Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  * * *

  —

  Every day my heart pounded with the fear of being recruited as a soldier for the Islamists. I knew that once you joined, there was no return. You could not decide to drop your gun and be a normal person again. Death was the only way out, and death was calling to everyone my age.

  Friends who had played soccer with me abandoned the pitch and joined the Islamists. Guys I had laughed with at Eddie Murphy movies now signed up for the holy war. The training grounds in Mogadishu were thronged with these young men and women, all fighting for the title jihadi, or shaheed, martyr. Boys I had known on the streets of Mogadishu came back with new names, new wives, and new clothes after the training. They all nicknamed themselves after international jihadists like Abu Ayman, Hamza, Osama, Mullah Omar. They had been instructed to fight sin. And sin was not just the enemy troops, it included sports, movies, music, Western clothes, even the way we walked and talked.

  One of the new recruits was a boy I had gone to madrassa with. His name was Mukhtar and he graduated after me, then became an assistant to Macalin Basbaas, who of course was happy with the Islamists. He and I played soccer together before the Islamists came, but now he had changed. Now his name was Abu Jihad, and he no longer cared about soccer. One day he showed up at my house dressed in a black salwar khameez, the knee-length shirt and loosely fitting pants worn by al-Qaeda, with a turban wrapped around his face revealing only his eyes. On his shoulder hung an AK-47. Abu Jihad had been told by his emir to go eliminate sin, so naturally he thought of me. He came to my room with another teenager, who also carried a gun. Abu Jihad must have heard I had a poster of Madonna in a bikini in my room, but when he came, it was long gone, my parents having thrown it away. There was just a blank wall. He was so disappointed, it was his first assignment to eliminate sin and he hadn’t found any. He asked if I had a prayer mat in my room.

  “No. But it is in my mom’s room,” I said.

  He told me to pray regularly or else I would be in trouble. “No joke!” he said.

  My biggest fear was that my mom would walk in and tell him that I was reluctant and not interested in jihad. Then he would take me out to his emir at the training ground and force me into the ICU. Looking around for anything sinful, he saw my jeans and cap, hanging on a peg. He ripped them off the wall and slashed them with his knife. He searched through the room and found my boom box. He knew I used it to play tapes and dance at weddings; he knew everything I did. He turned to his jihadi friend and said, “Look at this sin!” Using their gun butts, they smashed the boom box to pieces before my eyes.

  “We will come to your house most often,” said Abu Jihad. “We have our eyes on you!” Then he left. That same night, worried about all the threats in the city, Falis removed all the movie posters from the video shack. She hid the tiny television in her bedroom.

  * * *

  —

  Through all of this turmoil life had to go on, and we soon got word that my sister, Nima, was pregnant with her first baby. I had not seen Nima in several months, but my mom and I heard that she was in much pain. I decided to go check on her, but first I needed her husband, Omar’s, permission.

  Omar spent his days with his friends at the pharmacy street in Bakara market. There they sold all sorts of drugs from a line of kiosks packed with counterfeit and expired medications in boxes and bottles imported from abroad, written in English and Arabic. Women hidden under thick robes shopped for these cheap medications using U.S. dollars. Every kiosk had a name taken after the Prophet Muhammad’s companions or Islamic scholars. I walked down the row of kiosks to see if I could find Omar. He was breaking large bills at the stand of the money changer, who sat on a big tin box with dollar signs painted on every side.

  We said hello using the formal Islamic greeting. He told me that Nima was still in pain but that he had a group of sheikhs who read the Koran over a bowl of holy water for Nima to rub over her body and drink. “She will be fine,” he said with a shrug. I told him I would come down on Friday to see her.

