Don't Tell Me You're Afraid (20 page)

N
OW
HE
RE
I
AM
IN
T
RIPOLI
, waiting; it's been two and a half months since we turned back. It's March 31, 2012. Only four months till the opening ceremony of the London Olympics and I know that I can still make it.

Three days after I returned to the apartment in the eastern outskirts of the city, a new girl arrived: Nigist, an Ethiopian. She was nervous, like all newcomers, but also elated: She had conquered the monster of the Sahara; she hadn't let it scare her. We became friends. She's like me: She's my same age and has the same build. If you ask me, we look alike, even though she says I'm prettier than she is. It's not true; I think she's prettier. I found her a place next to my mat. I didn't want her to end up in the clutches of some mean woman whose heart had been hardened by the Journey.

I went over my story a number of times with Nigist. She recognized me. She had seen me on TV nearly four years ago, at the
China Olympics, and since then, she says, she's never forgotten my face: my gentle, radiant smile, she says.

At first, like Abdullahi, she couldn't believe it was me. That I was there, like her, a
tahrib
like everyone else. A needy refugee. The second day she asked me. And I've never been more grateful to anyone. Nigist brought me back to life; that's why I decided to protect her. If she hadn't recognized me, I wouldn't have remembered who I was. It had been too long since I last looked in the mirror. The truth is that was something I didn't want to do. Whenever I happened to come near a reflective surface, I would avert my gaze. I hadn't seen my face in eight and a half months, except through the reactions of others when they looked at me.

That is why I will be forever grateful to Nigist. And why I like to tell her my story, again and again, almost every day. We must have had the same conversation—how many times? Twenty, thirty? Maybe more. Each time she asks me the same questions, or asks me new ones, and we find ourselves laughing at the same incidents. When Alì stole the candies that Aabe had saved for the feast of Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, and as punishment Aabe made him eat them all, causing him to get diarrhea. When I ran in the stadium at night and imitated the noise of the crowd by taking a big breath and roaring:
aaaaarrghhhh
. When Alì fell into the big pool of excrement at the first race I won. When I told a reporter after the race in Beijing that I would have been happier if people had applauded me because I finished first and not last, and he'd burst out laughing in front of the TV camera. When Abdi actually thought that the aquarium in China was magical, and I confirmed it, and he fell for it. Then
too the eucalyptus. When Alì climbed to the top and stayed there until he was weak from hunger. Like a monkey.

Another three months here in Tripoli without being able to leave the house for fear of being hounded by the police results in a lot of talking. There was a brief time, during the clashes and then right after the death of dictator Gadhafi at the end of 2011, when the situation was calmer. An absence of government means an absence of law. And without law even we
tahrib
were less
tahrib
. No one thought about us then because nobody was hunting us anymore. The traffickers were without work and a passage to Italy was cheap.

But now they've regrouped.

Worse than before. They say that if you, a
tahrib,
are found on the street, they'll send you straight back to the Sahara.

After I came back to Tripoli, I had to call Hodan and Hooyo again. But this would be the last money I'd ask for. This time, finally, I was going to make it.

I paid again, and here I am with Nigist, waiting for them to call and tell me it's time to leave. After you pay it's best to stay put in the house, because they could come at any time.

But now I've been told I'll leave tonight. This time they gave me a little advance notice, three hours, because the boat is big, they said, and there are a lot of us. My last three hours as a
tahrib
.

I'm used to departures: In eight months I've left at least six or seven times. I don't even have any bags to pack. Always the same three things: Aabe's headband, Hooyo's handkerchief with the seashell, the photo of Mo Farah.

Nigist and I will say good-bye when the time comes. Not before. During the Journey you don't do anything before you
have to. There's no time for the past, there's no time for the future; only living in the present moment helps us survive, to stay alive. Practical things like good-byes don't fall into that category, so they are done only when the time comes.

Besides, we'll meet again later on; we've already talked about it.

Like me, Nigist too will come to live in Helsinki; we want to build a community of women from the Horn of Africa. Reproduce the colors of our countries in that distant, cold place.

I am very fond of Nigist; I'll miss her very much until we meet again.

