Blue Daughter of the Red Sea: A Memoir

2 Appetizer

2 Appetizer· 17 · Any small portion that stimulates a desire for more or that indicates more is to follow. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary W   , in a choir. After all, it was a whole meal. We sat on the floor, our little bodies, which housed our eager hands and hungry stomachs, surrounding the big plate of food. Our small fingers grabbed as much rice and beef as they could and transported the morsels to our mouths. We looked like a group of contestants on a mission to see who would finish the food first. In reality, it was our stomachs that competed for that food. And the only prize they strove for was the award of being fed. The Somali rice with beef tasted delicious. We licked our fingers ingratiatingly, showing as much love to the relics of food as its flavor permitted. We vacillated in our state of belligerence and clemency. We resented our hosts.They never had to compete for leftovers.They never had to search for flavor in the dirty nails of their greasy fingers.They never had to beg. We watched them with envy and endeavored to forgive them their fault of needlessness. We appeased our warring thoughts with a dose of fantasy. We fabricated castles and crowned ourselves princes and princesses . Perhaps, life had hope in store for us. Perhaps, someday we too will be hosts to starving kids. I was at Hajji’s house. He was the blind aristocrat who owned both the house and the granary that stood in front of my house. So, while his family sold the grain that made Hajji wealthy and fed the poor and thus adorned his name with a valuable gem named good reputation, mom sat across from his house, selling potatoes sandwiches and gin to the hungry and tired working-class men. Hajji’s house became the scenario for my fantasies . Everything he owned, I owned; every excursion his family took, I took; every whim they indulged, I indulged myself. I made up my mind to be the architect of my own world. And if window-shopping was the 18 Exodus of Bodies
only alternative to enjoy life, then I had to shape my mind into a transparent glass through which to see my own version of the world. Smell is my hometown’s legacy to me. Smell of Somali rice, the memory of which clings to my fingers that I know and then lick, remembering the taste. Smell of dashed potatoes and hot-spiced berbere and fresh bread. Smell of onion chopped in tiny pieces and cooked with oil and melted butter until it is dark and ready to pour the hot berbere into and again to wait a while to mix the chicken or the lentils and other spices that make up the traditional Ethiopian dish wet. Smell of flour, which in a matter of minutes converts into a round, spongy, many-eyed injera. Smell of men’s sweat, of people who flow to our house and ebb back to work, after appeasing the growling cries of their stomachs. Smell of excrement that often besieges the wall that separates our house from the futile field. Smell of hashish, which the men at Hajji’s smoke inside the one room where they gather to converse and relax. Smell of tchat that my brother and his friends chew on late in the afternoon, sitting on the floor, by the gate of our house, and experience the emptiness of oblivion that only tchat can transmit. Smell of gin and tej, which invade our verandah through the foul breath of mom’s drunken clients, as they cheer and narrate many a tale in a state of pure abandonment. Smell of blood, which automatically plants roots of knots in my throat and branches of weakness throughout my legs. Smell of my own self, so strong for lack of hygiene, shower being taken once a week. Smell of my mother, a mixture of sweat and food aromas, scent that harrows me wherever I go. The shit is at arm’s reach wherever I go. As I squat down on the floor, I feel the air caress my nakedness and the dirt make its way up into my ass, and I immerse myself in the foul smell. I have to make room for the next person and make sure that I am not invading the space of those who were there before me. We form a queue: a group of squatting animals...