Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  My joy was interrupted by a sudden clamor from the crowd, followed by panic and running in all directions, like frightened cattle. I had not heard any explosion, so I couldn’t understand why all the Somalis were running. Hassan grabbed me by the hand.

  “This way!” he yelled. We ran, turned down an alley, and ran again. We ran for a quarter mile. “What is going on?” I asked between my panting breaths.

  “The police,” said my brother. “They come like this every night to rob the Somalis.”

  After a few minutes the police were gone and everyone was back on the street, business as usual. Tea shops filled up, and conversations went on, just like nothing happened. I was starting to think maybe life in Nairobi was no paradise.

  Hassan had reserved a room for both of us at the Hotel Medina for one night. This was one of the best hotels in Eastleigh, with running water and a restaurant, owned by Somalis, but he chose it because it had the same name as our mom. We went to our room and talked for hours. I told Hassan about my adventures, and he told me about his own long journey to Nairobi, which he had only hinted at in his e-mails.

  * * *

  —

  The green Mercedes had broken down in the bush, he said. The one-armed driver was picked up by another driver, along with the two women and the goat. There was no room for Hassan, so they left him in the desert; the goat was more valuable. He walked for days across the barren red land with no water, at times drinking his own urine. He encountered many human skeletons as well as lions and hyenas, which terrified him and reminded him of our mom’s stories.

  He did not know the direction to Kenya, but eventually he caught up with other families walking toward the refugee camps. After eight days of walking, they were met at the border by aid agencies, then quickly registered as refugees with fingerprints and photos. With their new refugee IDs in hand they waited for transportation to the camps in Dadaab, their new home. When the truck that was carrying them pulled in to Dadaab, they were all told to descend and wait. But after the truck left, there was no one else. Slowly people who had walked with Hassan were met by family members or friends. Hassan found himself sitting under an acacia tree waiting and waiting. Two days went by, and no one came to help him, no food or water.

  Finally, he hitched a ride on a dump truck carrying sand to the other side of Dadaab, ten miles away. There he saw people queued for food. He had not eaten in days, but Hassan was told he could not get food; first he had to get a coupon to apply for food. The food coupons were distributed along clan lines, and this area of the camp seemed to be controlled by the Marehan tribe from Kismayo. With hundreds of women and children from their own tribe arriving daily, no one was interested in helping a teenager with a strong Mogadishu accent. He was not even given a space to build his own hut. Whenever he finally got to the front of a line, the response was always the same: “Leave here!” Everyone was just trying to survive, and there was no room for pity.

  Someone told Hassan to go and see a Rahanweyn man who lived about twenty miles deep in the camp. He went there and the man said he was not in fact Rahanweyn. But unlike everyone else he took pity on Hassan and handed him six hundred Kenyan shillings for a bus to Nairobi. “Nairobi has some chances for you,” said the man. “Don’t show the police your refugee ID, or they will send you back here. Tell them you are a kid and don’t have one.”

  He caught the first bus out. When the police stopped them for checks at the border, Hassan hid his refugee ID. Finally his English, which we had practiced so many nights in our bedroom, was a lifeline to Hassan. In plain and simple English he told the Kenyan police that he was seventeen years old and had no ID. They let him go. When the bus dropped him in downtown Nairobi, Hassan followed other Somalis and ended up in Eastleigh, where he had been living ever since.

  Hassan soon learned how to survive on the streets of Little Mogadishu. He picked up some Swahili phrases and was able to make some good friends, including his roommate, Siyad. The two of them were also business partners—hawking socks, sneakers, and belts on the streets of Eastleigh. They would buy in bulk from the shops; a bundle of socks cost about twenty dollars and could be sold on the street, by the pair, for a total of thirty dollars. This was illegal because the Kenyan police did not allow street vendors, especially refugees, who are not allowed to work. But like street vendors in cities around the world, Hassan and Siyad developed a sort of radar for the police, and they would snatch up their merchandise and dash away before trouble. In this way they could save enough money to buy dinner, pay rent, and pay off the police on the occasional times they got caught.

  * * *

  —

  We talked until three o’clock in the morning, when we both fell asleep. I awoke at sunrise to the cries of the conductors calling out the destinations of their matatus. Eastleigh in the morning was a noisy place, filled with seemingly crazy people. I looked out the window. Young Somali men, dressed and shaved like American gangster rappers, wearing headphones, walked along jamming to music I could not hear. I saw beautiful Somali women in colorful dresses and exotic-looking Kenyan women of the Kikuyu tribe. Music was everywhere, people laughing and dancing. This place was lit!

  We checked out of the hotel. Hassan and I had a list of things to do on that Sunday; first was buying me some new clothes and a haircut, then visiting Ben Bellows. I bought a pair of jeans for five dollars and a T-shirt with the American flag for three dollars. Then I walked into a Somali barbershop. There were portraits of soccer players, rappers, and actors all over the walls. You could choose your hairstyle from the celebrities on the walls! When it was my turn, I pointed to Usher, the American singer. “Like that,” I said. Sides trimmed down to skin, top and back growing wild. So cool.