  The home shared by Nima and Omar was just one room about eight feet square, in a house with other families in other rooms. Nima lay on a wooden bed next to a shelf lined with different medications. I looked at the containers: bottles of Hemoton syrup, boxes of aspirin, blister packs of colored capsules—it looked like a pharmacy. Before she let me in, Nima had put on her hijab, because that’s what a Muslim woman must do when a man enters the house. I was disappointed to see that my own sister, whom I had cared for her entire life, was today treating me like every other man in the city. But those were the new rules.

  She told me she had been in this bed, pregnant, for weeks. Her body was covered with rashes and pimples. Her skin was darker. She talked about how many times during the day she took the medications as instructed by a pharmacist in Bakara market who never went to school. I read one of the boxes of the syrup she was taking: it had expired two months earlier. Nima could not read and wouldn’t have known. I told her but she said nothing. What could she do?

  Even as sick as she was, carrying a baby, Nima had to cook for her husband so that he could be fed when he came home at sunset. It was hard for her with all the pain. I went back many times to help her cook, clean, and wash, each time seeking permission from Omar first. Nima had her baby, a healthy girl, but my sister never fully recovered.

  * * *

  —

  At least I had some good news from my brother: Hassan had made it to Nairobi. It turned out the refugee camps were no paradise on earth—violent, filthy, and hopeless places where the same militias and gangs of Mogadishu terrorized people. Hassan paid a bus driver six hundred Kenyan shillings, about six dollars, for a ride to Nairobi and what he hoped would be a better life.

  Through our e-mails Hassan was the only person left in my world who encouraged me to keep up my American dream. The Internet café in Bakara market had not been closed by the Islamists, because they also used it, especially the international jihadis staying in touch with their families. Into that shop came foreign fighters with their faces covered, speaking Urdu, Arabic, and other languages. Hassan e-mailed in English so the Islamists couldn’t read his words. Of course that was dangerous too, because if anyone saw me reading English, he would surely find a way to translate and then execute me for praising America. So I always picked the computer at the corner of the room where no one would stand behind me. I read my brother’s e-mails quickly and replied just as fast, then logged out of my account and got out of that place.

  Abu Jihad kept his word, checking on me daily. When I saw him approach our gate, I would sneak out the back, avoiding him. I would spend time with my mom in the market, then after sunset I would sneak back into the house. Nights were so scary. I could hear the murmurs and conversations of the Islamist soldiers outside the mud walls of my room, and I could hear the screams of people they were beating for minor mistakes.

  One night two bombs exploded in Falis’s video shack. The first one pierced the roof; the second destroyed the television in her bedroom and the cassettes. When we all woke up in the morning, we learned Falis had been taken to prison by a group of Islamists. I ran to the shack. The ICU had brought in a bulldozer, which was clearing the rubble of the explosion. A group of young fighters gathered. They said the land had been found to be sinful and therefore the Islamists took it and would turn it into a preaching place where people would be taught Islamic lessons.

  A crowd built up as I stood there watching my beloved video shack disappear before my eyes. This, not the dreaded madrassa, had been my real school. A fighter walked up to the crowd holding the Koran in his right hand, talking about how sinful it is to watch movies. “You see naked people in the movies, women who have no clothes on!” he shouted. “It is a Western culture that they want to impose on Muslims. It is haram. Wherever you see sin, you must destroy it with your hands!” He seemed like he had been given training in how to spe
ak clearly about Islam. He was good at sending the message. The crowd cheered, “Allahu akbar!”

  Falis had been sentenced to pay five hundred dollars, besides losing her property. The ICU put up huge speakers on the remaining walls, playing Islamic chants every day and encouraging jihad. In the same way and around the same time, our neighborhood soccer pitch was turned into a spot where people who were caught playing soccer were punished, usually by twenty or forty floggings.

  Soccer, movies, music, dancing—these were all the things that had kept me going in Mogadishu. Now, with everything banned, my future was falling into a deep dark hole. I started writing to Hassan only once every two weeks, always in Somali. One day I e-mailed him, “I don’t know if I will be able to e-mail you again, but, Hassan, in case you don’t hear from me, I might be in the hands of the Terminators.” That was our secret word for the Islamists.

