Abdiaziz Abdi Narrator

Ibrahim Hirsi Interviewer

August 31, 2014 Rochester, Minnesota

Abdiaziz Abdi -AA Ibrahim Hirsi -IH

IH: This is Ibrahim Hirsi recording for the Minnesota Historical Society Somali Oral History Project. I am interviewing Abdiaziz Abdi in Rochester. The date today is August 31, 2014. Abdiaziz, thanks for the opportunity to interview with me. My first question is, can you tell me about your early childhood years in Somalia?

AA: Thank you very much, Ibrahim Hirsi. I was born in Somalia, the capital, Mogadishu, in the year 1978. Basically, my childhood, as far as I could recall, I remember myself going to dugsi [Quran school]. I don’t know what they say in English. How do you say that?

IH: Yeah, dugsi is all right. Religious school.

AA: Religious school to learn and memorize Quran, given that I came from a religious background.

IH: And that was the first thing that families did before they even send to school, to kindergarten.

AA: Exactly. We had a system within our family.

IH: And that worked for you.

AA: Exactly. And it went like this. You should go to that religious school—I was, I think, seven or eight at the time—and then one needed to memorize the Quran before they do anything else. So that’s the route or the path that I did take. And when I was eleven, I memorized the Quran, and then the civil war started. I was eleven, I believe. Or twelve.

IH: Do you remember what were you doing that day that the civil war broke out?

AA: I do remember vividly, actually. I was in that religious school, as you know. We did go after the fardambe [recess].

IH: Break.

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AA: After the break. And it was eleven o’clock or twelve o’clock, I think. Or one o’clock, I don’t exactly know. I didn’t have a watch at the time.

IH: Right. So you go to the dugsi in the morning.

AA: In the morning.

IH: About six o’clock.

AA: Yeah, six o’clock, came back like ten to have breakfast and then went back. And then it was twelve, I believe, or one, going home and getting lunch, and then principally coming back in the afternoon. So I was going home—I was a very devious kid, I would say, when I was a child [chuckles]—so I was playing soccer in the middle, and I hear the bomb. Boom! And we were a bunch of kids. Everybody ran. Everybody went home. And that was the beginning, I believe.

IH: What was the first thing that came to your mind when you heard that bomb?

AA: I said, “Maybe it’s a tire,” because if you live in Mogadishu, it’s a norm, right? And then we saw people with guns, wearing robes. You know, soldiers, they’re not in a uniform. And then hiding. And pow, pow! Fire shots. And then I said, “This is not healthy.” We went home, and I think ten days after that we have to leave, because shelling started.

IH: You didn’t go anywhere for ten days?

AA: No, we stayed home. We did move from our house to another house because there’s some stable area. We used to live, at the time, in Howlwadaag District. So we went to Hodan District, a little bit calmer, because the war was not at that point at that place. And then after ten days, shelling was all over the place. And militia and the government soldiers had started fighting, and we have to flee from the capital. So I remember walking, first time, walking on that Maka al- Mukarram street—somebody remembers—and it’s women, children, old people, young, everybody walking like it’s doomsday.

IH: Where are they going to?

AA: They are going to the south, to Afgooye district. Where, I don’t know. Everybody’s walking. No cars, nothing. There are some cars, and some soldiers, but we were part of those people. I didn’t have a brother, because I’m the only child, but we lived with my uncle.

IH: So who was walking at that day? You were walking with…

AA: With some, many number of cousins of mine. So we went to Afgooye—not Afgooye, actually. If you know Lafoole?

IH: Which is sixteen miles away from Afgooye.

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AA: It’s thirty, twenty-five, twenty-eight miles, I believe, or thirty miles from Mogadishu.

IH: So you walked for thirty miles, and you were only eleven years old?

AA: Yep. And I remember sleeping three or four days under the trees. And that was actually the norm. Every tree has a family, some people you know from your dugsi, from the school, whatever.

IH: And how many would you estimate? How many families?

AA: That were walking or…

IH: Thirties or…

AA: About, I would say, two, three hundred, at least that are at the surrounding areas. And then we went to Afgooye. My uncle happened to have a wife who hails from Afgooye district, and then we went to live with their family or her family. We stayed there, I think, a month, and then the war stopped. Then we came back.

IH: Okay, so you went back to…

AA: To Mogadishu, to our house, resumed our life, went back to the dugsi.

IH: And how was life different?

AA: It was different, because when we were leaving, houses were intact. I remember Maka al- Mukarram, and Shaleemo or Cinema Somalia we called that, or Kilometer Four—buildings around these areas were intact. But when we came back, destruction and damage was complete.

IH: Major institutions are gone.

AA: Exactly. And you will see, get men roaming around, gunshots all the time. And it was a chaos when we came back, and we couldn’t feel the sense of normalcy that we used to or the stability, whatever. So we started out life back, and we went back. I went back to that religious school back. And I think it was a year later, another war started within the USC [United Somali Congress] militia. I would say it was worse than that, because some people that I knew were killed. Yeah. Before, I didn’t know anybody, but now people I know. People I did know.

IH: And that was a clan killing another one.

AA: Exactly. And death—I remember seeing people killed in front of me. Not one, not two, not three—and it became part of the life. “Oh, that guy, yeah, get him.” Shelling was also part of the daily life. My mother was wounded in that. I lost two of my cousins because of that. They died. So it was very, very painful.

IH: And do you know the reason why they’re killed? I mean, is there specific reasons?

