Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  No one in Africa believed me. When I spoke to my mom on the phone, she was deaf to my complaints about the lack of work in America, where money grows on trees. She thought I had become arrogant, that my newfound wealth had changed me. I had no way to convince her that life could also be hard in America. But her problems were bigger than mine; she and Nima needed money to survive and buy food. I stayed up all night browsing through JobsinMaine.com and other websites, applying for any work that I thought I could do. I tried warehouses, laundries, bakeries, bathroom cleaning, floor mopping, and many other jobs. Most of them ended up being too far away from Yarmouth, and I had no car or even a driver’s license. So I had to limit my search to jobs within walking or biking distance.

  I walked around town, visiting neighbors, asking if they needed someone to work in their yard or help with anything. I visited local farms to see if they wanted help. Some of the online applications for warehouse jobs got back to me for interviews. The bosses smiled, and I felt good talking to them. I said how hard I would work. I filled out so many forms, signed papers, and answered questions. They all turned me down. Was it my English? I knew it wasn’t as good as most Americans’. Maybe they turned me down because I was new to the country. I did not have previous work experience here in the United States, something they always asked about. I had no résumé or references.

  My fears of unemployment grew stronger after every interview. I was really struggling to understand how America works. What if I never find a job? I was ready to do any kind of work, the dirtiest jobs, but still I could find nothing. Gib and I put up a sign in the front yard of the house. Sharon helped me write a few lines: “I am a young man from Africa. Healthy, no drugs. I need a job. Any job. If you know of any please call this number.”

  Maine is home to about fifty thousand Somali immigrants, most of them living in Lewiston, an old textile mill town in central Maine and the home of Bates College. Many others live in Portland, the state’s largest city. The Somali refugees get help from resettling agencies like Catholic Charities that give them money for the first eight months and assign caseworkers who help them assimilate and find jobs. But I was not technically a refugee. And while Sharon and Gib were doctors who traveled the world helping to fight diseases, they were not social workers trained to help an African immigrant navigate America.

  Also there were no Somalis in Yarmouth, a bedroom community ten miles north of Portland with fewer than nine thousand people. In Lewiston and Portland, Somalis can ride buses around town. In Yarmouth at the time there were no buses, so I rode a bike around, asking every business on Main Street if it had any jobs. People would stare at me like they had never seen a black neighbor. Children looked startled; they would hide behind their parents’ legs and point. It felt strange to be so different. Somalis don’t look like Kenyans, but it’s a matter of degrees. Here I was like a space alien. I stopped by the Dunkin’ Donuts, Romeos pizza, several horse farms, the laundry, even the transfer station. But no one had a job. I thought maybe I could hawk socks on the sidewalk like in Nairobi, until I remembered that everyone was driving in cars and probably bought socks online or at L.L.Bean just up the highway.

  After weeks of futile job searching around Yarmouth, we decided I should go down to Portland and ask around in the Somali community about jobs. As we waited for the day to come, at dinnertime one evening in November the house phone rang. It was Christine, one of Sharon’s friends who lived in Yarmouth and had seen the sign in our yard. She told Sharon that a local home insulation company was seeking men who could do tough work. Winter was coming and the demand for insulation was growing. I e-mailed the manager, and we arranged an interview that week.

  The leaves of the trees were turning dull brown and falling as I walked to the interview. It was getting dark even earlier and getting even colder. The manager looked at my green card. “What is your name?” he asked. It was on the card, but I guess he couldn’t tell my first name from my last name.

  “Abdi,” I said.

  “Forgive me if I pronounce your name wrong,” he said. “You look good, strong and energetic; we need guys like you, Abbi. This job is dealing with heavy material and climbing roofs. Are you okay with heights?”

  I told him I didn’t have a problem with heights and that I really needed the job.

  “We pay eleven dollars an hour,” he said. “We might increase the pay if your work is good.” He seemed like he was apologizing for the pay, but to me it was great, the most I had ever earned in my life. He asked if I could work on weekends. I said I could work anytime day or night. I walked out of that building on air.

