Author: Samira Farah

Once upon a time in Xamar Weyne

Last November, during my trip back home to Somalia, my uncle took my dad and me on a stroll around Xamar Weyne, one of the oldest districts in Mogadishu. The historic and beautiful neighbourhood was hit hard by the civil war in the 1990s, and many buildings and homes were destroyed. My father grew up here, made his memories here.

On our ‘tour’, we stopped in the middle of a street market. I tried to make a note of exact locations but after a while the streets and buildings all became the same to me. My uncle pointed out my great aunt’s house which overlooks the ocean. She married an Italian soldier during colonial times and moved to Italy where she still lives. Writing that sounds so simplistic and almost funny – “colonial times” is a period so foreign to me I can’t even conceptualise it.

My father was squinting peculiarly at a building. He told me it used to be a cinema. His cinema. The cinema he spent his Friday nights in, where he hung out with friends after a day playing soccer on the beach. I looked curiously at the building which now contained just an ordinary shop. We stood there staring for what seemed like a lifetime, until I noticed that our behaviour was attracting the attention of local folk.

These streets, with their derelict and destroyed buildings, held no meaning for me but captured so much for my father. I was amazed at the squatters who had turned these shells of houses into homes. I wondered if they belonged to them, or if the original owners were in Europe, America and Australia, safe and protected? If they returned, where would these locals go?

Imagine staying in a city through thick and thin, through pain and love, through hate and joy – and then to have those who left come back and take your home from you.

With each street turn we took, my father’s memory returned to him. A hotel there. A restaurant there. A bank there. A friend there. A girlfriend there. A relative there. A fight there. A hug there.

My imagination is good, but not that good. I could not bring his stories to life in my head, I could not turn them into a marvelous romantic saga of childhood and young adulthood. So I did the only thing I could do – I took photos.

I was also very eager to go to the beach.

“What beach?” my uncle asked.
“Lido beach.”
“On a Thursday?”
“Do people not go to the beach on Thursdays, does the beach disappear on Thursdays?” I pressed.

I knew what the problem was. My uncle suffers from laziness. I do too. But I was adamant about this and began walking in the direction of the ocean.

I fell spectacularly when we arrived, my feet unable to find a proper hold as we climbed down the rocks. A random young man asked: “Well, what did you do that for?” Yes, because I like to fall deliberately. (When it comes to asking pointless questions, Somalis are king.)

I had no grand expectations about the ocean but it did not provide any disappointments either. The sand was white, whiter than I had expected. The water was a clear light blue. There was no light bulb moment for me. No sudden urge to cry. The universe was not explained to me as I stood. This was an ordinary beach with people doing ordinary things. It was busy and noisy. The beach stretched further than my eye could see. Boys played intense games of soccer while competing with each other to get their photos taken. Then they demanded I add them as Facebook friends and tag them in the pics.

After a dip in the water, we walked up to the beach restaurant for food. My uncle scolded me when the bill came. “We’re paying for the view! Enjoy the bloody view!” I told him.

The restaurant was quiet. The benefit of being an Australian is I get to enjoy opposite summers to the Northern Hemisphere, which means hardly any American/Canadian/European Somalis were around. On some days during my trip, it almost felt like I had the whole city to myself.

Even with the cracks and the bullet holes and the decay, there is no denying the beauty of the magnifient buildings and homes that once stood on those streets and overlooked the water. Magnificent Mogadishu stood for hundreds and hundreds of years. It faltered, but it did not collapse.

It is an insult to those Somalis who never left the city when the diasporans talk of Somalia as suddenly ‘rising’ – it is the locals that kept the heartbeat and bloodline of Mogadishu going these past decades.

The stories I am interested in are those between 1992 and 2010. The current dialogue among Somalis who left the country is all about what can the diaspora do, what can the diaspora bring, and so forth. I find myself tuning out these conversations.

Really, what is more important is what we can learn about the city from those who stayed.

Samira Farah is a freelance writer and events organiser based in Sydney, Australia. Visit her blog at brazzavillecreative.com

12 years ago

Returning to my roots in Balcad

Balcad is the hometown of my father, his father, his father’s father (you can see where I am going with this). It’s about an hour’s ride to Mogadishu depending on what kind of bullshit you have to encounter to get there on that particular day. My dad complained how back in the day the trip took only 30 minutes and provided a great source of daily entertainment, gossip and scandal. Balcad is a farming and agricultural town, where goats compete with humans for control of the road. Men and women wake up at the crack of dawn and spend hours sitting by the main road drinking copious amounts of tea and arguing about absolutely nothing. One of most powerful people in the town is the humble bus driver who we rely on for our movement in and out of Balcad.