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AA: One, he was older than me, one of the cousins was older than me, about two or three years, I believe. He was a guy, I would call him now—introspective—I will call him now a psychopath, because he loved war and destruction. That was his nature. And I think he was sick, because always he was in fight. And he was someone who thrives in the violence. So always his father used to tell him, “Don’t leave.” And he was, at the time, I believe, fourteen, fifteen. He used to sneak out and go with the militia guys and, you know how they… And we were told he died, but still now we don’t know. But he was in a war zone, and he never came back.

IH: But also there were people who were not part of this violence, but got killed because they had money, or because they are well known in the community, or maybe because they are doing good things in the community and there are people who don’t want them to do that.

AA: Actually, I don’t know. I don’t even know that. I was eleven, so my formative intelligence—if you know what I’m talking about—I don’t think gives me the opportunity to evaluate or analyze who was doing. But I remember people get killed. I didn’t know why. And I remember, yeah, they happen to belong to that tribe or that tribe, and that was basically it. I couldn’t have gone beyond and, “Oh, they were good, they were doing something for the community, they had money.” I didn’t know what was going on.

IH: And you were a child then. I mean, what did you do for fun? Because everything…

AA: All right! I tell you what I did for fun. I was what Somalis call fulay [coward]. Very coward. And in evolutionary terms, that’s good, that’s why I survived, I believe. [chuckles] Yeah, I was fulay. So I used to imitate having a gun, but the real gun—oooh, I was so afraid of it. [both chuckle] So I remember visualizing myself, and actually that guy who was killed, that cousin, was my role model. I couldn’t do what he did, but I idolized him. I said, “Oh, yeah, that guy must be brave. Yeah, he did go, and can fight, and fire a gun.” All that. “He’s a hero!” That’s how I conceptualized things, because if you’re young and everybody’s talking about, you know, “Yeah, I’m…” So I remember doing that. And maybe most of you are younger than me, but I remember at that time in 1992 and ’93, in Mogadishu, at least the part we lived, the play, the actual play that was so prevalent among the youth and people in my age was fight. We used to divide among ourselves as teams, call ourselves names like the USC, whatever, and then fight with whatever—I don’t know what you call that—but stoning each other. So it was a gang. Violence was the norm. And to play, if you need to have fun, you have to join a team and you need to be part of that.

IH: Imitating the militia.

AA: Imitating what is going on. So we didn’t have soccer as I remember, because nobody enjoyed. We didn’t have TVs or cinemas, because destruction was everywhere. There was no electricity, nothing. So killing or imitating to kill was how I, at least, as a child spent my… Yeah.

IH: Right. Tell me about, so did you go to school then?

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AA: It was 1993, ’94 then. Then we had to leave Mogadishu, actually, after the second war. The militia, that people that started killing each other…

IH: And that was 19…

AA: Nineteen ninety-two. We went back to Afgooye, same place, and then stayed there and came back. And then I believe when I came back, I went to school, 1993 first time, and that school is called Mujamma Umm al-Qura. That’s where I met Abdi Aynte, by the way.

IH: And Abdi Aynte is, for those who don’t know, is a Somali journalist from the Twin Cities area.

AA: So that school is called Mujamma Umm al-Qura. That was a school run by Somalis, but teachers were Egyptians, from Egypt. It was 1993. So I stayed in that school about three, four years, or five, and then life became very, very hard, at least for me. And, as I told you, I was the only child of my mother. And my father—or that’s how the talk went—belonged to the wrong tribe, maybe the people being kicked out. Finally I have to leave, because I couldn’t… Because I was seventeen or eighteen, I believe, and then…

IH: You feared for your life.

AA: Exactly. Then there were some vendetta people, and my father was an official in the army as well. So I have to flee. My mother actually collected some money, and I had a sister as well in Switzerland who helped me. So I went to Egypt. I was seventeen, I believe. I was in middle school when I was going to Egypt. And then I stayed in Egypt, went to high school—Azhar high school, they call it—and then went to university there.

IH: So how did you go to Egypt? Was it through a scholarship?

AA: No. It was a visa. I had to purchase a visa as a visitor, and when I went there they have a United Nations [UN] center there. Or the other way that you can do—and that’s how I did—is you go there as a visitor, and then you could change your status as a student. And I think two, three years later I went to the UN. The beginning it was visa as a visitor, and then the status was changed as a student. That’s where I started high school.

IH: Azhar high school. And it was named after a prestigious university in Egypt.

AA: Exactly. It is part. The education system in Egypt is two. Azhar education and non-Azhar education. Azhar education, they had their own elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. If you don’t graduate from Azhar high school, you cannot go to Azhar University. So they have their own curriculum, and the national system is totally different. If you go to a normal, national-run government high school, even private school, you could go to Cairo University or to Ain Shams University.

IH: And for those who don’t know, Azhar is like the Harvard in the Middle East.

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AA: Exactly.

IH: So did you pay for your education in Egypt?

AA: No, I didn’t. In Egypt—I don’t know now—but at the time, given that we Somalis are part of the Arab Union or Arab League, whatever, if you are part of that Arab League, you have free tuition, you don’t need to pay. Even you could go to medical school, and you don’t need to pay. An education is free if you are Egyptian or an Arab.

IH: And Somalis are considered Arabs.

AA: Exactly, yeah, because we are in the Arab League. So education is free, and you can go.

IH: And for how long did you live in Egypt?

AA: I lived about ten years, I would say.

IH: And how was life in Egypt different than life in Mogadishu?

AA: It was better.

IH: Okay. And how was the transition like?

AA: It was difficult, but in comparison or comparatively, I would say it was much easier to me, given that I spoke Arabic when I was twelve or thirteen, given that Egyptian teachers trained me. So when I came to Egypt, I didn’t feel that I’m an outsider.

