I remember Borama, playing basketball with Shevchenko, in his Miami Heat jersey, on the cement court with potholes in it, built in the 80s by the Siad Barre government. The same government that would wage war on its own people a few years later. And now, as a result of that violence, we have Somaliland and Somalia.
A fracturing, not unlike the patches of missing concrete in that cement basketball court in Borama. They say the two regions of the formerly united country are distinct entities now, but, historically, countries have never meant anything to us. We wander the earth in search of provisions for our livestock and our tribe. Borders were suggestions, nothing ever set in stone like that grey, chipped basketball court. Amazing, how far we’ve fallen apart, like the holes in that court. Thanks, colonialists.
I’m reminded of this brother I met in H-Town, aka Hargeisa. He was from The West, spending the summer back home with extended family. I was jealous of his life when I visited him from Borama. He woke up every day, had breakfast brought to him. Lunch brought to him. Dinner brought to him. He hardly ever left that room during his time in Africa. He only ever left to go get more weed, but most of the time, it would be brought to him by brothers like me.
His life plan was to work overseas, save his money, go back home for a vacation until his money slowly dwindled. This is the type of brother who doesn’t believe in responsibilities, at least, that’s my impression of him in hindsight. So what does it say about me that all I could think about in those days was my next puff of tree?
In Somalia, and Somaliland, weed is not hard to find. Most Westerners are shocked to hear that. That’s not surprising, because most Westerners are unable to imagine a world outside the West. Sadly, most people from the Global South who move to the West end up taking on that same mindset. The West is ruthless in its ideological maneuvering. It slithers its way into your conscious without your ever noticing. More and more, day by day, you become what the West wants you to become, until one day you look up and see a different person staring back in the morning mirror. Unrecognizable.
And just as unrecognizable when, late at night, you find your reflection snorting ski slopes off of frosted mirrors.
Anyway, I was still friends with that H-Town brother long after I’d left Somaliland, after I’d gotten sober, after I came back to America and all. He hit me up on messenger one time and asked if I was going back to the motherland for summer vacation. I said no, too broke.
He said you’re in America, bro, that’s not an excuse.
I told him no one wants to go back more than me, but I still have to finish school, still so many things on my list-to-do. In the back of my mind, I pictured his recent updates from travels around the world. I didn’t know how he could afford it, even if he was working nonstop. Most shocking of all was how his pictures showed a casual disregard for hiding illicit activities.
Thinking back, when I was under the influence, it seemed like the cool thing to do, too. I, too, threw up pictures of smoking and drinking and carrying on, may Allah forgive me. All that stuff is against our religion, but you should already know that, even if you’re an Islamophobe in a cowboy hat. Boy, I hate that word, Islamophobia. Why we gotta be perpetual victims in this world? We not weak, bro, we don’t need Western salvation. We have everything we need. But I guess that’s life and we all have to find ways to cope. Try not to stuff me inside a convenient trope.
I sometimes wish I could live still live such a careless life. I mean, I did, for years, but it never got me anywhere. It only lead to breakdowns and hospitalizations. Dead broke and on the verge of dying. I’m the oldest in the family, born overseas. There’s a lot of expectation for me to be all that I can be. Like an Army slogan from the 90s. I’m supposed to be a soldier without a gun. And I got soul, but I’m not a soldier. My family tells me I’m supposed to be gold. The one who made it, escaped poverty, fulfilled his parents wildest dreams.
There are so many things I’m supposed to be, and sometimes people tell me what I already am. But on most days, I don’t feel like I’m anything at all. On most days, I just try to fill the void within me. Nowadays, my connection with Allah occupies that void.
Back in the day, I was wearing sunglasses indoors to hide that void, to hide the pain, Makavelli on my brain, Ambitionz Az A Ridah, passing joints back and forth in a small room inside an unknown family’s house, surrounded by diaspora kids from all over the world, wearing wife beaters to beat the heat, pounding down over our heads, the sun-bleached corrugated tin roof, the Somaliland flags waving in the listless breeze that only brought warmer air, thinking I had it made. Naw, dawg. That was all illusion. Tall fiction.
You ain’t no gangster, bruv. You’re just Said. You weren’t meant to OD. You were meant to worship your Lord, find that inner peace and build a family. You were meant to write these words and help set yourself free, and in so doing, help your Muslim brothers and sisters around the world free set themselves free from mental slavery.
This world that teaches them to hate themselves, to pick up drugs, to pour pounds of makeup on their faces, to sit on social media comparing themselves to unattainable standards of beauty and success. This world which says: get the gat, the strap, the click-clack, you-don’t-know-me-like-that, so-get-back.
That leave a nigga flat.
That catch a fade and run it back. Like a punt return. Like passing joints to a brother who is only your brother for as long as he keeps your lungs drowning in ganja smoke. Nothing as real-feeling as the false camaraderie shared by druggies, Breh.
Can you feel me?
Nowadays, about my surroundings, I don’t know what to believe. I know I believe in Allah and the Last Day. I believe in His Books, and the Angels. I believe that Muhammed (PBUH) is His last and final Messenger. I believe that this world is only a trap; a prison for the believer and paradise for the disbeliever. I believe that justice, true justice, is elusive. And that we’ll all get what we’re owed on Judgement Day.
I’m grateful, truly, that I made it out of those dark days. Because I look up and see some people stuck in their same old ways. It makes me feel some type of way. I see memorials on facebook pages. Some of us never made it. Some of us were destined for greatness. The real question is: what does greatness look like?
For someone like me, who just yesterday didn’t have a reason to breathe, greatness is stability. Greatness is a wife and kids by the bundle. In a stable home environment devoid of yelling and negativity. In a home environment filled with love, not to say that I never had it. I did. But that love was shrouded by symptoms of PTSD. We made it out of war, baby.
We the lucky ones. Now, it’s time to raise the next generation full of self-love and acceptance of their place in the world. I want to raise kids that are sure of themselves, that never question their worth. I want to help them avoid all the pitfalls that I stumbled into. Not that it was necessarily my fault.
You see this country, see what it does. This time that we’re living in, so devoid of love. You see what it is and what it wants you to think you should be. You don’t want that, trust me. If a man has three square meals and a content heart, he should be grateful. And I hope to raise children from a place of gratitude, not fear. Because growing up on the run was never fair. But that’s life. Life is very often not very fair. & that’s ok. We here, we here.
And the destination? Well, I’ll let you know when we get there. In the meanwhile, please don’t put one in the air. Extinguish that joint. Put it down. Go make wudu. Purify yourself and connect that forehead with the ground.
Make yourself small before your Lord. Ask Him for forgiveness and ease in that tight chest of yours. I know it’s tight, because I know what that tightness of heart feels like. Allah will expand that heart of yours, trust me. And you will feel a sense of peace that no drug on this earth could ever touch.
You’ll feel like you died and went to heaven on earth.
But you ain’t dead yet. And tomorrow ain’t promised today. So, please, put down that Alizé. Pick up the mat upon which you pray.
Set it down, lightly.
Make peace with Allah before it’s too late. Before that sun rises from the West. Before the skies are torn asunder and the mountains disappear like mirages. Before that final horn is blasted, make peace with your past.
Before that last breath enters your lungs, ask Him for forgiveness. Repent, now, before it’s too late. I know it’s cliché, but the end is near. And none of us knows for whom the bell tolls, until the angel of death is in our periphery.
You feel me, Breh?