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Read all of our current story submissions on the Widgery Wharf Blog.
Download and print this list of places to publish your work, year-round. It's never too soon to share your work!
"Climbing Barefoot" by Fadumo Issack
When a child is born she learns how to walk, how to eat, how to talk, and how to play. When I was growing up I learned all of these things too; but for me, there was something else just as important—I learned how to climb trees.
It became a part of my body; the tree limbs, my limbs. I climbed trees everyday. When I climbed up tree branches I felt safe. I climbed as high as I could, and then I would sit down and look out over the only place I had ever known. Ifo, Dadaab, Kenya. Dadaab is the city; Ifo is the refugee camp in Kenya—the largest refugee camp in the world.
Never for a second did I blame the tree for what happened to me. I never thought, “Maybe if I hadn’t been in the tree, my life wouldn’t be like this.” My relatives thought this way. But for me, I never blamed the tree. It wasn’t the tree’s fault. It wasn’t Ifo’s fault, either.
I knew Ifo like a book you memorized, and when I looked down from the top of a tree, the camp looked like a good place. I saw kids playing. When I climbed back down, it was a mess, but up there, I felt like everything was okay. I never thought that something bad could happen up there. But it did.
It was a very hot afternoon. It hadn’t rained for three or four months. I was walking to the markets to get sugar. I was five years old. When I went outside, my neighbor called me over to his house. He was twelve. I had known him my whole life. His brothers and sisters and some of the other kids from A-7 block were in his yard. His parents sat in the shadows of their house. My neighbor dared me to climb the acacia tree in the yard. It was the tallest tree in Ifo. I had never climbed it before. I wasn’t scared, though.
I walked up to the tree, took off my sandals, and began to climb. Even though my mom told me always to wear sandals, I liked climbing barefoot. I liked being able to feel the tree on my feet and toes. I got to the top of the tree very quickly. It was easy for me. I sat down on the highest branch and looked at everybody. All of the kids couldn’t believe it. The boy who had dared me to climb the tree said that he didn’t think I was really a girl, because I didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Right after he said that he began to climb up the tree, too.
At first I didn’t even notice. I was yelling down to another kid. He climbed and sat on the branch next to where I was sitting. He wanted me to be afraid of him and his family, because everyone else was. But I wasn’t. God made me, and God made him; why should I be afraid of him?
He said to me, “Your mom must be proud of you for being so brave.” And then he pushed me out of the tree.
People as far away as A-4 block heard my screams. Later they said that I was a quiet girl and they had never heard me scream like that. My father heard me, too, and he ran to find me, lying on the ground. He carried me home. When I woke up later, he was next to me, splashing water all over me. I tried to get up, but every part of my body—my joints, my bones, my skin—hurt. I couldn't move. I was just lying there like a dead person. My father began to read the Qur'an over me. He did that for such a long time. I fell asleep and woke up; fell asleep and woke up. I was confused and in so much pain.
They took me to the hospital and we met the doctors. They examined me and really tried to help, but because I had broken so many bones and joints they didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to cure me.
It was a painful year for all of us, all of my family and me. We couldn’t do anything to bring justice to what had happened. Our neighbors were dangerous people who had killed a lot of people we knew. Whenever my dad wasn't out looking for some way to help he read the Qur'an over me. And on one day I remember, lots of people and all my relatives in Ifo came to my house and they all read the Qur'an over me. But little did I know that they had found a man who was going to burn my body in order to fix it. For months, my dad had looked for miracles from Allah, for some way or for someone who could help me somehow. Then one day he approached this man, a specialist who burned broken bones to heal the person, an old technique from back home in Somalia. I remember I cried so loud when he burned my skin. I screamed my nearest brother's name out, and cried, “Please help me! Take me away!” My brother broke into tears. My mom did, too.
It took many more months to heal the burns. Pain became my friend. It told me when I was seriously injured, it kept me awake and angry, but the best thing about it was that it let me know that I was alive. And each day I began to feel a little better. One day I could lift my hand. Another day I could stand up. Finally I was able to walk again.
The first day that I was strong enough to stand on my own and walk, I walked out of the bedroom, across my yard, and right to one of our trees. Even though I hadn’t climbed in months, my body remembered how. I put my bare foot on the tree, and reached my arm up to the closest branch, and my brain helped my body move in the way it knew so well. I climbed and moved as though nothing had ever happened to me, even though so much had. When I reached the top of the tree and looked out over Ifo again my eyes began to tear, but for the first time in so long, I cried with joy.
I realized that so much had changed within me since the last time I had sat high up in the trees. I was now seeing with new eyes—as a stronger and wiser person, very different from others. Looking out over my block, at my house, the place I knew so well, I knew that there would be more hard times in my life to come, but that I would have the strength to meet them. I also knew that there would be many joys in my life. I didn’t know it then, but I would one day leave the refugee camp and move to the United States with my family.
I looked down at one of my hands where I had a scar from the burning. Sometimes it feels good to wear a scar on the outside to represent something on the inside.
When we were in the Ifo refugee camp in Kenya we ate lemons every day. One day my mother brought home a lot of them, maybe fifteen or so. This was the day my mother chose to teach us how to make rice with lemon. My mother is blind and cannot cook so my sister and I are the cooks in the house. Here is what she taught us.
First you start to boil the rice in two or three cups of water. While the rice is cooking, you pour oil on some onions in a pan, add a little water, and some meat (my favorite is goat), and then cook everything together on the stove. In another pan, squeeze the juice out of five lemons and add it to chopped tomatoes and a spicy pepper. Cook for about ten minutes and you have sauce for the rice and meat.