Last night I spoke with Hodan via Skype, and with Mannaar as well. She's almost four years old, and by now it's clear that she looks exactly like me. There is a period, during the first two or three years as a child grows, when her appearance might take on any semblance whatsoever: She's not yet defined; she's just a sketch. By four years of age, however, she is what she was intended to be; she is already what she will be. Mannaar looks exactly like her aunt Samia. She resembles me more than she does her mother.

Hodan enrolled her at the gym a year ago.

She's been running for more than ten months now. Hodan was right about her; evidently mothers really do understand everything about their children, even before they are born. Mannaar has a flair for running; she's the fastest in her group. She has already won her first two races. And with those short little legs too. She's already so fast.

I'm her idol, that's what Hodan told me. One of the first words Mannaar uttered was “Tie Amia,” Auntie Samia. She keeps my photograph—a newspaper clipping from the time of Beijing—next to her bed, as I did with Mo Farah's.

Each time I see her on Skype, I'm struck by how alike we are. Physically, two peas in a pod. But not only that. When she moves and talks, I feel like I'm seeing myself in miniature.

“Come soon,” Mannaar told me last night. “Auntie Samia . . .” She paused. ”Don't let the monsters come. . . . Don't say you're afraid.”

Hodan and I both burst out laughing.

“No, little Mannaar, I'm not afraid. Ever,” I told her.

Tonight I'm leaving at last.

It's time to leave; it's time to finally get there. I'm tired of this waiting. And tonight my aunt Mariam will also leave with me: She's one of Aabe's older sisters, whom I ran into by chance here in Tripoli when I went out to get the cans of water one day. She'd been living in an apartment nearby for nearly a month, and I didn't even know it.

She too was arrested three times during the Journey; she too is weary and needs a place where there's no war, a place from which you don't have to flee.

Tonight we leave and soon we'll find peace.

We'll find peace.

T
HE
BOAT
IS
BIG
, much bigger than I had imagined. It's an actual boat; the other one was a dinghy.

There are a great many of us, men, women, and children, from infants to the elderly; once more we seem like a crowd of excited, hopeful ghosts. There is no fear in our eyes; our gaze is focused far ahead, already looking beyond the sea.

We met at the port around eleven o'clock at night.

Aunt Mariam was there too. She's exhausted. She came with a woman friend with whom she made the Journey from Mogadishu. On the boat she found a place inside; I preferred to stay out on deck, to breathe in the smell of the sea, like a foretaste of the smell of freedom, the smell of Italy, of Europe.

The sea, the sea at last! It's the second time I'm seeing it up close like this. It's heaving slowly, gently, awaiting us.

There are about three hundred of us in all. Truly a great many. We make an impressive sight. Silent ghosts. The tremor in our bodies is a mixture of anxiety and hope. No one talks about
it, because to talk about it would be to name one or the other. And naming things makes them real, so for tonight better not to. Better to keep anxiety locked up inside us and let hope grow, slowly perhaps, during the journey. Only then, only at the end, will we be able to rejoice, and do so all together. We'll weep and laugh together, and it will be wonderful. Like when we were in the trailer with the sacks of corn flour.

Not now, though; now is a time for silence. And prayer.

When they told us to board, we boarded.

Then we set off.

This time it's longer than the earlier three hours in the dinghy.

The voyage is smooth sailing, swift and steady. The sea is docile; our hull easily plows through it. Some sleep, others don't. I don't. I stay at the prow as long as I can to catch the breeze, until the cold becomes too intense and the night too dark. I stay there enjoying the wind and looking north, awaiting the land of freedom.

Then the first day is over.

We don't have much to eat, except for a little
angero
and
moffa
, a grain and corn flour mush. As usual, they haven't let us bring anything on board, because of weight. Not even water.

In fact, the water is all used up after a day and a half. A few try to say something; others even start shouting at the traffickers, but it's just to be doing something; it serves no purpose other than to mark time, going through the necessary motions that someone has to make.

After two days we're forced to drink water from the bottom of the boat's barrels. I would never have done it after the fever I
caught in Khartoum, but I see that others are drinking it and not getting sick, so I drink it too. It's disgusting; it tastes of iron and urine. I find a small container and bring a little to Aunt Mariam, who must be thirsty.

“It's horrible,” I tell her. “But it's all there is.”

