A Man of Good Hope (Jonny Steinberg) (NF8) (32 page)

Saab blood has for generations been considered by many to be impure. The 99 percent who can locate themselves in Somali clan history ought not marry them, procreate with them, or, indeed, break bread with them. Nor work with them, for that matter. Historically, the Saab have been confined to specific occupations, passed from one generation to the next. Some have been shoemakers, others barbers. Some among the barbers have also performed circumcisions. Others are craftspeople. One Saab group, the Migdan, were hunters in past times.

Without territory or genealogy, how, you might ask, do the Saab acquire legal standing and physical protection? They borrow all of these from others by finding patrons among the Somali clan families. For generations at a time, a Saab group will attach itself to a clan. It will offer its patron clan labor and in exchange will be permitted to settle and to go about life in peace. But it will live forever at the edge of a history that it cannot claim. Its members cannot own land. Paths of upward mobility are blocked to them. They are excluded from councils of elders. And should one of them be killed by a Somali of pure blood, they can claim no right to compensation, except through the patron clan to which they are attached.

It is said that the Saab are not to be trusted because they are known to wear masks. They come to understand the clan history of their patrons intimately and are thus skilled at passing as people they are not. Some are said to speak a secret dialect so foreign to Somali that others cannot follow it. They have a reputation, too, for witchcraft and magic. One should not, it is said, turn one's back for too long on a Saab.

When Asad fled Mogadishu in 1991 in his uncle's care, their first stop was the town of Afgooye. He may well have come across members of a small Saab group called the Galgale, for some of them were there at the time. For generations, the Galgale had lived under the patronage of a Hawiye clan called the Abgal. They were shoemakers and butchers and some of them were craftspeople who worked with wood.

Sometime in the late 1980s, the elders of the Galgale made a decision they would soon regret. Somalia's president, Siad Barre, had for some years been courting Saab groups and using them as bodyguards, drivers, soldiers, and spies. Because they had no independent base of their own, Barre considered the Saab to be excellent clients.

During his last years in office, Barre convinced the Galgale elders to turn against their Abgal clients. As hard as I have looked, I cannot find any detailed account of the treachery, but it appears that many Abgal people were butchered by young Galgale men. It seems, too, that in exchange for turning on their old patrons, the Galgale were given a place in Daarood genealogy. It was said that they were Nuuh Mahamud, a lineage that falls within the Majerten, a famous Daarood clan.

In January 1991, when Mogadishu was overrun by Hawiye militias, Siad Barre, the Galgale's new patron, fled his own capital. At the very moment that Asad was robbed of his home and his childhood, the Galgale lost all protection in the world. Dominant among the Hawiye militia who took control of Mogadishu were Abgal people. They were quick to wreak vengeance. At some point in early 1991, many hundreds of Galgale were herded into Mogadishu's football stadium and slaughtered.

In the two decades since, news of the Galgale's fate surfaces periodically, usually in the course of asylum applications somewhere in the developed world. The Galgale have suffered twenty-one years of war without protection. Despised by Hawiye people for their betrayal, they are despised, too, among the Daarood, for having been Hawiye clients for so many years. That is probably why Asad sets so much store by their name. To call them Galgale is to invoke a history in which they are fickle clients and traitors. To call them Nuuh Mahamud is to give them a place in a lineage.

Defenseless, most were driven from the towns in which they had lived for generations. It is said that some five thousand of them are now in a camp for internally displaced people in Kismayo in southern Somalia. The rest, whether in Somalia itself or among the diaspora, are doubly branded as Saab and as traitors. They are people without a home on this earth.

Asad tells me of Sadicya's history only in the briefest terms. I am not sure that he knows much of the detail himself. She was born in Mogadishu, it seems; many Galgale settled there during the latter years of the Barre regime. In the early stages of the war she was orphaned; she will not say how or why, only that her parents were no more. She is Asad's age, perhaps a little younger; from early in her life she was without family to mind her.

At some point in her late teens, she no longer recalls exactly when, she fled Mogadishu to Kismayo because she had heard that that was the one place in Somalia where Galgale were safe. But she never made it to the camp where her kinspeople had settled. She was taken in by a Daarood man who married her and with whom she had Musharaf. When the boy was still an infant, her husband had kicked her and the child out of his home. Apparently, he had miscalculated when he wed her; the shame of having married a Galgale was too much. He cut her lose.

