Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  He went first to our old house, inhabited only by the flies that feasted on the shit of the militiamen. He wandered the streets confused, checking in the distribution centers, searching for anyone he knew. He looked at every family sleeping on the streets, hoping to see us and wondering if we were still alive. In the city where he once was a basketball star, no one recognized Tall Nur; people ignored him. The celebrity athlete was now homeless, hungry, and sick like everyone else. He walked down to the Mogadishu beach to see if the fishing business was back, but he was chased away by new faces who claimed they were the only people fishing now. All the other faces he saw on the streets looked either scared, angry, or hungry. His feet were burning. He put on some discarded flip-flops he found along the road—two different sizes, but he didn’t care, anything to shield his feet from the burning ground. Dad was almost ready to collapse when he ran into Khadija’s daughter Fatuma. She led him to our house, where Mom and Nima were taking their midday nap next to each other with bellies full of porridge.

  When my mom saw her husband walk in after three years, she thought she was seeing a ghost. This man in front of her looked sort of like Nur Iftin, but different. He was so thin and dark, his eyes sunk deep in his head. The skin was peeling off his hands. He had rashes, cuts, and bruises all over his body, which was caked in rusty blood. His hair had grown long and was matted with dust and mud. His shirt was torn everywhere.

  Hassan and I were at the madrassa memorizing our lesson for the day when Fatuma came and told us. Macalin Basbaas, and the other kids who had believed Hassan and I were orphans like most of them watched us sprint out of the school.

  We had forgotten his face during the past three years of the civil war, and like our mom we felt we were reuniting with a ghost. I still remember the smell that was coming from Dad. It was definitely the smell of death, the rusty smell of blood and dust. Hassan and I sat at his side. Our mom went out to fill a bucket with warm water for him to take a shower, but he was too weak, so she bathed him herself. Every time Mom touched his skin with the water, he screamed in pain. His long, muscly legs looked like sticks. Mom fed him with porridge that Hassan and I brought from the distribution center. Hassan cut his hair and trimmed his long beard. I washed his clothes, all he had was a macawis and the torn shirt. Mom put a straw mat in the corner of the house. He covered himself with a piece of cloth and slept deeply, waking only to pray five times a day. Hassan and I went out to bring more water and food home. Even though many men were returning to Mogadishu, when it came to getting work done, it was still a city of women and children. The men were still too weak to help.

  After a few days, when Dad felt able to stand and speak, Hassan and I walked him to a local clinic run by the United Nations inside the airport. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, but Dad had to stop and rest every minute. An Asian man gave him shots, penicillin tablets, and vitamins. Back home, Dad finally told us all that had happened during his treacherous journey deep in the bush. After he left us in Baidoa, he walked for days into the bush, land he once crossed as a nomad with his camels. He saw the places where he dated our mom and the land where the lion Fareey used to roam. Dad told us he actually prayed to the lions to protect him from the militias, but for months he did not see one lion. He came across dead hyenas and other animals. It seemed like the lions and other predators had fled the severe drought.

  Dad was far from the gunfire, but he did encounter other people. He met a group of Rahanweyn men sitting under an acacia tree. They had killed a gazelle and were sharing the meat over a fire. After discovering they all spoke the Maay dialect, they shared their meat with him. They were nomads who had never seen the city, so my dad’s stories of his basketball games, the clubs, and the beach were all like fairy tales to them. They stayed together for months, constantly moving and hunting, sharing the meat according to nomad tradition. At times they hummed, sang, and danced, and at night they slept with only one man awake to guard their camp. Like my dad they had all lost contact with their families, but they did their best to enjoy the few months they spent together as nomads again.

  One day they heard gunshots and had to scatter and run for their lives again. Dad eventually caught up with one of the men. They walked for days and nights, unsure where they were going. At times they came across corpses of women and children with bullet wounds. Dad thought for sure that we were dead by now. Even if we had escaped the militias, the harsh environment would surely kill us. As he told us the story, his eyes had tears, but he was not actually crying; it was some sort of allergy. Water ran down his eyes for months.

