Don't Tell Me You're Afraid (9 page)

I
HAD
BEEN
LEFT
WITHOUT
a coach at age fourteen and six months away from the most important race of my life, the one in Hargeysa. The one I had to win if I was to become the fastest and be able to go to Djibouti to run in the name of my country for the first time. The very thought of it made my head spin; I had to do it at all costs.

There was no one to clock me anymore, no one to make me do the exercises for my legs and arms. No one to check if I cheated on the reps or the abdominals.

Every day since Alì's departure I had wondered where he was, what he was doing. As I ran I heard his voice buzzing in my ears.
Don't do this, don't do that. Lift your heels more, keep your arms in close. Try to coordinate your breath with your stride. And smile! When you reach the finish line, smile, Samia!

I never did. I didn't care about smiling. By the end of a race I was exhausted, and there were a ton of things I'd done wrong. I
knew there was room for improvement, and I just wanted to work on that. When I passed the finish line, I wasn't even able to savor the victory. I began thinking about the next race, mentally correcting my mistakes.

Besides that, I was also a little afraid. Afraid that there might be someone in the stands who didn't like young girls to flaunt themselves. Alì, on the other hand, pressured me each time and insisted that it was important to smile. “It's like acknowledging the spectators,” he said.

In the evening before going to sleep, with the
ferus
still lit, I lost myself staring at Mo's photograph. I gazed at him and asked him questions. Said teased me, saying that I was talking to a piece of paper.

“Samia, are you still talking to that newspaper?”

“I'm not talking to any newspaper,” I retorted irritably. Yet that's really just what I was doing: talking to a worn-out scrap of paper.

“Ink stains, you know, but it doesn't talk.” Said kept it up.

When the others all laughed, I woke up from my trance. Then Hodan gave me a kiss on the forehead and told me not to get mad, that Said was only joking.

True, he was joking, but he was right.

I looked at Mo in that photo where he was about to cross the finish line, his eyes wide open and frenzied from the effort yet serene and satisfied with another victory, and I whispered to him to reassure me. To tell me that one day it would be the same for me. That I too would win with that look of hope and serenity in my eyes.

Still, winning serenely seemed unlikely to me. Each victory
was also a sin that I knew displeased a lot of people. Naturally I did everything I could not to let it bother me; I went my own way, not caring what others thought, not smiling either.

But the truth was that Alì's absence made it all seem less carefree, less of a game; running had taken on a different feel, even though Hodan was back to put me to sleep with her velvety voice.

During those months the only thing I did besides going to school was run. I trained as much as seven hours a day. I ran in the courtyard, and after curfew, as soon as I could, I went out and ran through the streets.

The burka over my head and under it the terry headband to soak up the sweat.

Running in that getup was impossible. I stumbled repeatedly in the long garment, and the heat buildup under that confining black garb brought me close to fainting each time.

But all I could think about was Hargeysa, the race of my life, the one that would change my destiny. I had to win; it was my only chance to become a professional, even though that word has never meant much in Somalia. No one has ever earned a red cent through sports. But I hoped that I would at least have the chance to compete in major races, to represent my country in the world and to run for the liberation of Somalia while Somalia thought I was playing by its rules.

Two days a week I went to help Hooyo at the vegetable stand, to earn a few shillings that would help pay for my bus ticket to Hargeysa. Hodan went with Hooyo on two other days and Ubah the last two, and they too gave me something whenever they could. Their contribution to freedom.

The Islamic Courts administration had prohibited Hodan and her group from rehearsing and playing in the city.

They could no longer go to the concert hall and were forced to meet in the cellar of a restaurant up north, toward the Shabelle River. If they were found again in the concert hall near the old port, they would be shot.

When I returned, drenched in sweat, from my run around the block at curfew, Hooyo looked at me strangely, as if I were a rare animal.

“Who did you take after?” she asked me, slipping off my burka and running a hand over my damp hair as she stood in the corner by the
burgico
preparing supper. Each time it was the same routine. As soon as she saw me duck in from under the red curtain, she smiled at me with her usual tenderness. Then, when I went over to her, she turned serious.