IH: Oh, so when you attended school in Somalia, high school and middle school and elementary school, the subjects were in…

AA: No, no, I didn’t attend elementary school, because if you finish Quran, you start from middle school. I think that’s Azhar system, whatever. I didn’t even go to elementary. Middle school and then high school.

IH: Your teachers were Egyptian?

AA: Egyptians, yeah.

IH: Okay. So that helped you out.

AA: A lot, because when I came to Egypt, “Yeah, this is the place.” Even places, streets I knew, because this is the curriculum.

IH: You read about it when you were…

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AA: I read about it, and I had teachers, more than three, four years, talking to them all the time and teaching me. So I didn’t feel that. But I felt I am away from home. Weather was so difficult, because first time seeing cold weather. And if you are from that part of the world, Somalia, it was very chilly. And I didn’t have my mother with me, and no other family. I didn’t know anyone else. It was very difficult, but in comparison to other people that I know, mine was easier, I would say.

IH: So tell me about your journey. What happened after Egypt? Did you come to the USA right away or…

AA: No, actually, it took me three or four years to contact with the United Nations. I didn’t know about it, and then I didn’t want. Because my thought at the time was getting a good education at Azhar, prestigious school, and then one day Somalia will be fine and you will be somebody in there. What happened, though, is that I started school—and I used to laugh. Azhar, they have different departments. Although education, as I said, is free, if you want to learn something that they call secular within Azhar, you have to have a scholarship within. So you have to apply for that scholarship. Otherwise you don’t need to apply for the scholarship. By default you will get the education. But if you want to learn something that’s secular—what I mean secular is non-religious. It’s like if you are not learning the Quran or Sharia Islamiah, Islamic law. If you are not learning that. If you are learning, for example, journalism, or philosophy, or medical, or medicine, or biology, you have to have a scholarship.

IH: You have to pay for that.

AA: No, you don’t need to pay. You have to have a scholarship. And that scholarship is most likely, ninety percent of the time, you will be rendered or you will be granted. But there is a ten percent that you might lose or you might not get it.

IH: And what causes that?

AA: I have no idea. Because it’s Azhar—you are from another country, for example, from Somalia, Azhar, they have free education when it comes to religion. Get religion, and you don’t even need to apply for a scholarship. Attend the class, do your assignments, and get your degree after you are done—even your PhD in Islamic law. But if you want something that’s not under the religious curriculum, like journalism or English literature—that’s the subject that I loved— you have to apply for the scholarship or you need to pay. Ninety percent of the people will get, but there are ten percent that may not. And I was that ten percent. I applied, I was rejected. I was told, “You need to go to the Islamic law.” And I applied again, and I couldn’t get it. And I said, “I don’t need to…” And the school accepted me and everything, and classes started in English literature.

And I stayed there a year or two. Every year there’s an invoice coming to you. “You have to pay or…” They gave me a chance for two years and I didn’t pay, and then they told me they’d hold everything, the grades and everything. And they said, “No, we cannot. You have to…” And then I went to the UN. That’s when I heard about the UN, and I told them, “This is the university that I attend. I was told that you give assistance to refugees like me. I’m from Somalia, I have nobody

7 here. You either pay this for me or you just help me another way.” And I remember a lady who was working there told me, “Do you want to go to the USA?” And I said, “Yes.” [chuckles] It was 2004, I believe, or 2003.

IH: She asked you whether you wanted to go to the USA?

AA: Yeah. She said, “We don’t need to pay,” because it was three or four thousand pounds a year. That’s expensive.

IH: It’s very expensive.

AA: Exactly. Three or four thousand sterlings or pounds—English pounds, not the Egyptian one. It’s more than, higher than the dollar. And then she told me, “How about if you go to the USA, or we have a German university in there, an American university.” And I said, “America? Can I get America? Yes, let me go to America.” And then I called my family. And then there is a process, as you all know now. It’s IOM [International Organization for Migration], and this, and this, and security. And finally, in 2006 I came to the USA.

IH: How long did that take you? I mean, the process of coming.

AA: It started in 2003, up to 2006. It was a very long process. Yeah.

IH: Yeah. So you came here in 2006.

AA: Exactly, to Rochester. Exactly, because I had a brother. He died, he passed away a year ago.

IH: Wow. So, then, how was life different than the one in Egypt, in Rochester?

AA: Actually, when I came, this time much easier. I had a family, a house. My brother had a big house here, and he was a truck driver. He was living large at the time, and he welcomed me, and welcomed me in his house. And he had children. They are not in my age. Younger, but the difference was not that big. It was good. After two months of staying here in Rochester, I got a job at the public—what do you call—Rochester Public Schools, right? Yeah, Century High School.

IH: What did you do there?

AA: They gave me a title, I believe tutor or study hall, whatever. People that helped students with their homework, and then study hall teacher. I was not a teacher, but there was a teacher. I have to help that teacher. So in study hall. Para [paraprofessional]. Yep, you got it. I forgot. Para.

IH: Yeah, that’s cool. How long did you do that?

AA: I stayed there a year. I didn’t like it, because teaching was not in my heart. [chuckles] I’m sorry, Ahmed. I didn’t like it. They loved me. And they even told me to go to school and get a teaching-whatever, because they had some programs. I don’t know if they have it now. But they

8 told me, because they needed some diversity at the school at the time. And I said, “Oh no, I don’t want.” Because dealing with kids to me is very hectic. I didn’t like it. So I left. Given that I came from Egypt with some English literature background, but no transcript because I didn’t pay… [chuckles]

IH: Right.

AA: I went to RCTC [Rochester Community and Technical College], a community college that we have here.

IH: RCTC?

AA: RCTC. We call it Rochester Technical, right? Community college? Technical college, something like that. And I told them, “Hey, I’m from Egypt. This is my high school degree. I have two, three years university, but I have nothing to prove.”

