Call Me American

by Abdi Nor Iftin

  “See, this thing is fake,” said Yonis.

  When we got a computer, Farah went first. No luck. Zakariye. No. Yonis. Same. I went last. As I entered my application number and date of birth, I thought about all the good luck I had received in my life. There was the time my family escaped execution on our flight from Mogadishu when that fighter recognized my dad; the time I met Paul by chance that day in Mogadishu, setting me on a path as a radio correspondent; Sharon hearing me on the radio in Maine one evening; Aleey, the Somali cabdriver in Kampala who rescued me from Entebbe Airport. So much good luck. I clicked Submit, on the luckiest day of my life.

  14

  Long Odds

  I thought it was a mistake. Nobody wins the green card lottery. I reentered my information, twice. Both times it said the same thing: “You have been randomly selected…”

  People in the café went crazy, slapping me on the back and cheering. The owner was so happy, now he could brag about having a lucky café. “You’re an American now!” he shouted. “You’re going to the land of opportunity! Remember us back here!”

  It went on and on, the handshakes and congratulations. I was in a state of bliss. When things calmed down, I finally had the chance to read further. The website did indeed say “You have been randomly selected…,” but that wasn’t the whole sentence. The rest of it said, “…for further processing.”

  You have been randomly selected for further processing.

  What did that mean? I read on. It turns out that winning the green card lottery does not actually win you a green card. It wins you the chance to apply for a green card. Not everyone who applies will actually get a green card, so the lottery draws three times as many “winners” as there are actual green cards to give out. In 2013, I was one of 155,000 people chosen around the world to apply for just fifty-five thousand green cards to be issued in 2014. About one chance in three.

  That didn’t seem too bad. In my life I had beaten much worse odds. But that wasn’t all. The lottery winners are numbered, and the people with the smallest numbers get the first crack at applying for a green card. When some of those early winners fail to pass for whatever reason, the next numbers in line are invited to apply. When all the green cards are issued, the process ends for that year. If your number has not been called, it’s all over. You lose your chance. And even if your number finally gets called, the cutoff date for diversity green cards is September 30 of the issuing year—2014 in my case. On that date no more green cards would be issued, even if not all fifty-five thousand had been awarded yet. So the clock was ticking for everyone.

  The first name chosen from the Africa region received case number 2014AF00000001. Number one. My case number was 2014AF00047441. I had to read it carefully several times to figure out it meant there were more than forty-seven thousand people ahead of me. In Africa. Not counting other winners all over the world, trying for the same visas. It seemed like impossible odds. For me to get to America, I had to hope tens of thousands of other desperate people around the world lost out.

  The math was bad, but the paperwork seemed even more daunting. If I ever did get an interview to apply for a visa, I would need all sorts of documentation about who I was, and what I’ve been doing all my life. But the U.S. government didn’t recognize any civil documents from Somalia. No Somali passports, birth certificates, divorce papers, or marriage licenses were accepted. In other words I needed to produce civil records to escape a country so broken that we had no civil records. Years later I learned about the term “catch-22.” That’s what it was.

  The one hope was that Somalis could sometimes get a waiver on those documents. But other paperwork was always required, starting with a medical certificate to determine that I was healthy. I didn’t think that would be too hard, but I’d never been to a doctor in my life, so I really didn’t know. Then you had to get school transcripts, but with all the police raids I could not get to school every day, and my attendance was poor despite my best efforts. The worst requirement, the one that filled me with dread, was obtaining something called a Letter of Good Conduct, certifying I was not a criminal. Of course I was no criminal and had no record, but getting proof of that required walking into Nairobi police headquarters and getting fingerprinted. The same police who were harassing us daily.

  Hassan did not win the lottery. I think I was more upset than he was.

  Over the summer of 2013 we lay low while plotting ways to gather my paperwork if I did get the notification to apply. We made barbells out of empty milk cans filled with rocks and sand, and we took turns working out in our room. I thought maybe if I looked ripped like Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would help me pass my physical exam to become an American like he did.

  I reported on my lottery win for The Story, and then The Huffington Post did a story about me. I became the most famous green card lottery winner in the world, even though I had not even been selected for an application interview. Every day I checked my e-mail for news from the State Department, but nothing came for weeks and months.

  * * *

  —

  On September 21 a group of al-Shabaab terrorists attacked the Westgate Mall—the same place Hassan and I had met Dick Gordon’s daughter Pamela for coffee. They pulled up around noon on a Saturday and began lobbing hand grenades everywhere. Inside, the mall’s video surveillance cameras showed terrorists walking up and down, randomly shooting Kenyans and foreigners out for a day of shopping. They let go those who looked like Muslims, or those who could recite the Koran, or even just name Muhammad’s mom. (Aminah, good to know.) Before then, their attacks were mostly around the slums, but now they had targeted the rich part of town. Over the two-day standoff, sixty-seven people were killed and many more injured.