She's so dehydrated, her mouth parched, that she drinks it all in one gulp.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she replies in a faint whisper. Since they got on the boat, she and her friend haven't once moved from those seats. Lifeless, they sleep, pray, and eat what little the traffickers give us. They sit there, stock-still, staring out at the endless expanse of sea that separates us from freedom.

I go back inside to get some water for her friend as well.

Then I try to get some sleep outside in the sun during the day, because at night I like to watch the stars and I don't sleep. I may have rested just a couple of hours total; I'm too itchy with excitement. The sea conveys an energy I've never felt before; I've been waiting to see it since I was a little girl and went to glimpse it from afar with Alì and Hodan. I've been waiting for it a long time.

I keep to myself and don't speak to anyone. Suddenly a girl comes up to me, wanting to chat.

“Are you Somali?” she asks. As I had done with Taliya. I pretend I don't hear her. “Are you Somali?” she repeats. So I turn to her, nod my head “yes,” and motion that I don't feel like talking. I want to be alone, just me, the sea, and the future. Just the three of us. Like me, Hodan and Alì, when we were little.

Then it happens.

Again. I can't believe it's really happening, but it happens.

Iblis, the devil, must have a hand in it, because the boat's engine fails. In the middle of the third day. May a thousand pounds of stinking shit fall on your heads, so fetid you'll never be able to wash away the stench.

We slow down and then stop.

I can't believe it. It can't be too much farther to the Italian coast. Yet we are stopped. We remain at a standstill for about fifteen hours.

Fifteen hours are endless if you know you are just a step away from the goal line. If, like me, you've been traveling for a year and a half, counting Addis Ababa. With the adrenaline I am producing, fifteen hours standing still is a time you can't even imagine. It's as if at the end of a race, just when there's one step left to go, one final stride to plow through the finish line, you were to run up against a transparent wall.

Some people have started raving. Others have begun calling upon Allah. The traffickers, all six of them, come down on deck and restore calm with the use of clubs. Shut up,
hawaian
!

“If you shout, for sure we won't get to Italy,” they say.

After fifteen hours an Italian boat finally comes.

All together we begin waving our arms, jumping and singing, cheering, hopping up and down and jumping some more, and in the throes of a collective, uncontrollable euphoria, we all move to the same side, where the Italians are.

Some actually scramble up on the railing, wanting to jump into the water and swim out to the boat. With all the weight on one side, the boat is in danger of listing, of capsizing in the sea. Using a bullhorn, one of the traffickers shouts at us to return to our places.

Slowly almost everyone backs off, except a few who remain
clinging to the railing. Two already have their legs over the side, ready to jump.

Then we get it. Everything becomes clear.

They won't tow us, no.

Some are saying that they'll never rescue us and bring us to safety in Italy. We spend an hour like that, the two boats facing each other, maybe fifty yards apart, bobbing on the sea, the Italian captain speaking to our trafficker via radio.

On our boat, the rumor that they are going to bring us back circulates from ear to ear. They're going to call the Italian police and take us back to Tripoli. Or maybe Kufra. Some of us are terrified. Others depleted.

Someone starts shouting, “Noooo, you bastaaaaaards!” at the top of his lungs, as if the sound of his voice could reach the Italian vessel. Instead it's lost somewhere amid the surging, increasingly angry waves.

Others move back to the rail again, threatening to jump with unmistakable gestures: They don't want to go back.

Then a decision is made on the Italian boat. The captain orders ropes to be thrown over the side, to be ready in case someone jumps.

The ropes hit the water with heavy plops, cutting cleanly through the towering, foamy waves crashing against the side of the vessel. There are about a dozen ropes in all. A dozen heavy plops, along the entire length of the hull.

Then it starts. It starts, and there's no going back.

A man from our floating wreck suddenly jumps into the sea. Without warning. No one could have anticipated it. The plop this time is much louder, as if a refrigerator has fallen in.

Everything halts, suspended; no one dares breathe a word. Time expands in that silence, on the brink. It's a state of waiting. Pure waiting. For something to happen. Whatever it is.

Very soon another man follows the first one.

Someone yells at him not to jump. “The sea is rough; the waves will swallow you,” somebody else shouts.