IH: Right. So what did they tell you?

AA: Take the placement test. I did take it, and they told me, “Oh, yeah, you’re at college level.” I didn’t know at the time what college level meant, because Egypt is totally different. You finish high school, you go to the university, and you start the subject that you specialize in. So, English literature, I don’t need to worry about math or biology.

IH: All the generals that you have to take here.

AA: Poetry, and Shakespeare, and I have to read Hamilton and whatever. But here there is all the general education. I said, “What! College algebra! My God! Biology! English 11?” Eleven, I don’t even remember that. All right. I said, “Bring it on. Let’s do it.” So I finished the community college and went to Winona [State University].

IH: When did you graduate?

AA: I actually graduated in, I believe, 2012.

IH: And then you went to where?

AA: I stopped a little bit, and then I went to graduate school. Same school. I didn’t go anywhere else.

IH: Are you still in graduate school right now?

AA: Yeah.

IH: And what are you doing?

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AA: I’m doing clinical counseling in psychology. It’s a master level, but hopefully this is the last. I’m doing the last term this fall. I already started. Something great will be. But given that this field is very competitive and you need to have a PhD in it, I did some applications. One of them is at your prestigious university, U of M [University of Minnesota]. I don’t know if they will accept me, but I applied. And if that didn’t work, we have Saint Mary’s [University]. They have a doctor of psychology program.

IH: How did you develop this interest in doing this major? Because you were an English literature guy and all of a sudden you’re in psychology.

AA: I will think that you will ask me this. Do you know what? This is a theory that I have, and I wish one day I could empirically verify it—or quantify it, if you like. I believe a child like me, or a person like me, or an individual like me, like you, like Musse, like Ahmed, who happen to hail from a country like Somalia, civil war and stuff, I believe we have a disease called a psychological problem. I believe I do have it, and I believe a large segment of our community here in this city, in this state, have it. For one, I have ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder]. I never knew I did, but now I have it. I have it! And I know many people who have. Because I talk a lot, I don’t pay attention to detail—I know I have it. I don’t know if it’s subclinical, but I didn’t go to the shrink yet. [chuckles] I’m trying to be my shrink or my psychologist. I also think, and I believe, that ADHD is not specific to me because I have the symptoms, the features. If I look at my people, the community, I’ll say, “Oh my God. This guy has it.” If I see five people or ten people in our community, at least five of them, my hunch, at least, tells me that they have it. And majority of them are not even aware.

I was talking to somebody last night. He was cutting my hair, and he was very smart. I used to tutor him at Century High School, and he’s a very talented guy. We were talking, and I asked him, “Hey, why didn’t you finish your school?” Because he went to the University of Minnesota and he dropped. And he is always doing something. I told him, “Hey, why you’re not sticking?” And he asked me, “Yeah, I have another plan.” You know that. And I asked him, “Do you have ADHD?” And he laughed, “Who told you?” And I say, “Because I have it.” [chuckles] Yeah. You know, restless. He told me, “I do have it.” Even he told me, “My psychologist told me, but I didn’t want to take the medication.” And I said, “Hey, you need it.” And he was so open, and he told me, “I cannot even finish a movie from A to Z. You know, I can’t. I cannot finish a book from A to Z.” And that’s a big thing. And that’s what I believe. I do happen to have it. But I force myself. Maybe mine is subclinical. I don’t know. Because I don’t like to follow instructions. Instructions to me are very cumbersome. Finishing a movie is not easy for me, even if I love it. I love reading, and I do read. That’s why I have glasses. But something in me tells me, “Oh yeah, you need to skip this, you need to skip this.”

So the reason I did go—back to your question—is we have a lot of diseases, and psychology is not well known, at least within our community. It’s a voodoo, or a magic, or something, or supernatural. I was in Somalia last year, and one of my uncles asked me, “What are you learning?” And I told him, “Psychology.” And he said, “Are you becoming saaxir [magician]?” [chuckles] Magician or whatever. So I said, “Maybe.” And we need it. Psychology is a real science, and people who do have those symptoms—ADHD, schizophrenia—it’s a biological basis.

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IH: And a lot of people in the community don’t accept even if they have it.

AA: They do not. They even don’t believe it. And the second thing I believe is that PTSD [Post- traumatic Stress Disorder] from the war sometimes comes to me. But it’s not often, it’s not more often. Because if you’ve been in a place that killing is the norm, I believe, it’s very difficult. So the reason I did go to this field from English literature to psychology—I said, “Hey, at least treat yourself.” Know what defects that you have, and then try to tell someone close to you, “Oh, yeah, you have these defects,” and then we can deal with it. If you have diabetes and you become an endocrinologist, I believe you can be more familiar. You will know mechanisms and the underlying features that are accounting for the disease. So it’s very personal and communal, you would say. It’s more personal because I want to know who I am, what abnormalities do I have, although I believe everybody happens to have some abnormalities. We call them anomalies, something abnormal. But it’s a continuum. It’s that graph. If you are the higher end, oh, you need… But if you are… So it’s very personal.

IH: And you mentioned that you went back to Somalia. When was that and what was the reason?

AA: Actually, last year. I have a mother there, so I was visiting her and some other family.

IH: How was life going back there? I mean, what has changed? What has stayed the same?

AA: A lot. A lot, I would say. For starters, people that I grew with, I only saw one or two.

IH: What happened to the rest?