  * * *

  —

  Monday morning, November 17, was my first day on the job. When my alarm went off at four o’clock, I dressed warm, in layers of silk and wool. I had my usual breakfast of eggs, milk, and toast. Everyone else in the house was asleep. It was a forty-five-minute walk to work and I headed out, with my new craft knife tucked in my belt, my staple gun in my back pocket, and my hard hat on. I walked through the woods; all was quiet and silent except the scared deer that dashed when they heard me coming.

  “Welcome on board,” said the manager when I arrived. He introduced me to the guys I would be working with. They were all big, muscular Maine guys in dirty clothes and big construction boots. Whenever they talked, they cursed. Fuck, shit, bitch, ass. They wrestled and punched each other. Except for being white, they reminded me of Somali militiamen, but I was so happy to have the job that I ignored my fear.

  The crew boss, Joey, told the workers my name, but they all struggled with it. Eddy, Abey, Abbdey. I told them whatever was fine. I could barely understand their thick Maine accents anyway. Until now I was proud of my English, but they kept correcting my mistakes and laughing at my accent, so I felt humiliated and different. To them I was a strange African man, not the American I wanted to be.

  The sun was coming up as we gathered for the daily safety meeting. The workers talked about a couple of employees who had fallen off a roof and hurt themselves, someone else’s ladder broke, someone tripped and got hurt on his stilts. Every week there were stories of broken bones. I was told that I could go to a hospital for free if I got injured, which surprised me. I didn’t know it was the law, I just thought the company was being nice.

  Joey assigned me to work with Milton and Sean, experienced workers who had been with the company for more than ten years. Milton read the instructions for the day’s job. It was a commercial building, six floors, we would “batt” the walls and the ceilings with fiberglass insulation. We were called the batting squad. Both Milton and Sean were big, strong guys with tattoos all over their bodies. Sean had piercings in his nose and lower lip; Milton was missing some front teeth.

  I loaded the heavy rolls of insulation into the big delivery truck from “the shop,” which is what we called the Yarmouth warehouse. Heavy bundles of fiberglass sat everywhere. Milton used one hand rolling the whole bundle to the truck. I struggled with two hands. While I loaded one, he loaded three. The tiny strands of fiberglass got all over my clothes; even with gloves, a face mask, and goggles I was itching. The three of us, the batting squad, climbed into the cab and drove off, Milton behind the wheel. Before the truck left, Joey shouted out from his office, “Remember, everyone, don’t forget your hard hats and goggles! It’s the law!”

  As soon as the truck left the shop, both men reached into their duffel bags and took out marijuana. “Do you smoke the shit, dude?” Milton asked me.

  “No,” I said. I had never smoked marijuana or even seen it. I’d never even smoked a cigarette. As they puffed their weed, the smoke filled the cabin. “It smells bad,” I said. They just laughed, looked at me, and said something I couldn’t understand. They spoke so quickly and with sarcasm that was new to me. They talked about their wives, going to clubs, drinking beer, smoking weed, cars, winning the lottery, pizza, and professional wrestling. I sat next to them in
silence, trying to absorb and learn their culture, looking out at the trees and buildings.

  Milton got a call from his wife. He called her “the old lady.” At first I thought he was talking about his mom, but he said his mom was dead. “Hey, today we have a new guy, Abbi,” he said to his wife, then put her on speakerphone and signaled me to say something. I didn’t know what to say.

  We talked about Africa. To them, Africa was one big country of naked people who eat snakes. More monkeys and lions than people. I told them that we have highways, airplanes, and cars, which surprised them.

  Milton had barely any space for another tattoo, so I was surprised to hear him plan to dedicate a new tattoo to his late mom on his neck, which he said would cost him over five hundred dollars. I could never understand that, or the piercings, but one thing we shared was that these guys all loved their families. Milton hung photos of his wife and kids everywhere, on his hat, in the truck, and at the shop.