“Who did you take after, huh, little Samia?” she said in that gentle voice of hers. I'd grown as tall as her, and I noticed that her bright eyes, deep as a bottomless well, were being framed by wrinkles all around.

“I take after Aabe,” I replied.

She looked at me, took my face between her hands, and said: “How beautiful you are, Samia. By now you're a woman. You're the most beautiful one in the family.”

Then she folded the damp burka, untied the laces of my sneakers and told me to go rinse off and rest my feet.

It was like a ceremony. The disrobing of the beautiful, wacky daughter.

But at that time all I thought about was conserving my energy
for the following day's training. I couldn't concentrate on anything else.

The day of my fifteenth birthday was two weeks before the race, and Said gave me a stopwatch.

I never knew where he got it or how much it cost. The fact is he came to me and said: “This is for you, warrior Samia.”

It was the first time he'd called me that; usually Said came up with a hundred different names, all to make fun of me. But that day he called me “warrior,” as Aabe sometimes called me, maybe because I was growing up: I was fifteen, and fifteen is a grown-up age. Then he said he hoped that stopwatch would someday mark the women's speed record for our country.

“I promise you, Said,” I told him, kissing his cheek.

I had never had a stopwatch. Alì used to measure my time by calculating the seconds with his battered old wristwatch. The strap had been missing for a long time; only the dial remained. Until the day they stole that too from him.

He was on the corner of the national monument waiting for me to reappear from the narrow street across the way, when he was approached by a group of three Abgal boys whom he had never seen before; they must not have been from our neighborhood, and who knows what they were doing there? Alì was standing in the shade, leaning against the trunk of an acacia tree, when the three started insulting him.

“This Darod has a face just like a nigger,” they said.

Alì, as always, didn't breathe a word; he looked them straight in the eye one by one.

“So this Darod doesn't talk. He must be so hungry he even ate his tongue.” And the three morons burst out laughing.

Alì knew he wouldn't get very far with three against one. Besides, he was in an Abgal district, so he didn't have much hope. Remaining calm, he let the one who seemed like the leader get close enough, then suddenly, as swiftly as he had bitten the militiaman's hand that long-ago night, he kicked him on the shin. The guy doubled over in pain and Alì ran away fast. The other two ran after him for a while; then, being slower than him, they blew the whistle that thugs wear around their necks for times like these.
Tweeeeeee!
So loud it could be heard through half the city. Turning the corner, Alì found himself face to face with a man who stopped him, demanding to know why he was running and whether he had by chance stolen something, which was contrary to the law of the Koran. Right then the two guys showed up and told the man that Alì was a thief, that he'd stolen their money.

They beat him and took everything he had, which was only that strapless wristwatch. From then on we did without a watch.

Now, with Said's stopwatch, everything changed.

Who knew what Alì would have said. He'd have found it hard to believe that he could use a real timer. Being able to measure my times seemed impossible to me too.

Until that day all I had known was that I'd come in first.

I must have inherited the seed of madness from Aabe, in any case.

I was right to say that to Hooyo when she asked me. It was with my father's permission, in fact, that I went to the CONS stadium at night on the last three days before the Hargeysa race.

I had been asking him for years. Alì had told me many times about how he and his friends Amir and Nurud would sneak in
and play soccer there when they were little. It had stuck in my mind. A time when I could use the stadium in peace.

Aabe had never given me permission to do it. Until those three days before the race, when I went to plead with him, and he relented.

“Thank you, Aabe. I'll be forever grateful to you,” I told him, making sheep's eyes at him.

“I hope you'll be grateful when these three days are over, because it will mean that nothing happened to you,” he replied worriedly.

The truth was that, even though it was pitch dark, this was the only time when there was no danger, because there was no one around and the evening curfew had already quieted things down.

I left the house around eleven o'clock, all covered up in my burka, and in half an hour, running through the most out-of-the-way streets, I was at the stadium.

I slipped through one of the holes in the fence, crossed the ticket-window area, climbed over a low gate that led to the central tunnel, and from there got in.

It was fantastic.

