Nomad (16 page)

After my father died, memories flooded into me unbidden. Some of them were painful, others sweet, but strangely, most of them were of Holland, the country I had recently left.

Holland was the safest place I had ever lived, and the place where I was happiest. I remember with particular nostalgia the summer of 2001. I had just graduated from the University of Leiden with a master’s degree. I had made enough money, working as a Somali translator for the Dutch social services, to buy a place of my own with my best friend. I had learned the language of the society I immigrated to, and I had just found a meaningful job at a think tank for an important Dutch political party. I had friends with whom I could share the gifts and trials of life.

In those days, when I reflected on what I had achieved and where I was going, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Yes, I was disobeying many of the laws of Allah, and I had taken a huge risk in exiting the world of my clan. Yes, I had plainly hurt my parents and put myself at the mercy of a wrathful God. Yes, I had lost my sister and felt deep pain. But I also felt that I was succeeding at something important, something that my family had always warned me I would fail at.

In every story I was ever told, the girl who left her family—or, even worse, her clan—to pursue her own goals found that her story ended swiftly in horrible depravity and bitter regret. I had not just left my family and clan; I was on my own
in an infidel country
. But I felt I could still hold my head high. I had not fallen into the pitfalls of depravity; I had hoisted myself onto the road of progress. And I felt that I was still basically a faithful Muslim, just a slightly lapsed one. I didn’t pray, I
drank alcohol, and I had sex out of wedlock, but I felt (uneasily) that in essence I still obeyed Allah’s main rules and would one day in the distant future return to his narrow path.

I had been reconciled with my father. He had even acknowledged that he should not have forced me to marry against my will, and he worked for months to get me a divorce. I felt it was proof that not only had he forgiven me, but he had accepted my chosen path in life. I was in constant touch with my mom and sent her a monthly allowance. Mahad had been taken ill, which saddened me, but when he felt well he and I could speak on the phone. Once in a while I exchanged emails and phone calls with my cousins: Hassan, Magool, Ladan, Hiran, and others. The family circle did not by any means embrace me, but as time went by I sensed that my difference was becoming accepted. My professional success in Holland brought me respect, and I felt that I again belonged to my family, but on my own terms.

My life back then was not yet politicized. I had not yet made the public statements about Islam that would bring me notoriety, fame, a seat in the Dutch Parliament, a mission to improve the lives of millions of women I have never met, as well as drama, death threats, and bodyguards. My best friend, Ellen, and I used to take bike rides with friends—a crowd of young women riding our bicycles six or seven miles to the beach, flying down the roads with a picnic as our goal. We splashed in the freezing cold North Sea waves and walked across the sand dunes to get bags of spicy
patat-oorlog
, “warlike French fries,” in swimsuits that were still covered in sand. I felt full of joy, freer than I had ever been in my life. I looked forward to a future that promised no upheaval, but a safe, steady, and predictable existence surrounded by loving friends, a slightly blurry but undoubtedly wonderful mate, and children, perhaps even an inquisitive little girl who looked like me.

But my life in Holland ended abruptly in May 2006, in an atmosphere of high drama and low farce. Although I was then a relatively prominent member of the legislature, the Dutch Minister for Immigration and Integration, Rita Verdonk, stripped me of my citizenship—only to be forced to restore it a few weeks later, after a debate in Parliament that led to the collapse of the government and new nationwide elections.

When I first arrived in Holland, I was told by refugee advocates that in order to obtain permission to stay, it was not enough to say that I was running away from a marriage that was forced on me. If I said that, I would be sent back to Africa. To receive permission to stay in the Netherlands I had to state that I was being persecuted in Somalia for my political opinions or clan. So, although it was not true, that was what I claimed, and I duly received refugee status.

Years later, when I was asked to join the Liberal VVD, a political party founded on the principles of individual freedom, limited government, a free market, and national security, and to run for Parliament, my party leader asked me if I had any skeletons in the closet. “Yes, I do,” I said. “When I came to the Netherlands I changed my name, I changed my year of birth, and I pretty much lied my way in.” I told him the whole story.