  The night the U.S. Marines landed in Mogadishu, Dad was looking up at the stars, still hiding in the bush, not knowing what was happening in the city. A few months later he was able to return to Baidoa after he heard that Australian and American troops were there, providing food and nutrition. He was queuing for food in Baidoa and kept asking people about us. But no one answered him. You don’t ask about people in Baidoa; you pray they have reached heaven, because they are probably dead.

  He stayed in Baidoa after reuniting with a friend there. His friend had a bullet injury on his knee, and with no treatment the wound had gotten worse and infected. The man could no longer walk. Dad cut some traditional herbs to treat it and brought him food from the distribution centers. On other days, Dad walked into the bush around Baidoa, trying to see if he could find us out there. He stumbled upon dead kids and women, some of them too difficult to recognize. He had to roll over the bodies to see if their faces were ours. Some bodies were only parts, so he couldn’t be sure if they were us. Finally he gave up and assumed we were dead. But after hearing that lots of people had returned from Baidoa to Mogadishu, he decided to go back to the city and look for us there.

  After Dad told his story, we told him ours. He was not surprised that our mom had done everything to make sure we survived. He was sitting with his back against the tree trunk, but he leaned forward and looked at Hassan and me, telling us how proud we made him for the way we had helped our mom and sisters.

  It would take a long time for his health to return. Sometimes he talked to Mom about life in the good times before the wars—their life in the bush and in Mogadishu. Sometimes he paced back and forth in the house reading the Koran. He was not sure what to do in a city where his beloved Horseed basketball stadium was now being used for war games by children and a camp for displaced families. It was Hassan and I who had taken the full responsibility of feeding our family every day, including our dad, the once-famous national athlete.

  * * *

  —

  The year had changed to 1993, my ninth year of life. The U.S. troops and the star-spangled banner were now accompanied by blue UN helmets and flags of countries from all over Asia, Africa, and Europe. Many nonmilitary people also came to the city to help. We would see them jogging, and swimming in the green waters off the beach. One woman, some kind of aid worker, jogged every morning near our house. She was white, had long hair, and smiled and remembered my name. I made sure to get up every morning and say hi to her when she passed. I watched her listening to music on her headphones and stretching. Sometimes she would sit and play games with me, my brother, and Nima. She always brought us snacks like peanuts, candies, and cookies, and she also brought painkillers, antibiotics, and other medicine. She explained what they were for and how to take them. I think I fell in love with this woman; it wasn’t romantic, but I just wanted to stay close to her. If I knew her name today, maybe I could find her in America, but I called her only what we called all non-Muslims, gaalo, or “infidel.” One day she came to the madrassa, just to visit and say hi. Macalin Basbaas refused to shake her hand. Then one day we stopped seeing her. Soon we realized no one was jogging anymore.

  The warlords were getting restless; they wanted the city back. Aidid had a radio station and was telling Somalis on the air that they should fight the “occupation” of Mogadishu. On June 5, UN forces went to the
radio station to seize weapons. Aidid thought they were trying to shut down the broadcasts, and he ambushed the troops, killing twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. That’s when things got bad. On July 12 the Americans sent Cobras over a house in Mogadishu where they thought Aidid was hiding and blasted it into rubble. He wasn’t there, but dozens of other people were killed. Aidid claimed the Americans had killed women and children, and he started to whip up Somalis against the infidel “invaders.” The Americans said only Aidid’s soldiers had been in the house, but the seed of resentment against the foreigners had been sown. Aidid wasted no time, planting roadside bombs in August that killed four American soldiers and wounded seven others. The Battle of Mogadishu had begun.

  I had been waiting so long for this moment! I wanted to see the American troops in action and how they fight. Hassan and I were so excited for war we ran toward whatever corner of the city where we heard explosions or gunshots. Soon Cobras and Black Hawks were swooping down everywhere, hovering over buildings where militiamen were hiding. I looked up and cheered whenever the helicopters shot at a building; to me it seemed like the greatest movie. I stood on the streets and watched militiamen yell at each other, jumping from house to house and hiding in narrow alleys. We watched them take positions as helicopters hovered over them.

