Pod Save the World - “Abdi American”

Episode Date: July 5, 2018

Tommy talks with Abdi Nor Iftin, the author of “Call Me American,” about his incredible story of survival in war-ravaged Somalia and literally winning the lottery to make it to America. 

My guest today is Abdi Noor Ifton. He's the author of Call Me American, a memoir about his migration from Somalia to Kenya and finally to the United States. Abdi, I'm so excited to talk with you on the week of July 4th because in my mind there is nothing more patriotic and American than someone who loves this country so much. They persevered through as much hardship as you did to make it to the United States. So thank you for talking with me and heading down to the studio in Portland. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. It's a fourth of July is a big day in my life, so I really appreciate it and to be able to celebrate Fourth of July is a big thing. Yeah, it's really cool. So the book is calling me American.

It details your life growing up in Somalia as the country is just torn apart by violence. But things weren't always bad. In fact, for a period of time, your dad was a famous basketball player. Can you talk about what Somalia was like in those early years before the Civil War started? Somalia was a pretty stable nation in the before the Civil War. We're talking about any time before 1991. So at this point, the only major problem that was facing Somalia and the entire nation was the famine and the droughts that actually kicked out my parents from their lives in the pneumatic life.

and then they came to the city, which was pretty stable, and they could, you know, figure out other ways to make some money. So my dad was doing some fishing in a, you know, a little while, and then eventually somebody, you know, somebody saw him and thought that he was a perfect fit for the basketball because he could jump so high. So it was, Somalia was at the time a place where you could be something if you want to work for it.

you want to walk hard for it. So that's what my dad was doing. No one was worried about, actually, no one was worried about war and no one expected that the war was coming at all. You know, it was a pretty stable nation and Somalia was one of the most powerful nations in Africa and our arms, you know, the military and everything else was just, was just extremely well-prepared. And we had a war with Ethiopia at some point in 1977. And there's a rare history where two African nations ever go into a war. So this was one of the historic two African nations going to war. And if you look at it today, it's completely a different story.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to remember that, you know, things can go badly quickly when there's conflict involved. And it can really just be incredibly damaging to the people who live in any given country, whether it's Somalia or Syria or, you know, name the place. But, I mean, you were still a small boy, like you were saying, when things got bad, there was the drought, there was war with Ethiopia, there was internal civil war between rival factions. And that was all before the Islamist rose to power and al-Shabaab was formed in 2006. I mean, the book is mostly about your unbelievable struggle to survive and persevere during that period. I thought you summed it up well when you wrote that, quote, by 2008, Somalia

had been at war for 17 years, calling this living hell of war was too polite. It was really just endless, gory terrorism on starving civilians who didn't care which side won. A million people had been killed and a million and a half force from their homes. I mean, those are just staggering numbers. Can you help us understand how Somalia was torn apart so fast and how you and your family managed to survive during that period? Well, the first generation of displacement began exactly when I was five years old. 1991 and they're there they're there the smolies have been on the move and uh it was only women and

children that like our family that who could not afford to leave Somalia you know those who could board a ship already left and those who could fly left and those who could cross the border by walking already left Somalia is a big country and we ended up in Mogadishu and to go to Kenya it would take us uh I would say you know 20 days or so, and that's not something we could do. And interestingly enough, my mother didn't know what direction was Kenya or Ethiopia. So at this point, the only thing we could do was to go out into the bush. To me, the way I saw it was, it was like an entire building that collapses within a minute, you know, and collapses to the, to ashes. So that's how the civil war in Somalia

I started. I was standing up there with my mother and we were on the move. We were saying goodbye to our house. And the moment I realized that the man who was on the ground, his face pushed to the sand and blood and everything else was all over him, I realized that, you know, that man was my favorite snack man. He's the man who owned the snack bar in the corner where our dad, when he came home on Fridays from work, that's where he used to take us. My brother and I, when that man was killed, that's when I realized this war is real and the bullets can actually kill someone. And then from there, you know, they named us many things, you know, the war-torn nation, the war-written country, the civil war ravaged Somali. I mean, so many names that the world called us until even the famine and the droughts.