  Five miles to the east, Little Mogadishu was turning into a ghost town. People closed businesses; streets were cleared. Inside, every apartment was packed with people watching their televisions and waiting for reprisals. Many other people jammed into the mosques and prayed for peace. Within days, police in red hats invaded the neighborhood. This was the General Service Unit, a highly trained paramilitary wing. “Refugees must go back to the camps!” said a Kenya police spokesman on TV. “They must show themselves to the police officers!” Then they went straight to the mosques and started dragging everyone out.

  Police trucks were sent into every block of Little Mogadishu. Outside our building, cops were loading Somalis into a truck like sacks of maize, just throwing them in on top of one another. Women screamed, and children cried. When the trucks filled, they drove off to the big soccer stadium at Kasarani, which had been turned into a concentration camp, and when there were no more trucks, they marched people on foot, ten miles, to the stadium.

  Around midnight we heard screams from downstairs, then banging at our door.

  “Open the door, you terrorists, or we will break it down and kill you!”

  Hassan and I knew our latch would give easily, so we decided there was no choice but to open. On the other side stood two policemen in red hats, but mainly what I saw was the fist of one, thundering against my face. He hit me so hard I was blinded. Then the two of them started kicking and punching both of us. The next thing I remember was one of the cops dragging me downstairs by my collar, like they do in movies. I was screaming for my life. Hassan was right behind me. They lined us up outside in front of the police vehicle so they could see our faces in the truck lights. It was chilly and rainy, and I was shivering. My shirt was torn. I had not eaten since that morning. In my head I was going back to Somalia.

  One by one they asked us to show IDs. When I pulled out my refugee ID, the officer threw it back in my face. He held my neck and told me to jump into the back of the truck. It was already packed with Somali refugees, there was no space, but I squeezed in and waited for the truck to move. “My American dream is dead forever,” I thought.

  But then some good luck. The red hats started negot
iating for money. In the end, those big-shot paramilitary cops were all about the bribe, just like the regular street cops. Anyone who could bail himself out with cash could go back to his apartment. Hassan and I bought our way to freedom with eighty dollars that we still had from Sharon. We felt bad for the people who had no money for bribes.

  The roundups and deportations went on for months, into the spring of 2014. In January, I had received a call from a BBC Radio reporter in London named Leo Hornak. He had read a blog post I wrote for a Kenyan charity about winning the lottery. He was doing a story about people who won all sorts of lotteries and wanted to interview me. So on February 4, I snuck downtown to the BBC studios and recorded an interview with Leo in London. In April, Leo decided to do a radio series based on my story, with me recording our Skype calls using a small digital device. But first I had to get the device—another trip downtown.

  It was a Marantz 620, about the size of a deck of cards. I could upload the recordings on our laptop; fortunately, we still had Wi-Fi, which had been installed illegally by a Somali guy before the Westgate attack for one hundred shillings a month, and somehow we still had electricity. My first recording, on April 18, made Leo feel guilty for having me come downtown:

  I’m in my room here in Little Mogadishu. The streets are under siege. The most wanted thing here is a Somali face. In the meantime I ventured out of Little Mogadishu for the first time today. My friends, my brother, and everybody who knows me can’t still believe it. On my first step out of my door, I felt butterflies in my stomach. My brother was at the door telling me not to go. It’s dangerous. But I have to do an audio diary for the BBC. But the equipment to record my stories is at the BBC bureau at downtown Nairobi. But between that audio recorder and me is a treacherous difficult journey. My travel out of Little Mogadishu was like crossing the border into another country, with heavy border patrol. I walked along the walls of the buildings and avoided the streets. But due to heavy rains in the morning, the streets are ankle deep in mud. I carefully stepped; any car moving sends chills down my spine. I saw bus number six headed downtown; my eyes scanned through the passengers. There’s no single Somali here. All eyes were fixed on a Somali face. The bus was rocking with a Jamaican music that was more than my ears could hold. The throbbing beat was unbearable. But it’s not my ears I care about, but my life.

  Hassan and I became totally afraid to leave our room, even to use the bathroom downstairs. The building was by now almost empty. As the days went by, our food began to run short. We pooled our supplies with another Somali family still on the ground floor of our building—two women, one a single mom with two small boys. They had also paid bribes to stay in their place. Soon we were down to tea and some bread that was still being delivered by a Kenyan on a bicycle. One night I told Leo over Skype that we were getting desperate.

  “I’m starting to feel like maybe we won’t make it. Our eyes are turning red and our hair is running out. We’re looking like pretty skinny.”

  I wondered if a skeleton could pass the medical exam for a green card.

  The family on the first floor ran out of money and decided to go back to Somalia. I told Leo,

  This really broke the heart of my brother and I because that means we are going to be alone. What they are telling me, “Abdi, what are you doing here? C’mon move, you’re dreaming about an America that doesn’t exist! This is a dream, c’mon, boy, you’re wrong.” That’s what they’re telling me, Leo. At some point I’m thinking like it would be okay to go with them. This is totally no life.

  But the road home to Somalia had no promise of life. In the Kenyan countryside, gangs of robbers and rapists preyed on the returning refugees. And once they crossed the border, refugees were in the hands of al-Shabaab. That mom downstairs was more worried for her two little boys than for herself because she knew al-Shabaab would probably kidnap them for indoctrination. But what else could she do? Starve them to death in her apartment?