We put all the food on the table: a pail of rice, a bowl of onions and goat, and a small dish of lemon sauce. I call to my mother that it's time to eat and help her to the table. My grandmother joins us, too. We begin to eat. I like to eat. When I come home and smell the food I know I am hungry. When we sit at the table, we don't talk about the past only the present and the future.
But here is the past. My family, they were living in Mogadishu in 1992. My father worked at a store and my mother was pregnant with me. Some people fought in Mogadishu and on August 25, 1992, they were fighting in the street with guns. My father was working in the store that day and bullets came through the wall. My father died shortly after this and so my family had to move to Ifo refugee camp in Kenya. I was born on July 18, 1993. One day, when I was seven years old, I asked my mother, “Mama where is my daddy?” Her story makes me so sad.
When I sit with my family at the table, I need to forget there has been a war in our country for twenty years, longer than my whole life. It is easier to forget about my father than be sad, but the smell of my mother’s stew reminds me.
"Cantaloupe" by Emily Hollyday
Every day I wear my shiny red cowboy boots.
Sometimes I even wear them when I stand on my table.
I pretend I’m doing magic.
Sometimes I perform tintinnabulations.
The problem is my soles get real sticky.
No one cleans up their juice from their cantaloupe.
I always clean up my own cantaloupe!
In my house, there are lots of good bells for tintinnabulations.
Mom uses them to call us to the dinner table.
When she rings the bells I come running. My boots
help me run really fast, almost like magic.
Then I wash my hands because they’re usually pretty sticky.
I don’t mind being sticky.
It just means I’ve been playing hard in my boots.
I know how long I’ve been playing. Tintinnabulations
come from our church every hour. During Sunday School we feast on cantaloupe,
and guess what? We don’t even eat it at a table.
We sit in a circle on the ground and talk about God and magic.
I don’t really believe in magic.
I just like to eat that cantaloupe
while I admire my shiny red boots.
I shine them everyday so they won’t be sticky.
You know how I told you about how I perform tintinnabulations?
Well, Mom yells at me when she finds boot prints on her table.
She says that food is the only thing that should be on the table.
Here’s the problem: food makes it really sticky—
especially cantaloupe.
When I stand on the table I pretend I’m God, using all my magic.
Too bad God doesn’t have red shiny cowboy boots.
He’d look pretty neat up in heaven listening to tintinnabulations!
I bet you don’t even know what that word even means—tintinnabulations.
I swear it’s not some sort of wacky magic.
It means the ringing of bells. Like on summer nights when it’s hot and sticky,
the bells don’t ring and I don’t know when to go to the table,
and so instead I eat my cantaloupe
at the playground standing tall in my red boots.
All you need are some boots and a little magic.
Sometimes things get sticky, and that’s when it’s time to go home, stand on your table,
listen to some tintinnabulations, and eat some cantaloupe.
My parents were very young when they met, young still when they got married and made me. I am the oldest, Mahad, like gold. We lived the hard way because my father, Said, helpful, kept losing jobs. He was a building contractor, but it was hard to find a job in Somalia. I remember how my mother, Fadumo, mother of nature, used to cook flatbread and soup with chicken, and give me lemon tea with sugar when I was sick. We had no table; it is the tradition there to sit on the floor and eat.
My mother and little brother were not home on the day the rebels came to our home. I was in my room studying when I heard a loud crack. I went out into the living room and saw the door broken down, and my father bleeding from his head. My sisters and brothers were all in the living room surrounded by large men with weapons. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make any sound. My heart dropped. My brothers, Faisal, prince, Fahad, king, and sisters, Ilhan, star, Faiso, hero, and Fardowsa, heaven, were crying for help. The rebels took money, my mother’s jewelry, and anything of value before a violent leave-taking. We all felt so lost and lonely. We went to my grandfather’s house where he arranged for us to go to Egypt. We fled for our lives, losing my mother and little brother Abdulah, son of God, in Somalia.
We lived in Cairo for four years. My father worked all the time, all the time. As a mechanic, in housekeeping—whatever it took to feed the family. We were in a rough neighborhood in Cairo, but our apartment was fully furnished; we had television, beds, a washing machine. My mother and little brother were still lost in the Somali civil war, but a family friend from Somalia, Shokre, sweet, took care of my little sisters, while the rest of us went to school. We were safe. In Cairo, I remember eating a lot of beets, and beans, and sometimes rice with beef, just grabbing food and eating alone. We had a round kitchen table with a mirror tabletop. My family never ate together.
It was seven years of running before my mother caught up with us here in Portland, and my brother Abdulah is in Ethiopia with my aunt, but he will come to America next month. I have a new baby brother here, Jihan, paradise. Now, we have a long wooden table with a stone top with eight tall chairs—enough for everybody. For dinner we eat pasta and tomato sauce with meatballs. We drink soda or juice, and my little sisters drink milk. I am the oldest and sit next to my father. My three sisters and two brothers line the sides of the table. They respect me and never sit at the right, next to my father. My father sits at one end or our long, solid table and my mother at the other end like the bookends of our family story.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Congratulations to Zaki Hassan! Winner of the 2008 "Stuff That Matters" Writing Contest! Zaki's poem, "Feel the Country" is featured in our anthology I Carry It Everywhere.
“Feel the Country” by Zaki Hassan
Feel the country—
It has not changed
For a long time.
