Story by Ayan Jama
Photos as noted
My father sits in his study reading the New York Times’ “International” section. The headline of the day reads, “Somali Pirates Strike Again. 10 Dead.” As I approach him he puts down the paper, quietly folds it and turns to me.
“I am not a fucking pirate.”
My father, Abdullah Jama, is a first-generation immigrant from the city of Hargeisa, Somalia. Born in what he can only guess was the late 1940s, he grew up playing soccer along the cobblestone streets with his fifteen brothers and sisters.
I know the faces of my distant uncles and aunts through only the tattered pictures my father keeps in a leather-bound scrapbook. The book came to him after being shipped to Saudi Arabia from Somalia following the death of his father, Mohammad Abdullah Jama.
Surprisingly, the book has stayed with him throughout the various moves he has endured in this lifetime: from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, then New York University on a soccer scholarship, and finally Portland, Oregon, with his children. The book has been a testament to the heritage and culture he left behind in the horn of Africa.
As a child, I used to run my fingers down the cracked and torn photos, wishing desperately that I could show them to the world as proof–proof that I am in fact Somali and that I am my father’s daughter.
My entire life I have been mistaken for Indian, Middle Eastern, Hawaiian, and any other race that produces brown-skinned babies. Being unable to speak Somali did not strengthen any confidence I had with my cultural identity. I longed to pass for an African child but instead settled for a “giant girl,” due to the length of what ironically can only be called my “Somali legs.”
After my father emigrated to the States at the age of eighteen, he desperately wanted to fit in with the new Western world. Mesmerized by the hustle and bustle of the streets of 1970s New York, he quickly became enthralled with the American lifestyle. Money, cars, clothes, college girls, and paved roads were all riches far beyond what a teenager from the impoverished town of Hargesia could dream of.
“When I first flew into JFK, I thought New York was on fire. There were so many lights and sights that I did not know what to do,” recalls my father as he stares out the window of his study.
“I could not believe where I was.”
New York was the melting pot of the world. With people emigrating there from every corner of the world, my father allowed himself to become immersed with people of all sorts. Before he knew it, he had met an American woman, settled down into a life of suburban bliss, and produced three little Jama girls of his own. He was eager to show his little ones the beauty of Somali culture and the richness of its traditions.
“Growing up I remembered participating in my first Ramadan,” he says.
His father had sat him down after a bath and explained that Ramadan was tomorrow. As my father was nine-years-old, he was now old enough to participate. My grandfather explained the fasting process, telling my father when he could and couldn’t eat.
“I remembered looking up at him and asking, why can’t you eat?” my father recalls.
“Gently, he scooped me into his arms, looked deeply into my eyes and told me that we celebrated Ramadan to be thankful for what we have. We learn what it’s like for people who are not as fortunate as we are.”
Sadly, between a nine-to-five job and mortgage bills, Ramadan became a holiday my sisters and I observed only through holiday traditions.
In 1991, Somalia became involved in one of the worst ongoing civil wars of our time. Through the destabilization of a once-stable country and the take-over of rebel forces, my father watched on the television as the Somalia he loved collapsed.
“I had come back from my lunch break and happened to turn on the television I kept secretly in my office,” he says. “I was flipping through some channels and heard the word ‘Somalia’ and quickly switched back to the CBS station that was broadcasting it.”
Silently, he watched the live coverage of burning buildings, wounded soldiers, and dead civilians. Day in and day out he read articles about the death and destruction, listened to radio segments about the fall of the government and more live-coverage of a destroyed land. He has since watched the turmoil his beloved country has gone through for the past two decades.
“I find myself in disbelief most of the time,” he says as he shakes his head and throws away his newspaper.
“I have lost family members both to the afterlife and literally in the chaos that now consumes Hargesia. Many have fled the country and others have been killed.”
Those are relationships I will never get to experience, memories I will never get to hear about, and people I will never have the chance to love. Instead, I will forever read headlines calling my family members pirates, degenerates, and ruthless savages.
Although Somalia is still at war with itself, my father has tuned out the daily updates he used to cling to. No longer does he watch Katie Couric deliver the latest headlines on CBS’s Evening News or click on the “International” tab of CNN.com.
For years, I believed that my father was trying to erase the Somali from his blood. Instead, I have come to realize that the Somalia that birthed him from its rich soil and raised him under its burning sun is no longer his.
I run my fingers over the faded pictures that portray my father’s adolescence. I find myself tracing the outline of my grandmother’s face and—for a moment–I see myself in her. I see her smiling up at me and am saddened that she is someone I will never meet or never have a relationship with. Instead, the land of my people, Somalia, has taken her.
Somalia, My Beautiful Somalia
Ethos
May 19, 2011
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