—
With so much of the city destroyed, people moved into houses they found in the neighborhoods whose owners had either died or never returned. Old buildings of universities, schools, and hospitals became makeshift refugee camps. But some people also returned to their former houses, including a woman named Falis who would change my life.
Falis was a tall, dark woman in her twenties. Like many sophisticated Mogadishu women, she wore makeup—including eyeliner and a bright yellow foundation made from ground turmeric. In peacetime she had been fat, which in Somalia is a sign of beauty. Many men chased her. But during the war she came back skinny, and she was worried that her beauty was gone. She had been lucky that her house survived the war, in part thanks to having relatives in the militias who guarded it while she was gone. Before the war Falis had a good job as the ticket seller at the Cinema Ecuatore; she remembered seeing my dad on weekends, hanging out with his friends in those peaceful days. When she came back to Mogadishu, she was able to get a television, some videocassettes, and a VCR, which she had set up in a shack attached to her house. With a gasoline generator and fuel she had somehow secured from the militia forces, she started a makeshift cinema and dance parlor, hoping to charge a few coins for admission. At first she wouldn’t let us kids wander in, but we could hear the sounds outside her door while she was testing the equipment. One of the tapes she played over and over was the Michael Jackson music video “Thriller,” and I would dance with other boys to the beat from her courtyard. I loved that song so much.
One day when I was out there dancing, Falis came out to hang posters of Rambo, the Terminator, and Chuck Norris, which she had saved from the Cinema Ecuatore. I stared at the men in the posters—big strong Americans, flexing huge muscles, not like the skinny people in Mogadishu. I didn’t understand what an actor was or that the men called Rambo, the Terminator, and Commando might have other names in real life. I just went and looked at those posters every day, imagining what those strong people must be like. Sometimes rebels would come up to the posters and spit on them, like they were picking a fight with the men in the posters. But whoever these men were, I knew it would be a fight the rebels could never win. The weapons the movie people carried were much bigger and shinier than anything the militias had in Mogadishu.
Falis needed help getting that shack cleaned up and ready for people to watch the movies. Because I was outside the shack all the time, looking at the posters or dancing, she asked if I would help. For the first time I was allowed inside. The shack had a dirt floor and was filthy. I got to work, climbing up into narrow corners and pulling off spiderwebs, dusting off the TV screen, cleaning the cassettes, fetching water, and arranging where people would sit. Finally the space was ready. I was so excited that I was going to see the people on those posters in a movie!
The first movie Hassan and I saw was Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I sat with my jaw practically on the dirt floor, my eyes popping out. The audience cheered, laughed, and applauded whenever an action scene happened. Of course none of us knew any English, we couldn’t understand anything they were saying, so whenever there was a bit of conversation in the movie, we shouted at Commando to stop talking and shoot to kill. Everyone hated the talk; they wanted shootings and killings and bloodshed, just like real life in Mogadishu but better. People would wander out of the shack during the talk and come running back when they heard the gunfire. Others stayed but just talked to each other during the dialogue until the action started.
I stayed. I never talked to Hassan or anyone during the dialogue. I loved the action best, but I also had a burning desire to know what they were saying. So I sat there, glued to the screen. I watched the actors intensely as they talked, trying to read their lips. I picked up words and phrases that were repeated often, most of them related to guns and death. I learned to recognize words like “shoot” and “kill.” I realized I had some ability to hear the words easily and remember them.
Hassan and I went back to watch movies whenever we weren’t at the madrassa or fetching food and water. Falis let us watch in return for sweeping the dirt floor. We saw Rambo, and The Terminator, and The Delta Force. All action movies. I got to know the scenes by heart, exactly what would happen and what Commando or the Terminator or Rambo would say. I met new friends in the movie shack, Mohammed, Bashi, and Bocow. At the end of the day, when Falis said she was closing, we would walk home and quiz each other on the movie, reminding each other of scenes, talking about what we liked. We would act out scenes, throwing rocks, jumping over debris, and pretending to speak English. I read Arnold’s lips and moved my mouth the way he did. I drove my mom crazy saying “I’ll be back!” over and over again. I didn’t even know what it meant, but I knew it sounded cool.
