Don't Tell Me You're Afraid by Giuseppe Catozzella

while.
    Before we went out, however, he called Hodan back.
    â€œHodan . . .”
    She turned, already at the door.
    â€œYes, Aabe?”
    â€œMake sure that Hussein’s father feels the same.”
    â€œThank you, Aabe.”
    We went out to the courtyard, into the air and light, leaving our mother and our father in the darkness of their room, wondering if they had made the right decision.

CHAPTER 12

    N EVERTHELESS , in those weeks everything was changing no matter what. Our lives as Somalis were destined to be transformed forever.
    One morning, without notice, Alì and his family moved out.
    I got up at dawn along with my brothers and sisters, awakened by noises coming from the courtyard. We all stumbled out in our pajamas, barefoot and drowsy. I was just in time to see them pile into a green pickup truck towing a rusty trailer that Aabe Yassin had borrowed from someone, before they left for good. Gone, without our even knowing where.
    Yassin, Alì, and his brothers had spent the night loading up the decrepit truck with boxes in which they had managed to pack away their entire lives.
    The previous day the Hawiye clan, which we Abgal were part of, had announced that they had formed an alliance of sorts with Al-Shabaab; it seemed they didn’t want to be at war for a change. This, however, meant that the Darod in our area were in danger,since Bondere was an Abgal district; Darod families had continued to live there only because they were protected by their Abgal friends. No one would have dared do any harm to Aabe Yassin; everyone knew that he was our father’s best friend, that they were like brothers.
    But that night, simultaneously, scores of families had made the same decision Alì’s father had. Once again, overnight, Al-Shabaab had changed my life.
    The morning was drenched with a surreal light. At dawn the air, misty with the sea’s moisture, seemed inhabited by myriad swift ghosts. People from my district were moving to places as yet unknown. The important thing was to get away as quickly as possible. Leave their history behind.
    Hooyo, like almost all of our neighbors, had not gone to work. Al-Shabaab’s men might come and make an inspection, house by house. We all had to be present.
    When I ran out to the pickup, Alì was sitting in the back next to the window, eyes downcast. Aabe Yassin was in front, next to the driver, who was a friend of his and Aabe’s. The engine was already running. I rapped on the glass and Alì turned. A pall of despair had settled over his face like wax. He had no eyes anymore. His face was a waxen mask, a mask of absence.
    He looked at me, but he was focused on a point in the sky instead of on me while I, on the other side of the glass, gestured for him to roll down the window. Alì didn’t hear me; he seemed dazed. I turned to look behind me.
    He was staring at the top of the eucalyptus.
    Only when the pickup truck started to move did he look at me. He may have been crying. Finally.
    Alì, his brothers, and Aabe Yassin had been part of my life since I was born and now, like ghosts, in a fraction of a second they were vanishing.
    Hussein’s family had made the same decision. They were also Darod, and there was no tolerance for mixed marriages anymore. Everything that had been gained in decades had gone up in smoke in a single day.
    They had decided to leave, like most of the Darod.
    Hodan, in the course of a few hours, found herself having to make a painful decision.
    Leave or stay.
    After an anguished night she’d decided to stay with us. What would become of her marriage was a question that there’d been no time to consider. Sometimes the weightiest decisions are carried along on the slight drift of a breath of air. And we with them, inadequate, flimsy. At least, that’s what happened to us that morning.
    A few hours after Alì’s departure, Hodan returned home. With only the few belongings she had