My party leader talked to some of the party’s legal advisers and lawyers, but everyone treated the whole affair as something insignificant, a small lie told years before. They emphasized that I had managed to assimilate to Holland; this, they clearly felt, was far more important than the lie I had once told. They wanted to tout me as an example: if immigrants seriously chose to adopt Dutch values, learn the language, study and work, then they too could succeed as I had. Besides being a role model, I was also seen as an expert on the social and cultural obstacles to integration, and how to surmount them.

Rita Verdonk was my colleague in the Liberal Party; indeed, she and I had been recruited into the party’s proposed parliamentary list at almost the same time. She had run a prison and had been director of a civil service unit, the Department of State Security of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. I had written articles about Islam. It was a time of turmoil in Dutch politics. Pim Fortuyn, a powerfully charismatic speaker and an openly gay man, had recently surged to political prominence, only to be assassinated by a deranged animal rights activist when he was on the brink of taking power. In appointing Rita and me, the Liberal Party was clearly seeking people who might attract some of Fortuyn’s voters.

I was to be the face of the Muslim woman who had sought and found freedom in Holland. Unlike white commentators, who were hamstrung by the fear that they would be labeled racists, I could voice
my criticisms of the feudal, religious, and repressive mechanisms that were holding back women from Muslim communities. Rita Verdonk, meanwhile, would be the face and voice of those Dutch men and women who had voted for Pim Fortuyn, who felt that they were disenfranchised in their own country, who felt invaded, their society pushed into mayhem.

A fifty-plus woman who looked her age, with dark, short hair styled around her face, Rita was plump in a muscular way that made her look strong yet warm and even motherly. She was a perfect image of Dutch rectitude, exuding hard work and competence; she had that direct, slightly disapproving clear gaze that is particular to a certain kind of Dutch person. This had intrinsic appeal to Fortuyn’s voters. Moreover, Fortuyn had been an outrageously gay academic who spoke with the haughty vowels of the upper class; Rita more closely mirrored his voters’ mannerisms and values, in addition to sharing many of their views. The plan was clearly that together, behind closed doors, she and I would find consensus, issue by issue. Many in the establishment saw us as rebels; others, as puppets. But the goal was that we would make separate, rebellious parties such as Fortuyn’s unnecessary, for we would gather his now docile voters within the steady embrace of the impeccably well-behaved Liberal Party and all would end well, the Dutch way: in consensus.

Who were these voters of Fortuyn’s? Policemen, teachers, civil servants, owners of small family businesses—the baker, the butcher, the florist—who felt tyrannized by regulations and taxes and saw immigrants from Morocco and Turkey both as competitors (with small shops that could sell cheaper goods because they hired cheap, illegal workers) and as bad employees (unpunctual and disrespectful slackers who could not speak proper Dutch). They perceived immigrants as
verloedering
, debasing, corrupting. They did not scrupulously separate their recyclable from their non-recyclable trash. Their children did not ride their bicycles only in designated lanes. They had no respect for public or private property. They vandalized shops, committed crimes, molested and harassed women, and turned once pristine neighborhoods into areas both unsafe and unclean. If picked up by police, they would be set free by the judge on grounds of being minors. They were dropouts from school. Their families lied their
way into generous welfare payments and out of proper payment of taxes; they jumped the queues for public housing. None of these generalizations was exactly or universally true, but they were true enough for this perception to be widely held.

There was a real tension between this “Rita class” of voters and the elite ruling class. Fortuyn’s voters no longer trusted their rulers, for they had opened the borders of Holland to foreigners. Even though the middle and upper classes could still afford to move to airy, expensive neighborhoods and send their children to safe schools, and could lobby for informal favors to keep from being fully exposed to disruption from immigrants, the Rita class felt that they and their neighborhoods were bearing the brunt. But when they voiced their concerns, they were chastised for being provincial and intolerant.