I am missing
White sand beaches,
Yellow bananas, tall and sweet,
Dark green stripes of watermelon—
The best things that run along
With myself.
Safety carries me to a place
I never thought I would go.
Kenya.
Beautiful, green, and safe.
The wild animals—the lions, giraffes,
Cheetahs, inside a huge safari park.
We saw them from inside a mini-bus;
Even that was safe.
The people were very good—peaceful
Not violent.
They welcomed us to their country
And let us stay like it was our country.
They understood us.
They were all educated
And understood humanity
And were compassionate.
They showed us love.
We spent time waiting
While mothers waited for their sons
Or sons waited to be reunited
With their mothers.
The Kenyan people embraced us.
We began to understand humanity, too,
But then we moved on again.
I run and I never know
Where we are going.
I have to move ahead
Before I sit down
On red sand, brown grass.
They tell us we must leave—
The war is in the way.
They tell you, but xarash iyo madaz—
I never know if they lie or not.
My family carries me on their backs
To the next place—
A city, the bush.
Tiredness and thirst take us over
Like a thief.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Runner-up is Madeline Micalizio. Congratulations, Maddie! Below is her story.
“The Cramp in My Hand ” by Madeline Micalizio
I am in class. Study hall, to be precise. I have no homework, and I don't want to read at the moment. Behind me, my backpack rests on the wall. My eyes trail to it and when my gaze falls upon it, I know exactly what I want to do.
I get up from my chair and unzip the big pocket of my black and white checkered school bag. Inside, my stories, book, and lunch box greet me. But what I want is beyond those. Behind my spiral bound, flower print notebook, my drawing book awaits me. I grab it and slowly slide it out of its mobile home.
Going back to my desk, I pull out my pencil, Beatrice, and its partner eraser, Benedick. Hero and Claudio are neglected for the time being, lying in the pencil box still. I leaf through old drawings, touching up some here and there. I finally get to a blank page. I see this page as something to create new ideas on, something those trees have been sacrificed for. I thank the trees silently and begin to think about what to draw.
Lines waiting to be formed into a creation appear in my head. I tell them to be patient while I think. Ideas pop in, introducing themselves and asking to be drawn. I acknowledge all of them, but one piece strikes me as worthy.
My hand begins the head of an angel. She is facing to the side, so I direct my hand to make a side profile. My hand commences to do so, but my brain changes its mind. Why not make her body aimed to the side and have her face at an extreme 3/4 angle? My fingers grasp for Benedick and erase the side profile. The cheekbone then begins to take shape, forming an elegant face.
It goes on like this until the head and a clothed body are born. All that was left was the hair and wings.
I begin the hair, making the outline of the general shape. It is swirling around her like mist in the early morning. I then outline a few individual clumps and strands, giving it a realistic feeling.
Before I could move onto the wings, the bell rings, signifying the end of the day. I sadly and regrettably close the page on the unfinished picture, but I knew I would continue it at home.
When I got home, I brought my notebook with me and went up to my room after saying hello to the family. Beatrice and Benedick were waiting patiently for me, as was the angel. She still looked unfinished, but I was about to fix that.
Beatrice was ready. Benedick was, too. I gave them their chance to be used as my hand traced the feathery wings.
Many eraser marks and pencil strokes later, my new addition to my book was complete. Shading was all it needed, but other than that, I was pleased with my work. I had put a lot of work into that angel, the cramp in my hand as proof of it. It had paid off.
Smiling, I closed the book again, but this time, without any regrets.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Ponce de Leon Walk, By Kahiye Hassan
It was common for my father and me to take a walk around Portland in those
first weeks. We were like Ponce de Leon trying to find the legendary “Fountain
of Youth.” Our journey started on the October morning we headed out
Danforth Street towards the Old Port. I had never seen so many dead leaves
lying on the ground. The bright yellows, reds and oranges were like the sun
lying on top of the earth. This was very weird to me because the life hadn’t
been sucked out of the leaves. When I snapped the edge off the stem of a
yellow and red leaf, white fluid oozed out. The trees didn’t look lifeless
either. Their roots were healthy beneath the ground. The grass couldn’t
be any greener. The ground was moist because it had rained a couple weeks
earlier. Not like in Kenya. When it rained there, it rained—for hours,
sometimes days. Here the rain was about a five-minute thing, and there wasn’t
any sign of drought. As my dad and I continued our walk, the first place
we came upon was Vespucci’s Market, a small grocery store, at the corner
of Danforth and High. My dad bought me my first bag of chips, Lays. They
were crunchy and very oily. I was used to homemade French fries; I had never
tasted anything like this before. We left and continued our voyage up High
Street. There was a tan mansion with a beautifully landscaped lawn. The fence
around the lawn was made of fancy iron. This was my dream house.
“Dad,
I want to live there,” I said.“You have to work for it,” he
replied.
As our mission continued up the street, on our right came the museum. Not
knowing it was a museum, I said again, “No, this one is mine.”
I remember the wind was blowing hard, smacking me on the left side of my
face with the hood of my jacket.
My dad said, “ Just like a child has to learn to crawl before he can
walk, you have to go through school before you can get that.”
We kept going up to Congress Street and went into Paul’s Supermarket.
I was determined to get sweets: honey buns, peanut butter, chocolate wafer
cookies, and Hostess snow balls covered with coconut. This was the closest
I could come to finding a real coconut. I was used to seeing coconut trees
everywhere in Kenya. I had assumed coconuts and mangoes would always be a
part of my life, but this store didn’t even have mango juice. It was
not at all like the Bakare back in Somalia where there were a bunch of stores,
like a yard sale almost, and you could buy spices, clothes, silverware, batteries,
boom boxes, and generators all in the same place.