For the first time in years, since going with my dad to the basketball games, I felt truly happy. I had no more strong dad to look up to, but now I had these big strong action heroes giving me so much excitement. I wanted Commando to come to Mogadishu and kill all the militias in the city.
Hassan and I still had to feed our family. How could we go to the movies and make money at the same time? We hit on the idea of selling popcorn and peanuts in the video shack. We didn’t even know Americans buy popcorn when they go to movies; this was just an idea we had. We borrowed ten kilos of raw peanuts in the shell from a market lady, who agreed to the loan when we told her our plan and promised we could pay her back more than she could make selling them raw. We got some corn kernels the same way. Hassan and I shelled the peanuts and roasted them over a fire at home. We popped the corn in a kettle of our mom’s. Then we carried our basket of peanuts and popcorn, still warm, to the video shack and sold it all. Even Falis bought some. We were able to pay back the market women, buy food for our family, and watch a movie.
The movie shack became a second home to me, and Falis became like family. I even started calling her aunt. Hassan and I started skipping the madrassa to go to the movies and sell peanuts and popcorn. We lied to our mom, telling her in the morning we were going to school, because she would never agree to let us do that. She thought movies were evil and not a place for good Muslims. But we weren’t alone. Many students were skipping the madrassa to watch the movies. One day Macalin Basbaas showed up at the video shack and found five of us watching Commando when we should have been in school. He dragged us out and marched us back to the madrassa in a rage. “Allah will send you to hell for going to the movie!” he screamed. “You will be punished in hell! Allah hates you!”
The punishment on earth was beating, and hanging by the wrists for a day. The Angel of Punishment stripped off my clothes, tied me to a pole, and beat me for a whole day until my body was covered in blood. I can’t say what was more painful, the beating or my arms being pulled from their sockets as I hung. All I could think of was the torture scene in Rambo: First Blood Part II, when Sylvester Stallone is captured. I tried to be strong like Rambo, but it was hard in real life, and I screamed for help. Macalin Basbaas’s hard sticks on my skin seemed even worse than bullets.
After that I had to stop going to movies for a while. Instead, my friends and I formed a gang called Weero. Weero is the Somali word for “war,” and our gang played war games with slings and rocks. We attacked another group of neighborhood boys who had formed their own gang. Unlike hide-and-seek, this war play was dangerous; you could lose eyes or break bones. Also if you hurt a kid in the same tribe as Aidid, you could be shot and killed. I was always careful to know my opponents in these games.
The best place to play war games was inside the Horseed Stadium, because it had a smooth concrete floor and bleachers. The rockets and guns had not done much damage to that thick concrete. The best thing in there was the echo that came from the concrete, so when we released the sling, the snap of the ropes was amplified like a gunshot. This had been the home of the Somali national basketball team, the same place where my dad trained and played, carrying me proudly on his s
houlders every weekend. Now everything was destroyed and looted, including the Somali flags that had waved inside and outside. On the walls that still stood were painted guns of all kinds. Some families from the countryside had settled in parts of the stadium, they had set up tents. When we played in there, they always tried to chase us out of what they decided was now their home.
Soon enough I was going back to the movies; no beating by Macalin Basbaas could keep me away. In those movies I learned about a world beyond Somalia and Islam. I had never seen a map of the world. I didn’t know the difference between Europe and America. I had no knowledge of geography or history, only what Macalin Basbaas had taught us in Arabic about Islam, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. But in the movies I saw so many brave soldiers and beautiful women. There were no ruins, the streets were clean and nice; the wars were always fought somewhere else. No one chewed qat and spit or dug graves in their yard. There was lots of food. I thought, “Whoever these people are, they are great!” I prayed to Allah that I could meet some of these strange foreigners. Maybe it was wrong to pray for infidels, but it worked.