That she came to South Africa was a matter of pure chance. After her abandonment by her husband, a strange woman took pity on her. This woman was going to South Africa. Sadicya had never heard of South Africa. She knew only what she was told on the journey: that it was a place of refuge, that one could be at peace there. She arrived in May 2007, precisely a year before the onset of the violence that would deposit her and her son in a pool of water at the bottom of a storm-water drain.

Asad met Sadicya in the last week of May 2008. Three months later, on August 24, he married her.

When news got out that Asad was to marry a Galgale, an impromptu group of Ogadeni elders met to discuss the matter. It was his first taste of the fact that his impending marriage was more than a personal matter, that his choosing to sully his Ogadeni blood was considered by many to be communal business. As he remembers it now, the elders were split. Some said that it was a disgrace to marry a Saab and that it could not be countenanced. Others said that he was saving a woman and child from certain death and that Allah would reward him in the next life.

Asad did not care what the elders said. His will to marry her was as strong as his spine.

After she had told him her story, he had finished his tea and walked away in a state of bewilderment. At first, he did not understand why she had moved him so. He knew only that something of great profundity had transpired, something too powerful to grasp.

That night, lying on a mat in his tent of Daarood people, he was able to think about it more clearly. Standing before her, listening to her story, it was as if his childhood, his whole childhood, from his days in Mogadishu to his wanderings in the Ogaden, had taken residence in her body and was now talking to him. Sadicya and the young Asad were one and the same. That is what had so confused him as he had walked away.

It was such a strange thought, and yet it was possibly the most powerful thought he had ever had. He resolved to sleep and to see in the morning whether the power of what had happened remained.

Over the coming days and weeks, he bought tea from her. He would give her small sums of money with which she bought raw food to cook and to sell. And so he began to take his meals with her. He spoke to her softly, quietly. He let her see that he was just showing kindness, that he wanted nothing in return.

On the second or third day, he placed his hands over the boy Musharaf's head and ran his fingernails through the boy's hair. Then he stretched out his hands and cupped the boy's skull. He felt a great tension pressing against his palms, as if the terror of that day in Strand had sunk into the boy's being and was now banging and thumping on the inside of his head. His bones must be thick, Asad thought, or else we would all hear the racket going on inside.

Sitting and eating with these people each day felt good. The terrible things that had happened to all three of them were now spread out and shared. Being with them was so very healing. He could hardly tear himself away.

After a week or two of these daily meals, the idea of marrying her passed from fleeting idea to imperative. Not to marry her would be to abandon her and the boy to their fate, and that was intolerable.

He cast an eye back over his past and fingered all the people who might have saved him: Yindy, her father, the AliYusuf at the Hotel Taleh. How many people had observed Asad, took in his situation, surmised his fate, and then walked on? How many knew full well what was to befall him and yet cast him out of their minds?

He could not do the same to Sadicya. He could not expel her from his thoughts. Were he to walk away, she would remain with him nonetheless, a rotting wound in his soul. He must marry her. He must take in her son. With her he must have children of his own. A child from her womb would be a good child.

I put it to him that his love for Sadicya was pragmatic.

He looks at me closely.

“The violence in Khayelitsha had made you a child again,” I say. “You couldn't get rid of this horrible child, and he was preventing you from functioning as a man. It was better to put the child into somebody else and look after him there. You were in search of a wounded person.”

I ought to have put it differently. The words did not come out quite right; some things are very difficult to say.

“Sadicya is the price you are paying for everything that has happened to you” is what I wanted to tell him. “All your life, you have treasured your nimbleness. You have dreamed big dreams and taken crazy risks. Heading south from Addis with twelve hundred dollars in your sock; staying in South Africa despite the Abdullahi blood that had spilled, despite the loss of your wife and child, because you refused to stop dreaming. Now you have given up your nimbleness. You have shackled yourself to two helpless people. You have done so because the violence in Khayelitsha brought back the lost and scorned and broken Asad-child, and you have no choice but to carry him around with you. He is Sadicya; he is Musharaf. They are the wounds of your history opened up anew.”

