LITMIR.BIZ

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my father heard me on the radio, and wrote immediately to express his surprise and pride. ‘How do you find the time in between your studies?’ he asked. My mother, who only ever signed the bottom of his many letters to me with, ‘Love from Mum’, didn’t make any comment.

       ***

      The departments and classes at Borough Polytechnic were enormous and I had to adjust to being surrounded by hundreds of teenagers also studying for their O levels in everything from pre-dentistry or pre-medicine to engineering and catering. Those two years were a great experience and forced me to develop better study habits. During my time there I prepared for the state preliminary examination for nursing and also did the equivalent of the first term of Nursing School. This exempted me from one semester of the nursing programme once I was admitted.

      One day a week we were taken for some practical experience to the Victorian Belgrave Hospital for Children near the Oval cricket ground in Kennington, south London. In huge, efficient wards, unrecognizable to me from anything I’d experienced in Somaliland, I worked alongside nurses, washed babies, fed and changed them, read to the older children, and helped give them their medication. It was our job to get the more mobile patients out of bed and take them to the window or wrought iron balcony for some fresh air. It was basic, uncomplicated care and we were given no responsibility in case we did something dangerous. I’d done much more practical nursing at home for my dad and was itching to get on, but I wasn’t old enough or good enough yet.

      My early years in London weren’t all about work, though – far from it – and Jessica and I could be quite mischievous at times. On the last Saturday of every month there were college dances known as ‘hops’. As this was the Fifties the music was largely swing and jazz featuring singers like Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Although I’d listened to my mother’s records when I was small, it was in London that I really discovered music for the first time. I bought my first record player, a secondhand Grundig, and spent ages browsing through the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong albums in record shops. I even queued to see Harry Belafonte perform at the Hammersmith Palais. A few of us also learned to dance so that we could show off at the hops. From then on, dancing became my number one hobby. With my pinched-in, 22-inch waist accentuated by a flared tulle underskirt and my Afro tamed into the tight chignon, I learned the tango, the quickstep, the foxtrot and the rumba.

      The music department provided the musicians for these events and the catering students made the food and sold the drinks, so the whole college was involved. Dancing is thirsty work and one night Jessica and I spent so much on orange squash that we didn’t have the Tube fare home. We began to walk, but had no idea of the direction. The Rodgers had told us that if we ever had a problem we should find a policeman, so we walked and walked looking for a ‘bobby’ until we found two on foot patrol. We always carried a piece of paper with our address in it – 137 Ramsden Road – so we showed it to them and explained that we were lost.

      ‘Goodness, you’re a long way from home!’ one of the officers exclaimed. ‘Just a moment.’ He went to a telephone box, called up his police station and before we knew it a squad car arrived to pick up two ‘lost’ girls – who weren’t lost at all really – and drove us all the way to Balham. We arrived at about 1 a.m. and a policeman rang on the doorbell (waking the whole household) and handed us over to the Rodgers, telling them, ‘We found these two waifs.’ Mr Rodgers thanked them for their kindness and we all went to bed. Very cheekily after that we made one more attempt to use the Metropolitan Police as a kind of personal taxi service. We even made a game of it, walking miles in the search for different policeman to trick into taking us home. In the end, word got around and the long-suffering officers told us, ‘No more!’

      After my first Christmas in London, I attended a New Year’s Eve ball for overseas students and their host families arranged by the British Council. This gala event had a big band and lots of dancing. I don’t recall the venue, but I do recall the handsome man who came up to ask me for a dance. While we were waltzing, he asked, ‘Where are you from?’

      ‘Somaliland,’ I replied.

      He stopped dancing and stared at me.

      I laughed. ‘What, don’t you know where Somaliland is?’

      He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Yes, I do. I am from Somaliland too!’

      It was my turn to be shocked. ‘No! Then w-who are you?’ I stammered. I thought I knew all the students from Somaliland, but here was a Somali I’d never encountered.

      ‘Well, who are you?’ he countered.

      ‘I am Edna Adan Ismail,’ I told him, knowing that the mention of my father’s name never failed to impress someone from my country. It worked. He couldn’t believe it and said that he was directly related to my mother. His name was Mohamed, the twenty-six-year-old son of Haji Ibrahim Egal, whose family I knew. I spent the entire evening dancing with him after that and when we parted I gave him my address and phone number.

      The next day the first bouquet I ever received in my life was delivered to Ramsden Road. The enormous cluster of roses from a handsome older man made quite an impression on a naïve seventeen-year old. I kept the note I found nestling in among the blooms for many years. It said:

      ‘Thank you for such a wonderful, delightful evening. Do you realize that we made history – probably the first Somalis who danced together in England? Mohamed.’

      Mrs Rodgers found a vase to put my flowers in, and for several weeks they brightened up the living room we shared. I was not a very romantic person and had never been out with any boy before, unless in a group. I was too passionate about my work to have time for romance and anyway the Somali tradition was that you never ‘messed around’ until you got married. Not that I could – my circumcision made that decision easy – and any boy who violated the daughter of Adan Dhakhtar Ismail and robbed me of my virginity would be considered to have raped me, with terrible repercussions for his family. There would have been vendettas and rebellions, as this was one code of ethics you did not break.

      Nevertheless, a few days later Mohamed invited me to dinner and I accepted. To my surprise, he arrived in a convertible sports car. This was the first inkling I had of his fondness for expensive, showy things; but then I remembered that his father was reportedly one of the richest men in Somaliland. All the neighbours peered out of their windows and I could almost see their blinds twitching as I climbed into the red MG. We had a lovely evening and he took me to dinner a couple of times after that, but then he simply disappeared. I never heard a word from him. Mrs Rodgers would ask, ‘Whatever became of that nice young man who sent you flowers?’ I had no answer, because I didn’t know what had happened to him. We hadn’t fought, we hadn’t argued. He just vanished. It was almost a year later when I learned that his father had suffered a stroke and he’d flown back to Somaliland in a hurry. As the only surviving child of a mother who’d been pregnant eighteen times and lost her other son to a snakebite, Mohamed’s duty was to be by her side. Haji Ibrahim Egal died six months later, and Mohamed remained to run the family business, forgetting to write to a girl he’d once sent flowers to in London.

      After a year with the Rodgers, Jessica and I bade them a fond farewell and moved into a boarding house run by nuns at 24 The Boltons, off the Old Brompton Road in Kensington. It was a place that took in mainly rich girls from abroad studying the arts. The property was a fine white stucco building with individual bedrooms and a common dining room. It was located in a very fashionable part of town, closer to the station and with a more frequent bus service. We loved living there and when we weren’t working, we went to the movies or to dances with friends. I recall that one of the films I saw that I enjoyed the most was called The World of Suzie Wong, starring the Hollywood heartthrob William Holden. Once a week we’d have social evenings where we were each invited to discuss our cultures. Jessica and I learned all about Ireland, the Gambia, China, India, Portugal and Finland from the other girls before it was our turn to don traditional Somali nomad dress – six metres of unstitched white cloth tied a bit like a sari and adorned with amber beads – and sing Somali songs. It was a great way to break the ice.

      It was a lot of fun living in

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