Having run a prison, “Iron Rita” was plainspoken to the point of bluntness and scrupulously respectful of the law. I rather liked her. She became the most popular politician among the voters of my party. As minister for immigration and integration, she was a powerful member of the cabinet. I was merely a member of Parliament, but I had been appointed our party’s spokesperson for integration and emancipation. (My title did not specify integration into what or emancipation from what.)

It was common knowledge that my views on immigration were different from Rita’s. For instance, I supported an immigration amnesty for the twenty-six thousand asylum seekers who, after more than five years of living and working in Holland, had been turned down for refugee status, and who thus had no further right to live in the country. But on other issues we agreed. We both supported immigration quotas that would favor the entry of people from Poland and other Eastern European countries over those from Morocco and Turkey. Our point was that Holland should attract immigrants who work; we needed nurses, caretakers of the elderly, fruit, vegetable, and flower pickers, workers in restaurants and hotels, electricians, painters, and construction workers. The immigrants from North Africa and Turkey were being admitted on the grounds of family formation and reunion. They went straight into welfare or applied for unemployment benefits after hardly a year in the workforce. Most of them were unemployable or unqualified or had a work ethic that employers found unsuitable.

Like me, Rita also wanted to confront Islam’s treatment of women head-on. I applauded her in 2004 when she walked into a mosque and extended her hand to an imam, knowing that he would reject it. It was an image that produced a great deal of anger and confusion in Holland, but the gesture she provoked—a blatant expression of contempt for a government minister—encapsulated not only what some imams in Holland were saying about women, but their scorn for Dutch values, society, and law. Like Rita, I thought that people needed to see this; once they saw it, they could no longer pretend it wasn’t there.

So Rita and I had a warm working relationship. We had occasional chats on the phone; we exchanged information before a debate; we shared meals; and sometimes we met for drinks.

When our party leader, Gerrit Zalm, stepped down in 2006, Rita decided to campaign for the post. She was running against Mark Rutte, a boyishly attractive, much younger man who was considered a rising star in the party. Just before Parliament broke up for spring break, I was with her in her office, talking about policy. The conversation veered to politics, a very different thing, and she asked me to support her publicly, a request that made me uncomfortable. Gerrit Zalm and Jozias van Aartsen, another leading Liberal, had asked all the members of our party to refrain from openly endorsing either of the candidates in order to avoid making public the splits that had begun spreading through the ranks. Consensus is a sacred article of faith in Holland, and although the media love any sign of dissension and will seize on it and amplify it with glee, any kind of public disagreement within a political party is frowned upon by party leaders, who consider it unprofessional and damaging to the party’s goals.

I told Rita, “I am not doing any public endorsements. You know what Gerrit and Jozias will say.”

Rita’s smile seemed forced. “Come on, Ayaan, don’t give me that! Since when have you respected what Gerrit and Jozias have to say?”

Shifting my weight, I reached for my drink. “You know, there’s enough tension between me and Jozias. Gerrit has been very patient with me. I’m not looking for trouble.”

Rita countered, “Ayaan, you know it’s not about me. It’s about the
people. They’re angry. When I go around the country, they take me into their homes, they tell me about their problems. It’s not just the welfare state and globalization, all these lofty themes. It’s about trash on the street. It’s about your daughter being raped. It’s about seeing your earnings disappear. They’re suffering. These are the men and women who voted for Pim Fortuyn, and now that he’s dead they’re politically homeless. Jozias and Gerrit won’t say so in public, but they’re endorsing Rutte. Do you think Rutte is capable of getting that vote for our party?”

I wanted to tell her what I really thought, which was that she and Rutte were
both
unqualified for the job. They were both beginners in politics (as I was), and neither seemed to have any real clue about how they wanted to change the country; they seemed driven by personal ambition and nothing more. The man I favored as candidate, Henk Kamp, had decades of political experience and had run two ministries. He was a far more skillful political operator than Rita, and yet there was humility about him, and a quiet intelligence. I felt that it was very unfortunate that he refused to run. But I did not want to offend Rita by saying so. I began rambling through a rather uncomfortable soliloquy about the nature of Dutch politics when Rita interrupted me, her gaze now steady. “I’ve lived here all my life. I know this country better than you do.”