My dad called me over. “Kahiye, come over here. Hold this.” He
handed me the mesh bag that was filled with bread, eggs, and lettuce. As
he walked toward the milk, I saw this familiar jar my cousin introduced me
to in Kenya: strawberry jelly. I couldn’t believe it! So many other
things weren’t here, but this long lost taste was sitting right in
front of me. Could this be?
When we got home the first thing I took out of the bag was the jar of jelly.
I couldn’t get it open so I asked my father to help. When he opened
the jar there was a loud pop like a champagne cork. The smell radiated through
the entire house; the long lost odor alone made me full. Suddenly I was transported
back in time to my cousin’s house, where I was spoiled with sweets.
I just wanted to keep it right there in my hands rather than eating it. I
thought it could be a long time before we could buy it again. I stuck my
index finger out like a hook and dipped it into the jar. Not wanting to miss
a drop I put my mouth over the jar so in case anything spilled it would go
right back in.
The taste softened my tongue; the seeds did not interfere with the essence
of the flavor or diminish the taste. They were the taste, providing flexibility
to the tongue. For days I munched the strawberry jelly from my hidden stash
which I refused to share with anyone, and came up with many ways to eat it
rather then sucking it with a spoon. I ate it with Somalian Angera, bread,
gapaty and learned later to eat it with peanut butter.
The next day my father and I took the same path into town, but instead of
going to the grocery store, we went into the building of Catholic Charities,
the group that sponsored us to come to America. We picked up jackets, gloves,
mittens, winter hats and scarves for the upcoming winter. A white woman with
short blond hair took my father to fill out paperwork. I stuck my face into
a room full of toys. Boy, did I hit the jackpot. I picked up a fire truck
with a long ladder that extended electrically. I was absorbed in a world
I had created. I was the architect of my own Matrix.
Then I heard a loud sound. When the truck’s siren went off, I quickly
jumped up, shocked. The white lady came into the room, smiled and said, “I
should have known all along this is where he’d be.” But my dad’s
eyebrows escalated and he stared right through me. It was like in the movie
Hercules when Hera’s eyes appear up in the sky. I immediately picked
up the fire truck and turned it off. I apologized to the lady and followed
them out. My father asked me “Why are you always doing things without
thinking first?” It was one of his rhetorical questions.
With my new jacket and hat we started heading back to our house, but took
a different path this time. We passed High Street going towards Longfellow
Statue and saw Joe’s Smoke shop, which seemed just right for my dad.
He bought his cigarettes and my first Snickers bar. I was set.
Right next door was the Laundromat. My dad had been looking for a place to
wash our clothes, because the weather here was cold and there were not hot
breezes for drying. We went inside. My father started reading the signs to
operate the washers and dryers, and I just stood there absorbed by the movements
of the people. I was good with machines so I was helping him puzzle out what
to do. He was the mind and I was the mechanic. Together we figured everything
out.
One night, it just got really cold. My feet and my fingers for the first
time were frozen. I went to bed seeing the stars, but the next morning, when
I woke up, it looked like someone had covered everything up in a lustrous
blanket, or had a pillow fight. It was still cold. After eating jelly for
breakfast, my father and I took our dirty clothes to the laundry. As we walked
on this white pearl frosting, it felt like a sponge that didn’t keep
its shape. The sun reflected on the blanket, making sparks. After we washed
our clothes, we headed down State Street toward Danforth Street, and this
white fragile puffy cotton came tumbling down softly from the sky. I wondered
if it was raining, but I couldn’t hear it, and I couldn’t feel
it. It just appeared. The atmosphere was getting warmer. I took my gloves
off to reach for it, but it melted on my hand. I stuck my tongue out. It
didn’t taste how I expected—it was just like water. My dad reached
down, picked some up and threw it at me. He sprayed my face and put some
more inside my jacket. I jumped up because it was cold—it felt like
glitter was under my jacket. I tried to spray him, but it didn’t reach.
This was how I first learned to make a snowball, pressing it together with
my gloves. I tossed the snowball at him, hitting him in the back of his neck.
I liked the snow then because it was new, but now I despise it—it’s
like a song that got over played.
After a few years in Portland, everything new
became old news, and everything that I had done in that first year, I longed
for. Life always makes you want something that you can’t see, or you
can’t
grasp. As my life changed and became more Americanized, new things no longer
impressed me. America is a fast-paced, changing culture, but once you become
used to the pace, there are no surprises, like first-time snow. I loved the
journeys with my dad in the first days of America, when we walked side by
side as one. Those walks are not lost, but waiting to be reborn.
Kahiye Hassan is a former Waynflete student and Poet Laureate.
. . . . . . . . . . .
A Day in Three Worlds
By Hassan Jeylani
I wake to the sound of my dad’s alarm clock—it's loud,
insistent, like a fire alarm. I’m in bed, wrapped up in two or three
blankets, and through the doorway, I see my dad shaking his head while he
tries to loop his tie. I sit up. My clock reads 7:11 a.m. I rub my eyes—am
I dreaming, or is my dad actually there, getting ready? He walks over towards
me, still adjusting his tie.
“Get up, it’s Sunday,” he says.
“Huh?”
“It’s Sunday, Hassan, get up.”
I'm
still asleep, but the thought of my dad dressing up on a Sunday morning and telling
me to get up puzzles me. I pull my blankets back over my head and pretend this
never happened.
