On living transnational lives, straddling borders, half the family
here, half of us there, half of me disappearing before my face, as it
stares back at me, in the mirror, refracted, the glass is broken,
slashed in half, like the hopes, the dreams that died in Africa, or
the ones which survived to see America, and died upon touchdown,
realizing that, you could never touch it now, that promised Heaven,
that Jannah, because it wasn’t meant to be found on earth, not in this
life, not in this body, not with that face, that skin, that faith,
that race.
Never in this place could you hope to be real, or equal, or something
other than what they tell you to be; you walked into a structure, and
it bends you to its will, it shapes your culture, reshapes it, keeps
you pressed firmly under boot, face on the floor, struggling to
breathe, and you acquiesce. Or at least, that’s what it looks like
from the outside – because you are fighting, but these systems have
been in place for centuries, stronger than your will, stronger than
your individual desire, stronger than all of your people put together.
This place breathes the souls of newborns clutching passports and
visas. This place made you hate yourself, made you not know yourself,
makes you, still to this day, lower your gaze when approaching someone
who reminds you of you. Because, when the whites look at you, they
avert their gaze, as if trained to see your presence as an enigma, a
broken pixel on a screen, something which causes distress.
In this
place you are little more than the smoke which fades into nothing
behind the crisp backdrop of cloudy grey. In this place, you are
little more than nothing, actually, on most days, less than even than.
And even when that is not enough, they remind you that you’ll never be
enough. A leg up to throw you back down. This is America, this is what
you see, this is what you are resigned to live until the end of your
days.
But all is not lost. At least you’re Muslim. At least you’re
black. African. Can cook. Have flavor. Second language. Clear skin.
Soft skin. Really good skin. Better than the whites, but don’t let the
whites hear that. It doesn’t fit their rationale for your
“inferiority.”
In this place, you are the only genuine thing. You and
everyone like you are the real deal. While the people in power drive
around with dogs held captive in the back of their SUVs.
You were born there, then came here, became this, then went back to
there, quickly forgetting everything you had unlearned, remembering
that which you had suppressed, re-engaging with your original self,
shedding that Other-ness at the airport, with that first breath of
heavy hot air, the first humid breeze slapping you in the face, the
sounds, the sounds of Somalia, the sounds which you didn’t know you
had even missed. No, this isn’t that place. This is somewhere better.
If there was heaven on earth, this place surely could compete. Or so
you thought, on first meet. But 3 years later, you realized that the
idealized imaginary was really just that – all image // no substance. A
mirage which wavered to the touch. And now, as you sit here, which is
really here, you wonder about there, which is really where, and you
thank God for it all. You may have a transnational soul, but at least
you have one. You may speek Somali with an accent, but at least you
speak it. At least you pay your bills with it, exploiting your
transtnational linguistic ability for currency.
You feel it in your
heart, that this life wasn’t meant as much more than a stopover, but
you often forget, for to forget is to be human, and to feel is to
forget, and to forget how you feel is to be Somali/Other. You may have
once forgotten where you came from, but now you know, and with that
knowing, you can see, where you need to be, where you want to raise
your seed. Your children, your legacy. An eye for an eye, a soul for a
soul. America plucked your eyes out, Somalia gave them back. America
stifled your soul, Somalia breathed it back. Somalia is
still broken but it put you back together again, after the fall.
And
America is still trying to tell you that you’re on the bottom looking
up, but they don’t know what you know. About your self. About what it
means to smile. America doesn’t know that you went to Africa and for
the first time in your life were able to see yourself as something
other than a racialized specimen.
The specter of race fell from the
shadow of you and you walked with a lightness theretofore
unachieved.
But God is Greater. God is Greater than anything they
could say about you, any brush with which they could paint you.
God is
Greater and that is Who
keeps you protected.