The scent of grass was overwhelming; my senses were completely engulfed by that sweet, subtle, pungent fragrance.

Having the empty stadium all to myself, illuminated only by the light of the moon, was as breathtaking as touching the star-studded sky.

I stopped at the edge of the tartan track on which I had won my first race and took off the onerous black burka. I folded it and left it on the ground. Then, as I took slow, deep breaths, just the idea of being in there at night produced a rush of adrenaline that
energized me. I warmed up, taking long, unhurried strides that brought me to the center of the soccer field. From there, for a few seconds that lasted an eternity, I savored the sight of the deserted stadium.

Not a soul.

Only me, my breath, and the moon. And the scent of the grass, heady, all around me.

I pretended that there was peace outside, that this was a minor infraction and that I wasn't risking anything.

It was there, on those nights, three days before the most important race of my life, that I discovered that I could run a hundred meters in 16.32 seconds and two hundred meters in 32.90 seconds. I had thought I was faster, but I wasn't. Said's stopwatch had revealed a bitter truth. My times were way over the world records; like it or not, I would have to improve. I had no choice but to improve.

On all three of those nights Aabe was there waiting for me at the exit to take me home safe and sound. On the way back, covered by the burka but skipping joyfully, I spelled out everything I had to do to improve. He kept looking around nervously, and every so often he would stop and threaten me with his cane, telling me to settle down and not attract attention, or he'd bop me on the head. I laughed; I knew we shouldn't be out and about at that hour, but I was happy.

The sudden freedom, the empty stadium, the full moon, the scent of grass filled me with irrepressible euphoria.

Aabe got mad and told me to quiet down.

But all I could think about was the race.

Three days later I left for the north.

T
HE
BUS
TRIP
TO
H
ARGE
YSA
made me feel like a celebrity. I was by myself and the ticket was expensive, the equivalent of sixty U.S. dollars—being able to buy it was a miracle in itself.

I had never been on a bus. Everything was very comfortable, the seats soft and roomy, covered in gray velvet, and there was background music. The driver wore a dark blue uniform and he was very kind. When he saw me get on alone, wearing the tracksuit that Aabe had gotten hold of somewhere and given me for the occasion, he must have thought I was a famous athlete. He looked at me and greeted me the way you regard and address a person worthy of respect.

“Good morning,
abaayo
,” he said to me as I climbed in. “Have a good trip.”

“Thank you” was all I managed to say, I was so excited.

The journey took almost a whole day.

I felt like one of those tiny birds that beat their wings so rapidly that all you see is a blur; the birds look like they're suspended
in the air, dangling somehow from an invisible thread. I was so impatient that I couldn't sit still. I must have gotten up a hundred times with the excuse of stretching my legs. When we stopped to get out and eat something or go to the bathroom, I couldn't wait to get moving again.

We reached our destination at seven the next morning, as the sun was rising. I hadn't slept for even one minute.

I got off the bus with the strange feeling of being in a country at peace.

The fact that there were no armed guards at the station, that there were no traces of guns or camouflage uniforms, and that outside there were no bullet holes in the walls didn't seem real. I felt disoriented. Like an animal that has spent its entire life in a cage and suddenly finds itself free, the cage door open. I was struck by a feeling of extreme euphoria, which instead of spurring me on at that moment immobilized me. I was tempted to turn around, get back on the bus, and return home to my natural setting, where freedom was measured by counting land mines and mortar rounds. That morning at dawn, with the sun peeking shyly through the cracks between the station's wooden roof and walls, I thought that too much freedom so unexpectedly isn't good for people; they aren't used to it.

I sat on a metal bench beside a newspaper stand and waited a bit. The news vendor was opening up just then, his face still sleepy.

With the few shillings I had I bought a
shaat
in the only bar that was open. The heat flowed from my hands to my throat and from there, after a while, finally reached my head.

I made my way to the stadium on foot.

I had all the time in the world, plus I had to loosen up my
joints after all those hours with my knees bent, not being able to straighten them.