  Next I bought a necklace, a wristband, and some sneakers. I was sure no one looked more American than me. Hassan laughed, I changed so much in one day, but freedom from al-Shabaab felt like the best gift in the entire world.

  Later that day Hassan and I jumped onto a matatu and headed to a nice restaurant across town to meet Ben Bellows and his wife, Nicole. They were so happy to see me and proud that they had helped Hassan and me reunite. The menu was confusing, we didn’t know what to choose, but burgers seemed like the most American dish, so we both ordered one. After the meal we went to Ben and Nicole’s house for a visit. They handed us a hundred dollars of their own money to help with getting me settled. After a few hours we were back in Eastleigh, but not to the hotel. Now I would be staying in Hassan’s room on Eighth Street.

  The building where Hassan lived was home to dozens of Somalis, each family squeezing into one tiny room. The stairs, pitch-black even by day, creaked and swayed so much I felt they would collapse anytime. Jerry cans of water and sacks of charcoal sat everywhere. People washed clothes in buckets and hung them on their balconies, dripping down on the street below and adding to the pool of mud in front of the house. Cockroaches crawled on the walls. Of course this is the way tens of millions of Africans live, in cities across the continent, so residents of Little Mogadishu were just grateful to be out of a war zone.

  Hassan lived on the third floor. Siyad had gotten married and moved back to the refugee camps with his wife, so I was the new roommate. The room was small but at least had two windows facing the street. There was no furniture, no bathroom, no kitchen. Basically Hassan lived outside and used his room only to sleep. Rolled up in the corner was a single foam mattress and a pillow; we used some of the money from Ben and Nicole to buy another set for me. None of this mattered or bothered me once I saw the main attraction in his room: a Toshiba laptop and piles of DVDs of Hollywood movies. Hassan told me there were thousands of DVDs sold on the streets of Nairobi. “You could never even watch them all in your lifetime,” he said. I decided I might try.

  The next day was Monday, and all the offices would be open. That morning after bread and tea we jumped into a matatu to the office of the United Nations High C
ommissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Because I had been smuggled into Kenya, I was not yet registered as a refugee, which was the first step in getting to the United States. I was carrying all the letters sent by Team Abdi. We arrived and saw to our dismay that hundreds of other people had the same idea that morning. The line stretched around the building. After four hours we finally got inside, and I was seated with a hundred other people in a waiting room. Six hours after that, a Kenyan man in a dark suit came out.

  “Time out today!” he yelled. “Come back tomorrow.”

  We came back the next day. Same long line in the chilly morning, me in my American flag T-shirt. Same long wait inside.

  “Computer problems,” said the man this time. “Come back tomorrow.”

  Frustrated, we called Ben Bellows. He e-mailed someone at the office who got back to him: “I will see Abdi tomorrow.”

  On Wednesday I got up very early and took the matatu by myself to the UNHCR office. Four security guards were pushing Somalis away from the gate. I jostled through the crowd and approached one of the guards.

  “My name is Abdi Iftin. Someone who works here is expecting me.”

  The guard put his arms on my chest and pushed me. “Go away!”

  No one ever came out calling my name.

  Thursday Hassan and I went back together, armed with a new strategy. We approached one of the security guards, and Hassan spoke to him in Swahili: “I will pay you.”

  The guard took Hassan to a place where the camera could not catch him, and we handed him two thousand shillings—about twenty dollars. He let me into the waiting room. At three o’clock in the afternoon a man walked up and called my name.

  In another room he took my picture and fingerprints, then led me to a desk for the paperwork. I was officially registered as a refugee living in Kenya! Now I could seek protection and resettlement in the West.

  Every day after that, Hassan and I went to the UNHCR, hoping for a protection interview. Since coming to Nairobi, Hassan had been interviewed more than ten times. On the wall of the building they posted names of people selected for protection and resettlement. Hassan had been checking the list for years. He was never picked. But now, with all the letters of support from our American friends, we thought our chances were high. Still it was always the same: the officials wrote down our phone numbers but never called for an interview. We watched other Somalis whose names were posted who could not control their happiness, tears running down their faces. It was hard to watch; we could not share their joy. Life as a refugee in Nairobi was permanent for those whose names were never picked. Real life only began for those who were selected. The UNHCR was the switch between happiness and misery.

  * * *

  —

  I continued to file radio reports for The Story, now from the BBC studio in downtown Nairobi. Instead of life in a war zone I told Americans about life as a refugee in Little Mogadishu. One big difference between Little Mogadishu and real Mogadishu: in the Nairobi version you didn’t wake up every morning wondering if this would be your last day on earth. So that was a definite plus. But Little Mogadishu was still a daily test. You were on your own, and survival depended on your strength, wits, and good luck. The Kenyan government and the UNHCR offered no help to the hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees living there, it was like we didn’t exist. Everyone had to fetch food, clothing, and shelter for himself, but refugee documents were not work permits, so there was no official way to earn money for those things. Your documents did not protect you from police harassment either.