  I thought the airplanes and helicopters would scare the militias away, but instead the huge, strong American men of the movies were being chased by Somali rebels on the streets. It was not what I expected. Soon everything had changed. We were no longer welcome near the marines; there were no more candies or cookies. For the first time the marines were aiming their guns at Somalis and pushing them around, even us kids. They looked nervous.

  It is hard to explain why so many Mogadishans turned against the marines and cheered the militias. The rebels had been killing us for four years, stealing our food, and shitting in our houses. The Americans had been so kind. For sure it was partly the U.S. attack on the house that killed so many civilians. And at this point we were so familiar with death and destruction that this new battle seemed like a basketball game or a soccer match; it wasn’t even real life. People filled the streets, rooting for their home team. I too fell in with the crowd. I yelled out to the militias to let them know which side the helicopter was coming from. I threw rocks at helicopters. I ran with the crowd, repeating their cheers: “Up with Aidid! Down with America!”

  The battle continued for weeks. The foreign troops slowly withdrew to the airport. Militias loyal to Aidid ruled the ground, but the foreign troops ruled the skies with their helicopters. At night it was hard for the Somali militias to see, but the helicopters with their infrared lasers were able to fire at their targets. Every night from our house I watched militiamen changing positions, shooting at helicopters. For a few minutes it would be dead quiet, then the helicopter would swoop down again and fire back. I believed my mom’s prayers saved us from the helicopter cannons, but now I think it was the pilots’ precision.

  On Sunday, October 3, Aidid’s forces shot down two Black Hawk helicopters with Russian rocket-propelled grenades. I heard the booming explosions and columns of smoke rising about a mile from our house. Naturally, I ran as fast as I could to watch this new action unfold. Everything was so dusty I could not see much or get very close. A crowd was dragging the bodies of dead Americans, and people said others were still alive, trapped. The rescue operation lasted until the next day. Sixteen Americans died and more than three hundred Somalis. A few days later I was playing hide-and-seek in the remains of one of the Black Hawks.

  * * *

  —

  Five months later the Americans left Mogadishu. It was March 1994, my tenth year. The skinny rebels with their ugly brown teeth had beaten back the movie-star marines. The Americans and the UN troops left so fast they didn’t even take their stuff. They left behind malfunctioning helicopters and vehicles, boots and uniforms. I joined a crowd that went to the same spot where the Mareekans had first invited us to watch them land on the beach in hovercrafts. This time we were looting the stuff they left behind, even the boxes of medicines, tablets, discarded syringes. We stuck the syringes into our hands for fun. We ate the tablets. Was it looting if they just left it?

  The same militias whom we had cheered against the foreigners would soon turn on us again—stealing our food and shooting at us for sport. I felt shame that I had cheered against the Americans, the people who came to help us from the country of my dreams. But I now realize that I was lost—a nine-year-old boy caught between the teachings of Macalin Basbaas, my mom and her view on infidels, the American troops and their kindness and food, my love for my brave dad and the glorious Somali basketball team, and the American movies I loved.

  I stood on the beach, picking through the discarded camouflage uniforms with the American names sewn above the pockets. I held them up, hoping one would fit my skinny little body. My friends Mohammed, Bashi, and Bocow laughed. I looked at them and scowled.

  “I’m not Somali,” I said. “I am Mareekan. I was left behind by the marines. And they will come for me soon.”

  6

  The One They Call American

  The city of women and children had become a city of refugees. The streets swarmed with former herders and farmers, most of them Maay-speaking Rahanweyn from Bay, Bakool, and Lower Shabelle regions, the places my parents came from. They had come to Mogadishu for the food brought by the UN forces and to seek work like fishing, or porterage at Bakara market, or digging people’s latrines. When the Western troops left, the ancestral lands of these new arrivals had been overrun by the warlords and they could not go home. Now they were stuck in Mogadishu, a city run by tribal militias who hated them.

