Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  * * *

  —

  Part of the problem was that Rahanweyn were not allowed to carry guns and so were defenseless. In almost every Hawiye house in the city there were guns, even houses where no militiamen lived. When Siad Barre’s government fell, the citizens stormed into the government arms stockpile. There were more guns in the city than people. There was more ammunition than food. It became a thing to own a gun to save your life. Most people slept with a loaded AK-47 sitting next to them.

  Khadija brought home two guns, an AK-47 and a SAR-80 assault rifle given to her by a relative who had plenty of guns and wanted to get rid of some. Khadija, her son Abdikadir, and her daughters, Fatuma and Fardowsa, all took turns shooting at a bucketful of sand set up at the corner of the house. Abdikadir and I carried the AK-47 outside, walking around to show it off.

  Some of the Rahanweyn beggars would come to Khadija’s house early in the morning around five to beg for a cup of tea. Mom was usually up at this time making tea for my dad, and when the beggars came and spoke in their Maay dialect, she would respond in Maay, “See hayteng?” How are you? “Hadhawaw fadheew.” Come in, have a seat.

  Mom and the beggars would get into deep conversations as they sipped their hot tea in the house. Khadija did not understand Maay, so it was easy for Mom and the beggars to talk about how bad life had turned under the Hawiye militias. They talked about life in the Bay and Bakool villages, the animals, the nomad life. Many of these beggars in Mogadishu had been some of the wealthiest people in their villages; they owned hundreds of camels, cows, and goats—assets they thought would never disappear. But like my parents they had not even a chicken today, nor a place to live. They bragged about their past life. They talked about fighting hyenas, lions, and cheetahs. They were warriors who fought with knives, spears, and bows. They had no idea why God had abandoned them and left them begging on the streets.

  Their conversation would come to an end as they remembered that they had to be on the road again to find food for their children, who were sleeping on the streets. But every morning they came by to chat with Mom. Usually Dad was asleep, but he sometimes woke up to join the conversation.

  Then one day none of the beggars showed up. Mom went out to see what had happened. Down the street, around a corner, her beggar friends had all been killed by a sniper; the killer piled their bodies on top of one another and was yelling, “They were burglars, I shot them!” For sure they were not burglars. Mom returned home and prayed for them to enter heaven.

  Most Rahanweyn men returned to the harsh life in their villages, which the militias also controlled. The women remained behind and did all the dirty jobs; they dug out latrines and removed shit, carrying bucketfuls of shit on their shoulders and dumping it in the sea. They begged or hawked on the streets. I heard later that only one out of four of their kids survived to adulthood. But they showed strength and perseverance.

  Hassan and I could identify with these beggars because we would have been like them had we not been born in Mogadishu and received the goodwill of our neighbor Khadija. Still, no one else we knew let beggars into their houses, and Hassan and I were a little embarrassed by it. By now we had started to distance ourselves from our parents. We had no stories of our own to tell about the villages, or the nomad life. All we knew was Mogadishu. We had a Mogadishu accent, the neighborhood was our home, and all our friends were Mogadishan. We had become so unlike our mom but especially different from our dad, who could not blend in at all. He pined for his village, and Mom hoped for the same. They waited for two things: the rains to return and the Aidid militias to withdraw from Baidoa so they could go home. Hassan and I were home in Mogadishu, and we hoped we would not move to a village in the bush.

  Every day I walked out to the airport, hoping to see the American marines coming back to rescue me. But all I saw were the tread marks of their big tanks in the hot, soft tarmac of the runway. Discarded U.S. military boots were still scattered across the sand dunes, drying in the fierce sun of Mogadishu. The airport had been closed since the troops pulled out, and quickly the militias turned the terminals into a butchering place for people they did not like—dragging their victims inside and shooting or hacking them to death. Their jeeps, mounted with automatic machine guns, parked in the middle of the runway as the militiamen wandered aimlessly around the airport, not sure what to do. There was no commander they listened to, no schedules to follow. Their days were always the same: wake up every morning, get qat, sit, and chew. We gathered around them every afternoon when the sun cooled down a bit and they were too busy chewing their drug to mind us. They usually had plenty of qat that could fill their cheeks the whole day, but the next day they would have to ride fifty kilometers out of the city, to a makeshift airport where the qat flew in from Kenya and Ethiopia, to escort the shipments into Mogadishu. Their technicals, loaded with leaves, barreled into Mogadishu with engines screaming, like teenage drag racers trying to impress each other. This juvenile display of power reminded us every day that these were the rabble that had kicked American marines out of the city. They were so unorganized they never figured out how to use the main airport, because Aidid and Mahdi, the rival clan leaders, couldn’t agree on how to run it.

  Other than sheikhs, the only role models for young men in Mogadishu were these rebel soldiers with their guns, their cheeks full of qat, and their endless bickering and cursing. I didn’t chew qat, but I cursed every day at my friends for fun, and they cursed back. Our fiercest obscenities were related to pigs and dogs, two animals much hated in Mogadishu. “Son of a dog!” “Son of a pig!” “Your dad is a dog and you are a dog!” Everyone would get very angry when associated with these dirty, satanic animals that cannot be touched. When I saw Americans kissing dogs in movies, I’d make a face like sucking on a lemon. “How do they trust the dog?” I asked myself. “What if the dog bites them?”