The city at peace seemed like a miracle to me. Being able to go around without a burka, being able to walk or even shout in the middle of the street. Being able to stop someone and talk to him. The idea of being able to do all those things made my head spin.

After an hour I reached the stadium; it was now eight o'clock. The guard behind the gate was moved to take pity on me. When he heard where I'd traveled from, he opened the gate with a big key, let me in, and even found me a shady spot where I could rest.

I tried to lie down on the grass surrounding the track, in front of the stands, but sleep was the last thing on my mind.

I was quivering like the strings of a
shareero,
the instrument that Hussein played in Hodan's group.

At ten they opened the gates and the first runners arrived with their coaches. Only then, unhurriedly, did they set up the tables for those who had signed up.

I was the first to present myself.

The lady in charge looked at me questioningly and asked me my name. I answered her, terrified that somehow, between Mogadishu and Hargeysa, my name might have been lost along with my registration and that I had come all that way for nothing.

But the lady looked me up and down and only asked: “Did you sleep, child?”

“Yes, of course I slept. How could I run if I hadn't rested,
abaayo
?” I replied, candid as a lily.

“All right, then go rinse your face afterward. There's a fountain over there.”

“Thank you,
abaayo
.”

“What's your name, child?”

“Samia Yusuf Omar,” I said, all in one breath.

The lady opened the register and searched. Endless seconds went by. “I come from Mogadishu,
abaayo
,” I added.

“Samia Yusuf Omar from Mogadishu . . . Here it is.”

I signed the book and she gave me the bib with my number. My first bib.

I was signed up for the women's one-hundred-meter and two-hundred-meter races.

My number was 78.

I had to wait another two hours before running. I didn't know what to do with myself.

Fortunately, the women competed before the men.

I exchanged a few words with a couple of girls, but I couldn't get too distracted. I was there to win, not to chat. I kept looking around; I couldn't help it. Everything was new to me. It was my first time in the north, my first real race.

I was surely the youngest. No one would have bet a shilling on me.

After a while, when my impatience had reached its peak, I took the path of least resistance. I lay down on the grass and waited for time to pass. Surrounded by that sweet, enveloping scent.

Until the moment came.

My opponents didn't seem very intimidating. They were older than me, but they didn't have the fervent eyes of real athletes. Right away I had the feeling that I could come in first.

In a little less than two hours I won the two qualifying rounds in the heats, one after the other.

Before I knew it, I found myself in the final, with a lot less
breath, a great deal of pain in my quadriceps, and two races behind me. One in the hundred meters and one in the two hundred.

The first-place finishers from each heat were admitted to the final.

The first of the finals was the two hundred meters. My legs were stiff as boards from the overexertion; I was twice as exhausted as the others because I was the only one to run both races.

But that only made me more driven. If I had come this far, I might even win.

I bent over the starting blocks and at the signal took off like a rocket, my eyes only on the finish line.

In my head, as always, were the voices of Aabe and Alì, shouting at me to run.

And I ran.

I crossed the finish line first.

It was a huge thrill, the greatest feeling of liberation.

Number one.

I was the fastest runner of my country in the two hundred meters. Something that I was barely able to absorb.

I didn't have much time to let it sink in, however. In ten minutes the hundred-meter final, the most important race, would be run.

The spectators in the stands began to make themselves heard for the first time. Some shouted, cheering us on.

As we headed for the starting blocks, the girl in the lane next to mine pointed to a small group of people in the stands who were trying to get my attention. When I looked over, they began clapping and rooting for me. I had fans.

I raised my arm and waved at them.

When the starting gun went off, I again heard only the voices of Aabe and Alì in my head.
Run, little warrior. Run and smile at the finish line!

I burned those hundred meters like I'd never done before.

The girls to my right and to my left were slower than I was; instantly I was two steps ahead of them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that there was only one runner, in the first lane, who was even with me. In the last ten meters I poured out everything that had brought me to that track.

The strain and effort, the training, the commitment, the fears and frustrations that I'd experienced for at least seven years. I looked back at Mogadishu like a cage from which I had finally been able to escape and run free.

And I won. Again.