  “I think my world is going to end soon,” I wrote. “Mom wants me to join the ICU. I am scared of carrying a gun. I want to leave.”

  Hassan wrote back, “Abdi, these Islamists will be like the Taliban. I think America will do air strikes against them. I am scared for you too. Let’s think of a way for you to leave.”

  10

  Trapped

  One Thursday morning in June 2006, when I was about twenty-one, I was lying on the mattress in my room, looking up at the ceiling and thinking about my life, when a neighborhood boy came in.

  “A girl who is outside wants to see you,” he said.

  I dashed out quickly, wondering who it was. She was wearing a heavy hijab and face cover, with gloves on her hands and socks on her feet. Even in the heat of that day, there was not a tiny part of her body visible. But whoever it was, she waved her gloved hand at me from the street corner. I stood there puzzled.

  “Abdi, it is me!”

  It was Faisa. I had not seen her for months, she was always holed up in her house, and I was afraid to go near it. I had never been welcome there, but now I would probably get shot. It was always crowded with young men who came to study the Koran with her dad, hoping to get great jobs in the Islamic government, or maybe even to marry Faisa or her sister. Sometimes at the mosque I would see her dad sitting in the front row, and I tried to hide from him.

  But today Faisa had made a break from their house. She was standing at my corner in the hot sun, dripping sweat through her hijab, afraid to come in.

  The streets were clear. The enforcers had not been patrolling that day, probably out on briefings. Their black flags were still flying everywhere. Their prayer mats, jerry cans full of water, flip-flops, and uniforms were arranged around their sandbag outposts. But they were all gone.

  Underneath Faisa’s hijab I could see her bright orange dirac and a shawl. She looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve missed you. Take us somewhere.”

  I did not know where to take her; the city had changed so much since she and I used to walk together. There were so many Islamist checkpoints in the city, and they couldn’t all be off duty today. We both knew that men and women walking together was a crime, the Islamists said so on the radio and from huge speakers. But we didn’t know the punishment. I took a moment to think about it. My heart was beating hard as I looked down the street in case the Islamists returned.

  The only place I could think of was the beach.

  Uruba beach, our old meeting place, was a couple miles away. Walking that far with an unrelated woman would be way too dangerous, but I decided we could take a minibus. When it pulled up, the driver immediately instructed Faisa to go to the backseat. Under the new moral code, women had to sit in the backseat of the bus while men sat in the front rows. No man and woman could sit next to each other. I knew that bus driver when the warlords were in the city, he used to play traditional Somali music in his bus that people enjoyed, but this day he was playing recitals of the Koran. If he played music, he would lose a hand or a leg. No one spoke to anyone else in the bus because there might be an Islamist spying on people. We all sat there very quiet and enjoyed the Koran.

  Traveling through the city was peaceful of course, there were no gunshots or roadside bombs, but there were constant butterflies in my stomach. When will they find out Faisa and I are dating? My heart rate had increased drastically.

  We got off the bus at the Hamarweyne junction in front of the Catholic cathedral. The roof of the church was completely gone, blasted and burned away, and the two bell towers had been destroyed except for one crumbling corner pointing up to heaven like an old man’s crooked finger. Inside, high above the Gothic arches, the massive stone carving of Jesus on the cross was now bathed in sunlight and pockmarked by hundreds of bullets: target practice. Dozens of kids were climbing up on the rubble to throw rocks at Jesus. We moved on toward the beach, Faisa walking three steps behind me. We did not talk to each other, but I constantly looked behind to make sure she was okay. We got up to Bank Street, overlooking the green water of the Indian Ocean, and inhaled the fresh sea air. I wondered if Venice Beach in California smelled as good. From the movies I knew it looked very different: no one at Uruba beach was surfing, and the hotels along this beach were bombed-out ruins.

