Desert Flower (22 page)

Oh, shit. I stared at him with my eyes open wide, thinking: Who is this crazy motherfucker? He’s the one who needs help. But during the course of the weekend, both Nigel and Julie kept assuring me that if he could help me, why not? What future did I have back in Somalia? What was waiting for me there? My goats and camels? I asked Nigel the question that kept coming to mind: “What’s in it for you, man? Why do you want to marry me, and put yourself through all this?”

“I told you I don’t want anything from you. Allah sent me to you.” I explained that marrying

me wasn’t just a simple matter of hopping down to the registry office. I was already married.

“Well, you can divorce him, and we’ll tell the government blokes we’re planning to get married,” Nigel reasoned, ‘so they won’t deport you. I’ll go with you. I mean, I’m a British citizen they can’t say no. Look, I feel bad for you and I’m here to help. I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Well, thank you very much…”

Julie added, “Look, if he can help you, Waris, might as well. You might as well take a chance, because what else have you got.)’ After listening to them for days, I decided at least she was my friend, and he was her brother. I knew where he lived, and could trust him. She was right: might as well take a chance.

We concocted a plan where Nigel would come with me to talk to Mr. O’Sullivan about a divorce, since I certainly didn’t want to run into his boys again alone. I figured as usual with everything concerning this old man he’d want some money before he’d consent to do anything. I sighed; just thinking about it made me tired. But my friend and her brother kept urging me on, and I began to feel more optimistic about the whole plan. “Let’s go,” Nigel said. “We’ll drive down to Croydon

tomorrow.” The next day the two of us drove to the old man’s neighborhood, and I gave Nigel directions to the flat. “Watch yourself,” I warned as we drove. “These guys his sons are crazy. I mean, I’m scared to get out of the car.” Nigel laughed. “I’m serious. They chased me and tried to beat me they’re mad, I tell you. We’ve got to be really careful.”

“Come on, Waris. We’ll just tell the old guy you’re getting a divorce. And that’s that. It’s no big deal.”

By the time we reached Mr. O’Sullivan’s house, it was late afternoon and we parked out front on the street. As Nigel knocked on the door, I constantly looked over my shoulder up and down the street. No one answered, but I wasn’t surprised. I figured we’d have to make another trip to the corner pub.

Nigel said, “Come on, let’s go around and look in the window, and see if he’s home.” Unlike me, he could look inside easily. But after walking to several windows without any success, he looked at me with a confused expression on his face. “I feel like something’s wrong.” I thought, Oh boy, now you’re getting the picture. I get that feeling every time I have anything to do with this creep.

“What do you mean “something’s wrong”?”

“I don’t know… I just fed… maybe if I can get in through this window’ and with that statement he started pounding one of the windows with the palm of his hand in order to open it.

The next-door neighbor came out and yelled, “If you’re looking for Mr. O’Sullivan, we haven’t seen him for weeks.” As she stood there watching us with her arms folded over her apron, Nigel banged the window open a crack, and a horrid smell rushed out. I covered my mouth and nose with both hands and turned away. Nigel put his eyes down to the level of the crack and peered in. “He’s dead I can see him lying there on the floor.”

We told the neighbor lady to call an ambulance, jumped in the car, and took off. I hate to say it, but all I felt was relief.

Shortly after we discovered Mr. O’Sullivan rotting in his kitchen, Nigel and I were married. The British government stopped proceedings to deport me, but made no secret of the fact they thought our marriage was a crock. And, of course, it was. Still, Nigel and I agreed that until I got my passport, it would be best for me to stay at his place in Wales.

After living first in Mogadishu, then London,

for seven years, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed nature. And even though the leafy-green countryside scattered with farmland and rivers was completely different from the deserts of Somalia, I enjoyed spending time outside again as opposed to being in high-rise buildings and windowless studios. In Wales I was able to resume some of my favorite pleasures from my nomad days: running, walking, picking wildflowers, and peeing outside. Occasionally someone would catch me with my ass poking out of the shrubbery.

