Desert Flower (25 page)

playing, dancers would start dancing, and everybody would start filming, then I’d bungle my lines: “Take ninety-six . Cut!” The dancers would freeze, then let their arms flop down to their sides and glare at me as if saying, “Who is this stupid bitch? Oh, God, where did you find her? We just want to go home.”

My host’s duties included welcoming Donna Summer, which was a big honor for me, because she’s one of my all-time favorite singers. “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome the lady of soul, Donna Summer!”

“CUT’

“WHAT NOW?”

“You forgot to say her label. Read the cue card, Waris.”

“Ohhhh, Fucking-A! Will you pick this shit up, pick it up? I can’t see it. And don’t put it down. Put it up straight these lights are right in my eyes. I can’t see a thing.”

Don Cornelius would take me into the corner and say, “Take a deep breath. Tell me how you’re feeling.” I explained to him that this script just wasn’t working for me it wasn’t my groove the way I speak.

“How do you want to do it? Go ahead. Take over take it all.” They were amazingly patient and

calm. Don and the crew let me take over and make a mess out of everything, then helped me fix it up again. The best part of that whole experience was working with them and Donna Summer, who gave me an autographed CD of her greatest hits.

Then the BBC and I moved on to New York. They followed me out to do a job on location where I was being photographed in the rain, walking up and down the streets of Manhattan wearing a black slip and a raincoat and holding an umbrella. On another night, the cameraman sat quietly in the corner filming while I cooked dinner with a group of friends at an apartment in Harlem. We were having such a good time that we forgot he was there.

The next phase required me and the whole crew to meet in London and fly to Africa, where I would reunite with my family for the first time since I’d run away. While we were filming in London, Los Angeles, and New York, the BBC staff in Africa began searching diligently for my mother. In order to locate my family, we went over maps, and I tried to show them the regions where we Usually traveled. Next, I had to go over all the

tribal and clan names of my family, which is very confusing, especially for Westerners. For the past three months the BBC had been searching without success.

The plan was that I would remain in New York working until the BBC found Mama, then I’d fly to London, and we’d all go to Africa together and film the conclusion of my story. Shortly after the BBC began looking for Mama, Gerry called one day and said, “We found your mother.”

“Oh, wonderful!”

“Well, we think we found her.”

I said, “What do you mean “you think” ?” “Okay, we found this woman, and we asked her if she had a daughter named Waris. She said, yes, yes, she has a daughter named Waris. Yes, Waris lives in London. But she seems awfully vague on the details, so our people in Somalia aren’t sure what’s going on if this woman is the mother of another Waris or what.” After further questioning, the BBC disqualified this woman, but the search was just beginning. Suddenly the desert was alive with women claiming to be my mother; they all had daughters named Waris who lived in London, which was especially odd, considering I have never met another human being with my name.

I explained what was going on. “See, these people are so poor over there, they’re desperate.

They’re hoping if they say “Yeah, we’re her family”

you’ll come to their little village and make a film, they can get some money, get some food. These women are pretending to be my mother, ping they’ll get something out of it. [ don’t know how they think they’re gonna get away with it, but they’ll try.”

Unfortunately, I had no pictures of my mother, but Gerry came up with another idea. “We need some kind of secret that only your mother would know about you.”

Well, my mother used to have a nickname for me, Avdohol, which means small mouth.” “Will she remember that?” “Absolutely.”

From then on, Avdohol became the secret password. When the BBC was interviewing, these women would make it through the first couple of questions; then they’d always flunk out on the nickname. Bye-bye. But finally one day they called me and said, “We think we’ve found her. This woman didn’t remember the nickname, but she said she has a daughter named Waris who used to work for the ambassador in London.”

I hopped a flight out of New York the next day.

man. We’re almost at the end of this project; you can’t do this to us. We need this story to end in Africa, which means we’ve got to take Waris there. Now, for God’s sake, please…” But Nigel wasn’t interested. He went back to Wales with my passport.