He listens closely to the words I
did
utter, and I can see that he wants to quarrel with me. But he checks himself and smiles instead.

“I know I only married her because life was hard,” he says. “But I don't regret it. Just like I don't regret anything.”

“Did she like you back then?” I ask.

“She was very happy that I wanted to marry her,” he says.

“I'm sure that she was happy that you were saving her, but did she like you?”

“I will never ask her that,” he replies. “There are some things a person does not ask; whatever the answer, it can only bring trouble.”

Sitting here at my desk, writing, I think of Asad returning to Mew Way and staring at the space where his shop once stood. The walls are gone; only the concrete floor remains. He gasps when he takes this in. Around him is evidence of a will to obliterate him, to scorch and burn him until he no longer has a presence on this earth. It is in his history to be obliterated. It is in Sadicya's history.

What would Asad do now that he was bound to a woman and child? Here inside the camp, they were safe. But out there was South Africa. He would not take them there.

His idea was to leapfrog from the camp to America. He would refuse to leave until this wish was granted. He would hold himself and his wife and child hostage.

He was not the only one thinking this way.

The violence reached the Western Cape on May 22. Within forty-eight hours, more than twenty thousand foreign nationals in the province had fled their homes. The provincial and city governments had never before had to deal with such a large and sudden uprooting of human beings. What to do with all these people?

The city of Cape Town hastily established more than eighty makeshift emergency centers to house those who had fled. These ranged from mosques to police stations to community halls. People could not stay in such places long. They did not have the proper facilities. And, besides, these institutions had other purposes and needed to return to normal.

On May 28, the city announced that the displaced would be moved from the places in which they had found shelter to six temporary sites, one of which was Soetwater, a camping site that in normal times served tourists. Midwinter was approaching and the camp was closed. By the time the spring trade arrived in early September it was assumed that the displaced people would be long gone.

Asad had arrived in Soetwater on May 24. It was on about May 30 or 31 that he first laid eyes on Sadicya and Musharaf.

By mid-June, most of the people who had been placed in Soetwater were leaving. They were making their way back to the townships from which they had fled. Or they were looking for new ground, places where there had been no violence, places rumor deemed to be safe.

As far as Asad was concerned, there were no such places in South Africa. Foosiya had been right. One could run from province to province, from town to town. South African violence would find you.

Those who remained in Soetwater talked and talked and talked. They soon bound themselves around a common purpose. They swore to one another that they would never return to South Africa; they would simply refuse. If the authorities wanted them to be among South Africans again, they would have to slaughter them and dump their bodies in Khayelitsha. That was the only way they would go back.

Officials from South Africa's Department of Home Affairs met representa
tives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. It was in nobody's interests that these people be classified as refugees. If news were to spread that the ones in the camps were to get tickets to the First World, every undocumented person in the country would surely descend upon the camps. And besides, recognizing foreign nationals within its borders as refugees would be intolerably humiliating for the South African government. The buzzword of the time was “reintegra
tion.” People must go back to live among South Africans again.

After much debate, the UNHCR advised that the people in the camps be classified as internally displaced persons. They were given three options. They could opt for repatriation to their countries of origin. With monetary assistance from the UNHCR and the South African government, they could reintegrate into the communities that had thrown them out. Or they would be helped to relocate to another part of South Africa, somewhere that had remained peaceful during the disturbances.

For those from Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first option was void. The UNHCR would not repatriate them to countries that were at war. And so the last two options remained: Khayelitsha or somewhere else in South Africa. Asad and Sadicya, together with several hundred others, declined all options given to them. They would stay in the camp until another country accepted them as refugees.

At the end of August, just a few days after Asad and Sadicya were married, the city of Cape Town closed Soetwater in time for the tourist season. The newlyweds and their child were moved to yet another camping site. This one was called Blue Waters. It was less than two kilometers due south from Mitchells Plain Town Centre, a windswept place looking out over the middle of False Bay. Asad did not like it much.

“It was worse than Soetwater,” he recalls. “It was less safe because it was close to a small township where people were selling drugs and illegal firearms. Between Blue Waters and Mitchells Plain, it was very dangerous to walk. You did not want to do it. Also, the toilets and showers were not permanent structures. They were mobile facilities.”

