Grandma: Talk to Me

My almost 90-year-old “Ayeeyo” (Grandma) passed away in the early 1980s.

I last saw her during a visit to Mogadishu from the U.S. while on a break from college. She was then living in Mogadishu with my mother after spending seven decades in Qardho in the northeast region. It was a golden opportunity for me to spend time with her and talk to her as I had never been in that part of the country. Most of my questions were short, brisk, and pointed. After two dozen intermittent questions, she finally implored me to stop “bugging her.” Unfortunately, she was feeble and unable to stand and spent all her time sitting in her room.

I was curious how grandma—who hailed from Las Anod (a province in Sool)—ended up in Qardho and Bossasso. It is where she had married and bore three children.

Ayeeyo had separated from her family when she was 15 during the violent battles between the British colonial forces in the north and Sayyid Mohamed’s Dervish fighters. She got lost after the Dervishes routed civilians in her area, resulting in innocent people being killed, robbed, or uprooted.  It is not clear what had happened to Ayeeyo’s parents and siblings.

When I asked my grandmother if she had tried to return to her birthplace and looked for the family, she curtly responded, “No,” and then deftly changed the topic. She mentioned the names of her brothers whom she had not seen since that fateful incident. I know in wars families get separated, but I had a sense that she was never reunited with her family. Carefully, I broached the subject of her relationship with her family before the separation. Was she forced into a marriage? Did she have any conflict with them? Were there other mitigating factors in play that can shed some light on her flight? What kind of work did she do? How was life then for a single working mother in the northeast in the 1920s and 1930s? What was it like living during the time of Sayyid Mohamed’s independence war against the British? I also wanted to know more about my mom, her childhood and teen years, and about my aunt, Hadiyo, and my uncle, Abdi Gurey. Most of the time, I got a withering stare from grandma. She was selective in the questions she answered. One thing was clear: My grandma’s marriage to my grandpa was her first marriage, a possibility she may not have been forced into marriage.

After speaking with grandma, my regret was that I did not have an opportunity to meet her earlier in her life when she was a bit younger and healthier. I was curious of her life from childhood until her retirement. Grandma was a woman of ceaseless energy, a hard worker who had engaged in small business of buying and selling food and clothes. She maintained a steely calm, spoke in a soft, rather delicate voice, and rarely ventured an opinion of her. She had both grace and beauty and everything about her seemed impressive.

My mother, unfortunately, was more reticent talking about her childhood than my grandmother. It was simply something people then needed not to talk about. Interestingly, their silence did not indicate any disturbing secrets buried in their past. Simply, to them, there were more important things in life other than talking about mundane issues such as childhood.

For young Somalis, it is an important lesson for you to engage with your parents and grandparents. Talk to them and ask them about their lives. They might surprise you on how much interesting their early lives had been. It is also a way of connecting generations. I have been talking to an elderly Somali woman, 79, who has seven children, 42 grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren. “None of my grandchildren call me to chat with me,” she lamented. Born in Hargeisa, this woman has seen a lot; from the time of the British in the north, the pursuit of independence, the civilian government in the 1960s, Siad Barre’s coup, the Somali-Ethiopian war in 1977, the killings and upheaval in the north, the collapse of the Barre regime, the civil war, life in Kenya as a refugee, and finally settling in California. I have found her stories intriguing and captivating. Unfortunately, many of her relatives, especially the young ones, are unlikely to hear these fascinating narratives.