Do you know the cliché that ‘single mothers are both fathers and mothers to their children’? Well, my mother would have scoffed that statement as an oxymoron gone awry. To her, and without any embellishments; single mothers are women doing their thankless jobs in the absence of fathers who have abdicated their responsibilities.
My mother, Dahabo Yusuf Muse, was born in Qardho to a Majerteen father (Osman Mohamoud) and a Dhulbahante mother (Nur Ahmed). In early 1950s, she met a teacher (Reer Baraawe) in Bossasso and married him. The couple moved to Afgoi where the husband was transferred. Although my mother was blessed with four children from that marriage, three of her offspring died in childhood. My sister, five years my senior, survived. Mother got divorced and met my father and married him. That marriage was short-lived too. My mother divorced my father and moved to Mogadishu after my birth.
My mother was tall, dark, and imposing. She rarely smiled, and her poker face was her signature trademark. It was difficult to know if she was pleased with you or angry with you. Neighbors and friends called her “Dahabo Dheer” (Dahabo, the tall). My mother had a hot temper. She was quick to criticize and slow to commend. She rarely showed any emotions. I have never heard my mother saying to my sister and to me that she loved us. But that did not mean that she was not a loving mother. Indeed, she was but she just did not show any physical or oral display of emotions. In spite of her serious projections, my mother was sometimes goofy. On rare occasions, she would run in our house, when we were alone, raise her dress to her knees, and do strange acrobatic moves. Most of the time though she kept quiet and minded her own business.
Even though mother was a single parent, she did not live off on her relatives’ goodwill. She worked hard to support her two children. The two absent fathers in this case, unfortunately, were nowhere to be seen, let alone provide assistance. There were no government programs to assist the needy and the indigent. Immediately after our move to Mogadishu in 1960, my mother earned money by cooking meals for her brother and his bachelor friends. Then, she started making incenses (uunsi) and started importing perfumes and colognes from Aden; at the time a bustling British colonial post. Her incenses were in demand because she was a perfectionist who had such prodigious capacity for detailed work. You could see that she took pride in her work. The first ten years of my life, my mother, my sister, and I shared a room. Afterwards, we got our own little house that my mother rented. Given our humble living condition, I never felt, as a child, financially deprived. My mother always gave me money when I needed. If my mother did not want to do something, she never hesitated to let you know. For instance, she cooked breakfast and lunch for our family. When I told her that some families had also dinner as part of their daily meal intake, my mother looked at me as though I had offended her, and then quietly informed me that she was not into cooking a third meal every day. It was not a financial decision but rather a personal choice.
My mother was a clean person who always smelled nice. Her female friends teasingly named her “Dahabo Foon” because she smelled great. She had nice jewelry collection, and I used to tease her to sell them off because she was single.
My mother was illiterate until 1972. She was, though, a strong advocate for good education. Early on, she placed my sister and me into Qur’an school before we even started elementary school. My sister and I were placed in a Dugsi/Ardo (Quran School) that was a bit far from our home. A tall, big, single elderly woman named Maryam owned that school. The choice of this school was not coincidental. Teacher Maryam and my mother belonged to the same Majertein sub-clan (Osman Mahmoud). Moreover, teacher Maryam was the sister of Somalia’s president at the time, Dr. Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. Teacher Maryam was the only woman who operated her own Dugsi as all other Qur’an schools at that time were owned and managed by men. She had memorized the Quran and opened the school. Later, she would build a big mosque next to the school, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. I will address my years in that school later.
My mother placed my sister and me in a private English school run by a man named NUR (Abgaal) who had a laundry business in our neighborhood. Teacher Nur was smart and self-made man. I hated his school though because it was very competitive and not age-appropriate. For instance, my sister and I were in the same level even though she was older than me. Moreover, there were fewer students, and Teacher Nur did not hesitate to hit us with a stick if we missed our assignments. My mother was paying a fortune to send my sister and me to that school. These early and odious English tutoring classes proved to be so beneficial that, later in my schooling, I always excelled in language courses. They gave me a strong foundation not only to do well in English, but also the motivation and the discipline to acquire Arabic. Now, this was an indication of my mother, the illiterate, being ahead of her time. Other than my smattering knowledge of English and Arabic, my sister today speaks English, Arabic, and French fluently. Moreover, she will neither go hungry nor get lost in Italy because she has a working knowledge of Italian.
In 1972 when Somali language was finally written, I taught my mother how to read, write, and basic math. She was always grateful to me for teaching her literacy, and I was eternally grateful to her, among other things, for giving me the opportunity of attending private schools.
In my first year in elementary school, my mother was shocked by my odd behavior of tearing my lessons from my notebook and then discarding the pages. When she inquired why I was doing that, I told her “Well, these pages were already used and I need a clean notebook”. She always narrated this humorous story to juxtapose my sister’s serious studying habits. My laissez faire approach to studying during my first grade did not bode well with my mother. But in 1980, when I decided to come to the USA, some members of my family were adamantly opposed to my pursuit of higher education at that juncture of my life because they wanted me to stay in Egypt and not quit my job with the Somali Airlines. My mother gave me $1600 that she had at the time and encouraged me to seek education in America. It was a sage decision that I never regretted.