  The walls of the building were made of metal studs, not mud or blocks. It didn’t seem very sturdy to me. While Milton and Sean smoked cigarettes and drank Red Bull outside the building, I started unloading the fiberglass batts and carrying them to the upper floors on an unfinished staircase. I was breathing heavy and my goggles fogged up, so I could barely see the stairs. Finally Milton and Sean put on their favorite rock-and-roll music blasting all over the building and got to work. They showed me how to cut open the bundles of insulation, then how to put on stilts so we could batt the ceiling. I saw the rafters above and now understood how Americans got such flat ceilings. Sean and Milton didn’t bother to wear masks or goggles, but they told me I should wear them because I was new and not used to the fiberglass. “You’ll take those off after a while,” Milton said, laughing. They were so fast they were actually running on their stilts. I could barely walk on mine without falling over. Then we did the walls, climbing tall ladders. Milton and Sean moved their ladders forward while they were standing on them, by jumping. They were like circus acrobats.

  My first paycheck was a happy day; I had earned $400. Because I was living with Sharon and Gib and still had no car, my personal expenses were small, and I was able to send $340 to my mom. I was so proud as I walked into Portland’s halal market, which was the unofficial hawala money-transfer station. I handed over my cash to the guy behind the counter, he took an extra $6 for every hundred as a fee. Then he communicated by computer with the hawala kiosk in Mogadishu, where my mom went in and claimed the money.

  She was so happy she bought a goat and slaughtered it, cooked a pot of rice, and threw a party for the neighbors. Macalin Basbaas came and enjoyed the meal. My mom said he prayed for me: “May God keep him safe and working hard.”

  * * *

  —

  Every day we batted different houses and buildings in different towns. Ten miles, twenty miles, and sometimes as far as eighty miles. We had to finish batting a whole house within the same day, so we moved fast. Lunch break was only thirty minutes. Milton and Sean ate doughnuts, sometimes burgers they brought with them. I always sought a clean place and prayed. They both would come look at me bowing my head and reciting the Koran.

  “What are you doing?” Milton asked me.

  During the prayer I am not supposed to speak, so I was quiet and answered when I finished. “I was praying.”

  Milton picked up his phone and called everyone else who worked at the company and even his old lady. He made fun of the whole thing. “This dude bows and says he’s praying,” he said with a laugh.

  I had to tell them that I am Muslim, I have to pray five times a day. “They got Muslims in Africa?” Sean asked.

  Of course they thought all Muslims look like Osama bin Laden.

  After work, Milton and Sean would stop at a convenience store to buy beer and cigarettes. Often they would ask to borrow money from me until the next payday. I always gave them a few dollars when they asked, but they never paid me back. I wasn’t sure if it would be polite to remind them on payday.

  One day on the job my hard hat disappeared. Another day my staple gun, then my winter coat. When I asked what could have happened, Milton laughed and said, “That’s what happens when you’re new here.” The boss said he couldn’t do anything. I had to buy a new hard hat and a new staple gun from the shop. I had no idea who was stealing my stuff until one day I found my hard hat in the back of Milton’s pickup truck. The same guys I’d been working with for months, and when I asked, they said nothing! It was humiliating, and it felt as if my American dream was shrinking.

  I asked Joey to put me on a different batting squad, and I was told to work with a guy named Tom. He was respectful to me, rolling down his window when smoking weed. He had been to prison several times, due to drugs, and he said he wanted to stop. But he explained that he needed the weed to do his job. Tom wanted to go to college, and he asked me questions about my life back in Africa. I told him about the wars and the death and the escapes, and he shook his head in disbelief. “Dude!” he said. “I grew up with an abusive dad and I spent seven years in prison, but that’s nothing compared to your shit.”