In any event, Asad and Sadicya had been in Blue Waters less than two months when the authorities announced that they were closing it down and that its residents must accept assistance to reintegrate. Asad and Sadicya were among several hundred people who still refused to leave. At the end of October, the electricity was cut. The water supply was turned off. All services ceased. Still, the occupants of Blue Waters held their ground. The city of Cape Town went to court seeking an eviction order. By now, a host of nongovernm
ental organizations, including South Africa's venerable nonprofit litigation service, the Legal Resources Centre, had come to the aid of the displaced ones. Counsel was hired on their behalf. The matter went to court.

Asad had never before in his life been involved in politics. Wherever he had lived, the Somali diaspora had been awash in political talk. His interest had only ever been pragmatic: he wanted to know what had become of Mogadishu, and that was all.

But with Sadicya and Musharaf beside him, he was someone else now. He was the outer shell of a tender and wounded being. He needed quickly to learn to be very hard.

He will not talk to me much about the activism he undertook after moving to Blue Waters. He tells me in the sparest terms that he became a spokesperson for the refugees. That is all. I suspect that he considers the persona he presented and the tactics he adopted as bitter necessities; one does not speak of them, for they are not a part of one's true self. The real substance of his being was turned inward, to Sadicya and Musharaf. When he sees himself in the camp, that is what he chooses to see.

I have spoken to others who encountered Asad during that time. I have interviewed government officials who faced him and other camp representa
tives across the table. They speak unhappily of their experiences.

“The Somalis lacked basic civility,” one of them said. “We understood that they were in a condition of terrible distress. We tried to offer them humanity. We wanted to listen. We wanted to resettle them as gently and as thoughtfully as possible. We were prepared to put a lot of money and care into the process. They rebuffed us without grace. ‘We want nothing to do with you,' they said. ‘The only people we want to talk to are the Americans. You can go to hell.'

“They had talked themselves into a frenzy. They believed that they had a right to go to America. They believed that in trying to help them find homes in Cape Town, we were violating their rights. They treated us like we were representing the devil. Whenever I walked out of a meeting with them I felt indignant, insulted, and dirty.

“I am not sure where they got it into their heads that they had a right to resettle in a third country. I think it is because some of them had been in refugee camps in Kenya, where third-country resettlement was an option. They took this Kenyan experience and insisted that it was universal law.”

For the people in Blue Waters, South Africa was considerably more dangerous than Kenya had ever been. If being in Kenya warranted repatriation to a third country, why on earth not South Africa?

Asad is prepared to share the details of one altercation he had with officialdom during this time.

On a morning in mid-September he received a call from a friend to tell him that Hassan had been shot. It had happened just as Asad feared—behind the counter in his
spaza
shop on Mew Way. He was lying in a hospital bed in Mitchells Plain.

“I went straight to the hospital,” Asad says. “He was not critically injured. He had been shot in the chest but the bullet went straight out of the back without touching organs or bones. He was very lucky.

“The next day I went back and discharged him and brought him to Blue Waters. I kept him inside my tent. But the very first time he went to the toilet, the coordinator of the camp, a man called Cecil, saw him and started to shout at him.

“ ‘What are you doing here? You are not a member of the camp. Leave.'

“I said to Cecil, ‘He is my brother. He has been shot.'

“Cecil said, ‘You cannot bring him here. This is not a lodge.'

“He brought in law enforcement. Hassan was removed. He went to live in a lodge in Mitchells Plain. He healed there. Then he returned to Somalia.

“It was a sign to me, brother. For once, I had made the correct decision. If I had gone back to Khayelitsha with Hassan it would maybe have been me shot through the chest. Maybe the bullet would have hit my heart and I would have died. What would Sadicya and Musharaf have done then? Brother, the thought of them being alone in Khayelitsha…It was not going to happen. I was not going to leave that camp.”

During his time in Blue Waters, Asad befriended whomever he felt might help him get to America. All sorts of people were coming into the camp: nongovernm
ental organization workers, lawyers, officials from the UNHCR, volunteers of various descriptions. He was especially interested in anybody who had an inside track at the UNHCR or who had knowledge of the American refugee-admission process.