Only at this point do a lot of us wake up and hurry over to the rail; the decrepit tub lists again.

Then yet another dives.

There's no way of knowing where the next person will jump from; everyone looks around to see if there will be another one. They look like fish dazzled by an intense, million-watt light, heads snapping left and right.

Now suddenly it's a woman who jumps.

No one can really believe it, but there are four people in the water who are struggling as hard as they can to reach the ropes. Two are swimming like mad, with broad, noisy strokes. The other two, including the woman, wrapped in veils that billow and swirl as she enters the water and resurfaces, are moving convulsively, their gestures spasmodic; it's clear to everyone that they don't know how to swim.

The water is choppy: It's an angry sea.

“Come back!” someone shouts.

“Don't be crazy; get back here!” somebody else yells.

Since the four bodies went into the sea, the waves seem even more towering, even rougher than before. I'm up against the rail like everyone else and I glance back at my aunt, who has come out on deck.

Then I look at the sea.

My sea.

She immediately understands and moves toward me.

Maybe it's written in my eyes, but somehow she understands.

“No!” is all she says.

“
Nooo!
” she says again.

She says it, but I can't hear her voice. I only see her lips moving.

Maybe I say something to her; maybe I tell her, “I'm not going back. Ever.” But I'm not sure my voice really comes out.

Then a force greater than me makes me climb onto the rail. I don't know where it comes from; I don't know anything. It's that force that seizes me and makes me straddle the rail. It's not me, it's that force.

Aunt Mariam tries to tug me back, gripping my T-shirt, “Nooo! Samia, no!”

I swing one leg over.

Then the other.

Down below me is the sea. At last, the sea. And I can go in, and no one can stop me. For the first time in my life I can be embraced by all that water, I can swim in it, as I've always wanted to do.

Now I'm sitting on the edge of the rusty old tub, gazing at that infinite expanse, at the sea. I look at the ropes. I look at the sea.

I turn around.

I didn't even realize what I was doing. Aunt Mariam is behind me; she keeps pulling at my T-shirt and crying; I see her lips form a sound that I can't hear.

Then it happens. Again it happens.

I'm driven to life by this force that's seized me and decided to take me in hand.

It's a long way down, as every leap to freedom should be.

The water is icy cold and even rougher than it seemed from above.

I slice through the surface and reach the lowest point before the natural reascent. I open my eyes. There's a world of bubbles above me. There are slow, larger ones close to my head and small, very tiny ones racing swiftly toward the light, up to the surface.
Hsss hsss hsss hsss
. To my right and to my left, the dark shapes of the two vessels.

I thrust with my feet and rise back up. I emerge into the air and look around for the ropes.

I don't know which is our boat and which is the Italian one. I try to stay calm, while all around the sea is breaking over me, wave after wave.

The Italian boat is the one on the left.

I go under and come up, under and up. The water cradles me and takes hold of me. I swim a few vigorous strokes as forcefully as I can. I try to stay up and head for the ropes.

The ropes. The ropes are my goal, my finishing line.

As I slam my arms against the waves, I sing Hodan's song in my head: our song about freedom. I sing it to myself as I go under and come up; I try to sing it with my mouth but I can't, so I keep singing it in my mind.

Fly, Samia, fly, like a winged horse through the air. . . .

Dream, Samia, dream, like the wind playing among the leaves. . . .

Run, Samia, run, as if there were no particular reason. . . .

Live, Samia, live, as if everything were a miracle. . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

Then, finally, something happens.

Someone grabs me by the hand and pulls me to the rope. I don't know how I do it, but thanks to this person whom I don't recognize but for whom I feel an infinite love, I manage to grasp the line. The contact with the water becomes more gentle, horizontal, now.

I'm swimming.

No, someone is pulling me up. They're lifting me on board the Italian boat.

. . . 
Fly, Samia, fly, like a winged horse through the air. . . .

Now I can breathe finally. I'm able to breathe.

Once I'm on board they'll take care of me.

They'll dry me and warm me up.

How nice to be warm; the sea is so cold.

After a short time, just a little while, not more than a few hours of sailing, we're in Lampedusa. In Italy.

It can't be true: I'm finally in Italy.

I realized my dream; I made it.