AA: Either died, immigrated and went to another country. So I think I did see one or two. That’s my surrounding and the people that I knew, the neighborhood that I came from. Second thing, when I was living in Somalia, people were more nicer, I would say—more moral. They were killing, but people were more, I would say, nice and more kind and there was some empathy. I went back now, everybody sees you as a material, as a commodity. And immorality. You go to a doctor—I went to a doctor because I got sick and I had some fever. I don’t know, maybe the weather, I couldn’t handle it although I’m from there. And I went to a doctor and he tells me, “Yeah, you have malaria.” And I have medication that are preventing malaria, and he tells me, “You have malaria.” And I say, “How do you know?” And he said, “You don’t need to ask me.” And I said, “Show me the mechanisms, show me my lab.” And he said, “Make it out.” And I went to another one, and he said, “No, you have typhoid.” What? And I said, “All right.” And he prescribed medication. I take the medication. I don’t want to take it, and I went to a pharmacist. He was very kind—the only one. And he said, “Where are you from?” And I told him, “I’m from the US.” And he said, “What symptoms you have?” And I told him, and he said, “Yeah, you have nothing. It’s the weather change. You are from a very cold place. And this crap, toss it.” And I asked him, “How do they do the medicine here?” And he said, “The majority of the people here are not even doctors.” I said, “What?” He said, “They are not even doctors. They even have no idea in health discipline.” No nurse—nothing. Not medical—nothing. They have no background in medicine or in health.

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IH: They just opened…

AA: And the second thing that he told me is that this medicine, he says, the power, he says, it’s like a placebo. He was highly educated. He said, “It’s like a placebo. What they do in you, it’s like a placebo.” That’s the word he used. He said, “There’s no effective agent in this medicine. It’s from India.” Because if you need an aspirin, you need that real aspirin, or if you need penicillin, you need that antibiotic to be compacted and inside that medicine. He tells me given that, you tell the guy, “Make it cassaan [red], make it white, and put some little.” But that’s why the Tylenol that I had, I gave it to my mother and uncle, and they tell me, “Oh, this is powerful!” Right away they feel fine, and I said, “You have to…” They take five, we take five and nothing happens. Back then, to my humble opinion—I could be wrong, because I was young and naïve, I don’t know—but maybe people were more moral than they are now. Because there is no medication, doctors are not doctors, medicine is not medicine. Everybody is trying to take advantage of you.

IH: Is that because you’re from the USA?

AA: Not necessarily. You are Ibrahim, I meet you. I don’t see you as Ibrahim, as a human being, as a very kind person. No—as a medium, as a money-making machine, something that I can get advantage of. And there is no morality. If I don’t get that, I might kill you or kidnap you or do whatever I want, as far I think I could get some material plunder. If I know I could kidnap you and get money, I will do it. So it’s no moral remorse. At the time, I believe, when I was young and in there, I think there was some code. Some older people that tell people what’s right, what’s wrong. I didn’t even hear people talking about right and wrong. Even the talk, the discourse was more how to get money. “You know that guy?” “Yeah.” “He is rich! He’s worth like two million dollars now.” “Oh my God, where did he get it?” “Maybe from…” Yeah! People say, “Wow, that’s good.” And I can remember when I was growing up, “Oh, that guy is a thief, because that car—he looted it.” Now nobody talks about looting. People are talking about, “Oh, that guy is worth that.” And if you ask him the origin of the money? No, no, you don’t need to worry about it. So I think it’s a cultural shift. So it’s totally different. That’s my reading. I could be wrong, but that’s how I read it. That’s how I read it.

IH: And you stayed there for how many…

AA: Two months. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because beginning I was thinking Somalia was Somalia. I have some nostalgia. And the second thing that I did see there, that still is a puzzle to me is that Arabization of Somali culture. People are becoming more Arabs than they are Somalis. Everywhere that you go there are Arab signs, an Arabic sign. No singing now, you don’t hear music. Everybody is garbed in jilbab [overgarment worn by some Muslim women]. I said, “Oh my God, this is not…” My own sister, she was a college student or a medical student at the time when the war started, say her second year. She is now… And I asked her, “You were more liberated and highly educated and intelligent.” I said, “Everybody does it.” So a lot of— more radicalism, I would even say, is in there. And I’d been in Mogadishu only, and to Nairobi. And I remember being in Nairobi. The thing that also baffled me is that I was in an internet cafe, and the muadin [person who calls Muslims to prayer] did the adaan [call to prayer].

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IH: A muadin is somebody who calls people for prayers.

AA: Yep. And the guy tells me, “Yeah, I will lock the shop or everything. You will now go to the masjid [mosque], mosque.” And I said—you know, this is a person, it… It’s not a Muslim country. You are in Nairobi. And he says, “You need to come with me to the mosque.” And I said, “What? How about if I don’t pray?” And he said, “You should.” This type of Taliban. So there is a cultural… Back then, I remember, people didn’t care if you pray or you don’t pray. I think there’s a change, a lot of change.

IH: Now, let’s come back to Rochester. How many people do we have? How many Somalis?

AA: I don’t know the number. But a friend of mine, a good doctor, Dr. Abdirashid Shire, was at Mayo Clinic. He was in hepatology, a hepatologist, and a researcher. He told me, and he was doing about five thousand to seven thousand. That’s the data, according to him.

IH: About five to seven thousand people.

AA: About five to seven thousand, yeah.

IH: And do you feel like the Somali community is growing now, here?

AA: I do, I do, because the birthrate among our community is higher in comparison to other people, I believe. Three or four or five, I think, is the average.

IH: And what are the challenges that the Somali community here in Rochester is facing, do you think?

AA: Many challenges, I would say. One is culture. I would call it identity crisis. Especially for the young generation, people in their thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and even younger. Because you or we are from a culture… Are we on time?

IH: Yeah, we’re good for time.