He comes back again. He goes to my brother’s
bed this time, knowing it’ll take more than words to get him up. My
dad hits my brother’s
shoulders several times, and, Kahiye jumps to his feet.
“I’m awake, I’m awake…The
bus doesn’t leave
for 20 minutes. I’ve got time,” my brother says, still asleep.
My dad laughs, “Waryaatha, it’s Ede,
get ready, prayers are about to start.”
* * *
I had forgotten Ede, the most joyful Muslim
holiday. For 15 years I’ve
been celebrating Ede, anticipating it each year. But this year, I didn’t
wake up with that same excitement. I didn’t even know it was Ede until
my dad told me. How could I have forgotten?
For most Muslims, Ede is one of the most important
days of the year. It comes a couple weeks after Ramadaan, which is 30 days
of fasting and is one of the five pillars a Muslim must follow in his lifetime.
At 15, Muslim boys and girls are expected to fast for Ramadaan—the
fasting allows Muslims to get out of their ordinary lives and put themselves
in someone else’s
shoes. At 15, Muslim boys and girls are supposed to have sworn that there’s
only one God. At 15, we’re supposed to do the five daily prayers. At
15, if possible, we’re supposed to give back to the poor. At 15, we’re
supposed to be dreaming about going on the Hajj once in our lives.
At 15, I barely complete the days of Ramadaan.
At 15, I struggle to do the five daily prayers. At 15, I don't have a job
or any money to give back to anyone.
* * *
“Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar.”
I am in the third row, sitting with my legs crossed, my arms on my thighs,
repeating the ritual words of the Iman. I am wearing cimmamad and qamiis
and a hat, the traditional Muslim clothes. We’re in the gym at Portland
High School, and everyone has brought their own prayer mats. There are sixty
or seventy of us praying with the Iman, less people than last year. The men
pray at the front, and where normally there would be a curtain or a wall,
instead there’s just a space, and the women pray in back of it. As
prayers are about to start, a few little boys are running around near where
their mothers are about to take stand and pray. I laugh—when I was
their age, I was well-dressed and stood next to my dad and prayed with everyone
else. When I was their age, I prayed five times a day.
Prayers are optional right now. Not because I’ve lost faith, but because
of the society I live in. Also, I forget it’s less than 2 minutes.
My mind is set up to go to school, come home, go to sleep.
* * *
In Somalia, where I was born and
lived for the first two years of my life, on Ede, we would wake up in the
morning and go to morning prayers. Everything—the
stores, the businesses, the meat market, even the guy who walked around with
a large covered plate selling sweet candy took a day off—everything
was shut down for the entire day. Morning prayers would be at the mosque,
everyone would be there dressed in their traditional clothes.
The inside of the mosque is beautiful, the ceiling decorated with gold and
other bright colors, the windows open. I think about a thousand people can
fit in there. It’s huge. All these people crammed together sitting
on the massive rug covering the floor with the Koran in their laps.
There’s an Iman at the front. The prayer takes a few minutes, depending
on the Iman. Nowadays, little kids would be with their moms, but I remember
being with my dad. The women aren’t in the back in Somalia, they’re
completely separate, in a separate room.
After the prayer, you look to the left and to the right and say something
that’s almost like Merry Christmas. Then the kids would walk around
and get money from everyone. After that, I’d go back to my home, and
then I'd be free to do whatever I want. There's no school that day or the
next day. I’d try to get out of my traditional clothes.
I’d go outside, walk around. Everyone’s out, doing their own
thing, sitting under apple and banana trees for the shade. Some kids are
playing soccer in the sand. My dad has changed out of his work clothes, he's
wearing the Somalian version of a sarong, sitting on a low stool with jugs
of water all around him. It's sort of like you’re in the mall, but
everyone knows each other and would say--no matter who you are, rich, poor,
crippled--that Allah was there, God was there, and you’re worshiping
Him.
* * *
During the war in Somalia, when I was two,
my family had flown to Kenya to get away from the chaos. My parents hoped
to return, but they knew there was a slim chance of coming back.
In Nairobi, there weren’t very many Muslims around. As a kid, I'd think, “I’m
gonna go pray, if I want, go to school, then maybe go play a little soccer.” Ede
was still there, but you didn’t get that same sense you had in Somalia.
Nairobi was so huge, and we lived in the city. The people there were all
different. I wasn’t used to these huge buildings. And it was very busy.
I remember one time in Nairobi when a girl my older's brother age, Marion,
burst through the gate where my brother and I were playing soccer, saying “Let's
play.” We'd just finished playing one-touch pass, so they got some
other older kids to play with them. At three, I knew I was too little to
play a pick -up game. Just before the game got started, Marion said, “I
need someone to watch out for my dad.” Being a Muslim girl, Marion
wasn't allowed to play with guys.
Kahiye told me to be the lookout. I climbed up on the tall iron fence and
stood sideways on a little ledge watching both the game and for Marion's
father. I could see over the fence, my head just above the fence's sharp
points. I watched as Marion put the ball between Kahiye's legs and then ran
around him and scored. As I watched Marion dancing around the goal, I saw
out of the corner of my eye Marion's father walking to the gate. In the excitement
of the goal and the fear that Marion would never being able to play again,
with my hands gripping the fence points, I tried to jump down, and one of
the points sliced my neck.
I fell flat on my back. I saw the birds overhead in the clear, hot sky, my
head spinning. My brother picked me up and held me up to his chest and, when
he let me back down, blood, my blood, covered his shirt.