I talk about this in my book, that the famine had been killing more than the bullets. So you can imagine what those pictures that the newspapers in the United States had published early 90s with young children so thin, you know, and insects landing on their faces. And that's actually what triggered the United States Army to intervene and then the world to join them. That's how serious and very desperate Somalia was like. And I was right there. I might not have been that kid that was all over the newspaper,

but I was like him, you know. Right. And that's when the world actually realized that, well, this is the silent killer because, you know, nobody was talking about it. And not like Syria today where everyone talks about it, where so many countries are involved. But it turns out that Somalia was left by itself and the warlords took advantage of that, you know, with no accountability, with no one talking to them. So they just were able to do anything. And I was caught up in this situation where the only thing I could hope was death, but also, you know, another day of waking up breathing was just a miracle.

And I always was surprised, you know, because I expected to die any time. But then surviving to the teenage and then as a grown-up man was just absolutely something so amazing, you know, and especially to be alive, alive and unhealthy today to come to the United States. So I wake up every day in Maine and trace my hands up and I say, thank you God. Everything that I have is wonderful. Yeah, I mean, it really is wrong. I mean, I think a lot of people when they think when they hear famine and they hear about, you know, countries dealing with mass hunger or in food insecurity think it's because of just weather or drought or, you know, a disease in a crop, they don't always think about famine being conflict-driven. But like you said, I mean, Somalia was both. And it feels like it took a long time before the international community took notice and intervene. And it was so desperate that, you know, you write about how Somali's, you know, were trying to leave to flee to Yemen, which I think is a country that we think of today as being incredibly food insecure and dealing with a lot of the same violence. But, I mean, that was seen as a destination to escape to, right?

Yes, yes. Yemen was two reasons. Yemen was the closest that you could go to. And it was a different continent. It was not in Africa. So those two things cost, I would say, thousands, hundreds of thousands of some Somalis to take that route. And the people who were handling this later will become the Somali pirates and they make a movie out of them called Captain Phil.

So these are the same people that I went to and they charged $80, $80 for each person to board on this boat that was going to Yemen. But I couldn't afford $80, so I had $50 and I traveled all the way from Mogadishu. and they couldn't let me jump into that boat. And I talk about it in my book. That's pretty much my story, specifically when I say that one of my friends was on the boat and I waved goodbye to him and he survived and he made it to Yemen. And another friend, you know, gets on a different boat and he drones and dies. You know, my really good friend, Abdullah and Madobe, I talk about him in the book. And then I say, that's my story.

It's either survive or die, you know. And to us, Yemen was, we were not looking at Yemen for the economic purposes. We were looking for the fundamental human desire that everyone wants. When you are living in a war, there's only one thing that you hope for. It's the peace. And that's one thing I had not been able to find one single moment in some. Somalia, and I wondered what it would feel like to wake up in the morning and never expect to die. So that's what I was looking for.

I wasn't really looking for, you know, an economic opportunity or anything like that. All I needed was to get to Yemen and wake up in a refugee camp and say, I'm safe. You know, that's what I was what I was hoping for. But it didn't happen. I couldn't afford enough money to go to Yemen at that point. And then I was forced to go back to Somalia and live through the hell that was happening at the time. Right. I mean, you know, I think so much of the conversation that we're having right now, and I want to get to Trump later, but it's about ways to be as harsh as humanly possible to people seeking asylum to the United States or trying to come in without proper documentation as if that would deter them.

But you described, you know, the life of a Somali refugee and such unbelievably, just how unbelievably hard. it was for you. I mean, you said Somali refugees were like the migrating wildebeest that faced crocodiles one way and hyena's the other. I mean, you literally had Shabab taking over one area, or you had rival clans fighting in another. And along the way, everyone was extracting bribes from you, whether it was in Kenya or Somalia or anywhere else. I mean, it felt, it was an impossible situation. It doesn't seem like anything the United States or any other country could do would deter someone from wanting to leave there. That's true.

And I also think it teaches us a lesson, you know. For example, if I frown myself, if, like, I was marching the other day on the streets of the United States with a sign in my hand and, you know, with hundreds of people all over the place. And at some point, I was actually smiling. I know that everyone else was frowned, but I was smiling. The reason I smiled was exactly the things that you just mentioned, which is like in Somalia, I could never march against al-Shabaab. The Somali Islam is terrorist. I could not march against the warlords that could have killed me.

