And someone says: why are you so vindictive?
In a 1956 speech to the Somalis of the Ogaden, Emperor Haile Selassie said: “Go to schools, my people. For there, you will have a good chance to learn to read and write Amharic. Only then will you be able to take over the various positions in the central government administration. And remember this: lack of knowledge of Amharic, which is the national language of Ethiopia, will prove a great barrier to economic improvement and individual and communal betterment. Learn to read and write Amharic. It’ll do you a lot of good,’
Nomadic camps were rounded up and their children taken away to schools in Upper Ethiopia — boys and girls who were barely six years old. They were sent to different schools in the non-Somali-speaking regions of the country, so they would lose contact with other Somalis and with one another. Amharic — the language of a minority imposed upon a majority. Arabic — an alien language with its alien concepts and thoughts imposed forcefully upon the mind of a child. One is not beaten as harshly when one is learning in one’s mother-tongue, surely? Does learning come naturally? Do things flow smoothly, then? The brutal force of the written tradition imposed upon the thinking of one belonging to a non-written tradition? The brutal force of adults imposed upon a child? I am not sure why I kept the cutting giving the full text of the famous 1956 speech which Emperor Haile Selassie delivered to the people of the Ogaden. On its margin, I can read Uncle Hilaal’s scrawling hand: “It is revolutionary, isn’t it, that we vindicate our people’s language, culture and justice?”
To vindicate. To be vindictive?
Following the confrontations between Aw-Adan and myself, one day, Misra said: “It worries me to think what you will do when you grow up. You’re not yet six years old but the hate in your eyes frightens me. As though you really mean it when you say you will kill Aw-Adan, or kill Uncle Qorrax or, for that matter, me.”
“True,” I admitted. “I am vindictive.”
“But why?” she said.
I wouldn’t tell her. She looked miserably worried and frightened. I began to recite a Koranic verse which she repeated after me. My hand rested under her ribs and I could feel her heartbeat, I could sense the tremor of her caged emotions.
“I’m sorry I cannot help myself being who I really am.”
“Of course, you can,” she said. “You’re very young, almost a baby.”
We made peace.
I behaved as though I were convinced that being caned by Aw-Adan was part of the ritual of growing up, that in a way, it was for my own good — didn’t learning the Koran form a part of the ritual of growing up spiritually? It was also a trade. After all, I could teach it if I landed with no other profession. Also, she reminded me of something Uncle Qorrax had said: that the flesh was the teacher’s and he could treat it as he wished. And if, for purposes of teaching this young boy the Word of God, you were to discolour his body with bruises or injure it slightly, so be it. Uncle had said it was to train my spirit so it would dispel Satan.
Yes, Misra and I made peace. We forged a union of our bodies. After all, she was a woman and she could be beaten or taken at will. I was a child and the same tyrannical persons could beat me or maltreat me.
“You promise that you will not see either of them?” I said.
She promised. Then she said: “You promise that you’ll learn the Koran and will behave well.”
I promised.
There was a very long pause. Then she said: “What we must do one of these days, so you can be a man, is to have you circumcised, have you purified.” And she looked at me.
My head moved, as though of its own accord, away from the body to which it didn’t feel at all connected. I shunned contact with her, I wouldn’t permit her to touch me. I scrambled over to the other side of the bed and sat on the edge, my feet danglingly touching the floor. It was such a plague to think that I would finally be separated from Misra and the thought gripped my heart and played tricks with its beating rhythm. I would live in a territory of pain for a fortnight or a month following the circumcision and then in a land of loneliness — forever separated from Misra. Maybe I would be given a bed of my own and I would have to sleep by myself after that.
III
I would sleep with the loox-slate between my legs. This not only enabled me to keep her from coming anywhere near me but it also gave me the warmth, the security and continuity I most deservedly needed: that of reading the slate night and day; and that of seeking nobody’s company save that of the Holy Word. I slept with the Sacred Word sweet on my tongue and awoke chewing it in place of Misra’s profane name. In secret, I would drink the writings which I had washed off the slate, believing it would help retain the Word’s wisdom, a day, a week or a month longer. During the long silences between myself and Misra, my thumb would busily trace and retrace, with the help of the index finger, a Koranic verse or a tradition of the Prophet’s; at times, I would copy, using my body instead of the slate, a short verse which I had committed to memory; I would copy the verse again and again and again until my veins flowed, like ink, with the blood of the Word. The Word became my companion, the slate the needed extension of my body and I chanted selected verses of the Koran whenever Aw-Adan called on Misra, as he was accustomed to doing after dusk, verses which promised heaven for the pious and a hellish reward for the adulterous and the wicked.
“Do you know that Askar will be circumcised the day after tomorrow?” she said to him one evening, speaking loud enough for me to hear it. “Hell become a man from then on, you’ll see,” she predicted.
A stray dog howled in the distance and, right there and then, I choked on the Word and my speech flew in fright, like a bird at the approaching of boots crushing under their heels a mound of gravel. Above all, my ears were filled with a din associated with that of fear. I held the slate tightly in my grip until the blood that had rushed to my heart began to circulate normally again. When I resurfaced, I was back where I had begun — I was motherless, I was fatherless, I was an orphan and had to give birth to myself. Yes, I was to re-create myself in a worldly image, I thought to myself, now that the Word had deserted me, now that I couldn’t depend on its keeping me company. The Word, I said to myself, was not a womb; the Word, I convinced myself, wouldn’t receive me as might a mother, a woman, a Misra. And so I waited for Aw-Adan to leave and, just as Misra returned, she saw me standing in the doorway, suggesting that we embraced — opening my arms like a bird opens its wings when about to fly off. We embraced warmly, we embraced tightly, then she laughed, laughed in such a way that I could sense mockery in it. Offended, I let go. Once apart, I saw why Apparently, the slate had become an impediment disallowing her to hug me comfortably, since its sharpened edge embarrassingly pressed itself against her pelvis.
“You naughty little boy,” she said, teasing me.
I said, “I'm sorry.”
Again teasing me, she said, “I’m not sure if you are sorry.” And while laughing, she bent double, half-leaning against me, while supporting her great weight on her knees which were on the floor. A spatter of her saliva had begun to descend on the slate which was lying flat on the floor, nearer me. And I noticed the letters of a verse I had written on my bare thigh run into one another, with the letter “o” closing its eyes in misted tears as of remorse. The other letters were reduced to tawdry shapes and a straggle of formless figurines.