Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  Paul asked me a lot of questions about life in Mogadishu, and I told him my story up on that balcony as we looked down on the ruined city. He and Kuni Takahashi, his Japanese-born photographer, were surprised that I had learned English just from watching movies. I told them there were no more movies in Mogadishu. I said most guys my age had been recruited by the Islamists, and I felt my luck was running out. “It sucks to be here, man,” I said, using my best Hollywood slang.

  Then I started bombarding Paul with questions about America. I asked him about New York, California, the cars, the food, what snow is like. He could not restrain me. Paul soon realized how much I loved America, and he said something that gave me hope.

  “Abdi, I am sure that one day you will live in America.” We spoke for three hours. When I left, Paul handed me his business card. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out fifty dollars.

  “Here, buy a cell phone so I can call you. What’s left, give to your family.” By now cheap cell phones were becoming widely available in Somalia, and for a few dollars you could buy scratch cards from a kiosk that gave you enough minutes to talk to family abroad. For even less money you could send text messages, if you knew how to write. Every few days you’d need to pay someone with a generator, like the cybercafe, to recharge your phone because no one had electricity.

  We hugged and waved good-bye.

  “Abdi,” said Paul from the gate. “Make sure you e-mail me your phone number.”

  * * *

  —

  Walking out of that building was a return to the apocalypse. No more English, no more Pepsi. I might have been killed for meeting a white man; I could have lost my head just for hugging him. Thankfully nobody had seen us, so I tucked the fifty dollars underneath my belt and headed directly to the cell phone store.

  Just before I reached the store, a bomb went off in front of it. As I ducked for cover, another exploded nearby. Suicide bombers were hitting Ethiopian troops right on that road. The bodies of soldiers lay in the streets. Gunfire erupted all over, and I ran. Night fell, and the hellfire rained down all over town. I had never seen Mogadishu’s sky turn red like that before. The Ethiopians were using Russian BM-21 truck-mounted rocket launchers against al-Shabaab. The Russian name for this weapon is grad, which means “hail,” and it was a hail of death coming from the sky. They could launch it from one corner of the city, and the rocket would pass over our heads with a sharp whistling sound; by the time it hit the target, it felt like the entire earth was cracking in half. We called this fearful thing Fooriyaaye. The whistler.

  When the bombing stopped the next day, life returned on the streets. I walked into the nearby cybercafe and e-mailed Paul: “Dear Paul. I hope you are okay. I just came out of hiding from the shelling and the bombing. I am safe and will buy a phone soon so that we can communicate. Best wishes. Abdi.”

  Paul e-mailed me back a minute later: “Hey Abdi. My friend, you are such a strong man. I am glad I met you. Let’s continue talking. Meanwhile, stay safe. P.”

  That was getting harder and harder. By now the citizens of Mogadishu were trapped between al-Shabaab and the government forces. When my mom walked to her market stall, dodging bullets the whole way, she passed through a government checkpoint where the soldiers tore off her hijab and forced her to show her face. Then, inside the market, al-Shabaab threatened her for daring to show her face, demanding she cover it and also give them money for “taxes.” Then the government troops would steal her food.

  Mom and I went to her stall the morning after the big attack to find that her small business had been reduced to a smoking pile of incinerated grain bags. Probably one of the Ethiopian rockets had hit it during the night. Before we could leave, the battle erupted again, with the sniper fire of al-Shabaab followed by the deafening tank mortars and then the dreaded BM-21. Its whistling sent us flat on the shaking ground.

  Mom pointed to the nearby mosque and yelled that we should get into it. She didn’t think it would be any safer, only that if we died in there it would be our ticket to heaven. Almost a hundred people had already squeezed inside the brick sanctuary, reading the Koran, crying, and calling out names of family members who were missing. Some people had cell phones and were calling relatives. Of course mosques have minarets, which make good sniper posts, and soon al-Shabaab soldiers were climbing the towers and shooting from the high windows at the advancing Ethiopians. When the foreign tanks found their way to the mosque, the first hit destroyed one of the minarets, sending bricks and rubble raining down. Before the second round could come, Mom and I decided against dying in the mosque and dashed out, holding hands. We ran and ran, not sure where we were going, but we followed a crowd that was heading south toward the Thirty Road.

  Rockets fired from the tanks landed all around us. Bullets whistled. One time I looked behind me, and the building we had just passed was flattened. The tanks, like the angel of death, were gaining on us, so we ran faster. But in front of us were al-Shabaab fighters, primed for their glorious death and wrapped in suicide bombs, battling their way toward the tanks. With the advancing Ethiopians stalled by the suicide fighters, we had a narrow window to escape. Finally we reached the Thirty Road, miles from Bakara market. Now what? We could not go home. All roads going that way were blocked by the shelling.

  “This way,” I said, pointing down a road with no explosions. But before we got more than a few steps, an Ethiopian helicopter gunship swooped down like a space alien and opened fire. I could see dust flying off the ground, people falling, blood spilling. But as the helicopter banked for another round of firing, a rocket fired from an al-Shabaab bazooka knocked it down in a ball of fire. The fleeing people all cheered, “Allahu akbar!” Al-Shabaab brought down a helicopter! It was like Black Hawk Down all over again.