As a child, I would go with my mother to the market. I was fascinated with the respect she commanded, on one hand, and her pugnacious habit of picking fights with strangers, on the other hand. At the market, my mother used to get the best cut of meat from butchers. Her poker face gave her an aura of respectability. She was serious and, unlike other women, never joked with the butchers. But sometimes she would argue with cab drivers or storeowners for reasons that seemed trivial to me at the time. Because prices were never set in the country, and aware of her female status, my mother did not give an inch in bargaining. I hated such outings because of my aversion to confrontations and discord.
Once, I saw my mother in a wrestling match with a woman younger than her in Isku-Raran neighborhood sometime in mid sixties. Both fell on the floor. It was an ugly sight to be witnessed by a child. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The cause of the fight was innocuous; my mother turned on the radio in a day where a house a block away had ‘tacsi’ (funeral). My sister instigated the whole thing when she told my mother that the woman in question made disparaging remarks about my mother’s uncouth and blasphemous behavior. My mother loved listening to Radio Mogadishu so much that no one could have come between her and the radio. In addition, she was in the confines of her room when she felt badmouthed. In Somalia in 1960s, the radio was broadcasted for only a few hours a day and was the only source of news and information in a country which had no television and no mass circulating papers. To her detractors, the incident showed my mother as a woman with deeply entrenched stubbornness. To her admirers, it was plainly Dahabo Dheer being herself.
As a child, I would engage in occasional fights with other children. When one boy taunted me one day of being “ugly”, I felt hurt and upset. My mother told me, “Don’t listen to him. Thank Allah that you have your senses. You can hear, talk, and walk soundly:” These statements, somehow, gave me a great deal of comfort and assurance.
My mother married several times and none of her marriages lasted long. Her strong personality, a no-nonsense approach to life, and her fierce independence were characters abominable to insecure men. Being a single mother gave my mother some sort of edginess and a cynical attitude to men. It was apparent that romance was not her forte. I remember her brother, and my beloved uncle Abdirahman Yusuf Muse ‘Abdi Gurey’, telling me, “Hassan, your mom is not lucky with men”. This apt characterization was, indeed, a true illustration of my mother’s odd relationship with the opposite sex. Men, generally and unfortunately, prefer women who are pliable, dependant, and less demanding. My mother’s top priority was raising her children and making sure that they got the best education available to them. She was an imperfect woman who was dealing with an imperfect world with grace and dignity. May Allah have mercy on her?
My mother, Dahabo Yusuf Muse, was born in Qardho to a Majerteen father (Osman Mohamoud) and a Dhulbahante mother (Nur Ahmed). In early 1950s, she met a teacher (Reer Baraawe) in Bossasso and married him. The couple moved to Afgoi where the husband was transferred. Although my mother was blessed with four children from that marriage, three of her offspring died in childhood. My sister, five years my senior, survived. Mother got divorced and met my father and married him. That marriage was short-lived too. My mother divorced my father and moved to Mogadishu after my birth.
My mother was tall, dark, and imposing. She rarely smiled, and her poker face was her signature trademark. It was difficult to know if she was pleased with you or angry with you. Neighbors and friends called her “Dahabo Dheer” (Dahabo, the tall). My mother had a hot temper. She was quick to criticize and slow to commend. She rarely showed any emotions. I have never heard my mother saying to my sister and to me that she loved us. But that did not mean that she was not a loving mother. Indeed, she was but she just did not show any physical or oral display of emotions. In spite of her serious projections, my mother was sometimes goofy. On rare occasions, she would run in our house, when we were alone, raise her dress to her knees, and do strange acrobatic moves. Most of the time though she kept quiet and minded her own business.
Even though mother was a single parent, she did not live off on her relatives’ goodwill. She worked hard to support her two children. The two absent fathers in this case, unfortunately, were nowhere to be seen, let alone provide assistance. There were no government programs to assist the needy and the indigent. Immediately after our move to Mogadishu in 1960, my mother earned money by cooking meals for her brother and his bachelor friends. Then, she started making incenses (uunsi) and started importing perfumes and colognes from Aden; at the time a bustling British colonial post. Her incenses were in demand because she was a perfectionist who had such prodigious capacity for detailed work. You could see that she took pride in her work. The first ten years of my life, my mother, my sister, and I shared a room. Afterwards, we got our own little house that my mother rented. Given our humble living condition, I never felt, as a child, financially deprived. My mother always gave me money when I needed. If my mother did not want to do something, she never hesitated to let you know. For instance, she cooked breakfast and lunch for our family. When I told her that some families had also dinner as part of their daily meal intake, my mother looked at me as though I had offended her, and then quietly informed me that she was not into cooking a third meal every day. It was not a financial decision but rather a personal choice.