  Tom and I got along well. I felt it was safe to leave my things in his truck. He wanted to see the world outside the United States; he wanted to explore. He told me he liked watching National Geographic TV shows. He watched shows about the Maasai Mara and Serengeti national parks in Kenya and Tanzania. We talked about lions, hyenas, and wildebeests. I told him stories about my mom and dad facing lions in real life. I liked Tom, but I noticed the drugs he took to cope with work also seemed to cause his troubles.

  There was always a radio on the work site, always blaring rock and roll, blues, or country music. The guys could name all the bands and artists, but they didn’t know anything about American history. They couldn’t name many presidents except the most recent ones or George Washington, and they didn’t know about the Black Hawk Down incident, even though there were pictures on the Internet of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. They had no idea where Somalia was.

  Many of the guys on the batting squad had lost their licenses from drunk driving, so they all gave each other rides home. Milton gave Sean a ride, and Tom picked up two other people. I asked if someone could give me a ride home, and Milton said I would have to pay him gas money. None of the other guys gave him gas money, but he wanted twenty dollars a week from me. I told him I was happy to walk home, even though I was so tired and dirty after work.

  I don’t know if the guys on the batting squad were racist; I hadn’t been in America long enough to know about that. But it did feel like something I understood very well: the tribalism of Somalia. I have heard Americans complain that Africans bring on their own problems with their tribal feuds, and there is some truth to that. But these Maine guys had a tribe too. Maybe they didn’t call themselves Darod or Hawiye, but it was a tribe, and I definitely was not a member.

  So I had to walk home, up Main Street, looking like some homeless guy in my filthy work clothes and covered in pink fiberglass threads. Fortunately, the people of Yarmouth got to know me and realized I was just a hardworking guy. When I got home, I took off my rough clothes, took a warm shower, dressed up nice, and walked back toward Main Street to relax at the Dunkin’ Donuts. People waved and smiled. I started to feel like part of the community and not just an outsider like I felt at work.

  * * *

  —

  The batting squad guys were getting excited for winter because it meant they did not have to worry about sweating so much on the job. The trees went bare, like skeletons. A cold wind came straight in from the sea, but the sky was bright blue. On my day off I walked across the meadow of dry grass behind the house. Natalya’s horse was growing a winter coat. At the dinner table the weather news was on; there was a brutal and early winter storm coming to Maine, they said. A “northeaster.” People were instructed to drive slow; schools were canceled. E
veryone around the table had been preparing. There were shovels ready at the front door. Wood was thrown into the burning stove.

  “We’ll have to give you a ride to work tomorrow,” said Gib. “It will be hard to walk in the storm.” I went to bed at seven o’clock as usual and woke up at four, when it was still dark outside. Out the window of my room I saw it was snowing a lot—my first snow! I noticed the flakes falling silently, not like rain. The sky was glowing white and hazy.

  I got dressed and went outside to help Gib shovel the walkways. Snow covered the cars and roofs. The roads were hardly recognizable. Trees were dancing in the storm; the only sound was limbs creaking under the snow, which kept falling and falling. My hands turned numb from the cold, even with gloves. As we drove to work, the car heater was still warming up and I was shivering, both hands buried in my lap. “This is what we call winter, Abdi,” said Gib, smiling. “It may get even worse.” All day at work I was freezing because there was not yet any heat in the buildings where we were installing the batts. I needed warmer clothes.

  The winter went on. So much snow fell that I could hardly see our house, or out of our house; the snow was higher than the windows, and the paths we had shoveled became like the walls of a giant maze. We were running out of places to put all the snow. Dump trucks were taking snow from the store parking lots to the ocean. It felt good to come home from work in the evening for a warm shower and a tasty dinner. I turned up the heat, browsed Netflix, and watched lots of movies, one every night before bed. I watched movies I had seen back in Africa that inspired me with the American dream because watching again helped me understand many things. In Somalia once I watched The Grey, with Liam Neeson playing a guy battling wolves in Alaska after his plane crashes. I didn’t really understand how terrible it could be in the wilderness during a snowstorm. Now I watched it again and it made sense.