  We hurried down a narrow alley that led out to a street and from there to an open space of small hills and sand dunes. We were five miles out of the city. Behind us the shells were still landing; in front of us was just a vast bush dotted with thorn trees. More people joined us, shocked and frightened, and we all just kept walking away from the city and the bombs. After a mile we came upon a building in the middle of the bush that looked occupied. As we got closer, I could see inside, where al-Shabaab fighters were pouring ball bearings into pipes; others were wiring detonators. It was a bomb-making factory in the desert. Thankfully, the fighters were too busy working to bother with us. We kept moving.

  We were now walking deep into al-Shabaab territory. Mom and I joined hundreds of other displaced people who were building huts from sticks and cardboard. It must have been an old graveyard because I came across bones and a skull as I set to work building a hut. I used what I could find of trash and sticks to make a shelter that was barely big enough to protect my mom from blowing dust. She slept in there that night, me just outside.

  By the next day this camp was crowded with makeshift huts. Sunrise revealed the faces of hundreds that had been walking all night long, tired faces and hungry mouths. Mom found a baby girl crying, no parents around, about a year old and wasted thin from hunger. She took this child and yelled for her mom. Finally the mom showed up. Almost unbelievably, it was my sister Nima. The baby was my niece, Munira. The last time I had seen Munira she was a few weeks old with a smiling face; today she was nothing but a reminder of our sister Sadia, dying of malnutrition. During the night Nima had built her own hut near Mom’s, just by luck. So this was our family reunion. Nima’s husband, Omar, was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared into the city, maybe dead or alive, we didn’t know. Within another day every inch of open space in the camp was taken.

  The new camp was named Eelasha, which means “water.” During the days of the Somali government this place had wells that had provided water throughout Mogadishu. In the civil war everything was looted and the wells were buried. Now there was only the name to torment thirsty people.

  Within a week business acti
vities had sprung up in the camp. Everything that was in Bakara market moved to Eelasha. The money-transfer agencies, telephone companies, mosques, everything. Macalin Basbaas built a hut for his new madrassa. Dhuha and her kids also moved in. It had become its own city. New friends, new neighbors, new Koranic teachers, and a new administration, the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahedeen. There were Sharia weddings, with the most beautiful girls going to al-Shabaab fighters. Women must cover up, men must grow beards. Al-Shabaab fighters called on all men to gather at the mosque five times a day. One day the bodies of government troops were brought to Eelasha. We were told to spit on them and kick them. The dead al-Shabaab martyrs were never seen. They were buried quickly.

  We were told that the Mujahedeen needed more men to fight for them. My heart was in my throat. Many times I had been able to avoid recruitment by slipping off and losing myself in the streets of Mogadishu. Out here in the camp there was no place to hide, and I was soon ordered to report for training.

  * * *

  —

  We gathered under a tree, new recruits. We were told to call the government the Murtadeen, the apostates. “The president, the prime minister, cabinet members, and everyone else involved are all non-Muslims, enemies of Allah,” said a young teenager who still had a boy’s voice and face. “They should be killed the same way we should kill Americans and Europeans.”

  A man dressed in a military vest with a long kanzu and beard started our training—how to wear an explosive vest, how to approach the enemy, then how to shoot people. “Aim at the heart, aim at the head,” he said.

  Another man stood up and talked about how he had assassinated a government official a few days earlier. “I approached him; I did not fear, because there are infidels in our country. We don’t fear killing them,” he said. “Just open fire! Make sure they are dead!” I felt sick.

  That night I whispered to my mom, “Mom, I have to go back to Mogadishu. I’m leaving now.” In the paper huts of Eelasha, al-Shabaab could hear even whispers, so Mom said nothing but just brushed her hands on mine. I walked in the dark up over the Kaxda hills and across the open bush, trying to avoid the trails where al-Shabaab had planted land mines in case of attack. By three in the morning I had made it back to our neighborhood. There was no one around, the only sounds were snipers shooting randomly. I crept into what was left of our house.

  Home felt good even with the roof, doors, and windows gone. Everything else had been looted. I found a shovel, went into my old bedroom, and dug a hole six feet deep that I could jump in at night when the shelling started. In there every night, like a grave, I hummed songs and closed my eyes to make myself forget about the whistling rockets and thudding explosions. I was always surprised to wake up in the morning alive. Outside, every morning, was more destruction and dead bodies, blood and bullet casings. But those like me who stayed behind also came out, chatted, and prayed together. I walked around the neighborhood checking on people. All the faces I knew were gone. Falis was gone. Faisa and her family had left for Ethiopia; we never said good-bye. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  Al-Shabaab released a new order: “People living in the government areas must leave immediately, or they will be considered enemies and killed.” The government issued a contradicting order hours later: “Any civilian who moves to the al-Shabaab areas will be considered a member of al-Shabaab.”