* * *
Memories like these run through my mind
as I walk over to the Y here in Portland to play basketball with my friends,
brother, and cousins. This has been my home now for eight years. I change
into my basketball shorts and my Jermaine O'Neal high-tops and one of my
practice jerseys. My cousins are shooting for teams as I come back from the
bathroom. As soon as I see them, I drop to the ground laughing.
“Yo, quit playing around, get changed,” I say.
“We're ready man, c'mon,” Mustaf says.
Mustaf's got jeans, a black tank-top, and dress-up shoes on. Omar's wearing
a white button-down shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals.
“Alright, forget it, let's just play,” I say.
What I don't say is that I remember when I was like that, not knowing what
to wear, not being used to having so many different kinds of clothes to choose
from.
We're playing four on four, full court. Shots are falling for everyone. We're
sort of like the And 1 team: it's all about streetball, crossing someone
up, throwing no-look passes, talking mad trash. I'm at centercourt, holding
the ball, then Omar's covering me. I look down and laugh at his sandals.
I shake him to the right, he doesn't react. I shake him to the left, he still
doesn't react. I take off to the right full speed and I can hear his sandals
chasing after me. I cross the ball back over to my left hand and for a second
I don't hear the flapping of his sandals. Then I hear him drop flat on his
ass.
The game stops. I stop. I drop the ball and start laughing. Everyone hovers
over him, booing and laughing at how badly he's been faked.
* * *
Kahiye and I are back at home, collapsed
on the couches, playing FIFA 2006 on Playstation 2, still laughing about
Omar and his sandals. After a few games, Kahiye gets tired of losing and
turns off the system and goes to the fix something to eat. I flip through
the channels and put on ESPN. During Sportscenter, there's a commercial for
the latest DVD collection of Baywatch. Pamela Anderson running down the beach
in her signature red swimsuit.
It was in Nairobi when I started watching American movies, and Baywatch.
In Somalia, we didn't have a TV in the house where we lived. We couldn't
believe it. Money, cars, houses, all this stuff, Pamela Anderson running
by in a bikini. TV gave us our ideas about America. We thought in the US,
everything would be handed to you, like gold. You’d get your own house,
your own car, a pool.
I remember sitting in my bunkbed in Nairobi, cramped in a small room with
my family. It was so hot that we kept checking the fan to see if it was on.
It was always on. A commercial would lure us in, showing a fancy house with
a pool. Our fantasies would take over. We're living in a mansion in America,
my sisters are in the pool while my brother and I are in the house being
served by Jeffrey, the butler from the Fresh Prince of Belair. “Dinner
is served, Master Hassan,” he would say.
The commercial ends. Kahiye is banging the fan.
* * *
Later, I decide to pray Isha, the last prayer
of the day. It takes a couple minutes to do the ritual movements, most of
which involve standing, bowing, kneeling, and placing my head on the floor.
I used to do it almost every day, but most nights now I run out of time.
After I'm done, I sit on my bed, hands held up high, reciting parts of the
Koran. I lie on my back looking at the ceiling and let my mind wander. This
is when all the doubts and questions I have start to unfold.
I prayed five times a day in Somalia. In Nairobi, three times. Now, it’s
none. It’s not consistent. The religion is still here, people are here.
Prayers and traditions are still here. But Ede’s not a holiday, or
at least it doesn't feel like it.
Most of the changes have happened because of where we are. If I was in Somalia,
things would be less complicated: get up, pray, eat, go to Muslim school,
come home, eat, go back to prayer. There, every day revolves around the same
quotidian existence. In Somalia, prayer was most important.
I do stop once in a while and think about it. I don't want to forget a single
homework assignment. I don't want to forget a single prayer. I don't want
to forget a single basketball practice. There's consequences to all three.
But there's not enough time to do all three. I even ask for help from religious
leaders. “I can’t handle school, I can’t handle basketball,
I can’t handle my religion all at once,” I say, “How I
should balance all of them?” The same answer always comes back: the
Koran. In other words, they want me to seek answers myself.
My dad wanted to get us away from the tribal fighting in Somalia. I've started
my whole life over. I've gone from having to share a room to having my own.
I've gone from having no TV to two TVs and a computer and an iPod. I've gone
from barefoot to nine different kinds of shoes. I've gone from three outfits
to a closet full of them.
I appreciate all these precious things and the opportunities I've been given,
but there's still an empty hole in my life. I've gained all these things,
but I've lost something and I want to recover it. Most nights I fall asleep
thinking about all this, but then, two days later, I'm playing basketball
at the Y and thinking about Mustaf, and that thought is gone.
Hassan Jeylani attended Waynflete School, Portland.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The Photograph
by Aruna Kenyi
I am seventeen years old and I have no photographs of my past, none of my
village or parents or me as a boy there, none of the places where we fled
or the camps in which we lived, nor of my friends.
For instance I’ve never seen a picture of my oldest brother, and I
will never know what he looked like. He was a captain in the army, and he
was killed the year I was born: 1989. So that’s why my parents gave
me his name.
Kenyi.
I was born in the village of Nyepo, in southern Sudan. I was one of the youngest
of nine brothers and sisters. We grew corn, and had chickens and goats. There
were banana groves nearby and a river that ran very deep during the rainy
season. I drank from that river every day and every other person born in
my village drank from it, too.
My father was a farmer. He had a very calm voice. That’s what I remember.
