Call Me American

The country descends into civil war. The family packs up their home and prepares to leave. Pregnant with her fourth child, Madinah carries baby Nima. Amid the distant gunfire, Abdi cries and begs to also be carried. People loot stores, dead bodies litter the street. Gangs of rebels arm themselves with guns. Civilians escape by any means possible, many relying on their tribal or familial connections to get out of the country. Abdi’s nomadic family lacks these connections, so in the tradition of nomads, they decide to “walk to safety” (22). They stay the night in the home of a relative, a general in the defeated government army. All night, they hear the rebels looting a nearby hospital. They leave the next day.

Siciid, a friend of Abdi’s father, offers the family a ride in his truck. The family squeezes in among Siciid’s family and their belongings. Rebel groups stop the truck and steal anything valuable. With nothing left, they head out of Mogadishu along a crowded road packed with pick-up trucks full of machine-gun wielding teens loyal to the rebel leader Aidid. Abdi witnesses youths clumsily gunning down people in the street. At one checkpoint, the rebels forcibly drag everyone from the truck. Abdi’s father and Siciid are beaten, but the families are allowed to leave. Their tribe is not a threat; they have nothing worth stealing.

By the time they leave Mogadishu, the road blocks end. They pull off the desert road into a forest. Monkeys pour over their truck while the family scavenges whatever fruits they can find. Other families are there, weeping for their dead loved ones. Back on the truck, they drive along the dusty road. Abdi and Hassan marvel at the crocodiles in the river.

They pass through checkpoints loyal to the government. Both sides of the war wave through people from the Rahanweyn tribe, as they are not powerful enough to be considered important. The civil war is sectarian in nature with bitter and bloody rivalries between tribes. Many people seek revenge. A gang of diehard government loyalists attacks the truck. Siciid is dragged out; Abdi’s father hides. His mother pleads that they are just a poor family, trying to escape to the town of Baidoa. Abdi watches as his father reveals himself, only to be struck down by the butt of a gun. Before Nur Iftin is beaten, a friend in the militia recognizes him. They talk briefly about basketball. As they talk, Abdi hears other people in other trucks screaming in pain. Eventually, Abdi and his family are allowed to leave.

They drive through the night. They reach Baidoa, a town populated by the Rahanweyn tribe. A man herding animals offers them food, as is Rahanweyn custom. The truck is almost out of gas. They find their way to the house of Nur’s aunt, Aseey. As they eat, Aseey says that Baidoa will soon be attacked. Abdi’s parents realize that there is no way to escape the civil war. Men will be the main targets of any attack, so Nur and Siciid decide to leave as soon as possible. Even their presence could be a danger to their families. Abdi watches his father disappear into the night. 

The family now consists of Madinah, Hassan, Abdi, Nima, and the unborn child. In Aseey’s home, they hear gunfire. Abdi worries that his father has been shot. When they wake in the morning, gunfire and death are still all around them. A bazooka shell destroys the thorn fence around Aseey’s home. The militia demand to see any men inside. They hold Abdi at gunpoint. Abdi spots something shiny on the ground—a bullet. He picks it up and holds it out to the gunman, telling him that he has dropped it. The man snatches it back. Eventually, the militia leaves. As they depart, they promise to return at midnight. Anyone still at the house will be shot.

At twilight, the family sets out, with Madinah relying on her knowledge of the environment to keep them hidden from the roving militias, lions, and hyenas. The vultures and crows fight with the dogs “over the flesh of dead human beings” (32). The birds follow Abdi’s family, waiting for them to die. When Abdi and Hassan collapse, unable to continue, Madinah agrees to camp for the night under an acacia tree. As soon as they wake the next day, they begin moving again. Abdi screams in pain while they walk: His stomach aches and his feet are bleeding. Madinah sits them under a tree and then devises a remedy using the local plants. Seeing his mother’s strength and knowledge, Abdi vows to “always survive like her” (33).