AA: Yeah, we are from a culture that is very conservative, I would say. Predominantly Muslim nation, or that’s how we’d been called at the time. And in terms of modernity, I would say we are very, very underdeveloped, right? I don’t think I, for one, didn’t have a TV set in our house up to 1994 or ’95, I believe. Telephone came later. We didn’t have it. Some people could, but it was very expensive. The normal, average guy didn’t have access to it. You come here, that’s also modernity. Third thing I would say is, a country that’s at war, that violence and killing is part of the daily life, no law and order. You come here, shifted from that environment to here, to the USA. Everybody is different in terms of, to begin with, religion. They’re Christian or some people are atheist or even they don’t believe religion or whatever. There’s no conservatism as we observe. And then also second thing is that modernity. Highly advanced—big cars, big clothes, TVs, smart phones, telephones, whoo—you name it. I would say from tenth century to twenty- first century. Ten centuries apart. So that child, that person, what he or she would feel? She would be challenged, right? And the first thing that comes to mind is, “Who am I?” And then

13 you’re told, “You’re an American. You have the citizenship, and, yeah, you’re an American.” In the house your family or whatever are telling you, “Yeah, you’re a Muslim, and plus you are from clan hebel [clan so and so].” You know, from tribe… Traditional.

IH: The people live in…

AA: Yeah, it was good. Tribalism is not bad, as I see. It was a good medium back then, when we were living in the nomad because that was the only way that you could save yourself. But now you don’t need it. So it was functional then, but it’s dysfunctional now.

So how the identity crisis kicks in is this thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen year old— who is he, or who is she? Is she a Muslim? I have a child, and she tells me all the time—I do have it, it’s a classical example. I have a six year old, always she tells me, yeah, she is not Muslim, so she doesn’t relate to me. I don’t remember saying she’s not Muslim. She doesn’t relate to me when I was six or even ten or eleven. I don’t remember saying that. I was not in that context, in that environment, in that setting. And then when she says that, she’s forming her identity. Them and me, right? It’s a discourse. I’m not them, they are not me. And then she grows up, and then you will see… One day she asked me, “Why do we have hijab [headscarf worn by some Muslim women] and they don’t? Why do they eat pork and I can’t?” I didn’t have to ask that question when I was in her age. What should I tell her? I may tell her, “You are a Muslim.” But then, “Why am I a Muslim? And how I become Muslim? And what it means to be a Muslim?” It is very difficult. And when she reaches what we call in psychology “formentation”—[Jean] Piaget’s term for forming conceptualization, and understanding abstracts, and understanding the world as it is—at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, the child starts asking, “Who am I?” If that child doesn’t know who he or she is, that lingers for a lifetime.

And I remember reading an article three or four days ago with a Somali child. She is twenty, and she is asking—I cried when I read it—she said, “Who am I?” And I said, “Oh my God.” She is a college student, she is in Canada, she lives in Canada. She did write in a Canadian newspaper, very prolific and talented in writing, and she asks, “Who am I?” That’s the title. I hope some of you will read. I cried. She said, “I don’t know who am I.” She said, “I was born in Canada. Canadians don’t think I’m Canadian. I went to Somalia…” She said, “I went to Nairobi with my father. My people told me, ‘You are an American or Canadian.’ Some people tell me I am a Muslim. I went to Egypt, and people didn’t take me as a Muslim. So I don’t know who am I.” Finally, she said, “I am a person and I’m a human being and I have no country, no identity, nothing. But that gives me the opportunity to objectively analyze people as I see them.” And that’s something in our community. I cried. So that identity crisis. We hear, “Somali students are failing schools. Ahh!” To my humble opinion, that, to larger extent could be explained by identity crisis. Because this child, he or she doesn’t know who is she.

Second thing—and that’s the reason also I want to be a psychologist and get a PhD in it, and I will tell you why. Majority of the Somalis think, our children think of us—I don’t know if you’d talk to them, Deq [Ahmed] probably knows—they think of us, the older generation, as we are stupid. Because we don’t have what I call dazzling titles—doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists. We don’t have it. I even don’t know if we have a licensed teacher in this city, apart of

14 this brother. I don’t know. I think. I could be wrong, but that’s my hunch. You correct me if I am, but I think. Five, six thousand people—no teacher?

Deq Ahmed: We have a handful and that’s it.

AA: Exactly. I even don’t know, I don’t know. You and who else? I don’t even know. In this city.

Deq Ahmed: In Rochester there are four. Including me, there’s five.

AA: Four, five? That’s good. That’s good. The second thing that I know. We have no doctors, except Dr. Abdirashid [Shire], Rahma [Warsame], and Abdi Jama. Who else we have? Three. Five, six, seven thousand.

IH: That could mean we’re new to this…

AA: No! Five, seven thousand? And we’ve been here since 1993? Yeah, we are new, I understand it. But do we know that we are missing? Are we looking? I told, I went to a masjid one day. They told me to do a lecture, and I think they kicked me out after that, afterwards. I told them, “Hey, we don’t need a lecture about prayer. We need to send our children to Harvard, to Yale. We need to have doctors, lawyers, and teachers. If we don’t have it, no problem. Let us plan now.”

IH: Is the community working on it?

AA: No. As for as I know, no. Brother Deq knows more than I do, and last time I checked with him, he was not optimistic. He was not optimistic, so I don’t know. He’s more activist than I am, and I don’t think he was optimistic. He didn’t give me a bright side of the story, so I don’t believe. So I said, “Do what you can and at least get two or three people and tell them, ‘Hey, I came here to this country, very old. I went to a very normal, average university. You can go to Harvard! Get the GED [General Education Development].”’ I remember this story. I remember I met a very talented gentleman. He was in his eighteens at the time, he was a senior high school. It was 2010, I believe. He tells me, “Yeah, I’m finishing school and whatever, and this is my last year.” And I thought, “Okay, what plans you have?” Are we within the time?