I had previously only made quick visits to Balcad (the last time was in 2004-2005) but this time I was staying for a few weeks, in the same house my parents married in and my siblings were born in. There is something quite peculiar about sleeping in the room in which your parents promised to spend the rest of their lives with each other over two decades ago.

I arrived in Balcad in the heat, bothered by dust and sand clouds hitting me in the eye. From the moment I stepped out of the car, I could feel people’s eyes on me. Their stares followed me as I surveyed the main road, the shops, the women who all wore full jalabeebs or burkas. It was as if ‘outsider’ was printed in bold font on my forehead. Thankfully my first visit to Somalia in 2004 had already prepared me for this.

The stares were most intense on the bus rides from Balcad to Mogadishu. The bus never left on time. The driver would sit outside, leisurely drinking his tea, waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers. I’d be sitting in my seat, open to the various curious looks and questions by fellow passengers. It didn’t matter how I dressed, they could always identify me as the outsider. Sometimes they didn’t even ask me anything; they were content to sit and discuss me loudly. During my stay I managed to perfect a blank expression mingled with confusion. It usually saved me from further questioning.

I spent my days in Balcad watching Somali music videos and a lot of badly dubbed Bollywood films. One night the entire road seemed to be in my room: their electricity connection had failed them and the thought of missing their Turkish soap opera was unbearable. Friday soccer games would see half of the town trickle into the green grounds to watch various teams compete against each other. The animosity towards the Mogadishu teams was fantastic!

Some days my dad took me on walking tours, pointing out the ruins of his childhood. I could sense his bewilderment and confusion at times when buildings that used to stand large and proud now appeared before him bullet-ridden. Balcad felt more freeing than Mogadishu, with local residents staying outside till late at night. Residents walked around freely and generally the atmosphere was less anxious than it was during my previous visit.

On other days, my grandfather’s housemaid would chaperone me despite my loud and angry outbursts that I was perfectly capable of roaming around by myself. She was a decade younger than me and refused to leave my side while I explored Balcad. Young children would run and scream at the sight of my camera before cheekily returning and asking to have their photo taken. I’d often spend a good 20 minutes taking personal photographs for people.

In Balcad, my grandpa’s town, I was merely my grandpa’s blood. People referred to and introduced me by his name, wherever I went his reputation and presence followed. It was nice. Even though my grandfather is in his eighties, he still treks by foot to his farm each morning to check on his crops, his animals and to basically get away from it all. I did not know grandparents while growing up. My maternal grandfather died shortly before my arrival in Somalia years ago. My paternal grandmother died decades ago. I’m fully realising how limited my opportunities are to understand my grandparents and their stories. Time is definitely never on our side. Hopefully through the stories and photos of my visit, I will have something of them to hold on to.

This post is part of a series by Samira Farah about her recent visit to Somalia. She is a freelance writer and events organiser based in Sydney, Australia. Visit her blog at brazzavillecreative.com and connect with her on Twitter.

12 years ago

From Sydney to Somalia: My journey home

In November last year, I made my way to Dubai airport to catch the early African Express flight to Mogadishu. To my surprise, several other Somali-Australians who I knew at home in Sydney were already in line, waiting to board the same plane.

One woman had brought her two teenage sons with her. It would be their first visit home. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I recognised the fear and irritation etched on their young faces. I wore the exact same look seven years ago when I made my first trip to Mogadishu from Sydney. I lived in the city for a year, and was now returning for a short visit.

While waiting to board, I got into an argument with a random man who tried to trick me into checking in a mysterious box of ‘dates’ under my name to Mogadishu. I refused but he kept insisting. My friend yelled at him and he hurried off. I still wonder what exactly was in that box of alleged dates.

The group of women I was travelling with cheered as we stepped off the plane at Mogadishu International Airport. They did what homesick citizens would do: they posed for photos under the Somali flag. An airport official immediately began yelling at us to move on. It was the start of the first pointless argument out of a series of pointless arguments I had to witness in Somalia.