He never went to school, just grew the food to help his family survive. He
was also a soldier, and once after he accidentally dropped his rifle in the
water, they put him in prison.
I’m told that I’m tall like him, but look more like my mother.
She had lots of hair—and was really fast. If I did something wrong
and tried to run away, she always caught me.
My village was happiness. That’s what I remember. And Christmas was
the best day of the year. All the families played together, to all hours
of the night We ate bananas and played drums. We made guns out of branches
and acted like we were soldiers, too. We hid and captured each other in the
banana grove. Some of us pretended we were children and some pretended we
were parents.
I will tell you now about the night everything changed. It was the hour just
after dinner when families go to visit each other. Everybody gets up and
wanders from place to place, saying their hellos. My tribe, the Bari—we’re
very friendly people. I was with three of my brothers, playing. I would have
been five years old. Meanwhile, my parents had gone to our garden, to pick
corn.
That’s when the Arab militia attacked. Everything was peaceful, and
then I heard a noise like an earthquake. I saw the plane coming, and they
started bombing our village, and then they came in trucks. The soldiers were
yelling at us to leave our homes, and they started killing people and burning
everything.
Of course, everyone ran in a different direction to save his or her life.
Some mothers and fathers even forgot their kids. That’s how I was separated
from my parents. My brother led us into a cane field and we hid there for
the night. We could see the fires and hear the screaming. There were many
mosquitoes and the grass was sharp and wet on my face.
In the morning there was nothing left. No houses, nothing. My oldest brother,
who was 20 at the time, said, “It’s no use. Our parents are probably
dead, and we don’t want to die here, too,” so we got up from
the field and started walking. “I’d rather die ahead,” he
said.
I just wanted my parents, that’s all I remember. From that point on
my life has been one of never getting to say goodbye.
So we walked for a year, through different tribe lands: the Koko, the Mari.
Some were friendly; some were not. It was very far for a young boy, and my
brothers sometimes carried me. We ended up in a camp in Uganda called Kali.
There were many lost children—and a lot of disease and death. It was
here that we met my uncle and where he was shot and stoned when Ugandan rebels
attacked. They burned houses with people in them, like before, and we ran
again and hid in the fields by the mountains.
During this time I thought about my mother and father. I could remember them
taking care of us. We would have a bath every night. I was a really bad kid,
so they were always having to punish me. When I was hungry, my mother would
say, “If you don’t want to work, then there’s no food for
you today.” These were the lessons I learned.
Sometimes my brothers would tell stories about them and when they did, it
made me believe that my parents were not dead, like they were here again
with us.
Later, we ended up in the camp at Kyangwali. We stayed there five years.
I remember it was next to a forest and the monkeys and baboons scared me.
I didn’t have time for homework. I worked our little garden all the
time to try and get food—corn, beans, and nuts. Like my father had
once.
And then one day they told us to get ready, that we were going to America.
We’d spent years hoping for this moment, and then when it came, we
had no time to say goodbye to anyone, none of our good friends, no one. They
just put us on a truck and took us to the airport. We left many people there.
We flew from Kampala to Nairobi to the UK to New York to Virginia, where
we lived for the first year. Then we came to Portland.
We were lucky, my brothers and I. We survived all those years without illness
or real harm. We grew up without parents, which was very hard. Every night,
in those camps, we’d have to wait two or three hours on line for water
because the big people just kept pushing past us. There was no one to protect
us.
Not long after coming to Portland we had a letter in the mail, and in that
letter, was… a photograph! I don’t know how to say this, but
it was of my mother and father. They were alive. My mother was standing and
my father was sitting in a wheelchair because the soldiers shot his legs
off. They looked so old—my father’s hair was gray—but I
remember looking at that photograph for a very long time. I’ve since
talked to my father on the phone in Sudan. His voice is like I remember it:
calm. But he has had a hard life. He said he would like to go back to our
village some day, but right now I won’t let him.
All of our happiness was there—and it’s still not possible to
return.
Aruna Kenyi attended Portland High School and is nearing the completion of his autobiography.
. . . . . . . . . . .
My grandmother always told me that I should be afraid
of the lions, but not to be afraid of the hyenas. My grandmother lived in
our village and helped my mother cook. She died before my father died, but
I remember the stories that she told me. She said that you should never
run away from a hyena because they will kill you, but if you don’t
run away, they will not kill you. My brothers and sisters were afraid of
hyenas, but not me. They had seen a hyena eat something down by the river
once and it scared them.
At night, we put our goats inside the fence that went around the house.
One morning, a hyena jumped the fence, grabbed a goat by its neck and jumped
back out of the fence. My father said to me, “Wake up! Go get that
hyena who stole our goat!” So I ran after him. I hid behind a tree
and when the hyena went by, I hit his kidneys with a club and he fell down.
My grandmother had told me not to bother hitting them in the head. You can
hit them all day in the head and nothing will happen, but if you hit them
in the kidneys they will die, she said. My father ran over to me with a knife,
and he gave the knife to me. He was afraid of the hyena. Then my father said, “Kill
him!” I stabbed the knife into the hyena’s stomach. That was
the first time I killed a hyena. It was before my father died, and he died
when I was five years old.
After that all the people in the village came to me and said, “Oh,
you killed a hyena! My grandmother had told me not to be afraid of hyenas
and I wasn’t afraid. When you are small like that, the big people think
it is funny that you are not afraid, they think you are brave. My father
was proud of me, too.