* * *
—
By December 1992, the world could no longer sit back and watch the starvation in Somalia. Humanitarian aid had been coming in for months, but the warlords grabbed all the food and medicine for themselves and gave none to the people. The situation got worse until finally the United Nations decided to take action. Led by the United States, twenty-eight countries organized a military task force called Operation Restore Hope. The goal was to supervise the distribution of food and supplies.
In Somalia we call Americans Mareekans. When I heard these Mareekans were coming to Mogadishu, I asked my mom who they were. I didn’t know the people in the action movies were Mareekans. “They are huge, strong white people,” she said. “They eat pork, drink wine, and have dogs in their houses.”
This sounded like the people I had seen in the movies. Whoever they were, the militiamen looked worried about their arrival. Many rebels started burying their guns; some fled Mogadishu. There was confusion and tension everywhere. I couldn’t wait to see Mareekans land in Mogadishu! Hopefully, they would look like actors in the movies and would spray bullets all over the militias.
And so at midnight on December 9, the thunderous roar of Cobra helicopters and AC-130 gunships filled the air. From the ocean came the buzz of hovercrafts, unloading tanks and marines onto the beach. Our house was close to the airport and the sea, so all these sounds woke me up right away. Through the bullet holes in our roof I could see the gleaming lights of the planes, accompanied by the roar of tanks along the roads. My mom, Hassan, and Khadija were all up, even Nima.
I was eager to see the troops and the helicopters in the morning. At dawn Hassan and I, holding hands, walked down to the airport past streets that used to have sniper nests. There were lots of Somalis in the street, all of them headed the same way, toward the airport. As we got closer, the sounds of the Cobra attack helicopters became deafening. We joined a group of other excited Somalis, some standing on the walls, others on top of roofs, watching as big Chinook heavy-lift copters took off and landed. We could see warships in the distance on the blue ocean; everywhere around the airport, marines in camouflage were taking positions and setting up gun posts.
Someone said the Mareekans had rounded up the rebels who were controlling the airport and seaport. The crowd got bigger and bigger; we shouted, laughed, and cheered in excitement. Security perimeters had already been set up, blocking entrances to the airport. The Mareekan flag was waving, stars and stripes. That’s when it hit me: I had seen that flag in movies! These Mareekans were the movie people, and this was a real movie happening in front of us!
Commando must be here, I thought. This is it. This is the moment I had been waiting for, to meet Commando and watch him blow away all the militias! Helicopters dropped a shower of leaflets with photos and information about the troops. I picked up several of them. “United Nations forces are here to assist in the international relief effort for the Somali people,” it said in Somali. “We are prepared to use force to protect the relief operation and our soldiers. We will not allow interference with food distribution or with our activities. We are here to help you.” Because not so many Somalis could read, the leaflets also showed an illustration like a comic book of a U.S. soldier shaking hands with a Somali man under a palm tree as a helicopter flew past. I couldn’t wait to shake hands with Commando.
Everything was moving so quickly—the tanks, the soldiers, the planes. We jostled for positions to watch the movie that was happening in front of us. Except there was no gunfire. I kept waiting for the battle to start; I wanted the Chinooks and Cobras to blast away at the rebels. But everything was peaceful. Then I remembered it’s always like this in the movies. First you see all the heavy machines and helicopters gearing up for action, then the battle comes later. I wanted to see the militias face these troops, but the rebels I had known since we returned to Mogadishu were now walking around unarmed, acting like regular people. They didn’t dare to face Commando.
