Dhegdheer

The goats come in at sunset in a cloud of dust, and somewhere inside the cloud, bent low among the warm flanks, are five girls who are trying very hard not to cough. The herd girl walking behind them has told them what to do. Stay down. Keep in the middle. Slip out through the gap in the thorn fence at first light. She has also told them why. Her mother eats people.

The mother is Dhegdheer, and her name is a plain description. It is Somali for long ear. Her story is told in many parts of the Somali lands, and it shifts from one teller and one stretch of country to the next, but the ear is always there, and so is the hunger.

Some tellers begin before the horror. In these versions she was once a girl called Xaynwada, clever, good looking, born to a poor family, and a leader among the other children from early on. Her parents married her to a rich man of the homestead who was known for his violent temper. One telling adds that he turned cold toward her when she bore him no son. Then the rains failed. A long drought stripped the land, and somewhere in those years Xaynwada changed. She began to eat human flesh, and her husband was among the first to go. It is hard to feel very sorry for him.

After that she was less a woman than a hunting animal. She could catch a scent on the wind and pick up a footfall from far away, and it is for that hearing that people called her Dhegdheer. Nobody describes much else about her body. The tales give her the ear, the nose, and a pair of legs quick enough to run down anyone on foot, and they leave the rest to the listener, who usually does not need help.

Her evenings follow a pattern. She comes home to her hut, lifts her head, and says she can smell people. Her daughter, who is the one person she will not eat, tells her she is mistaken. In one telling the girl says it is only her own body the old woman smells. The mother grumbles and asks for meat. The daughter leads in a fat goat, and the night passes with the sound of chewing and the guests lying rigid among the animals outside.

The daughter is the hinge of nearly every version. She lives inside the monster’s house and works against her from there, warning strangers, lying about smells, buying hours. In the telling most Somalis know, she is also the one who ends it, and she goes for the ear. One recorded version has Dhegdheer complain of an earache and ask for a sheep’s fat tail to be fried and pressed into the ear as a cure. The daughter does as she is told, and the mother dies on the spot. Other tellers say the girl poured scalding water into the long ear while her mother slept. Either way the thing that made her deadly is the way in. When the news gets out, the people she had marked for her next meals sing that Dhegdheer is dead and the land is at peace. Suitors arrive for the daughter soon after. In that same telling she accepts one with a warning: after six children she will become what her mother was.

There is a second ending, and it leaves the daughter out of the killing. A widow and her small son, worn out on the road to her family, stop at Dhegdheer’s place. The daughter hurries them off, and soon the cannibal is pounding after them across the hot ground. They reach the Hargega valley. The widow begs it for safe passage, and the valley answers that it will let through anyone who is free of sin. Mother and child cross. Dhegdheer comes up behind, makes the same request, gets the same answer, and cannot pass the test. She falters there and dies. A cousin of this version sets the scene at the sea, with a brother and sister in flight and the water demanding that nobody foul it. The children come through. The cannibal drowns. The scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed has pointed out how closely both endings follow the parting of the Red Sea, and has suggested they took shape in the years when Islam was arriving on the Horn of Africa.

Her powers all grow from what the drought made of her. She hears and smells like a predator, she runs like one, and she has a predator’s appetite, nightly and without limit.

Her limits are just as clear. She can be fooled by a voice she trusts, and she trusts exactly one. Her greatest gift is an open door to her skull. And she cannot cross ground or water that weighs the guilt of those who ask to pass, because she has nothing to put on the scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dhegdheer?

Dhegdheer is a cannibal woman in Somali folktales. Her name means the one with the long ear. She hunts and eats people, and her story is told in many versions across the Somali lands.

Why is she called Dhegdheer?

Dhegdheer is Somali for long ear. She is named for her hearing, which lets her pick up people from far away, and she can also smell them. Some tellings give her birth name as Xaynwada.

How did Dhegdheer become a cannibal?

In some versions Dhegdheer was a clever, pretty girl called Xaynwada who was married to a rich man with a violent temper. During a long drought she changed and began to eat people. Her husband was one of her first victims.

How does Dhegdheer die?

In the most common telling Dhegdheer is killed by her own daughter through her long ear, either with a fried sheep’s tail pressed into it or with scalding water. In another version she chases a widow and her son to the Hargega valley, which lets only the sinless pass, and she dies there. A third version has her drown in the sea.

What role does Dhegdheer’s daughter play?

Dhegdheer’s daughter is the only person the cannibal will not eat. She warns travellers, hides them, and tells her mother that the human smell is only her own. In most versions she is also the one who kills Dhegdheer.

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