail. You can create an account on the internet, create one and lets talk there and my hotmail address is hansiftin@hotmail.com. Say hi to Mom and Nima.
Back at home, life was so different with both Hassan and Dad gone. When I came home at night after watching a movie, the house was dead quiet because Nima and Mom usually went to bed around seven. When Hassan was home, he stayed up and we chatted in English. Now I was in our room all by myself, lonely and bored. Nima was now fourteen and had been practicing her regular daily chores starting from dawn, from making tea to washing clothes. She did not have friends like me; her only companion was Mom. Nima was tall like all the children of our tall parents, and like every other girl in the city she had been putting on eyeliner, coloring her nails, and putting henna tattoos on her hands. After Hassan left, Nima and I grew closer; we entertained each other at home playing gariir and hopscotch.
One afternoon some strange guests came to visit. They were five men all dressed in long white robes, their beards reaching their Adam’s apples. They were spotlessly clean except for the fresh dust on their foreheads, which signified they had been to the noon prayer at the nearest mosque. At first I thought maybe they were Tabliiq, coming back to enlist me to preach the word of Allah, and I prepared to run. But when they arrived, Mom ran back into her room, put on her hijab, and came out smiling. She offered the five of them to sit on the mat.
“Nima, prepare the tea for our guests,” she said.
“Okay, Mommy.”
I was dressed to go out and see what movie was on at the shack, but the men invited me to sit next to them. “I heard you graduated from madrassa,” one said. His name was Omar, and he was short and maybe about thirty years old. “Congratulations!” he said. “It is one big leap. We are proud of you. What are you doing now?”
“Nothing,” I said. Definitely nothing these guys would want to know about.
He pointed to my hair and told me I should trim it down, I looked like an infidel. And my jeans and tank top were not proper dress, he said.
“That is true!” said Mom. With my dad gone, she had finally found another man to scold me. “Today you will go with them to the mosque,” she added. But while they were talking, I snuck out of the house to the movies. When I came back that evening, the guests were still there, eating meat and maize.
Omar scowled at me, but then he reached into his pocket, pushed aside his beard comb and mirror, and pulled out five American dollar bills. After he was sure we could all see his money, he gave me one of the bills and said, “It is yours.” It turned out Omar had a cousin in America who was sending him fifty dollars a month.
I was still confused why they were here and why they were giving me the money. But in Somali culture it is not appropriate to ask guests questions like that. I went to Nima, who was making tea behind a curtain we used to separate our house from the kitchen. “Who are these people?” I whispered.
“I was about to ask you,” she said.
From the kitchen we overheard them talking about a wedding, presents of goats, a silent Muslim ceremony with no dancing. Omar was explaining his plan for the wedding, saying it would happen on Thursday.
“Nima, come here,” said Mom. Nima came running from the kitchen. “Look how gorgeous she looks!” Mom said to the men. “Nima, you are so lucky. Omar has come to marry you. And we accepted.”
Nima had no words; I think she almost had a heart attack. Of course she knew she would someday be married, but she never expected to marry a man more than twice her age whom she had never met. I was in just as much shock, and I felt so betrayed that our mom would do this with no conversation, just for some money and goats.
Mom told us that Omar just got in from Baidoa and that he was Rahanweyn and a relative of ours, being the son of our dad’s cousin. A Somali marriage is mostly considered kinship between clans and families. Family marriages are always considered more respectful, and therefore every mom wants her daughter to have an arranged marriage within the family. But Mom said it was actually our dad, through a messenger sent to Dhuha, who made the decision to marry Nima to Omar. The culture did not allow Mom to disagree. The wedding was happening next Thursday, and two goats would be slaughtered. Guests including Macalin Basbaas had been invited; there would be sheikhs present, which meant no music or fun at all. Just eating meat and praying.
Mom talked about how fortunate Nima was to marry a man who had memorized the Koran, who regularly went to the mosque, who never missed praying five times a day, and who received money from abroad. “Nima, look at you! You are so lucky!” Mom said.
Nima was still out of breath and could say nothing.
All I could think of to say was “Mom, no music?”
“Shut up!” she said. “Shame on you!”
The wedding day came, too soon. It would be Nima’s last day in our house, leaving me home all alone with Mom. But I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, only for Nima. Unlike our mom, with her festive nomad marriage, Nima did not have other women around her who could teach her about the wedding techniques or ululate in joy. It was only our mom who whispered into her ear every time Nima cried because she was frightened about going into the house of a man she didn’t know.