I watched all day as the marines took positions, more and more of them coming. Two men in uniform waved to let us cross the airport runway up to the sand dunes, so we could watch as the hovercrafts brought more and more marines from the sea. Humvees and tanks roamed noisily but never fired a shot. I was getting impatient for the battle to start. We watched as the troops pulled out their stuck Humvees from the sand dunes. Hassan and I grew bolder and edged close to the troops. I stood there with my mouth open, watching them drink from a water bottle and smile at us. I made a sign asking for water, and the white guy in uniform went into the Humvee and handed me a plastic bottle. Then we made eating signs with our hands to our mouths, and they handed us tasty marmalade, bread, and butter. The Commando look-alikes even spoke to us in Somali, but all they could say was “Somali siko!” Somali, move back!
One of the marines threw a chocolate candy to me. I grabbed it and swallowed the whole thing. When I got home and told Mom, she gave me a hard slap.
“You must not eat pork!” she said.
I told her I didn’t think it was pork, it was sweet, but she didn’t believe me. How would she know what pork tastes like?
Night came again, and Mogadishu was noisier than I had ever heard it. But for the first time in two years, there was no sound of explosions and gunfire. We were surprised how the marines lit up the airport. Lights came from everywhere, helicopters, tents, cars. It looked like daytime in the middle of the night. We were not allowed to get too close to the airport at night—“Somali siko!” the marines yelled over and over. But for the first time my friends, my brother, and I could go out on the dusty streets after dark and play games, laugh, and talk. We counted the helicopters as they flew over, and the big gunships that circled over the city. Falis’s movie theater could now stay open at night, but we did not go. For the first time in years, outside was even more exciting than the movies.
* * *
—
One morning my brother and I woke to see sand-colored Humvees parked in the streets of our neighborhood. The troops were going from house to house searching for weapons. There were marines on every corner with their guns pointed down, standing tall. They looked so fit and clean in their uniforms, which had no holes or missing buttons. They were not chewing qat or spitting. They were not arguing with each other. I stood there trying to imagine the America that these people came from; that place must be gorgeous. Then a beautiful, tall lady marine exited a house near us and walked our way. She had a huge smile on her face, but Hassan and I ran back to the house and stayed close to our mom and Khadija. We weren’t sure what was happening, and we did not want our mom to be hurt. The lady came in and used sign language to communicate that she wanted to search the house for weapons. Every step she took I was following her, my mom struggling to pull me away. Her straight brown hair reminded me of white women in the movies. Be
fore she left, she smiled, said something, and came to me, stretching out her hand. I shook my head no and backed off shyly. I wanted to touch her, but I was too scared to get into trouble with my mom and Somali culture. Normally we don’t shake hands with women, specially a non-Muslim. The soldier wasn’t angry, and she handed me some chocolate bars. My mom grabbed them away, thinking it was pork, but we convinced her it was candy. Even she ate some.
As the marines drove off, I ran after the Humvees begging for more. One marine took off his mirrored sunglasses, and I saw he had blue eyes! He was like an alien. Next thing we knew, sweets were raining down from the Humvees. Other kids and I fought over them, and then chased the Humvees some more. Finally one stopped and I quickly climbed up, trying to reach a marine’s sunglasses. I was curious and wanted to see if he also had blue eyes. He was as big as Commando. He pointed his M16 rifle up and away from me, then stretched out his arms and lowered me back to the road. I shouted, “Rambo! Commando!” hoping he would respond. He laughed and waved and said, “Somali siko!”
* * *
—
Lots of food was now coming into the port under troop escort, and distribution centers opened in Mogadishu. Hassan and I went to one of the food kitchens in the old ministry building—the place we had crawled past every night and day to avoid snipers while bringing water. Now the snipers were gone and the gates were open, hundreds of people queuing for food. Hassan and I waited in line every day, holding bowls in our hands to get nutritional porridge for our family. Streets closed by the Four-Month War reopened; the green line was eliminated. Convoys carrying food and escorted by U.S. troops roared down the streets, some of them headed off to Baidoa. With all that food and no warlords, people started flooding back into Mogadishu. The city of women and children now had men. One of them was our dad.
Call Me American Page 8