  * * *

  —

  One day Dad called us out to the courtyard. “I’m going to take a walk around to see if my brother Hassan is still in his house,” he said. Dad had not left the house since the Americans and United Nations left. So this was a big step, but one filled with danger. In Mogadishu under the warlords it was very dangerous to knock on people’s doors, especially for a Rahanweyn. None of us had been to our uncle’s house since we returned to Mogadishu, we didn’t know who was living there.

  But Dad found the courage to walk to the house. Leaning on his stick, in his worn-out clothes, his hair a mess from our homemade haircut, he looked like one of the Rahanweyn beggars. People avoided him on the street. Unfazed, he shook his head and took small steps toward the KM4 circle. He stopped briefly every few steps to catch his breath and then kept moving, looking around. Everything had changed, no more clubs and restaurants, no cheering fans slapping his back.

  Uncle Hassan’s house was there, still standing, with some damage to the roof and walls. The back side of the house was gone. The green tin door that my dad remembered was not there; instead, a gate of thorn branches covered the entrance. He stood there hesitating, deciding whether to move the thorn gate and go inside; many houses had been looted and taken over by militiamen and their families. Who lived here now? Dad stood there waiting for any movement, or someone to come out. It was very quiet inside. He didn’t hear a single noise except the flapping of the tin roof, which had come loose from the rafters.

  After a long wait he heard some noise inside, the sounds of kitchen cleanup and distant chatter. He didn’t know if it was Uncle Hassan’s family. He came closer to the gate and looked through it, but he could see nothing in the courtyard.

  “Salaam aleikum!” he finally said. No answer.

  “Is Hassan here?” he yelled.

  Then Uncle Hassan’s daughters came out to see who was asking for their dad. They did not recognize my dad.

  “No,” they responded as they looked at him, studying him.

  But Dad recog
nized them and cried out their names. “Salada! Anab! How are you? It’s me, Nur!”

  At that point Dhuha, Hassan’s wife, came out and joined the girls. They all welcomed Dad inside. Everyone cried; they hugged.

  They told Dad how Hassan had been killed by a bullet, or two, or three, or six in his head. No one knew how many bullets, but someone knew he was shot in Beledweyn town. Dad had no more tears to cry. His own parents had starved to death or were eaten by animals, who knows? His other siblings had gone missing and were presumed dead. Dad reminded the grieving family that his brother Hassan was by now in heaven and that we will all die and go where the dead are.

  “We are happy you are here for us,” said Dhuha. In Somali culture a man must take charge when tragedy strikes a sibling’s family. Ideally, he is supposed to marry the wife of his deceased brother, a union of mercy called dumaal.

  But Dad was in no position to be the man of their family; he couldn’t even be the man of his own family. Even if it were possible for my dad to care for Hassan’s family, he was in too much danger as a Rahanweyn man. With the wars still happening, and men being killed daily, our dad might be next. He reminded Dhuha about this, saying he did not want to cause more grief to her family.

  Dhuha said she understood, then invited us to come and stay in the two-room mud house that had been built on Uncle Hassan’s property. This was a relief to us, because now Hassan and I would have our own room. Dad, Mom, and Nima would stay in the other room. Nima had turned seven, but she looked somehow both younger and older—small and frail from years of malnutrition, and already missing some of her permanent teeth. And she was still struggling to speak well.

  Now we woke up every morning alongside family members, and Dad had stories to tell every day, which made him feel better. He and Dhuha would sit and talk while Mom and Dhuha’s kids were busy doing the chores. (Dhuha was older than my mom and also had two grown daughters, so she was excused from housework.) Sometimes we shared sweet tea with cloves, cinnamon, and camel milk. Only one full kettle was made at a time; everything was measured, from tea to water. We were told we could shower only once a week with a three-liter jerry can, and we were given just five minutes each to use the bathroom. The most difficult rule was that everyone had to be at home no later than seven in the evening. Mogadishu was completely lawless, and crime in the city was high at night; even people without guns were using knives to slit throats, and there were burglars who jumped into houses. Dhuha asked our dad to be the guard at night. It was one way he could still be the man of the family.

  Our new room was so much better than Khadija’s tin-and-cardboard shack. The mud walls at Dhuha’s absorbed the heat during the day and released a bit of cool air at night. The room for Hassan and me had only one straw mat, no furniture, no beds. But it had a wood-framed window, and we could sneak out through that window and come back in without anyone noticing us. We had to be so quiet because the wall between our room and our parents’ room had cracks and holes from bullets and rockets, and we could be heard when we came in or when we talked. Always when we lay on our mat talking, Mom would yell at us to go to sleep.

  It was pitch-black in our room at night, we had no electricity or lantern and could not see each other, but we could see the glittering stars through the small window. As we both lay on the mat on the dirt floor, Hassan talked about Kenya, Yemen, Europe, and America. “Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone visit Kenya on their vacations,” he said. Which definitely is not true but gained my attention.