That morning I tied the goats by their legs and cut their throats while saying, “Bismillah.” “I start in the name of Allah.” If I had forgotten to say this, many people would not eat the meat, because it would not be halal. Then I skinned and gutted the goats with my sharp knife. We cut the meat into small cubes and put a huge pot of maize on the wood fire. By early Thursday morning, neighbors and religious leaders, including Macalin Basbaas, were sitting peacefully under the shade of a tree, murmuring the Koran and feasting on the meat, milk, and maize. I served them water to wash their hands. It was one of the rare encounters I had with Macalin Basbaas since graduating from the madrassa. I could not ignore him, because he was my former teacher, but I said only the most basic Islamic greeting. He did not bother to reply, but after gobbling down his meat and milk, he shouted out to me, “Bring some more!”
Outside in the street, Rahanweyn beggars had smelled the food. They sat in the heat of the sun, waiting for scraps. It was not possible for us to let all the Rahanweyn into the house; it was already filled with sheikhs, and there were only two goats. So Mom went out and told them to be patient. But they knew we were fellow Rahanweyn and would never shoot them, so they pushed their way into the house and started scavenging for food. Soon it was a chaotic scene. Mom insisted I get rid of them, so I grabbed a stick and started beating on some of the beggars, the same way Macalin Basbaas beat me. Order returned quickly, and the beggars left. The sheikhs went back to reciting the Koran and stuffing their faces.
The droning of the prayers and the eating went on for hours. Worse, because it was a strict religious wedding, Nima was forced to wear a heavy traditional dark hijab. She sat there baking in the sun, breathing heavily. I decided to stage a revolt. How could Abdi American, the great wedding dancer, let his own sister feel sad and bored at her wedding? I ran down the street and called a few of my friends. Minutes later we showed up with the boom box, ready to dance.
My friends were greeted with frowns by the women in hijabs and burkas and the men with long beards and in kanzus, but we didn’t care. We put in a cassette of the New York rapper Ja Rule’s remix of the Jennifer Lopez hit “I’m Real,” and we turned it up loud. Then we started to dance.
Our mom was not impressed. Her jaw went slack, and she put both hands on her cheeks in a look of disgust. Macalin Basbaas and his followers quickly put on their sandals and left, grumbling that the devil had shown up at this wedding. Poor Nima did not know how to dance; she watched from her seat, sweating in the hot sun. But she was proud that I danced at her wedding; she did not care about the sheikhs. I made her happy for a few minutes. Her husband slipped out, and soon she had to leave as well. Mom and I walked Nima down to her new house, six blocks away. I hugged her good-bye. She cried. Mom gave her some final marriage advice: “Be obedient. Do everything he says.”
I whispered in her ear some different advice: “Don’t allow him to restrict you. Come home whenever you can.”
With Nima married, Mom was lonely and decided to journey to Baidoa and search for my dad, who had been gone for a year. She set off on the Afgooye road by bus and arrived in Baidoa two days later.
Baidoa was very different from the last time she saw it, during our flight from Mogadishu. People streamed out of narrow alleys of the city, buying and selling goods. She walked through stall after stall in the market. Giant slabs of red meat were swinging in the sunlight. In other stalls people sold long strips of dried meat called kalaankal, which was chopped into small pieces and fried in ghee. In the grain market, women sold every variety of corn and seeds from sacks that attracted bees, wasps, and flies. Vegetables, watermelons, papayas, and bananas, all grown nearby, were everywhere. Men who were pushing wheelbarrows ran to Mom offering their services. Streets and open spaces were crammed with chickens, mattresses, shoes, and bright fabrics. And everyone spoke her Maay language.
Mom sat down on a rock near a kiosk that was selling freshly squeezed fruits and ordered a glass of mango juice to cool herself after walking in the hot sun. She scanned her eyes through the crowd to see if our dad was somewhere around there. She asked people if they knew Nur Dhere. No one knew. But then she remembered she needed to say Nur Dhere in Maay, which would be Nurey. She had lived in Mogadishu for so long she forgot to use her native tongue.
“Do you know Nurey, the tall guy?” she asked a woman.
The lady said yes. She said our dad could be found working in the charcoal market. Mom walked down to the charcoal market, a filthy place where the air was black with charcoal dust.
“Nurey!” she cried.
Within minutes he emerged from the dust like a ghost, covered head to toe in soot. They walked back to his battered tin kiosk, surrounded with bags of charcoal. A little boy, named Deeq, was sitting in the soot drinking camel milk. Dad explained that Deeq was one of his two children with his new wife. She was dark and thin, ten years younger than he, and she sold tea next to his charcoal business.
In Somali culture a man can marry up to four wives. Mom was respectful and told him that she missed his presence. He cursed Mogadishu as a place of the devil. Then she said good-bye.