The sun was blistering hot on my skin and I was uncomfortable in my abaya. I never wore it back home, and it seemed ridiculous and restrictive in this heat. I awkwardly tried not to trip over it as I hurried into the arrival lounge. As I queued with the rest of the passengers, I was told I was in the wrong line. A weird feeling passed over me as I realised I was being directed to the foreigners’ queue. There is something humbling about arriving in your home country, the land of your birth, and having to wait in the foreign citizens’ line. Indeed, I was a foreigner who could not tell left from right in this city; a foreigner whisked away as a toddler only to return when it suited me. I left Somalia in the nineties during the outbreak of the civil war and emigrated to Australia with my parents and siblings.

I paid US$ 50 for my foreigner visa, and stepped outside, right into the arms of my uncle and father. I wrestled myself away from the eager taxi drivers offering to provide a lift and followed my family out of the airport. I stopped abruptly as an envoy of African Union tanks passed by, followed by a truck full of Somali soldiers. The African Union troops are in the country to bring peace and order after a long and brutal civil war. This envoy would become a frequent sight during my stay. As I looked at them in bewilderment, one of the Somali soldiers cheekily winked at me. My uncle was quick to reprimand him. I smiled, shook my head and made my way towards our car where my grandfather was waiting for me. I was home.

Street life in Mogadishu. (Samira Farah)

A food and hangout spot. (Samira Farah)

We snaked our way through rush hour traffic as we drove from Mogadishu to Balcad, my family’s home town that’s an hour’s drive away. The drive gave me a chance to get reacquainted with the city. Some things were exactly as I had left them: the noise, the smells, the goats and donkeys stopping traffic, the war-torn buildings brimming with people. But there were also new sights: soldiers in uniform, a myriad of construction projects competing with each other, people counting money in public, the Turkish flag waving proudly from various buildings, teenagers texting away on their smartphones. There were school children in their brightly coloured uniforms walking in groups to catch the bus home; elderly men sitting under trees for shade, quietly sipping on tea; the constant yelling of bus drivers trying to hustle passengers into their vans.

Mogadishu is a noisy city. It has to be. Everything in the city happens while the sun is up. You get a sense of frantic energy but at the same time nobody is in any real rush. The people here subscribe to the philosophy “whatever happens, happens”.

I noticed that every woman and even young girls were now wearing either the burka or jalabeeb (head-to-toe burka). I left Somalia after a one-year stay in Mogadishu in 2005, before the Islamic Court and before al-Shabab. In that time – which honestly feels only like months to me – it seemed like the bodies and behaviour of Somali women changed. The traditional baati (long dresses) were replaced with head-to-toe jalabeebs. I stared at the women wearing them. In turn they stared at me.

Women dressed in jalabeebs. (Samira Farah)

As we made our way out of Mogadishu, we stopped at a government-run checkpoint. I was quite familiar with militia-run checkpoints from my last visit, so this was a welcome change. Then I remembered that I was carrying a large amount of US dollars on me. I froze. As I got out of the car, I fumbled and quickly hid the money in a hole inside my handbag. I had no idea if my money would be taken but I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. The Somali female soldier went straight for my handbag and then my wallet. I stared at her blankly as she examined them and tried not to smile. She let me go.

This checkpoint manned by Somali and Ugandan soldiers became a daily ritual for me as I shuttled between Balcad and Mogadishu. The men were searched in the open while the women were privately body-searched by female soldiers. I started a curious relationship with a Somali female soldier who nicknamed me Camerista. Whenever she saw me coming, she would yell, “Camerista! My friend!”

Halfway between Mogadishu and Balcad, a group of soldiers stopped our car to catch a lift. I was taken aback but not completely surprised at their nerve to barge their way into our car. One of the soldiers tried to chat to me but my uncle sternly put a stop to it. “Don’t concern yourself with girls that are not concerned with you, how about you do the job you are paid to do!” It doesn’t matter if you have a knife or an AK-47, my uncle will put you in your place.

I chuckled, closed my eyes and took a nap. When I woke up, I was in Balcad, the home of my father, his father, and his father’s father.

This is the first of a series of posts by Samira Farah about her recent visit to Somalia. She is a freelance writer and events organiser based in Sydney, Australia. Visit her blog at brazzavillecreative.com