I could not march against the Canadian police. You know, I was in my room and hiding from them. I never had the courage to ever do that. But at some point, whatever is happening in the United States to me is like, wow, I can't believe I'm doing this. So at some point, I'm really, really excited and privileged to be able to do this. Whereas when I get on the dinner table with everyone else, I can't imagine how so frustrated they are. Of course, I'm frustrated too because I don't want America to ever be like what we have been through.

It's easy to start a war, but it's never easy to get out of war. So that's why it's important for us to feel like we need to do something for that. to happen. And for us and, you know, for someone like me who had been through all of this, but at some point I had some love and a dream and a determination to have an identity, to earn a dream. And the only place in the world that I could do that was America. And I was exposed to America because of its, you know, influenced in how the world works and the, through the movie. through the music, and there was no other country that ever came to me like that. So at this point, to me, America was just a representative of what the world looks like,

and I could name myself, you know, with America. And I talked about it in my book that I later realized that all white people are not the same, and they don't all eat pork. They don't all speak English, and that's one thing I was trying to teach my mother. And every time I talk, she would say, shut up, you know. And it's like, why do you want to learn all of that kind of stuff? And how besides the war and the recruitment process that was happening at the time, whether from the warlords or from the Islamists later, how I had been thinking differently, how I was already inspired with democracy and freedom and tolerance. and most importantly, the American way of life, you know,

where Somalis are homogenous community, and sometimes there are things that are tapu. Like, you cannot be different from everyone else. It's so hard. But I decided to be different. I decided to feel that the things that I see on the movies aren't really a crime or a scene, and I thought that was great.

You fell in love of the culture of America, but at one point, the international community, including the U.S., actually sent troops to Mogadishu to try to break the warleds grip on power and feed people. And you were living in Mogadishu when that happened. And I think a lot of people are probably familiar with the book Blackhawk Down or the movie. You write about how you were living in Mogadishu when that happened. And you actually were just a child at the time. And one of them, ones who played hide and go seek in the wreckage of one of the helicopters just days later.

I mean, what was that brief period like when the international forces and the U.S. was occupying Somalia? And why do you think the population quickly turned on them and wanted them out? Well, from my perspective at the time as a child, I loved it. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the war. I thought this was a real movie, you know, action movie that was happening before my eyes. So when the helicopters came down, we ran towards, you know, where the smoke was coming from. It was fun.

It was like a real war game to us. But then the Somali Malaysians who are determined in taking back their city have been able to knock outdoors in every neighborhood and convince the tribes that supported them that they, you know, that they belong to this, the tribe called the Hauia tribe. They were able to convince them that America is a non-Muslim country that's invading. Somalia and trying to introduce Christianity and build up churches and all of that. That's how they were able to influence in the hearts and minds of the people through the propaganda that they have been doing. That specifically, Muhammad Farah, Adi, you know, militiamen were doing. But most importantly, the warlords had already been oppressing the Somali.

So like my family, my mother could never say anything, but just sit there and watch. And the only demonstrations that you could see out of Mogadishu were people who were either supporting the warlords or who were forced to come out on the streets and drag American bodies, you know, on the ground. And then there's the other part which like the kids, the little ones like myself, who had no idea what was happening, but we thought it was fun, you know, running all over the place. Right. And I talk about it in my book. I say, like, I just can't wait to see how this Americans crash the warlords and the militants. I couldn't wait, you know, for that to happen. But at some point, it wasn't happening.

The militias were everywhere, and they were able to shoot down helicopters. They were able to jace American uniforms on the streets of Mogadishu, pushing them all the way to the oceans. And then it was a different page where, like, the militias showed me how powerful and how unbreakable they are. And we were laughing and clapping, and we said, wow, you know, and we were running after them. And we started throwing rocks of the helicopters.

So it was like as children, we could only follow the ones that were winning at the time. And I haven't thought of what would happen when the Americans live. You know, most probably a situation would go back to the way it was, the militias, again, back to the city, and starving Somalis, and shootings and death and everything else. Right. But did I expect that Americans would ever withdraw? I did not. I thought that like the movies, they would always be the winners.

Right. You know, like the heroes and the movies are always winners and kill the thags and the villains and everything else. But it didn't happen that way. It was completely, you know, a different story where the warlords were able to, you know, kick down bodies of Americans on the streets from Mogadishu and America withdraws. And that's when I said, you know, it ended like I never expected. But I didn't give up. I continue watching America, not on the streets of Mogadishu, but on the movies. Yeah.