IH: No, you’re good, you’re good.

AA: Okay. I asked him, “Do you have plans?” And he says, “Yes! I want to be a medical doctor.” Very nice. You want to be medical doctors, right? I don’t know. Yeah, very ambitious culture that we belong to, that’s what I believe.

IH: And that’s true for a lot of immigrant communities.

AA: I don’t know. All I know is our community. Yeah, a medical doctor. All right! “Are you ready, though?” Because becoming a medical doctor, everybody’s not a medical doctor. And he tells me, “Yeah, I am, because I have a good GPA [grade-point average].” And I said, “What?”

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And he says, “Three-point-eight,” or something. That’s very good! I did some calculation in my head, I said, “Three-point-eight? You’re a diversity. Hm. You have some extracurricular activities?” And he tells me, “Yeah, I’m doing some community…” I said, “Okay. So where you want to go?” Because the school also plays a role. And he tells me, “Yeah, probably RCTC.” And I said, “What? Technical college?” And he said, “Yes.” And I said, “But don’t you think that you are above average?” Because three-point-eight, he’s close to four, right? Plus this diversity thing. “Do you know this, plus the extracurricular that you have, could take you to Harvard. Even a scholarship.” And he says, “That’s impossible, that’s out of my league.” And I said, “Did you try?” And he said, “I never felt.” And I said, “Are you ready?” And he said, “Yes.” And I don’t know anything, but, let us do it—heck of it—let us do it!

I was lucky. I had an email, a Somali guy, who was doing post-doctorate at Harvard at the time. He is in Saudi Arabia now. We did know each other through the email. He wrote an article in somewhere, and I emailed him, and we exchanged several emails. He was a very nice guy. He lived at Boston at the time, and he was doing some post-doctorate. I think he got his PhD from Pakistan, he told me. And then he was doing a post-doctorate in geology at Harvard University. And I emailed that guy, and I cc’ed this gentleman. I tell him, “Hey, you see this guy? He’s a Somali like you. He’s about thirty-five, the PhD guy. Let us email him and see what it takes to get enrolled to Harvard, because this guy’s an insider.” And he tells me, “All right,” and I emailed the guy. And right away, two days later, an email comes back from that guy, and, “Brother, thank you, I really love to do it. Is the brother ready?” “Yes.” “Let him come this summer. He will stay in my home. And I will give him a tour, and we will talk the logistics, and most likely he will get it.” The mother of the child comes to me, screaming at me, “Do you want my son to go to Boston?” And I said, “He’s going to Harvard.” She said, “Forget it.” I said, “What? If your son goes to Harvard, do you know what it means?” She said, “He will go to the University of Minnesota.” And I said, “Oh my God. This is Harvard that we’re talking about!”

IH: That shows that our parents don’t really understand.

AA: And the thing is that I see the guy three years later. Same guy. He went to the University of Minnesota—not even the real one, but University of Minnesota, we have a nursing program here. They don’t have the whole biology thing, you cannot even transfer it. He tells me that. It’s something weird, it’s Mayo-related. And he tells me he was here three years, and his transcript is not even transferrable to the real University of Minnesota, and now he is going to RCTC. And I said, “Oh my God.” And he tells me his GPA is like two-something. Oh my God. I cried. I said, “What!” I said, “You know what?” I told him, “Your mother failed you, and I don’t think you will finish school.” I could be wrong, but I told him because how he’s frustrated. For three-point- eight to two. And you know. It’s very frustrating. And three years, and he said, “I don’t even understand organic chemistry. Statistics is so difficult. Would you tutor me?” And I said, “No, I have no time for you, because you are a failure.” And I said, “Why didn’t you say no to your mother? Why didn’t you even leave?”

IH: One last question.

AA: Okay. Go ahead, sorry.

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IH: What do you think of Somalis in Minnesota, in general? Are we in on the right direction? Are we doing well or…

AA: I think this debate or this talk that was there at the time, we did have it with a very brilliant, very, very smart, and one of the best, I would say, among our Somali community here—and I wish you could even interview him if you didn’t—Ahmed Samatar, Professor Ahmed Samatar. Whoo—he is God. If there is a human god, he would be one. Yeah. He is very great. We did ask him that question, and that was there. And I will reply as he said because I loved it. And he even wrote an article about it.

He said that Somali community here in Minnesota, we are not doing great. We are below the average. And I agree with him one hundred percent. He added, “But we can do better if we want.” And we asked him, specifically, if we want to succeed—because, as you said, we are new to this country. And he said that’s crap. He said that doesn’t mean anything. That excuses it. He said if we want to excel and do something and thrive in this community, we need to follow the Jewish model. Some people might hate it or what, but he said—and he even wrote it in one of his Bildhaan [journal of Somali studies] articles—he said that we need to follow the Jewish model. And someone could refer to it and read it. And we said, “What do you mean by that?” And he said that we have some affinity or similarity. There are some similarity between us and the Jewish community. One, he said, in their history, they were nomads as us, killing each other, as tribes. I don’t know if you know, but the Jewish people are from twelve or eleven tribes, in the back then. Second, they’ve been kicked out of their land by foreign forces, because their place some foreign forces found them very strategic, like the Romans and then later Arabs and whatever you call them—Islamic or whatever. But some people found their place and their area, Palestine and Jerusalem in the area, very strategic. We’ve been kicked out. And they’ve been kicked out from Egypt, as you also know. So they were people on the go or in limbo, as they use, for thousands of years. They claim three thousand. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what they say.