  The Hawiye of Mogadishu did not know much about the refugees and assumed they were mostly criminals. Some of the very poorest Rahanweyn were in a subclan known as the Eelaay. They wore amulets around their necks and arms and often lived by begging instead of herding animals. Because of these Eelaay people, the Hawiye assumed that all Rahanweyn were beggars—similar to the way many Europeans think of all Romany people as shiftless “Gypsies.” To many Mogadishans they were all disgusting.

  My mom often went out and met the Rahanweyn refugees on the streets. She helped them find spots to build makeshift camps. The first place she could think of was out past the airport. The road from the airport to Lower Shabelle region was empty and treeless, with harsh sunshine and dust blowing from the sea breeze continuously. No one would bother the poor refugees there, she figured. Within one day, they set up over a hundred makeshift tents of sticks and plastic bags, but the next day the militias came and destroyed it all. Some of the refugees spent the day sitting on the open ground, one side facing the Indian Ocean and the other the endless sand dunes.

  Their despair was like my dad’s. He had no plans, and he never left Khadija’s compound. Her family could give us only one room, and Hassan, Mom, Nima, and I crammed into it. There was no space for Dad, he had to spend the night outside exposed to mosquitoes. So we took shifts: he slept during the day in our room when we all went out; by night he sat outside in the courtyard, swatting mosquitoes and praying. Gone forever was the strong man who jumped over fences, chased lions, and scored hoops. Whenever he stood, he leaned on a stick, his tall body bent in half. I helped him get to the bathroom, take a shower, and dress. The brave dad who carried us on his shoulders, in his basketball jersey, needed help with everything. Hassan and I sometimes jumped through the window to sneak out and escape the work. I would go to the movies, and Hassan would disappear with his friends. We would be out all day and come back with so much to do for Dad. We had to wash his clothes, trim his hair, and walk him around the house.

  My dad could not understand why all this had happened to him and his family. When he had money and played for the national team, he had always given to charity, given money to the poor, helped everyone. Why did he deserve this misery? Had his prayers not worked? Had he
given less than he was supposed to? He did not know why Allah put him in this misery. But his faith was stronger than ever, he prayed five times during the day, he even prayed extra hours. He could not go to the mosque, but he had a prayer mat in the house. The prayers kept him alive, but he had so much guilt. “I used to go to movies, went to clubs, and traveled abroad,” he told me once. “God might be angry with all that sin.” He believed those sinful things could explain why he suffered and lost his wealth. And it was a message to me not to go to movies.

  One night while Dad was in the courtyard kneeling near the fire, uttering prayers, a loud knock came at our tin gate.

  “Who are you?” said an angry voice from outside.

  “Why don’t we know who you are?” yelled another voice. “Open the door or we will kill you!”

  Dad got up and knocked at the door to Khadija’s house, trying to wake her up. She was Hawiye like the men at the gate and could maybe calm them. But the militiamen were impatient and kicked down the gate. Khadija got up quickly and managed to get herself between the militiamen and Dad. By now we were all awake. I was standing there watching as the men pointed a gun at my dad’s face while Khadija tried to stay in between, putting herself directly in the line of the barrel. With our Mogadishan accents, Hassan and I stood close to the militiamen and kept yelling, “He is our dad, please leave him!”

  The militiamen seemed very angry. Before they came to our house, we heard gunshots in the neighborhood; they had shot and killed a Rahanweyn man, a beggar who was sleeping on the streets because he did not have a place to stay. They asked Dad what his clan was.

  “I am Rahanweyn.”

  But Khadija told them we were Mogadishans first. “These kids were born here. They don’t know about clan,” she said. Luckily, they walked away, but the harassment of the Rahanweyn continued and grew worse. All of this was nerve-racking for my dad. Already weak and confined to the house, now he was worried that if he ever did get up the strength to walk around, he would be attacked by Hawiye gangs. So he retreated further into his small world and his bored mind.