So you talk about in the book, how movies saved your life. I mean, what you live through is unimaginable for me, but the book is sprinkled with these cultural references that feel like we could have been friends growing up. I mean, you loved Rambo and Commando and movies that I was watching and you were listening to Tupac and Michael Jackson and 50 Cent. And how did you come to Love America and like, what did you mean when you said movies saved your life? Let's think about this. Somalia had no other entertainment except movies. And that was, I talk about the madrasa, this place where you go and learn Quran. So it was extremely painful when the teacher beats, you know, beat me every day, whether I memorize it or no. I mean, whether I'm good or bad.

It's just the beating is like permanent or constant. So at this point, movies where it plays where I could relax my mind and watching it, it just took me into their world. Like I'm sitting there physically, but then I am with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his daughter, you know, in the apartment, just watching them or, you know, driving around the streets and watching them doing something on the streets of America and the last. lights and the nice and clean environment that they were living in. So that's what I mean, you know, the movies had actually saved my life.

It just showed me that there is another world outside of Somalia. That's where these Marines that came to Mogadishu, who did not point their guns in my head, that's where they lived. That's where they grew up. That's where they belonged to. And that's when I realized, you know, because... Eddie Murphy kind of looks like me. He's a dark skin and Denzel Washington.

So I realized, well, there's no white or black in America, and that's where everyone can leave. You know, and that's when I thought I could do it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the book is just an incredible story of perseverance and your will to live and fight and get through anything. And you eventually get to Nairobi and to Kenya, and you ultimately got to America because you literally won the lottery.

On a whim, you enter the diversity immigrant visa program or green card lottery. And a lot of Americans have learned about this program for the first time, even though it's not new, back when President Trump decided to lie about it. But the gist is every year, 8 to 15 million people around the world apply. Only 50,000 get visas. You somehow won, but that didn't mean you got handed a visa and a plane ticket on site, right? It was actually the start of another brutally difficult process that you then had to go. go through. Yes. And diversity visa is for everyone. It doesn't matter where you come from. But at some point, a country like Somalia, the U.S. State Department was a bit confused how to treat with a Somali,

a refugee from Somalia who does not have basic documents. I didn't have a passport. I didn't have a birth certificate. I didn't have an ID. Those things do not exist in Somalia. But at this point, And I was able to win out of those 15 million people that apply to the diversity immigrant visa lottery every year. And that's me in America because as you can imagine, there's no other country in this world that has the same system, the diversity lottery. And I was able to win it. But at some point, this was specifically a difficult moment. It was a difficult period being a Somali when Kenya shut down its board. borders because Somalia was infested with al-Shabaab. And it was, you could not trust a young man in his

20s who just come from Somalia and did not come with his family. It was the chances of the U.S. Embassy accepting, you know, my application and trying to bring me to the U.S. was very low because, you know, they could not trust who I was. You know, it was, they had this assumption that A young man from Somalia, he's pretty much probably an al-Shabaab. So that was the idea. So that's the struggle that I was going through. For example, if I was a Kenyan citizen, the process wouldn't have been this difficult. My story would not have been on NBR or on the BBC or on this American life.

But what made it very difficult at the moment was like, wow, a refugee just wins, you know, a diversity lottery. and this is not a regular refugee. I'm someone who learned English from movies, but now moved to Kenya and had a great connection to America because through my stories, I met so many American friends that were able to support me financially and, you know, where we tried a U.S. non-immigrant visa through U.S. college, but I had not been accepted. that I was told that, well, that's not possible because your refugee and an immigrant visa means that you need to come back when your studies are finished. So at this point, I was in this very difficult situation where I was hiding from al-Shabaab, from the Kenyan police, thinking that we're al-Shabaab.

And my brother and I were stuck in this apartment for three months, and we were starving to death. We were out of water. We were out of food. And this is when I called the U.S. Embassy and they tell me, nope, you know, you need to put together all the documents that we need or otherwise you're not going to get your visa. Yeah. And I tried. I remember I cried that day. I had tears on my eyes and I said, you can't imagine what's happening to us.

And the lady on the other phone said, bureaucracy. You know, there's no way that, you know, we can, I mean, it can't happen. We can't show you, we can't treat you differently. So you got to go find that and let's go from there. Right. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned this in passing, and I think I should just clarify everybody that along the way in Mogadishu, in Somalia, you met a journalist. You began communicating with him.

