Nomad (11 page)

We make our sons. This is the tragedy of the tribal Muslim man, and especially the firstborn son: the overblown expectations, the ruinous vanity, the unstable sense of self that relies on the oppression of one group of people—women—to maintain the other group’s self-image. Instead of learning from experience, instead of working, Mahad engaged in a variety of defense mechanisms involving arrogance, self-delusion, and scapegoating. His problems were always somebody else’s fault.

Trouble was brewing in Somalia: the civil war was about to erupt.
In November 1990 my mother, who was still in Nairobi, demanded that Haweya and I return, because she had heard so much about girls being raped by gangs of militia. Mahad played the part of guardian very well. He arranged for meetings with our male relatives and successfully raised enough money to send Haweya and me to Kenya by road. He found a male relative, our nephew, to act as our guardian en route. About a month after we arrived in Nairobi, Mahad showed up too, and right after him came a whole stream of refugees.

One of them was our uncle, and he wanted Mahad to take him to the border between Somalia and Kenya to look for his family. That was a clansman’s duty. But Mahad dragged his feet, said “Tomorrow.” Because I could no longer stand his procrastination, I volunteered. When my uncle accepted my offer, to Mahad it was like being kicked in the gut. It reminded me of my father calling him a girl, telling him to hide behind his mother’s skirts, where he belonged. When our uncle and I were out on the border, searching for his wife and children, Mahad showed up. He had been driven to come by the obligation of honor and the shame that would be heaped upon him by the gossiping tongues of the Osman Mohammud clan if he didn’t fulfill his duty.

A few months later my father came to Nairobi. Haweya and I had not seen him in ten years, and I, for one, was overjoyed that he was back. But the tension between him and Mahad was palpable. Mahad always boasted that he would stand up to Abeh, but when push came to shove, he yielded without a word. Father would wake us up at five to pray. Mahad had always lain in bed until noon; he never got around to doing anything until four or five in the afternoon, and even though Ma prodded and begged and pleaded with him every single day to pray, he never did. But when Abeh sang the call to prayer at dawn, Mahad jumped up as though he had been stung by a wasp, rushed to the bathroom, performed his ablutions, and stood on the prayer mat alongside our father, just like when he was a very young boy. And, just like Abeh, he sat down for about an hour and read from the Quran before he went to bed.

To avoid these rituals, Mahad developed the habit of sleeping in hotels and sometimes in the homes of his Kenyan friends. But he never stood up to my father. He never told him, “No, I’m not going to pray” or “Leave me alone, I’m going to sleep in.” He did not dare.

Another time, Mahad encountered Abeh near the large mosque in the city center of Nairobi. Mahad was walking with one of his friends, a Kenyan, and apparently both of them were smoking. As soon as Mahad saw Abeh, he folded the burning cigarette in his hand, shoved it quickly into his pocket, and as it burned a hole through his trousers, he stood in front of my father with a stoic expression.

My father never tired of telling this anecdote, and every time he did he called Mahad a coward and demanded to know why he did not just face up to him like a man. If a man is doing something he knows he shouldn’t do, he should be brave enough to stand up and defend himself.

When my father arranged my marriage to a distant relative who lived in Canada, Mahad saw how unhappy I was. He talked about how he was going to stand up to Father and convince him to change his mind. I believed him; I was so desperate that I thought Mahad truly would help me convince Father that this marriage was wrong for me. But when the occasion presented itself, Mahad said absolutely nothing. He wouldn’t even bring up the subject. My father would then go on and on about what a wonderful match he had made, and Mahad would just nod.

So I left. I made my own life in Holland. I learned from the sporadic letters Haweya sent that Mahad had found and secretly married a good woman, Suban, who was tall, beautiful, of a prominent clan. She was a refugee. Her family had been wealthy in the past, but now, because of the civil war, they were destitute. This was fortunate for Mahad, for it meant that he wouldn’t have to pay a very high bride price, perhaps even none. Haweya hinted that Abeh approved of the marriage, but she said Ma was opposed: the girl wasn’t good enough. I think Ma hated her because she felt Suban had taken Mahad away. Ma always wanted her son to marry a girl of the Dhulbahante clan. But perhaps, like some mothers all over the world, she would have hated any woman who married her son.