My father was a kind man and he was very tall, he was maybe ten or eleven
feet tall! Well, I don’t know how tall he was, I never asked him, “How
tall are you, father?” But when we walked together, while going to
the ocean or to town, and he held my hand I looked way up into the sky to
see him. My mother says I am getting tall like my father.
There was a village in Somalia where I lived when I was five with my mother,
father, my two brothers and my sister. There were maybe twenty-five farms
in this village. We had a round house made of wood. Inside the house were
two beds where we slept. There was one bed for my parents, one bed for my
sister, and my brothers and me slept on the floor between them. Every day
it took hours for my father to walk back and forth from the store he owned
in a town nearby where he sold food and soap and things like that. He would
leave at six in the morning and he would return at six at night. Sometimes,
my mother would send me to bring him his lunch and I would walk there and
back all by myself. Sometimes, I would return on a different road because
I liked to go through the forest, but my parents told me not to go on that
road because they thought I might get lost or there might be animals in the
forest. But I never got lost nor did I ever see any animals in the forest
to be afraid of.
Nothing had ever happened in my village. It was a very quiet village. I don’t
think that anyone had ever been killed there before. It was a Sunday night.
I remember everything about that night. It was in the summer of 1992. It
was 12:30 a.m. We were all awake. There were men with big guns who surrounded
our house. They looked like they were in the army. My mother said that we
were the minority tribe and they were fighting against us and that is why
they were there. Or maybe they had seen my father coming from his store in
the town and thought that my father had a lot of money. One of them had a
chopped off arm, there was no hand below his elbow, he seemed to be the commander
and he was the worst of them. He told everyone to come out of the house and
to lie down on the ground. He said, “Where is the father of this house?” My
little three year-old-brother told them that my father was in the outhouse,
then the commander without a hand, without saying anything, shot him. Just
like that, without thinking, he just shot him and he died. The soldiers went
to the outhouse and kicked down the door. The outhouse was up on the rocks
and there was no way he could have escaped from it. The commander with the
chopped off arm told my father to come out, when he did, the commander then
told him to get on the ground. Nobody was moving. A few minutes later, the
commander said to one of the soldiers, “Why are you looking at that
man, kill him!” Then they shot my father. He died. My mother screamed, “Why
did you kill him?” The soldiers asked the commander if they should
shoot her. The commander didn’t care about anything and he said, “Look
at her!” and then he shot her. The shot hit her leg. She was alive,
but badly injured.
They took everything we had. They took my father’s store money, my mother’s
earrings, and anything good we had. Then they left and people from the village
came. A friend and my older brother, who was ten at the time, took my mother
away in a cart pulled by a donkey to get her to someone who could help the wound
in her leg. I tried to follow them but they told me to stay in the village. Some
other villagers buried my father and my little brother.
When my brother got my mother to the doctor they told him that there was nothing
they could do for her. It was not a place where they could do surgery. My uncle
gave someone some money so that she could go the hospital in Kenya. My uncle,
my brother and my father’s friend all took her there and she was in the
hospital in Kenya for two or three years. I missed my mother for those long years.
I lived with my sister in the village. She made cakes that we brought to the
town to sell.
When my mother came back to Somalia to get me, my sister decided to move to another
village, and we never saw her again. She got married and she has two children.
My mother, my brother and I moved to the Hagadera, a refugee camp in Kenya. We
lived there for two years. I liked it there. I had lots of friends, we played
soccer, I went to school and learned English. I had a girlfriend there, she is
still there and I still talk to her on the phone sometimes.
One time, my friends at the refugee camp and I were talking and they said they
didn’t believe that I had killed a hyena. They were afraid of the hyenas.
I told them to ask my mother if I had killed a hyena in my village. Then one
morning, early, they took me over to the slaughter house where there were always
hyenas lurking around. I told them to give me a club. I started running towards
some hyenas, there were three or four together and then I dove on to the ground
and grabbed the legs of one the hyenas, then I hit him in the kidneys, like my
grandmother had told me to. That’s how I killed that hyena. Then I took
a rope and I tied his legs together. My friends said, “This is amazing
that you can kill hyenas like that!” Then they said, “Every Friday
we will come here and you will kill a hyena.” But I said, “No.”
I was fourteen when I killed that hyena and I lived in the refugee camp in Kenya.
Now I am seventeen and I live on Merrill Street in Portland, Maine. It is peaceful
here, except sometimes in my dreams. Coming to America has meant going back,
again and again in my mind, to these stories I am telling. My mother wants me
to forget, but I cannot. I would like someday to go back to Kenya, perhaps go
to the university there. And I would like to ask my girlfriend there to marry
me.
But I’m done killing hyenas. At least I hope so. I’m almost as tall
as my father now, and I’ve nothing left to prove.
Ali Mohamed is a senior at Portland High School next year.
The 2011 Founders Prize Winner:
"Climbing Barefoot" by Fadumo Issack
"Lemon Stew" by Rabiic Gedi
The 2010 Founders Prize Winner:
"Cantaloupe" by Emily Hollyday
The 2009 Founders Prize Winner:
"The Table" by Mahad Hilowle
"The 2008 Stuff That Matters" contest winners:
First Place: "Feel the Country" by Zaki Hassan
Runner-up: "The Cramp in My Hand" by Madeline Micalizio
Four stories from the "Coming to America" Story House Project:
Ponce de Leon Walk
By Kahiye Hassan
A Day in Three Worlds
By Hassan Jeylani
The Photograph
By Aruna Kenyi
Hyenas
By Ali Mohamed
To find out more about the Story House Project, click here. [more]