  People were crowded on the beach but not for fun or relaxation. Many were washing their clothes with the seawater, smashing their garments against the rocks. Others were fishing in small boats, coming back with nets full of snapper, marlin, and tuna. From the boats men were carrying those huge fish on their shoulders like my dad used to do. They cut up the fish right on the beach and sold the meat in cubes for two American dollars. Women who weren’t washing clothes just watched. All were wearing thick robes and face covers. None of them dared to get into the water. Except Faisa.

  She stood in the sand and removed her face cover, gloves, sandals, then her socks and her heavy hijab. “I was choking to death in these clothes!” she said. Her soft orange dirac danced against the soft breeze, revealing her curvy body. This was as close as you could get to Venice Beach in Mogadishu.

  “Isn’t this what you dreamed of?” Faisa asked me. “Peace and a happy life?”

  I smiled and told her about how people in Miami and California go to beaches just for fun, wearing bikinis and shorts. I told her that if we were in Miami, we would see white sailboats out across the water, more people having fun on those boats, also in bikinis and shorts.

  “Bikini is madness,” she said. “I would never do that.” She started talking about how good things were under the rule of the ICU; even though she had to sweat under all those clothes, she was happy that she could walk around without fear of crime. I wanted to argue, but in Mogadishu you could not trust anyone, not even your girlfriend. I wanted our date to be free from discussions of the ICU or Sharia, but when I tried to talk about movies or songs, Faisa changed the topic to Islam.

  I pointed at some fishermen. “Oh, look at that big fish they caught!”

  “Thanks to the Islamic Courts,” she said.

  The day was so hot and the water looked so good. Faisa was still drenched in sweat from her hot clothes. I stripped down to my shorts and beckoned Faisa to the water with me, but she hesitated nervously. We looked around and could not see any Islamists close by. Finally she walked down to the surf holding hands with me, slowly letting the water move up her body. Whenever she felt her feet touch something, she threw herself on me. We teased each other like they do in Hollywood movies.

  But this was Mogadishu. It didn’t take long for the crowd to spot us and start complaining. Women yelled out to Faisa, “Hey, shame on you! Your breasts are visible!”

  Faisa felt so humiliated. We quickly got out, but someone had already run down the road and called the Islamists. Before we had even dried off, four angry teenage boys with covered faces, guns on their shoulders, and whips in their hands surrounded us. Without saying anything, they just started flogging us with their whips. One guy whipped Faisa; two others knocked me to the sand and
pressed their rubber sandals against my face, while a third whipped me viciously. Faisa was screaming, “I will not do it again! I seek Allah’s refuge from Satan, the accursed one!”

  One of the enforcers pointed at her wet body, barely concealed under her clinging wet dirac, and yelled repeatedly, “What is this? What is this? Is this Europe? Or America? What are you wearing?”

  Then he turned to me. “Who allowed you to walk with a girl holding hands?”

  A crowd had gathered around to watch the episode unfold. I could hear people murmuring, “He’s the American guy.” They laughed and said I was stupid. Then Faisa and I, bleeding from our wounds, were marched down the next block into an old building next to the former National Bank of Somalia. This was a makeshift prison and court where people caught in different criminal activities were taken. Faisa was accused of breaking Sharia law. Two men led her into a room and closed the door.

  Finally it was my turn. I was made to get on my knees before an interrogator, who asked me my name, where I lived, and what I did for a living. “My name is Abdi, I live in KM4, I don’t do anything.”

  He scribbled my information in Arabic on a sheet of paper, walked away, and came back with the magistrate, who was scowling. He opened a Koran and read, “Tell the believing men to lower their gaze, and protect their private parts…and tell the believing women to lower their gaze, and protect their private parts.”

  Of course I knew that verse, I knew the whole Koran by heart, but today for the first time I was seeing it used directly against me. My punishment was twenty lashes and “counseling.” I wasn’t sure what “counseling” meant. I knew what twenty lashes meant.