  You felt trapped in Little Mogadishu. To the east is Moi Air Base, a former British RAF base and the headquarters of the Kenya Air Force. Naturally, it is completely fenced off, a dead end. To the west, between Little Mogadishu and the skyscrapers of downtown, is the feared Pangani police station, from which corrupt officers fan out every night in search of bribes from refugees. And to the north is the vast and notorious Mathare slum, one of the worst in all Africa. Compared with the tin shacks of Mathare, Little Mogadishu appears as organized as midtown Manhattan, with straight numbered avenues, real buildings, and services.

  But within Little Mogadishu was an armed Somali youth gang who called themselves the Super Powers. Those gang members realized the Kenyan police did nothing to protect people in Little Mogadishu; refugees ran from the police and would never dare to report a crime. So the gang members terrorized residents, snatching cell phones and cash at gunpoint. One night two Super Power guys held Hassan by the neck right in front of our building. They took his cell phone and some cash, then let him go. Another night they chased me down an alley. Luckily, I outran them.

  Fortunately, there were a lot of places to blend in with the crowd. The two main north-south roads in Little Mogadishu are First Avenue and Second Avenue, both of them so packed with people day and night that you can hardly walk. The cross streets are lined up between them, starting with First Street in the north and all the way down to Twelfth Street. On just about every one of those streets you will find a mosque, a hawala money-wiring shop, a small shopping mall, tea shops, photo studios, barbershops, and tall apartment complexes crammed with people. Even Kenyans do their weekly food shopping in Little Mogadishu. People come from as far away as Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and West Africa to shop for black market and often counterfeit electronics, which are cheaper in Little Mogadishu than anywhere on the continent.

  The neighborhood is organized by the names Somalis have given to smaller communities within it—like the zone on Twelfth Street called California Estate because refugees who lived there mostly moved to the United States after a long wait of screening and interviews.

  One resident of California Estate was a well-dressed young woman named Muna. She was short, of light complexion, and not as skinny as most Somalis, probably because she had grown up in Little Mogadishu, eating a lot of chicken. She was living with some roommates and was very independent. New refugees could tell she knew so much more about the world than they did. Watching her walk down First Avenue was like watching a confident American woman on the streets of New York. She feared nothing and was not the least bit shy like most Somali girls. People looked up to her, especially the neighborhood men, whom she completely ignored. Muna was mad about America and determined to marry a man who could bring her there. Naturally, I felt we had much in common, and I decided to pursue her.

  My first love, Faisa, now living in the refugee camps in Ethiopia, had a phone and we still texted each other. One day she told me she was engaged to marry a man in Sweden. This was not love; like Muna she was only looking for a way out of her miserable fate of being a refugee. I understood, but it reminded me of my sister, Nima’s, marriage. Two goats or a ticket to Sweden, what’s the difference? I knew Faisa and I would probably never see each other again.

  In the afternoon Muna liked to hang out at the Obama Studio, a sort of social club where they played American music and you could also rent minutes to use the Internet. One day I watched her on the computer, texting with a Somali man in Minnesota and another in Seattle at the same time. While doing this, she was also checking out other U.S. men on her Facebook account. A few days later I ran into her at the Balanbaalis Studio, another social club where young Somalis would dress up, dance to loud American music, and drink Cokes. These were mostly people who received money from family members in the United States, so if you were on the hunt for an American husband, it was a good place to hang. I walked up to Muna and told her in Somali that I wanted to date her.

  She laughed. “You have no money. Why would I date you?”

  “Because they call me Abdi American,” I said. I knew this was a thin argument, but it was my only card to play.

  She stared at me, taking in my accent. “Are you from Mogadishu?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “You have never been?”

  “No,” she said.
“My family was displaced from the south. I grew up in the camps. Anyway you are wasting your time. I don’t date men in Africa. Especially refugees.”

  * * *

  —

  Meanwhile, Hassan and I kept trying to land resettlement interviews, with no luck. Sharon called from Maine. A friend of hers, a teacher at the University of Massachusetts named Margaret Caudill, was leading a group of American nursing students to Kenya to improve cardiovascular and metabolic health in rural areas. The project was called Afya Njema, “Good Health.” Hassan and I were invited to volunteer for them. With nothing else to do and tired of waiting for something to change, we gladly accepted.

  One afternoon in May 2012, we stuffed some clothes in a backpack and jumped onto a matatu bound for the Methodist Guest House in Lavington, Nairobi. This would be our home for two weeks, and we couldn’t believe it had a swimming pool! We arrived just as dinner was being served, and when we walked into the dining room, the whole group of twenty-two American students and three teachers rose in applause. They had heard my stories on NPR, and to them we were celebrities. To us they were a dream come true. After the cheers, Hassan and I sat down at the dinner table as everyone listened to our stories. We were hardly able to eat, they had so many questions. I took selfies with everyone and posted them on Facebook. The first person to comment was Muna.

  “Are you in the U.S.?” she wrote.

  In the morning we got up early and rode a bus to the work site along with a group of Kenyan nursing students. As the bus sped out of Nairobi for the two-hour drive to Nyeri town, the American students put on their headphones. Some were reading books. Some took naps. I wanted to know everyone’s name and all about their American stuff.