  I was completely trapped. Days passed without seeing my mom, but I heard that people in Eelasha were dying of hunger and thirst. Then came a few days of quiet. The fighters must have been exhausted or out of ammo, who knows? I came out to the KM4 circle and saw that a few businesses had reopened. Next to the Fathi restaurant was a phone store called al-Imra Electronic. I went in and asked for a cheap phone with a memory chip. The man suggested a used Nokia 3110 Classic, thirty-five dollars. It came with a SIM card service that could let me send e-mails. I sent my first that night to Paul, giving him my phone number. It had been a month since we met. He called me an hour later. We talked until the shelling started and I had to jump into my hole. “I have to go, Paul. Bye!”

  Then I figured out how I could download songs and even photos of beautiful women to my little phone. Before long I was listening to Jennifer Lopez, Ja Rule, Michael Jackson, and 50 Cent while hunkered down in my hole. The music made me forget about the shelling and helped me fall asleep. In the morning I left the memory chip with all the songs and photos in the hole, buried under the earth. If al-Shabaab caught me with that, I would surely be killed.

  A few NGOs had started working at the government bases in Mogadishu, with funds from UN agencies based in Kenya. Because of this, more Somalis became interested in learning English so they could work with the aid staff. One day I got called to teach English at a house in the neighborhood, to a Somali woman and her kids. I taught her basic lessons on how to communicate with foreigners. On a small blackboard with white chalk I wrote down lessons:

  Asha: Welcome to Mogadishu!

   Paul: Thank you. It is beautiful here. Blue sky, sunny, and warm.

  Asha: Yes, it is. Also we have the warm Indian Ocean.

   Paul: Good. I see it.

  Asha: Okay, Paul, talk to you again.

   Paul: Talk to you again too, Asha.

  And another lesson:

  Asha: Where are you from, Paul?

   Paul: Asha, I come from California, U.S.A.

  Asha: How is California?

   Paul: Warm, sunny, and pretty like Mogadishu. But it has tall buildings and highways.

  Asha: Okay, Paul, see you later.

   Paul: See you later, Asha.

  Once I made some money from this teaching, I decided it might be safe enough to renew my old English classes—this time along KM4 Street, now filled with other businesses. I found an empty space and moved in. Somewhere I scavenged a thin wooden panel that someone had painted black, and some chalk. I wrote the first lesson on my blackboard, hoping some students would show up. To be safe, I decided the instruction should focus on the Koran in English.

  A: Can you tell me the Five Pillars of Islam?

  B: Yes. They are fasting, prayers, the pilgrimage, the faith, and charity.

  A: Have you been to the pilgrimage?

  B: No. But I hope to go someday if Allah wills.

  Then I waited. After a few days, some students started showing up. Typical of them was Abshir, a teenage boy who lived in Waberi, near Faisa’s old house. He showed up every day with a pencil stub and a notebook, into which he copied everything from the blackboard. By the next lesson he had memorized all that dialogue. I knew nothing about him or his family, only that he believed in the future of Somalia, and he believed English would someday help him get a good job. Unlike me, he and the other students had no interest in American culture, no interest in leaving. I did not share their optimism for Somalia’s future, but I was still happy to teach them English.

  They liked the lessons about Islam, so I put together more:

  A: Who created you?

  B: Allah created me.

  A: Why did Allah create you?

  B: Allah created me to warship him.

  I meant “worship,” of course, but it was close.

  The next day as I was preparing for the lesson, a bomb exploded just down the street. Abshir was on his way to class; the explosion killed him instantly. I decided it was too dangerous to hold school in a public place, and from that day I never went back to teach there. Instead, I went from house to house, teaching people who lived in the government area and who could afford to pay me. I was saving some money.

  But in Mogadishu your presence never goes unnoticed. One morning my phone rang. The caller ID displayed, “NO NUMBER.” I answered. “Hello?”

  “Is this the one they call Abdi American?” said a man’s voice.

  “Yes,” I said,
thinking it must be someone I knew. “Who is this?”

  “You must drop that wicked nickname. We know who you are; we know where you live.”

  “Sorry. Okay. But that’s not my nickname anymore. It is an old name.”

  “You are lucky I called. I have warned you.” And then he hung up.

  12

  Messages from Mogadishu

  By 2008, Somalia had been at war for seventeen years, but calling this living hell a “war” was too polite. It was really just endless gory terrorism on starving civilians who didn’t care which side won. A million people had been killed, and a million and a half forced from their homes. Half a million had now evacuated the city for the camp in Eelasha, where my mom and sister lived. But some remained, like me, and some form of life was still going on inside the city despite the constant slaughter. There were cybercafes, shops, restaurants, and even colleges. I paid five dollars and enrolled in the Somali Institute of Management and Administration, which promised to teach math, English, computer programs, Arabic, Sharia law, Tarbiyah (Islamic education), administration, and management. I was asked to take an English placement test and answered all the questions, which were easy for me, unlike the other students who either failed or barely passed. I started in a class with twenty-five students, learning English and computer. Our teacher, Mr. Wewe, was surprised at how well I answered the English questions. Soon he put me in charge of the English class on days when he was late because the roads were blocked. I would stand in front of the class and repeat the lessons in my American accent. Other students asked me how I learned this English. I couldn’t say I learned from movies, because someone in the class could be al-Shabaab, so I said I learned it from reading the class books.