Nigel and I had separate rooms and lived like roommates not husband and wife. We had made an agreement that he would marry me so that I could get my passport, and although I offered to help him financially when I started making money, he insisted he expected nothing in return. Nigel only wanted the joy received from following Allah’s advice to help another human being in need. One morning I got up earlier than usual, around six, because I was headed to London for a casting. I came downstairs and put the coffee on while Nigel remained asleep in his room. I had just pulled my yellow rubber gloves on and begun washing the dishes when the doorbell rang.

Still wearing my gloves dripping soapsuds, I opened the door and found two men standing

there. They wore gray suits and serious gray faces,

and carried black briefcases. “Mrs. Richards?” “Yes?”

“Is your husband here?”

“Yes, he’s upstairs.”

“Step out of the way, please. We’re here on official government business.” As if anybody else would walk around looking like that.

“Well, come in, come in hey, you want a coffee or something? Sit down, and I’ll get him.” They sat down in Nigel’s big comfortable living room chairs, but didn’t permit their backs to rest against the furniture. “Oh, darling,” I called sweetly. “Come downstairs, please. We have some visitors here.”

He came down still half asleep, his red hair tangled. “Hello.” Nigel knew immediately by the way they looked who they were. “Yes, can I help you?”

“Well, yes, we’d just like to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, we want to make sure you and your wife live together. Do you live together?”

I could see from the look of pure disgust on Nigel’s face that things were going to get interesting and leaned up against the wall to watch.

He spat out, “Well, what does it look like to you now?” The two agents looked nervously around the room. “Umm. Yes, sir. We believe you, but we still need to have a look around the house.”

Nigel’s face grew dark, ominous, like a storm cloud. “Look. You’re not going through my house. I don’t care who you are. This is my wife, we live together, you see how it is. You came in unannounced we didn’t dress up for you so get out of my house!”

“Mr. Richards, you don’t have to get so angry. By law we’re required to ‘

“YOU MAKE ME SICK!!!” Run, boys, run while you can. Instead, they just sat there glued to their chairs with looks of astonishment on their pasty faces. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! If you ever come around here or call me again, I’m gonna get my gun, I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you, and I’ll I’ll die for her,” he said, pointing at me.

I just shook my head, thinking, This guy is crazy. He is really, really falling for me, and I’m in deep trouble. What in the hell am I doing here? I should have gone back to Africa I would have been better off After living there a couple of months, I was saying, “Nigel, why don’t you clean yourself up, get some decent shoes, and get a girlfriend? Let me help you.”

And he would respond, “Girlfriend? I don’t

want a girlfriend. For God’s sake, I have a wife what would I want with a girlfriend?”

When he would say this, I would go berserk. “Go put your fucking head in the toilet, you psycho, and flush it! Man, wake up and get out of my life! I don’t love you! You and I made an agreement you wanted to help me but I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t pretend I love you just to make you happy.” But even though Nigel and I had made an agreement, he broke it and made his own. When he was screaming himself purple at the agents who visited his house, he wasn’t lying. In his mind, every word of it was true. And things became even more complicated because I depended on him, liked him as a friend, was grateful to him for helping me, wanted no part of him romantically, and seriously wanted to kill him when he started acting like I was his beloved wife and personal property. Quickly I realized I had to get away, and the sooner the better.

But the passport dilemma dragged on. As Nigel realized I was dependent on him, the sense of power drove him to be more and more demanding. He became obsessed with me where I was, what I was doing, whom I was with. He constantly pleaded for me to love him, and the more he begged, the more I loathed him. Sometimes I

would get jobs in London, or go to visit friends. I took every chance to get away from Nigel in an attempt to remain sane.

However, I was losing my ability to remain sane while I was living with a man who I thought was insane. I grew tired of waiting for my passport my ticket to freedom and one day, heading to London, I stood on the platform wanting desperately to throw myself in front of the oncoming train. In those few minutes, I listened to its roar, felt the cold wind of its force blow my hair, and thought about what those tons of steel would feel like as they crushed my bones. The temptation to end all my worries was strong, but finally I asked myself, Why waste my life because of this man?