  I told Leo that the Somali refugees were like the migrating wildebeests that face crocodiles one way and hyenas the other way. Either path is deadly and many will perish on the way, but some will make it. I chose the path of staying in Kenya, hoping for a miracle.

  * * *

  —

  With everyone else in our building gone, Hassan and I stopped leaving our apartment for anything. Classes had started, but we were not able to get to school. We covered our window and turned off all the lights after dark. We tried not to even move. We were down to a kilo of tea, some sugar, and a loaf of stale bread. Our stomachs felt like they were eating themselves inside out, and our eyes grew sticky. It was like the famine of our youth in Mogadishu, except we were in a modern African city with shops and restaurants full of people. In my hunger I salivated at the thought of the KFC, with that delicious chicken and Cokes, at the bus depot where we ate on the first day I arrived in Nairobi. It seemed a million miles from the ghost town of Eastleigh.

  The police were always outside our building, leaning on their trucks, eating mandazi, the Kenyan version of doughnuts, and making jokes. When we dared to sneak downstairs to the bathroom, we could never flush the toilet, because the police would hear it. A bucket shower was out of the question; we did not bathe for months. One night the police came up and banged on our door. Terrified, we stayed dead still. Finally they left.

  Days felt like years. Weeks passed excruciatingly. Near starvation, we decided someone must venture out for supplies or die. Not only that—Ben and his family were moving to Zambia; the terror attacks in Nairobi were even chasing away Westerners. Before he left, we needed to get some cash from Sharon, through him. So one morning before daybreak, I crept out of our building for the first time in weeks. I carried my student ID, the last cash that we had, and my refugee document. I walked past Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Streets. All were empty and looking spooky. The lights of the police trucks flashed down at First Avenue. I ran in a zigzag like a soldier in a movie, ducking behind signs and empty kiosks. When I reached Twelfth Street, I jumped on a matatu and was off toward downtown.

  Bad luck: We hit a roadblock a mile from Little Mogadishu. The police were checking for Somali refugees. My heart was in my throat as the officer boarded the bus and waved his flashlight across the passengers. He noticed me right away.

  “You!” he said, waving his light. “Come down!”

  I descended as the bus drove away.

  When I showed him my refugee document, he slapped my face and told me to sit on the side of the road. He kept checking other buses and found two more Somalis, who joined me where I was sitting. Finally the officer told me to stand, then he pushed me to the side and began the usual negotiation.

  “Ngapi?” I said in Swahili. How much?

  We argued back and forth until I handed him thirty dollars. He freed me and I caught another bus. Every minute Hassan was texting me to make sure I was fine. More roadblocks and I would run out of money.

  Life in downtown Nairobi was carrying on as normal; there were no police in sight. As I walked up the busy Tom Mboya Street, some pedestrians veered away from me. They could tell I was Somali, but no one hassled me. Ben took me to a restaurant near his office. For the first time in weeks I had fresh food and cold lemonade; it was heaven. He handed me six hundred dollars for food and bribes. On my way back, I bought gallons of clean water, red beans, corn, some fruits, milk, and rice. I made it back with no trouble because the police didn’t care about buses going into Little Mogadishu, only coming out.

  I had been building up the courage to get my Letter of Good Conduct from the police. I had no idea if my lottery number would even be called for a visa interview, but I wanted to be prepared. On May 12, a Monday, I got up early and made several calls to everyone who cared about me. I asked people to act quickly in case I got arrested. Paul sent a letter to journalists based in Kenya, including Tom Rhodes, the East Africa representative of the Committee to Protect
Journalists, and Peter Greste, a reporter for Al Jazeera. Leo e-mailed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It felt good to know people were fighting for me, but I also knew I would be on my own at the police station.

  I got together every letter of recommendation that I had, the U.S. senators’, the journalists’. I took all my refugee papers, in duplicate, and folded cash into my pockets. I said good-bye to Hassan, walked downstairs, and opened the front door a crack. No police. It had been raining all night; maybe the rains had kept the police off the streets that morning. I ran quickly down the muddy lanes of Little Mogadishu and hopped on a bus bound north for Kiambu Road.

  The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is a huge complex of low white buildings on the other side of the Mathare slum, beyond the A2 highway that divides rich from poor. It borders the elite Muthaiga Golf Club and the Karura Forest, sort of like the Central Park of Nairobi. I was in no mood to appreciate the scenery as the bus dropped me in front of the main gate.

  It had started raining again. Three officers were standing guard. Kenyans came, were searched with metal detectors, and went in. A few Somalis stood around in the rain, getting soaked. When I approached the guards, I was trembling with fear. One immediately walked toward me and yelled.

  “Do not come any closer!” he said. “Wait over there.” He pointed to the other Somalis and made it clear we were not allowed inside. We stood in the rain for four hours. Finally a man in a dark suit came out. He addressed the Somalis one by one. When it was my turn, he said, “Show me your identification.”

  When I pulled out my UNHCR refugee papers, he pushed me aside and moved on to the next person. I chased after him.

  “Sir, please, I need the police fingerprints for my visa interview.”

  He turned and scowled at me. “What country are you going to?”