Madinah tells her children to duck low. She has spotted militiamen with a hostage. When she realizes that they are Rahanweyn, she is relieved and reveals herself. They kill the hostage, warn Madinah not to head in a certain direction, and share what food and water they can. Madinah leaves with her family, walking in a new direction. A passing man offers them a lift on his donkey-pulled cart. He takes them along the outskirts of Baidoa, avoiding the town. Then, they arrive at the road back to Mogadishu. Another man agrees to take them back to the city on a truck packed with people. They have nowhere else to go.

Back on the familiar road, the monkeys and crocodiles are now all dead. The woman next to Abdi on the truck clutches her dead child. Another woman recognizes the body of her son on the roadside. Her living children plead with her not to be left behind. Madinah scans the dead bodies for her husband, but does not spot him on the 120-mile journey. Abdi is so hungry that he barely notices when they arrive at another checkpoint. Bullets hit the truck, and, before he knows what is happening, the truck is moving again until a stray bullet hits the driver and sends the truck careening off the road. Passengers leap from the moving vehicle. Madinah leads her children back into the bush as militiamen chase them, heading toward Mogadishu. 

Mogadishu has become “a city of women and children, a city of graves” (36). Militiamen roam the streets with guns, looting whatever is left. The family returns to their house, now a shelled-out ruin. Soldiers have been using the building as an outhouse; the family cannot remain there, lest the soldiers return. Gun battles in the streets interrupt their walk through the city. They find other families fleeing the fighting, all of them now trapped in the rubble of the city.

That night, they seek shelter in a tunnel. Growling dogs disrupt their sleep, and, in the morning, they wake to discover that they have slept near a mound of dead bodies. They flee again, spending weeks sleeping wherever they can. Their stomachs are perpetually empty. Eating unripe fruit and captured lizards, they fall sick. Many others are in the same predicament. Madinah can no longer breastfeed Nima and her unborn child is soon to arrive. Everybody expects the baby to die.

The family reunites with a neighbor named Khadija Ahmed, who has lost a husband and a son. Khadija agrees to take Abdi’s family into the home she shares with her son Abdikadir and her daughters Fatuma and Fardowsa. Riddles keep the children entertained as the war rages around them. The civil war devolves as tribes begin to fight internal conflicts. Madinah and Khadija try to bury what bodies they can; Abdi and Abdikadir play at being soldiers. All of the children play hide and seek. Food is so scarce that Abdi can see Hassan’s skeleton beneath his skin. The situation grows worse when a drought strikes Somalia, one even worse than that sent Abdi’s parents into Mogadishu for the first time. Years later, Abdi will learn that this drought killed all of his grandparents. Their graves are never found.

By the time Abdi’s baby sister is born, Khadija calls them all orphans, since their father is missing. The baby is named Saida and, surprisingly, she is healthy. Abdi notices that his mother is becoming weak; still, she must scavenge for food just days after giving birth. When she becomes too weak, Abdi and Hassan (now seven and eight) decide to take responsibility. They fetch water from the only well, dodging sniper fire. One day, Abdi hears a male voice in the house. It is Macalin Basbaas, the severe schoolteacher. Basbaas attributes his survival to god. Abdi and the other children return to Basbaas’s Koranic school. The beatings at the school add to the daily pain of war and starvation. The children memorize the Koran in Arabic, the only form of education available to them.

By early 1992, the fighting is less intense. Battle lines are drawn and two warlords divide the city between them: Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who controls the United Somali Congress (USC), and Ali Mahdi. Aidid ruthlessly takes over much of Somalia, killing any starving people in his path. The streets of Mogadishu fill with refugees. The boys who had once bullied Abdi and Hassan now have family in the militias; they torment Abdi without remorse. Everyone is malnourished and suffering. When baby Saida starves to death, Abdi and Hassan dig a grave in front of the house. The next day, they are beaten for being late for their lesson.