To his credit, after waiting for over a year, Nigel went to the immigration office and created a spectacular scene that finally got them to issue me a temporary passport. He cried, “My wife is an international model, and she needs at least a temporary passport so she can travel for her career.” BAM! He slammed my portfolio of modeling shots down on the desk. “I am a fucking British citizen, and for you to treat my wife like this well, I’m appalled, I’m ashamed to say this is my country. I demand this be sorted out NOW!” Shortly after his visit, the government confiscated my old Somalian

passport, and sent me a temporary travel document that permitted me to leave the country but had to be constantly renewed. Stamped inside were the words “Good for travel anywhere except Somalia.” They were the most depressing words I could imagine. Somalia was at war, and England didn’t want to take a chance on my visiting a nation at war while I was under its care. As a British resident, they would be responsible for me. As I read the words “Good for travel anywhere except Somalia,” I whispered, “Oh, my God, what have I done? I can’t even go to my own country.” Now I was completely alien.

Had anyone told me what my options were, I would have said forget it, give me back my Somalian passport. But no one discussed it with me. And now it was too late to go back. Since I couldn’t go back, there was only one direction to go and that was forward. I applied for a visa to America, and booked a flight to New York alone.

\020THE BIG LEAGUE

Nigel kept insisting that he had to come to New York with me. He’d never been there before, yet he knew all about the city: “That place is totally crazy. And you, Waris you don’t know what you’re doing, where you’re going you’ll be completely lost without me. And it’s not safe for you to be there alone I’m going to protect you.” Yeah, but who was going to protect me from Nigel? One of his more endearing traits was that in an argument, he would repeat his warped logic over and over and over and over and over..” like a crazy parrot, until he wore you down, no matter what you said to him. There was no reasoning

with him. But I was not giving in this time. I looked at this trip as a big opportunity for my future, not only for my career, but as a fresh start, away from Britain, away from Nigel and our whole sick relationship.

In 1991, I arrived in the States alone, and the booker at my New York agency gave me his apartment while he stayed at a friend’s. The apartment was in the Village, right in the heart of everything exciting in Manhattan. There wasn’t much in the studio except a big bed, but that simplicity suited me fine.

My agency had lots of jobs lined up for me when I got there, and I immediately began running in a way I never had before, and making money in a way I never had before. I worked every day that first week I arrived. After having struggled for four years to get work, I wasn’t complaining.

Everything was going great until one afternoon when I was on a shoot. During a break, I called the agency to check on the next day’s appointments. My booker said, “And your husband called. He’s on his way and will meet you at the apartment tonight.”

“My husband you gave him the address where I’m staying?” “Uh-huh. He said you were so frantic before you

left, you forgot to give it to him. Your husband was so cute, he said, “I just want to make sure she’s all right, because, you know, it’s her first time in New York.” I slammed down the receiver and stood there for a minute breathing hard. I couldn’t believe it. Yes, I could, but still he had gone too far this time. I didn’t blame this poor guy at the agency; he had no idea that Nigel wasn’t a real husband. And how could I explain it to him? See. we’re married and everything, but I just married him for his passport because I was an illegal alien then and they were deporting me to Somalia. Got it? Now, about those appointments for tomorrow-. The scariest part was that I really was legally married to him.

When I finished work, I came back to the apartment that evening, with my mind made up. As I’d been forewarned, Nigel arrived and knocked on the door. I let him in, and before he could take his jacket off, I said in a deadly, no nonsense tone, “Come on, let’s go. I’ll take you out for dinner.” Once we were safely seated in public, I spelled it out for him: “Look, Nigel, I can’t stand you. I can’t stand you. You make me sick! I can’t work when you’re around me. I can’t think. I’m frustrated. I’m tense, and I just want you to go away.” I knew what I was saying to him was horrible, and it gave me no pleasure to hurt

him. But I was desperate. Maybe if I was cruel enough, mean enough, I could finally get through to him.