Dekha

I met Dekha Ibrahim when she came to D.C. to meet people from my organization and some of our donors. As the lowest-ranking cubicle dweller, I was assigned to handle the logistics of her trip—book her hotel, escort her to her meetings all over town, make sure she got lunch, show her how to use the copier, that kind of thing. I didn’t know much about Dekha before she arrived, other than that she was a Somali woman peace-builder. Yup. A Somali. Woman. Peace-builder. Yowza. I was curious about who this woman was!

I soon learned that I could have asked for no greater gift that incredibly cold January, than permission to follow Dekha around and listen to her explain Somalia’s conflict and her work to heal it to donors, legislators, and non-profit big-wigs. She was self-assured and tough, but simultaneously humble and gentle. She talked about restoring relationships between victims and perpetrators, saying that the violence has hurt them both. She explained how experiences of trauma wound us so deeply that we cannot seek peace until we have repaired the internal rupture. She gave incredibly human solutions to huge problems that can seem like nothing but a tangle of politics and violence. She described Al-Shabaab with fierceness and tenderness, as though they were her own children who needed guidance. In a wood-paneled Senate office, she talked about love. And Allah. And forgiveness. And then she listened. Dekha made me want to be a better person.

Towards the end of the trip, I invited her and her colleague Isaac over to breakfast on Saturday morning at my then-fiancé John’s apartment. After a week of fancy lunch meetings, I remember feeling a little embarrassed to serve her food off of baking sheets and mismatched plates because we didn’t have any serving pieces or dish sets, but she accepted everything with such graciousness. She asked questions about us as though our work was anywhere near as important or life-changing as what she did. She thanked us profusely for breakfast and said that though she had traveled through DC many times, she had never been invited into an American house. I apologized that it was only a little run-down apartment, but she stopped me and said that it is the love inside that makes a home beautiful. I think my heart almost exploded with gratitude that someone that incredible found virtue in me.

Yesterday, Dekha died from wounds sustained in a car crash that also killed her husband and her driver. Like so many people who loved her and were inspired by her, I feel depleted, like the world is somehow less hopeful than it was yesterday. A colleague reminded me of what she said in her speech accepting the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the Alternative Nobel: “It takes time to build sustainable peace in society. If you are lucky, you see the fruits and sometimes our role is to prepare the field and allow others to take it forward, leaving a heritage for the next generation.”

Well, next generation? We have a lot of work to do.

Today, right now, I ask that you honor Dekha’s memory by praying for her, for her four children, for peace in Somalia, and for God to make our hearts ache for peace in the way Dekha’s did.