I made the trip to Wales alone and begged him. Again and again, he refused to give it to me unless he got to go to Africa with us. It was a hopeless bind for me. I’d prayed for the chance to see my mother again for fifteen years. With Nigel there, the whole experience would be ruined. No doubt about it he’d make sure of that. If I didn’t take him, I had no chance of seeing her, because I couldn’t travel without my passport. “Nigel, you can’t be following us around and making a bloody headache for everybody. Don’t you see it’s my chance to see my mother for the first time in fifteen years!”

He was so bitter that we were going to Africa and it had nothing to do with him. “I swear, you’re just being so fucking unfair!” he cried. Finally, in the end, I convinced him to give me my passport by promising I’d take him to Africa some day, when this job was done just the two of us. It was a cheap trick, and I wasn’t proud of it, because that was a promise I knew I’d never keep. But

when it came to Nigel, being a decent, reasonable adult never worked.

twin-engine bush plane landed in Galadi, Ethiopia, a tiny village where Somali refugees had gathered across the border to escape the fighting at home. As we hit the red desert soil strewn with rocks, the plane bounced wildly. You must have been able to see the trail of dust for miles, because the entire village ran toward us. They’d never seen anything like this before. The BBC crew and I all climbed out of the plane, and I began trying to speak Somali to the people hurrying to meet us. I was struggling to communicate with them, because some were Ethiopians and some were Somalis, but they spoke a different dialect. Within a few minutes I gave up.

I smelled the hot air and the sand and suddenly I remembered my lost childhood. Every little thing came flooding back to me and I began to run. The crew was yelling, “Waris, where are you going?”

“Go on… go wherever you have to go… I’ll be back.” I ran and touched the ground and rubbed the earth between my fingers. I touched the trees. They were dusty and dry, but I knew it

was time for the rains soon, then everything would blossom. I sucked the air into my lungs. It held the scents of my childhood memories, all those years when I lived outside and these desert plants and this red sand were my home. Oh, God, this was my place. I started to cry with the joy of being back home. I sat down under a tree and felt at the same time overwhelming happiness that I was back where I belonged, and deep sadness that I missed it so much. Looking around me, I wondered how I could have stayed away so long. It was like opening a door that I hadn’t dared open before today, and finding a part of me that I’d forgotten. When I walked back to the village, everyone gathered around me, shaking my hand. “Welcome, sister.”

Then we found out that nothing was what we expected. The woman who’d claimed to be my mother was not, and nobody knew how to find my family. The guys from the BBC were despondent; they didn’t have the money in their budget to come back a second time. Gerry kept saying, “Oh, no, without this portion, there’s no ending. And without this ending, there’s no real story to the whole film. It’s all wasted. What are we going to do?”

We combed the village, asking everybody if

they’d heard of my family, or had any information about them. People were all anxious to help, and word of our mission spread quickly. Later that day, an older man walked up to me and said, “Do you remember me?”

“Well, I’m Is mail; I’m the same tribe as your father. I’m a very close friend of his.” And then I realized who he was and felt ashamed for not recognizing him, but I hadn’t seen him since I was a little girl. “I think I know where your family is. I think I can find your mother, but I’ll need money for gas.” Right away, I thought, Oh, no. How can I trust this guy? Are all these people trying to con us? If I give this guy some money, he’s just going to bugger off and we’ll probably never see him again. He went on, “I have this truck here, but it’s not much…”

Is mail pointed to a pickup truck the type you’d never see anyplace but Africa or a junkyard in America. On the passenger’s side the windshield was shattered; on the driver’s side it was missing altogether. This meant that all the sand and flies in the desert would come sailing into his face as he drove. The wheels were warped and dented from driving over rocks. The body looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. I

shook my head. “Hold on a minute, let me talk to the guys.”

I went to find Gerry and said, “This man over here thinks he knows where my family is. But he says he needs some money for gas to go look for them.”

“Well, how are we going to trust him?”

“You’re right, but we have to take a chance. We have no choice.” They agreed and gave him some cash. The man hopped in his truck and took off immediately, raising a cloud of dust. I saw Gerry staring after him with a depressed look on his face, as if to say, “There went more money wasted.”