We’re similar to them. Why? Because we are Somalis. One, because we are tribes, as we said. And second, our country, or the place that we live, is coveted by foreign countries. Ethiopia is one. Kenya is one. Maybe America is coveted and wants. I don’t know. Our area, before people didn’t think that was as important as it is now. But now it is very important. Why do you have African troops in there? Why do you think you have millions and millions of dollars going to Somalia? Why do you have the United Nation monitoring group writing about corruption? Why didn’t they write that a long time ago? I don’t remember in 1993, ’94 people talking about. I remember Restoring Hope and the humanitarian, but now it’s totally different. We have al- Shabaab, we have radicalism, what I don’t even know. But in my humble opinion, it’s coveted. Some foreign countries, entities—whatever they are, either countries or entities within countries—think that area very, very strategic. Geopolitics, whatever, business, economic, I don’t know. So, we are out, like the Jewish people, wandering. So we are similar also in that instance.

Third, he said, is that we are like them because we believe that we are superior to other people. And I said that to one of my professors. She was a Jew, and she is so proud of her Jewishness. And I told her, “I am also. I am not a Jew, but I think I am superior too, as you.” And she said,

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“How do you know?” And I said, “That’s a superior complex that you have. We have it in our culture, because we think that we are better than the whites.” Do you remember, gaalka wuxuu qabaa baras ee ka fagow [the nonbeliever/infidel has leprosy, so stay away]? We are the racists. That girl is white, so she is dirty, she smells, yeah, you don’t intermarry. Yeah, we think that we are better. If you ask a Somali guy, “Yeah, whites, they don’t know. They don’t know anything. We’re smarter than them. Yeah, we’ll tell them and they will cry because they don’t know, they know nothing.” Right? We think we are smarter than them. Superior complex we call it in psychology. We have that. These three traits are good, if one uses it to his or her benefit.

IH: So Somalis in Minnesota are doing well or…

AA: If we have these traits. If we tap into these traits. We’ve been out, we are here. Forever. We’re not going back. Rageh Omaar, I don’t know if you know Rageh Omaar, the BBC guy, yeah. I don’t know where he is now, but he at some point was an Al Jazeera witness, and he was talking about his personal life, and he was talking about his father and mother always thinking about going back to Somalia. That mentality of going back should be erased from our memory. We are not going there. We’ve been kicked out! But no return. So if we need to thrive, we need to thrive in this community. And how do we do it? Follow the Jewish model—get educated. Every department, every great institution in this great country is led by Jewish people. I don’t know if you did go to the University of Minnesota. Go to Mayo. We know one thing. It’s a really small school. I think we have about thirteen—that’s a big thing, right? And I don’t know how many million—I don’t believe they have five million, right? I don’t know how many. So we need to be over-represented at the great institutions, and we can do it because they did it. So I believe we have an opportunity, given these three traits, if we tap into. Because if you think that you are better than anyone else—although you may have some illusions—but to some extent you will think that you are smart and you will do something, right? Yeah. And that helps you, so you will imitate until you perfect.

So I think if we start now telling our children and ourselves, “We need to make an impact and this is a great country,” we can do it. You as Ibrahim, me as Abdiaziz, Muse, Osman, Ahmed, each and every one of us—five are we right now, are we five? Yeah. If each and all of us think and say, think and plan. Allah will give you, if you think, “I want to make a dent in my field. I want to get a PhD in psychology. Not only that. I want to make a dent. I need to contribute to that field so my theory and my contribution will be read generations after generations after I’m gone, like [Sigmund] Freud or [Jean] Piaget or [Erik] Erikson or whatever.” I have to think about that. You, you’re a journalist. You should say, “Yes, I need to make a dent. I want to be somebody that his contribution is taught in the schools.” Musse, he’s a health professional. He will say, “Yes, I…” So Osman, same thing, and Ahmed. So each and every one of us. If he or if she thinks that, “I want to not only get the degree, but make a dent,” I think we may be the second Jewish people.

And the reason I am saying—although I get that thing from that professor—also, I think eighteenth or nineteenth century, there is a guy by the name [Friedrich] Nietzsche that I know. Those of you who did study literature or some philosophy you know him. He’s a German guy, Nietzsche. His book was translated into English, and he asked, “Who did do the translation?” He’s very difficult to understand. And he’s weird guy and he even died of syphilis. He was not

18 so good when it comes to sex. So anyway, that guy, he was told that his book was translated, and he said, “I want to see the person who translated my book.” She was a German lady, but lived in England. It was the nineteenth century. And he asked her, “Your ethnicity?” And she says, “I’m a Jew”. And he said this statement, he said, “Heaven have mercy on European intellect if one wanted to subtract Jewish intellect.” All right? If we want to be something, we have to be and create from now on the African intellect, and somebody has to say, “Have mercy on African intellect if one wanted to subtract Somali intellect.” But people don’t say that. So I think if we do that, I’m thinking we will do great. And there are opportunities. You can do it. You came to this country when? Two thousand and five, right?

IH: Yes.

AA: Did you think that you could do what you did within that short-term period if you were living in Egypt or in Kenya? You came from Kenya, right? I don’t think you could. It was difficult. Here, is opportunities. So I think we need to find opportunities, we need to tap into it, and we need to know what we are looking, so that we could get it and have it.

IH: Well, that was my last question. If you have anything to add to this or…

AA: Actually, I have nothing because I did talk a lot.

IH: Which is good.

AA: And it’s good, but sometimes it’s boring and it’s off the topic. But disclaimer—it has to do with my ADHD. First time I’m saying that on record. So anything that I did wrong has to do with my ADHD.

IH: No, you did great. Thank you. I appreciate your time here.

AA: I do too.

IH: Thanks a lot.

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