  “Nairobi is like New York,” he said. “They have highways, nightlife, clubs, music, movie theaters. And a lot of white people.” Many years later I would see New York and realize how different it is from Nairobi, but at the time I imagined either city was no closer than the stars we saw through the holes in our roof.

  * * *

  —

  “I want to leave Somalia,” said Hassan.

  We were talking at night while lying on our mat, as usual.

  “You are dreaming,” I said. To me leaving Somalia seemed impossible. First, I could not imagine going anywhere while Hassan was still around. How could I leave without him?

  Besides, at that point I was not unhappy with my life. Life in Somalia was harsh, but it was all I knew. You wake up in the morning with no plans and no future. Every day is the same. They come and go; months come and go. No New Year’s celebrations, no holidays, no birthday parties. Even the Eid was nothing to look forward to in war-torn Mogadishu. The Eid is the biggest Muslim celebration, after the last day of Ramadan, like Christmas in the West. In good times, kids get to dress in brand-new clothes and buy toys and sweets. But since 1991 the Eid in Somalia was just like every other day. No clothes, no toys, no sweets. All we had was our mom telling us stories about the fun Eid holidays we had before the war.

  While many people like my brother dreamed of moving abroad, I found peace sitting at Falis’s video shack watching movies. The things I saw in the movies seemed unreachable, but at least I could learn the language they spoke. I had been paying close attention to what the American actors were saying. Nobody else cared. The only Western language people in Mogadishu knew was Italian, and not much of that. Falis and everyone else at the movie shack wished the movies could be in Italian, or maybe Arabic. English might as well have been Chinese. But I wanted to understand it. I would walk up to Falis as she was busy collecting money and ask, “Falis, please could you turn up the volume today?”

  She would look at me and laugh. “Why would you want to hear that crap? You don’t even understand a word.”

  But I did. I sat very close to the speaker. I had been making progress on picking up words. Sometimes even when the dialogue was in English the movie had English subtitles, which made it easier to learn how to write the words. I also learned about the culture. The movies often showed kids’ rooms decorated with posters of rock and movie stars, which inspired me to decorate my own room. I collected old, worn-out posters I had found in the ruins of the Cinema Ecuatore and other buildings—posters of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis. Falis gave me some posters that she was going to throw out because they were torn. I would glue them together using the sap from the apple of Sodom plant, and then we used that sap to glue the posters onto the clay walls of our room. Using a piece of charcoal from the madrassa, I wrote on the walls the English words I had learned from movies, plus movie titles, names of stars I liked, and some daily phrases I taught myself, most of them swear words. I liked it when actors in the movies swore.

  Fuck you.

  Bullshit.

  Get the fuck out of here.

  Motherfuckers my name is Abdi American, I am a powerful man. Be careful.

  Rambo, Terminator.

  I’ll be back.

  I also wrote a notice on our wooden door: “Stop. No coming.” I meant for people not to come into our room, but of course no one would ever be able to read that. When Mom saw the walls tattooed in English, she gasped. Then she saw the poster of Madonna in a bikini hanging next to where I slept. This was the last straw. She slapped me hard on my face and yelled, “Lailaha ilallah! There is no god but Allah! Nur, come see what they did! I will kill these two boys!”

  In Islam it is sacrilegious to have any pictures of the human form, much less Madonna in a bikini. To my parents, we were inviting the devil into their home and pissing off the angels that stick with us until death. Raqib and Atid are the two angels that sit on our shoulders, invisibly writing down all of our actions, thoughts, and feelings every single day. On the day of judgment we will be confronted with all the actions the angels have put down, and Raqib and Atid will be present in front of God as witnesses.

  Mom ran from the room, yelling it was a sin hole and if she stayed a moment longer she too would be damned by Allah. She talked to our dad in the other room, then they both came back in. Dad was furious.
/>
  “I never expected this!” he said, pointing at the poster of Madonna. “What is this? Is this why we sent you to the madrassa? Are you out of your mind?” They both kept yelling at us for being evil and littering our home with infidels. Finally Mom tore off all the posters and erased all the words as best she could. When she told Macalin Basbaas, we were whipped. Even after all that, Mom was angry because you could still see the words we had written because the charcoal was hard to erase completely. So I was forced to scrub the walls with water and get rid of the notice on the door. From this time on, whenever something bad happened, I was blamed for bringing evil to the house. One time a stray bullet hit the roof; my fault. Another time Nima was coughing and wheezing and I was blamed for it. The things that I wrote and the posters just became a huge problem for me in our house.

  Even while I was scrubbing English off my bedroom walls, I was writing new words on the walls of abandoned houses where no one could scold me. I especially liked the walls at Horseed Stadium because they were smooth concrete—perfect for charcoal. The letters came out in dark black. I wrote, “I am not lost,” which I learned from the movie Die Hard. Then I painted the American flag, a huge one, on the wall with the stars and stripes. Boys looked at the words and wondered what it meant, so I translated for them. The next day I went back and saw that they had erased it all by smacking it with their sandals, which made the charcoal dust fly off. I was so mad I wrote “shit” and “fuck you” on the wall. They asked me what it meant. I didn’t know, only that in movies it’s what people say when they are angry.