My mother was a clean person who always smelled nice. Her female friends teasingly named her “Dahabo Foon” because she smelled great. She had nice jewelry collection, and I used to tease her to sell them off because she was single.
My mother was illiterate until 1972. She was, though, a strong advocate for good education. Early on, she placed my sister and me into Qur’an school before we even started elementary school. My sister and I were placed in a Dugsi/Ardo (Quran School) that was a bit far from our home. A tall, big, single elderly woman named Maryam owned that school. The choice of this school was not coincidental. Teacher Maryam and my mother belonged to the same Majertein sub-clan (Osman Mahmoud). Moreover, teacher Maryam was the sister of Somalia’s president at the time, Dr. Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. Teacher Maryam was the only woman who operated her own Dugsi as all other Qur’an schools at that time were owned and managed by men. She had memorized the Quran and opened the school. Later, she would build a big mosque next to the school, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. I will address my years in that school later.
My mother placed my sister and me in a private English school run by a man named NUR (Abgaal) who had a laundry business in our neighborhood. Teacher Nur was smart and self-made man. I hated his school though because it was very competitive and not age-appropriate. For instance, my sister and I were in the same level even though she was older than me. Moreover, there were fewer students, and Teacher Nur did not hesitate to hit us with a stick if we missed our assignments. My mother was paying a fortune to send my sister and me to that school. These early and odious English tutoring classes proved to be so beneficial that, later in my schooling, I always excelled in language courses. They gave me a strong foundation not only to do well in English, but also the motivation and the discipline to acquire Arabic. Now, this was an indication of my mother, the illiterate, being ahead of her time. Other than my smattering knowledge of English and Arabic, my sister today speaks English, Arabic, and French fluently. Moreover, she will neither go hungry nor get lost in Italy because she has a working knowledge of Italian.
In 1972 when Somali language was finally written, I taught my mother how to read, write, and basic math. She was always grateful to me for teaching her literacy, and I was eternally grateful to her, among other things, for giving me the opportunity of attending private schools.
In my first year in elementary school, my mother was shocked by my odd behavior of tearing my lessons from my notebook and then discarding the pages. When she inquired why I was doing that, I told her “Well, these pages were already used and I need a clean notebook”. She always narrated this humorous story to juxtapose my sister’s serious studying habits. My laissez faire approach to studying during my first grade did not bode well with my mother. But in 1980, when I decided to come to the USA, some members of my family were adamantly opposed to my pursuit of higher education at that juncture of my life because they wanted me to stay in Egypt and not quit my job with the Somali Airlines. My mother gave me $1600 that she had at the time and encouraged me to seek education in America. It was a sage decision that I never regretted.
As a child, I would go with my mother to the market. I was fascinated with the respect she commanded, on one hand, and her pugnacious habit of picking fights with strangers, on the other hand. At the market, my mother used to get the best cut of meat from butchers. Her poker face gave her an aura of respectability. She was serious and, unlike other women, never joked with the butchers. But sometimes she would argue with cab drivers or storeowners for reasons that seemed trivial to me at the time. Because prices were never set in the country, and aware of her female status, my mother did not give an inch in bargaining. I hated such outings because of my aversion to confrontations and discord.
Once, I saw my mother in a wrestling match with a woman younger than her in Isku-Raran neighborhood sometime in mid sixties. Both fell on the floor. It was an ugly sight to be witnessed by a child. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The cause of the fight was innocuous; my mother turned on the radio in a day where a house a block away had ‘tacsi’ (funeral). My sister instigated the whole thing when she told my mother that the woman in question made disparaging remarks about my mother’s uncouth and blasphemous behavior. My mother loved listening to Radio Mogadishu so much that no one could have come between her and the radio. In addition, she was in the confines of her room when she felt badmouthed. In Somalia in 1960s, the radio was broadcasted for only a few hours a day and was the only source of news and information in a country which had no television and no mass circulating papers. To her detractors, the incident showed my mother as a woman with deeply entrenched stubbornness. To her admirers, it was plainly Dahabo Dheer being herself.
As a child, I would engage in occasional fights with other children. When one boy taunted me one day of being “ugly”, I felt hurt and upset. My mother told me, “Don’t listen to him. Thank Allah that you have your senses. You can hear, talk, and walk soundly:” These statements, somehow, gave me a great deal of comfort and assurance.
My mother married several times and none of her marriages lasted long. Her strong personality, a no-nonsense approach to life, and her fierce independence were characters abominable to insecure men. Being a single mother gave my mother some sort of edginess and a cynical attitude to men. It was apparent that romance was not her forte. I remember her brother, and my beloved uncle Abdirahman Yusuf Muse ‘Abdi Gurey’, telling me, “Hassan, your mom is not lucky with men”. This apt characterization was, indeed, a true illustration of my mother’s odd relationship with the opposite sex. Men, generally and unfortunately, prefer women who are pliable, dependant, and less demanding. My mother’s top priority was raising her children and making sure that they got the best education available to them. She was an imperfect woman who was dealing with an imperfect world with grace and dignity. May Allah have mercy on her?
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