Mahad postponed disclosing the marriage to my mother until Suban was pregnant.

I didn’t see Mahad again until after Haweya died in 1998. I was living with my Dutch boyfriend, attending the University of Leiden, working toward a master’s degree in political science; I had a job as a translator and had applied for Dutch citizenship. Mahad was still in Nairobi. Although his wife, Suban, was expecting a child at any moment, he was living in my mother’s apartment.

Haweya was buried while I was in midair between Amsterdam and Nairobi. Mahad’s son was born ten days after she died, barely a week after I arrived back in Kenya.

When Mahad came home and told my mother, “Ma, Suban has given birth,” my mother’s face was stone cold. She did not move a muscle.

“Ma, I have a boy, I have a little boy,” Mahad said.

Ma turned her face away; her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered. She told Mahad, “He is not yours, he is a bastard child.”

Mahad did not know whether Ma was sad, angry, and confused because of Haweya’s death, or whether she was just being her usual difficult self.

When I went to visit the new baby, he was barely three days old. Suban was trying to soothe him by holding him to her breast, but he curled his little red, wrinkled face away from her nipple; he squinted and cried.

My visit to Suban was a secret of sorts. When I mentioned to Ma and Mahad that I wanted to see his baby and meet his wife, Ma erupted. “Did you say you wanted to betray me, like Haweya betrayed me? Like your absolutely good-for-nothing brother betrayed me?”

I knew that Ma did not approve of Mahad’s choice of wife; Haweya had told me that. But I thought it was natural for a woman to welcome her grandchild, a grandson, into the world. Instead Ma pouted on her mattress, draped in her
garbasaar
robes, crestfallen and gaunt. She had always been thin, but now she looked so emaciated that every time I looked at her I was overcome with pity and guilt.

But her attitude toward the new baby made me feel confused and angry. Ma had just lost a child; Mahad and I a sister. Why would she be upset about the arrival of a new life?

“As always, off you’ll go to air my shame to other women,” she ranted.

I protested; all I wanted to do was to see my brother’s baby. But Ma cut me off. “That boy is a
wa’al
, a bastard, he is not Mahad’s child. The harlot gives herself to any man who throws her a shilling.”

Mahad broke in. “Stop it, Ma, please, Ma, I beg you.”

“May the almighty Allah take you both!” she cried, shaking. “He took away Haweya to protect me from her shame.”

I was aghast. This was a jolt back into reality, hearing Ma curse and writhe in self-pity like this. I had been gone for over five years. I had forgotten or repressed the memory of her vindictiveness, her resentment, her ranting, which when we were young had usually been directed at me. Clearly she had found a new scapegoat: Mahad’s wife, Suban.

Mahad had suggested that I should sneak off to see Suban and the baby, so as not to upset our mother while she was mourning the death of her daughter. I thought it ironic and bizarre that he felt he could not celebrate the birth of his son.

Now, as I sat on a mattress across from Suban, watching her lament her fate in a raised voice that had her newborn squinting with displeasure on her lap, I marveled at the similarity between Ma and my sister-in-law: both tall and thin; both burning with resentment. It must be difficult to cope with having a baby for the first time, particularly in such circumstances. But the sense of despair Suban felt at being let down by my brother caused in her the same anger and confusion that my mother felt when my father neglected his responsibilities to her and his children. And her response was the same: placing the responsibility for her own destiny on external factors.

“Ayaan, I hold you and your family responsible for abandoning me,” she began. “You are here now in Nairobi, not for me, not for your only male heir—you are here because your sister died. And what have you brought me? What have you brought for your nephew? You came from a rich country and yet you come here empty-handed.

“Do you know how your mother treats me?” she continued. “Do you know of her campaign to separate me from your brother? She thinks she hurts me, but she’s hurting your nephew, your bloodline. Allah the Almighty is my witness, I shall always tell this boy, my son, about your mother’s machinations.”

Her voice grew louder as she explored the possibilities of revenge she had in store for the Magan family. “I have on my lap the only male who carries on the name of Hirsi Magan,” she screamed. The baby wriggled and twisted his head from side to side. Still glaring at me, she tried to pop her nipple into his mouth. He cried even more loudly.