When I reached the finish, I felt like a cricket that for weeks has been prevented from jumping, caught and kept in a box, as kids do in Mogadishu. They keep it in their pocket; then, after days, they release it, and the cricket jumps a long distance. They have jumping contests for crickets that have been penned up, and they bet on them. I felt like one of those confined crickets. I kept jumping left and right; I could have reached the sky. And the beauty of it was that we were in Hargeysa, there was no war, there were no Al-Shabaab men.

Here, at last, I could jump and celebrate in peace.

And I could smile too.

I smiled at everyone and I shook hands with those who came up to meet me. If Alì had seen me, he would have been so happy he'd have cried like a little girl. I hadn't seen him in six months,
and in my heart I dedicated the victory to him, to my coach. To the one who had made me become an athlete. And who was my best friend.

That day was the first time I saw my official times, posted in large letters on an electronic scoreboard: 15.83 for the hundred meter, and 32.77 for the two hundred.

There was still a lot of room for improvement, but I had won. I was the fastest woman in my country.

And I had earned the right to run in the race to be held in Djibouti three months from now. My first international competition.

On the trip back I slept for twenty hours straight. We left in the evening and would not arrive until the following evening. I never opened my eyes, not even once; I didn't even get out of the bus to go to the bathroom.

I had my two medals around my neck, safely tucked under my T-shirt, where I still wore the bib with 78, my lucky number.

Only for the first hour did I feel like a bomb about to explode. An elderly lady sitting beside me was trying to read a book by the dim light that filtered through the window, and I felt the irresistible urge to tell her everything that had happened to me, minute by minute. Every so often I tried to start a conversation. There was no way; she never raised her eyes from those pages.

Afterward I began to crumble. I hadn't slept in two days and I plunged into a deep, deep sleep. I fell asleep with my hand over the medals, grasping the jacket of my tracksuit.

At the bus station in Mogadishu, everything was the same as I had left it. For me centuries had passed; I had traveled to the other side of the world and had become someone else. Yet in a flash I found myself back where I'd started, as if nothing had
happened: the usual troubled faces, sunken and anxious, the usual rifles over the shoulders, the usual stained, crumpled uniforms, salvaged from who knows where.

Outside the station Aabe was waiting for me.

There was no need for me to say anything; he read it all on my face. I leaped at him, arms around his neck, and covered him with kisses.

On the way back I was obsessed by the idea of running into Al-Shabaab patrols. I used the technique that Hodan had taught me as a little girl, which I had later taught Alì: invisibility. It had always worked. Except for the time with the two boys and Ahmed. It was simple: If you think you're invisible, Hodan had told me, then you really become invisible. It was the way we went around the city; it was the secret that we'd always used, even Alì and I when we went running at curfew or when we ventured out to the beach when we were little.

Now I used it for me and Aabe. So that the bubble of invisibility might protect us from everything and everyone forever and ever.

It was past eleven when we got home. Everyone had already eaten, but they had kept a plate of
kirisho mirish
and sweet sesame cakes for me.

Hooyo, crying as usual, said she was proud of me. Even Hodan joined in with Hooyo's tears, and my other brothers and sisters came up with a song in my honor.

That evening, the night of the victory, everything was perfect.

I was transformed.

For the first time I felt grown up, like an adult. On top of that, I knew I was a champion, and buried somewhere in the pit
of my stomach was the conviction that one day I would win the Olympics. And that when that day came, I would indeed lead the resurgence of Muslim women.

I watched my siblings sing as if I were in a bubble of silence. I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn't hear their voices.

The absence of Alì, his brothers, and Aabe Yassin was palpable. Maybe that's why my family was more emotional than usual.

Alì, my coach, wasn't there, and for the first time in my life I wept inconsolably.

Hodan and Hooyo thought I was crying for joy over the victory. No, that night in the courtyard, in front of my entire family celebrating in my honor, I cried because I had grown up and because I missed Alì. The one person in the world who had devoted himself to training me so that I might win the race that I had won that day. And who didn't even know it.

Before going to sleep I hung the two medals on a nail in the wall beside the mattress. Next to Mo Farah's face.