I Pinch My Husband's Nose Again Tonight

My husband is the type of person who, when asked to 'buy two onions,' comes home with a 20-count bag.
When I ask 'Why?', he replies 'Why what?', so I gave up on adding quantities to my shopping list a long time ago.


My husband is the type of person who uses a shocking past as a casual preamble.
He'll say something like, 'By the way, speaking of that time I almost got shot in Venezuela...' I've become quite good at translating 'almost got shot in Venezuela' into a tone similar to 'almost tripped at the supermarket.'


My husband is the type of person who has no particular interest in birthdays.
Last year, for my birthday, I cute-ly requested in advance, 'I just want a letter,' but by the weekend after my birthday—when the day had already completely vanished from his mind—he proudly handed me a piece of paper with messy handwriting on it. When I said, 'That was last week,' he replied, 'It hasn't been that long, has it?'


But in return, on perfectly ordinary days, my husband picks roses from the garden and secretly leaves them on my desk.



My husband is American. We met by chance when he was visiting my country on vacation, spent just three days together, and a year later, when he visited again, we got married. It seems he intended to just register the marriage and return to America, as he had already booked his return flight. He ended up having to throw it away, though.


My husband is also Somali. He became an American around the age of nine, and until then, he lived in a country in East Africa called Somalia, chasing camels and sheep. While watching our son play with toy cars, he would say things like, 'When I was little, I used to play with camel jawbones as if they were little camels.'


My husband was born in the middle of the desert as the eldest son of a nomadic family. The group, which was in the middle of moving in search of new pasture, kept watch over his mother throughout the night during the birth to protect her from hyenas. Until I met my husband, the only world I knew where the dangers lurking around you were hyenas was The Lion King.


I end up asking boring questions like, 'What did you do about your birth certificate?' but according to my husband, they registered it when they stopped by a big town a few years after he was born. 'You'd think, how would you know the date if you lived in the desert, right? They said it was October 10, 1979, based on the year of the drought and the phases of the moon,' he told me as if it were some trivial small talk he'd heard at work today.

My husband is probably definitely not born on October 10th. No matter which horoscope I read, it's not even one millimeter accurate. Moreover, I don't think he was born in 1979 either. No matter how many times I search for 'Somalia, drought,' 1979 never comes up. But at least I understand why my husband isn't very interested in birthdays.



My husband is a musician. When he was 19, he met a young man also born in Somalia named K'naan, and the two began making music together.

I learned that there was a time when Bruno Mars was also there and it was the three of them from a preamble to a conversation one day, but the song they made at that time, 'Wavin' Flag,' was chosen as the Coca-Cola campaign song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup held in South Africa. The song, which played in commercials all over the world, became an instant hit, and a world tour was carried out.

When I asked, 'How many countries have you been to so far?', my husband said he had kept track up to about 90, but he didn't know after that—maybe about 110 countries? My pride and joy of 46 countries is a crushing defeat of less than half that, but when it comes to countries my husband hasn't been to, I become as eloquent as a fish finding water. My husband always listens to that with great interest, nodding along. Even though I would just brush it off if someone told me they were shot in Venezuela.


The country where my husband was born, Somalia, is a country where civil war still continues today. In the travel advice issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a red Level 4 evacuation advisory is always in effect.

Just before the civil war broke out in '88, his father and mother put their eldest son, my husband, up for adoption. My husband says he can still clearly remember the day he was led by the hand by a stranger, an aunt, and put on a plane. In an era when mobile phones were not yet widespread, there wasn't much contact with his family after he moved to America, and he told me nostalgically that he thought he had been abandoned.

Separated from his family and taken into a household where his foster father was always laying hands on his foster mother, my husband left home at the age of 15.


Sometimes I think about my husband when he was 15. The boy who was separated from the family he was born and raised in, taken to a country where he didn't understand the language at all, couldn't find a place in his new, unhappy family, and decided to live on his own. In the profile of my husband, who is surprisingly unattached to anything, I sometimes see the shadow of that 15-year-old boy.

'Nobody taught me how to cook or how to shave my beard,' my husband said while looking curiously at an electric shaver at Bic Camera during a temporary return to Japan. I want to hug my husband, who jokingly pretends to shave his head. But instead of hugging him, I grin and tease him, 'That's why you always cook way too much food.'