The room was dimly lit with a
feynoos
, the paraffin lantern most commonly used by Somalis. There was a switch and a lightbulb fastened to a wire hanging from the roof, but I surmised that the electricity had been turned off. In the flickering light I could see that the paint was peeling from the walls in some places. The floor between Suban’s mattress and the mattress I sat on was cement, painted in red; this paint too was peeling in some places. In one corner of the room was an iron charcoal brazier with a pot of tea on it, and to keep the odors of food and diapers suppressed Suban had set up a
dab-qaad
, or fire-carrier, a domed piece of pottery pierced with air holes that held embers of frankincense.

The room was tiny, almost a closet, with one minuscule window; the ceilings were blackened from the cooking smoke. There was no need at all to shout; in that small space, I could hear her very well.

Suban caught my eye as I glanced around the room. “I grew up in a villa in Mogadishu,” she said, sounding suddenly desperately pathetic. “If any of you Magans ever came to us, my father would honor you, treat you like kings. Look at this miserable room where your brother and mother have put me. I would not put animals here. I gave your brother my honor, my womb, I bore him a son. And you—my cousin, my sister-in-law—you are rich. I know the story. You drive around in a fancy car; you make money from the misery of
the refugees in Holland, translating for the infidels. And yet you did not bother to bring the little boy anything. You are rich and you do not share a penny.”

Sitting across from Suban, I thought of the reports I translated for the parents of Somali children living in Holland. These reports were compiled by Dutch psychologists and pediatricians working for the social services to analyze children with developmental problems. Some had motor difficulties because their harassed mothers penned them into cribs or harnessed them to prams and buggies for far too long. Others were understimulated in their cognitive and social development, particularly their faculty of language. Many of these children had first been introduced to toys and writing and drawing implements when they arrived in school at the age of four or five. They had not been groomed to take on the challenges of living in a modern world. Their parents had failed to provide proper tools.

How would my tiny nephew fare under his mother’s care? Her complaints of my mother and Mahad’s neglect were justifiable. Suban was barely literate, but seemed strong, resilient, able to cope. But like my mother, Suban did not speak any language except Somali, and like Ma she despised the Kenyans. Where would this baby go to school? Suban had grown up with servants, Somali Bantus, known as
Sab
, who commonly worked almost as slaves for the higher clans. Would she be able to care for her son? And how would he fare in Nairobi, without a proper father? It was not likely that Mahad would be much of a protector and guide.

Mahad and Suban disagreed on everything, from whose fault it was that she got pregnant to the name of their child. Mahad had chosen the name Ya’qub; Suban wanted to call the baby Abdullahi, slave of Allah. She had my mother’s fanatical religiosity and adherence to Arabic names and all things Arab-related.

As I held my wriggling nephew in my arms, it came to me for the first time that, viewed from the perspective of many generations, my family was hurtling backward instead of progressing. My grandfather Magan had earned his nickname,
The Protector of Those He Vanquished
, by conquering and annexing land that belonged to other clans. My father, his son, was able to adapt from the life of a legendary Somali warlord to that of a modern leader. He read Italian in Rome and
English in America and went back to Somalia to contribute to building a nation. But his only son, Mahad, was a dropout from school, unable to earn a living. Mahad’s own son would be brought up in this tiny, cell-like room in a Somali enclave of Nairobi, where the roads seemed to have dissolved, leaving large potholes filled with dust in dry weather and mud in the rain.

In the past none of this would have struck me as unusual. Now, though, to my newly Dutch eyes, the whole neighborhood was a festering cauldron of disease and poverty. I returned to Ma’s house on foot. Eastleigh was bursting with new inhabitants, refugees who were still pouring out of Somalia or the huge refugee camps along the border. They brought lice, scabies, and tuberculosis.

The night after I visited Suban, Mahad had told me that he was going to divorce her. I asked him why. I thought he was going to tell me, “I don’t love her, I hate her, I don’t want to be with her.” I expected him to say, “She’s a bad woman, spiteful and malicious and I can’t bear her.” Instead he said, “She promised not to get pregnant, and she got pregnant.”