Nimco Mahamud-Hassan is considering moving to Wales, another in a series of dramatic relocations that have shaped her life. The 1900s cast-iron stove and thousand-plus cookbooks in her kitchen complicate things.
First, there is the cast-iron stove, which is enormous, runs on gas and was made in early 20th century England. Beside it is a shelf of ceramic Turkish coffee pots, which climb to the ceiling, their vibrant colors reflecting sunlight. And then, of course, there are the cookbooks – Nimco has more than a thousand.
Nimco’s kitchen is as warm as her smile, her stove as British as her accent and her tools as multicultural as her cooking. From her corner of Tennyson Street in Somerville’s Winter Hill, Nimco can make an entire diaspora out of food, blending her native Somalian recipes with flavors and cooking methods from around the globe. It’s a unique skill set that Nimco brought to classes taught through the City of Somerville and Milk Street Cooking School, and to her catered events. In 2018, she was a Somerville Arts Council artist of the month. This year, she quit everything to start writing a cookbook.
“I often feel that cookbooks that are written of African food in general have a lot of irrelevant pictures,” Nimco said. “You know, a broken car, a hungry child.” Her own cookbook will be different, she said. It will be beautiful.
When Nimco was a child, she would make beautiful Somali pancakes. Her mother taught her how to cook, and by the time Nimco was 8 she would make breakfast over an open fire, as is the Somali tradition. It was around then that a family of missionaries started taking an interest in her, pressuring her family to let them take Nimco out of the country and give her a better education.
Nimco was a curious girl. She wrote consistently in her diary and loved to cook even then, though she couldn’t make much on her own. She laughed easily, and was obedient in school, as every Somali child learned to be.
The missionaries were her neighbors, and as part of their sponsorship of Nimco’s education, they wanted to unofficially adopt her.
Egypt and England
Nimco’s father opposed this; like more than 99 percent of Somalia, Nimco and her family were Muslims, and he was sure the missionaries meant to convert her. On the other hand, Nimco was one of seven daughters among 13 siblings, and Somalia was on the brink of war. Her mother thought that it was a good opportunity for Nimco to leave, and eventually she had her way.
Nimco moved to Egypt when she was just 12, where the missionaries sponsored her schooling. At first, it was difficult. Nimco was living with her brother, who was not much older than her, and neither knew how to speak Arabic. Every day, Nimco would go to school where, week by week, she would pick up the language. The missionaries’ promised education was nowhere to be seen – it was only after two years that they sponsored Nimco to attend three weeks of English lessons. Thus, Nimco and her brother picked up Arabic from their black-and-white television and their Egyptian neighbors. Every evening Nimco would make spaghetti and sauce, the only dish she knew how to cook. This went on until the neighbors started asking Nimco questions.
After three years, the missionaries invited Nimco to visit them in England. She packed a small suitcase, leaving behind her diary, her brother and almost all her belongings. She flew up for what was supposed to be a three week trip; Somalia’s civil war erupted in the middle of it. Suddenly, Nimco’s life was flipped upside down – everyone that she’d known from Somalia was in danger, and the missionaries felt that it would be safest for her to stay in England, sending her to live with a British foster family, the Mitchells.
Nimco was 15, with a funky afro and mismatched clothes, alone in a new country with a language she didn’t speak. It was a familiar sensation, but this time she was utterly bereft of her family. When she stepped into the Mitchells’ front door, she didn’t know what to expect. Would she be welcomed? Would the family be nice?
They were not.
Among the English
Nimco spent her first day in the Mitchells’ family home cleaning, a pastime she quickly understood no one else in the family had ever taken on. Liquids were congealed on the kitchen counter. When she tried to lift some cans up, to organize, she realized they were stuck. She had to pry them off,.
The family quickly fell into a routine, relying on Nimco to clean everything for them. She even had to clean the rooms of the Mitchells sons, who were barely younger than her.
At school – where her grades were better than the Mitchells boys, despite them going to a posh private school – Nimco’s teachers were kind, inviting her to Christmases at their homes and giving her private English lessons for no pay. One teacher was friends with the principal of a private girls school and managed to provide Nimco a year’s education there for free. To do her schoolwork, Nimco would have to hide from Mrs. Mitchell, who would force her to do chores whenever she caught her studying.
One morning, Mrs. Mitchell’s sister, Margaret, came to visit. She had a daughter of similar age to Nimco and like Mrs. Mitchell, wasn’t a kind woman. Nimco was listening idly to the two sisters’ conversation, Margaret effusing over the cleaning that Nimco had done. “Sue,” she finally said, “do you think I could borrow Nimco?” Nimco stood there aghast, then left and walked to a park to cry.
It was as if the woman were talking about borrowing a vacuum cleaner instead of a human child.
Like her father had predicted, Nimco’s life in England was also marked by weekly Sundays in church. The Mitchells were born-again Christians, and so Nimco was required to sit with them, and behave nicely as the pastor would preach, “Let’s crush Islam.” Even the nicer sermons – “Love thy neighbor,” for example – were uncomfortable. Church felt like a too-small dress foisted upon Nimco by an insistent mother: It itched, it was painful, the seams were splitting, and she’d never wanted to wear it in the first place. It didn’t fit. She wasn’t Christian.
Still, without church, Nimco would never have met Jo.
Jo was one of Nimco’s first friends in England, and she would communicate with her through a dictionary, flipping through the pages to translate conversations. They didn’t always need the words.
“It’s like, when you like somebody, I think language is just one part of how you communicate as human beings,” Nimco explained. “You can just look at the person and just know.”
The two would wander London together, stopping in secondhand shops and sift through clothes, giggling together. It was seamless.
America
Shortly afterward, Nimco left the Mitchells. She started to cook again, to work for a paper called The Voice and to volunteer for the human rights organization Africa Watch, where she met Alex, the associate director. They hardly saw each other for almost 10 years, but eventually reconnected, traveling together in East Africa. A few years later, the couple married. Together they moved to Somerville. She took cooking classes – later complemented by lessons in China and Thailand and working alongside friends from India and Pakistan – and around 2010, started to cook professionally.
The first person who hired Nimco to cook for him was an MIT graduate student. After the first meal that she brought him, he told her, “I would like to keep this going, whatever it takes.” A few weeks later his girlfriend begged Nimco to let her learn her recipes, and Nimco began teaching. Today, Nimco is the godmother of their oldest daughter.
Throughout her time in Somerville, Nimco has taken in five young women who needed a place to stay while they got on their feet. It was always by chance: a receptionist Nimco met at Goodwill, a sick student in her husband’s class – Nimco opened her arms first, and asked questions later. She gave these women what the Mitchells never gave her: kindness; love; a home.
Maybe that’s the true secret to Nimco’s cooking, beyond the cultural combinations, the cookbook collection and the beautiful tools – Nimco makes her food so that she can share it with others.
source/content: cambridgeday.com (headline edited)
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Nimco Mahamud-Hassan in her Winter Hill, Somerville, home. (Photo: Alma Barak)
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UNITED KINGDOM / EGYPT / SOMALIA