The first time my husband reunited with his family was when he was 22. He often shows me photos from the day he visited his mother and five younger siblings who had fled to India as refugees and met them for the first time in over 10 years. Now, my husband understands well why he was put up for adoption, and he is very grateful to his parents that if it hadn't been for that, if he hadn't moved to America, he wouldn't be who he is today.

That is why my husband is sometimes lost in thought with an unbearable look on his face. It is because he is thinking of his mother, who has been living as a refugee ever since, for decades now. His mother, who survived the war, fled to India with her five children, and ended up in Nepal, is still living alone in Nepal after managing to send all her children abroad. His mother, who cannot hold an ID or passport, cannot go anywhere, and my husband goes to see her two or three times a year.


Once, I went to Nepal with him to meet his mother. After being left alone with her while we couldn't communicate at all, and having the talkative mother talk to me in Somali for two hours straight, I glared at my husband when he returned.


On the day of our departure, seeing the tears streaming down my husband's cheeks as he turned his back on his mother, who was sobbing at the entrance, I cried bitterly too. That was the first time I had ever seen my husband cry. I will probably never be able to understand the pain of having to leave behind the parent who sacrificed herself to change his life, all alone.

Why is living a normal life so difficult in some parts of the world? Every time I hear stories of people who cannot live in their own country and do not belong anywhere, I still don't know what or how to resent.

In the taxi to the airport, I gently held my husband's hand as he stared out the window. At times like this, any words I try to find fall flat like scraps of paper. I whispered that this was unfair. My husband turned slowly and said with his usual calm face that it was something that couldn't be helped.



My husband is a very calm person. He rarely shows the middle two of the four emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. It's not that those situations don't happen often, but rather that he seems to endure quietly when it comes to anger and sorrow. I am the exact opposite, an emotional type who cries and gets angry easily, so if you ask who starts the fights, it's almost always me.

Because my husband has many absent-minded traits. He forgets things I ask him to do right away, he's basically sloppy with everything, and he has no sense of organization.

But my husband gives me bouquets on ordinary days. Sometimes he buys cake. When we go out to eat, he always gives me and our son the most delicious parts. On days when I'm not feeling well, he'll say, 'Let's have sushi today!' or take me out to eat something he doesn't even really like, saying, 'I want to eat this, so let's go.'


My husband is kind. That kindness isn't about having a soft demeanor or anything like that; it's something that stems from a solid strength.
My husband is strong. That strength isn't about his physique or aura, but about the kind of flexible, firm intensity that people who have known pain and suffering possess.


My husband is the type of person who is loved by everyone. People always gather around him. And his phone is busy, with calls and emails coming in almost every day from friends somewhere in the world, and the sound of incoming calls and notifications is always ringing.


My husband is the type of person who, instead of going to sleep first, waits up for me on nights when my work isn't finished. Even when I tell him, 'There's no point if we're both sleep-deprived, so just go to sleep,' he absolutely waits in the living room until I finish my work and go to the bedroom. With half-closed eyes.

Yet, my husband is the type of person who falls asleep within two minutes of getting into bed. I, who am the exact opposite and have trouble falling asleep, am very envious of him. But there is one thing I just can't overlook.

That is my husband's snoring. In the darkness of a sleepless night, the low-frequency roar echoing from right beside me is like a punishment game, and I instantly pinch my husband's nose. When that doesn't work, I sometimes give him a small kick. Each time, he groans, 'Ngh,' says a quiet 'Sorry...', and falls asleep again in two seconds.



I love my husband. To the point where I want to say such embarrassing things one by one. Even though there are still many moments where I think I don't quite understand what's going on. I'm sure there will be times in the future when the onions go bad or things I've lent out go missing, and each time I'll probably think, 'Why?' But if marriage is having another person you want to be with sleeping next to you every night, then I think it's not bad at all, in my fifth year of marriage.


My mother says, 'He's such a good person, make sure you don't get divorced! It's pitiful to kick him just for snoring!' That's certainly true.

Even so, I pinch my husband's nose again today. Sometimes I record it and let him listen to it the next day. Every time, he starts laughing hysterically, saying, 'Stop it!', and I end up rolling on the floor laughing along with him.


I can't wait for this year's birthday, too.