Blessed and Fortunate

Growing up as a little girl, there's always something important to you, whether it's your pink bow tied dress or your fluffy white socks. My name meant the world to me. The origin of Fartun came from the word Fortunate, which means lucky in Italian. It was a part of who I was, and it still is. I was always being tyrannized because of my name. There were times in my life when I wanted to change my name or at least change the spelling, yet my name is extremely valuable to me, My great-grandmother gave it to me. But I was unsatisfied with my tag, because of the way it was pronounced. There were couple of years in elementary school that I was bullied. The fifth grade was the most excruciating school year. A classmate of mine would always call me “Fart-Tune. She has a Fart in her Tune.” I would laugh on in the outside but slowly break down in the inside. My name was my identity, it showed others where I came from, and it also described my personality.

At the age of eleven, I was sitting in my sixth grade class where our substitute teacher was taking attendance and calling out students names. The teacher had called my name but he mispronounced it and said, “Something with the word Fart but ends with Tune without the E.” The students in my class were laughing and simultaneously revealing to the teacher who I was. I was embarrassed and speechless. I just felt the need to go home and sob under my blanket. After, I calmed down about it and realized the pronunciation was different. In Somali it has a very strong accent, the problem is just the way the Americans pronounced it. I also discovered that the word “Lucky” and Fart have two completely different meanings Lucky means being blessed or just fortunate. I’m fortunate and blessed because of my name. In others eyes I am just Fartun, but according to my eyes I see luck sent from Allah. Those five daily prayers made me confident and have faith in myself, due to the fact that a lot of Muslim women had the name.

Fartun is just a typical Somali name, at a young age it hurt me and killed me, being verbally bullied having to be put down just so that the “bully” could gain power. I remember not long ago for the first time that this had ever happened to me in my seventh grade classroom. A couple of kids were teasing around each other and I guess one of them laughed a little too hard and farted. The whole class quieted down and stared at me and this one bratty white girl said, “eww Fart-Tune farted guys” and there I went again, the hall of embarrassment. Every corner I turned, someone would enunciate my name differently. I thought about changing my name but my grandma and my relatives would be so very disappointed in me—if I had made a slight revision to it such as the name “Fatima.” It would change my identity, change my childhood, and how I was bullied, this name meant the world to me but some people couldn’t understand. But in life there are people who hurt you when you’re delighted. I didn’t want to be known for the child that hurt their parents because of a stupid decision.

Who you are in the past informs your future, I tried my best to try and not react to what anybody was saying about my name. In the future I plan to move on with my life, and not turn around even if malicious judgements and interrogations approach me, because my name made me who I am, blessed and fortunate.