I patted him on the back and said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to find my mother I promise you. By the third day.” My prophecy did little to ease the crew’s minds. We had eight days here before the plane would come back to pick us up. And that was it. We couldn’t say to the pilots, “Uh, yeah, we’re not quite ready, try us again next week.” Our tickets were scheduled for return from Addis Ababa to London; we would have to leave, and that would be the end of it, Mama or no Mama.

I had a good time hanging out with the villagers in their huts, sharing their food, but the English guys did not fare so well. They found a

building with busted-out windows to sleep in,

and rolled out their sleeping bags. They had brought some books and a flashlight, but they couldn’t sleep at night because the mosquitoes drove them crazy. The BBC crew was living on canned beans, and complaining they were sick of their food, and there was nothing else to eat.

One afternoon, a Somali man decided he’d give them a treat and brought around a beautiful little baby goat; the guys were all petting it. Later, he brought it back skinned, and proudly presented it: “Here’s your dinner.” The guys looked shocked, but didn’t say anything. I borrowed a pot and built a fire, then cooked the goat with some rice.

When the Somali man left, they said, “You don’t think we’re going to eat that, do you?”

“Yes, of course. Why not?” “Oh, forget it, Waris.”

“Well, why didn’t you say something?” They explained they felt it would be rude, because the man was trying to be polite, but after petting the little goat, they couldn’t eat it. They never touched it again.

My three-day deadline for finding Mama passed with no sign of her. Gerry grew more anxious by the day. I tried to reassure these guys that my mother was coming, but they thought I was being

ludicrous. I said, “Look. I promise you my mother will be here tomorrow evening by six o’clock.” I don’t know why I had this belief, but it just came to me, so I told them.

Gerry and the guys started ribbing me about my latest prediction. “What? Yeah? How do you know that? Oh, yes, Waris knows! She predicts everything. She knows! Just like she predicts the rain!” They were laughing because I kept telling them when it was going to rain, because I could smell it.

“Well, it did rain, didn’t it?” I demanded. “Oh, come on, Waris. You were just lucky.”

“It has nothing to do with luck. I’m back in my element now I know this place. We survived here on our instincts, my friends.” They started looking sideways at each other. “Okay. Don’t believe me. You’ll see six o’clock.”

The next day I was sitting talking to an elderly lady when Gerry jogged up at about ten minutes to six. “You’re not going to believe it!”

“What?”

“Your mother I think your mother is here.” I stood up and smiled. “But, we’re not sure. The man is back and he’s got a woman with him; he says it’s your morn. Come have a look.”

The news had spread like a brushfire through

the village; our little drama had definitely been the biggest thing to happen here for God knows how long. Everyone wanted to find out: Is this Waris’s mother or just another impostor? By now it was nearly dark and a crowd gathered around us till I could barely walk. Gerry led me down a little alleyway. Up ahead was the man’s pickup truck with the hole in the windshield, and a woman was climbing down from the seat. I couldn’t see her face, but from the way she wore her scarf I could tell immediately that it was my mother. I ran to her and grabbed her. “Oh, Mama!”

She said, “I drive for miles and miles with this awful truck and oh, Allah, what a horrible ride that was! And we’re driving two solid days and nights all for this?”

I turned to Gerry and laughed. “It’s her!”

I told Gerry that they had to leave us alone for the next couple of days, and he kindly agreed. Talking to Mama was awkward; my Somali, I discovered, was pathetic. Tougher than that was the fact that we’d become strangers. At first, we just discussed little everyday things. But the gladness I felt at seeing her overcame the gap between us; I

enjoyed just sitting close to her. Mama and Is mail had driven for two days and two nights straight, and I could see she was exhausted. She had aged a great deal in fifteen years the result of a relentlessly hard life in the desert.

Papa wasn’t with her. He was off searching for water when the truck came. My mother said Papa was getting old, too. He would go off chasing the clouds looking for rain, but he desperately needed glasses because his eyesight was terrible. When Mama left, he’d been gone for eight days, and she hoped he hadn’t gotten lost. I thought back to how I remembered Papa, and realized how much he’d obviously changed. When I left home, he’d been able to find us even if the family moved on without him, and even on the blackest night with no moon.