That led to him writing a story about you and your life, which led you to getting an opportunity to essentially act as a correspondent, both first. Somalia and then also to talk about what life was like as a refugee. So you talked about how, you know, the bureaucracy of dealing with the U.S. system. But what was amazing to me was how difficult was, I mean, you were paying countless bribes. You were navigating these demands for paperwork and vetting living as a refugee in Kenya, including having to get paperwork from Nairobi cops saying that you were not a criminal who were the same people who every time they saw you would beat you up. and rob you and extract a bribe from you and must have been the most unbelievably frustrating process imaginable. It was so difficult, and I was not only giving bribes. I was also giving myself up because, I mean, how can you even imagine that the police were looking for us? And that's why I said we were hiding in the apartment. and then at some point I end up going inside.

It's like going in the belly of the beast, right? So I was like right there standing in the middle of this thing. And I still can never forget that feeling that day. I was shivering. I couldn't feel my feet. I couldn't feel any part of my skin. I was just wondering, you know, they can shoot me or they can jump on me and choke me and drag me on the floor.

I mean, anything could happen that day. but I gathered all the courage that I had in my heart and I said, this is it or, you know, this is, I mean, it's now or never. So I stood there and, you know, I started to talk to him and he looked around for the cameras and that's when we started negotiating and I can't believe how how amazing that moment fell, you know, when I was able to handle this through the bribery. But welcome to Kenya. That's how things happen.

as long as you can pay somebody. I mean, if you look at a story, it just tells you that the Kenyans were not really, the police specifically, we're not really interested in deporting the Somalis back to Somalia. It was just frightening us so that we could give up everything that we had, including the money that we had, the jewelrys and everything else, you know. And they had been doing this. They took hundreds of thousands of Somalis into this concentration camp. It was a soccer stadium.

And at some point, everyone comes back home. And then the second day, the police shows up again, and then they took them back to the same field as long as, you know, everyone was paying for their freedom. And that was what was happening at the time. And thankfully, my brother and I had some cash from the Americans that realized how hard and unbelievable we were living at the time. But imagine what would happen if we couldn't afford

to pay the police, we would end up being sent back to Somalia. And then what would happen? We were a perfect target for al-Shabaab because that's the reason that al-Shabaab was bombing Kenya so that the Kenyans could turn against the refugees. And the refugees come back to Somalia. And then that would be an easy way for al-Shabaab to start recruiting young man who lost hope and who had been kicked out of everywhere else. And this is almost now it's 28 years of war that that's happening in Somalia. So we have an entire generation that's uneducated, hopeless, and just wondering what to do in their lives. Now, Europe is closing its doors. There's a civil war in Yemen, and the United States had bought Somalia under the list of those countries that cannot come into the U.S.

So this, I will talk about the travel ban. This is a great gift for al-Shabaab to start recruiting. Right. I want to ask you about the travel ban in one second, because I know it's it's impacted you very personally. But through this combination of just sheer will and perseverance and a lot of good luck and some amazing people helping you who had heard your story along the way, you managed to get on an airplane and land in Boston. What was it like stepping out into Logan Airport and being in America for the first time? It was like going to Mars.

You know, what would happen if someone told you that you would. we were going to Mars today. And I was wondering if the gravitation in America felt, you know, I came off the plane and everyone else was so busy and these Americans knew where they were going. You know, they were able to carry their luggage out of the plane and, you know, move forward to the terminal. But I stood there for a minute, you know, just, you know, just wondering America. You know, it felt amazing. And I remember neying down and just being the most excited man in the world that evening, August 11, 2014. And then I proceed inside the airport and, you know, they were breaking news at the time.

Michael Brown was shot and killed, but I really did not want to pay any attention to that. I mean, I could realize that so many Americans were frowned and angry and sad and they were not talking to each other and they were looking on their phones. I kept talking to everyone in the line, you know, hi, how's it going? What's your name? And, man, it was going through the doors of heaven that night. When did you get your first Dunk of Donuts Coffee and Donuts in Heaven? I got my first Dunkin' Donuts coffee August 12th, the day after I arrived. So the family I live with in Yarmouth, Maine, you know, this white American family that sponsored me.

And they said, we have a place for you to stay. I would like to say because America did not treat me as a refugee when I came to Boston that evening. I was treated as anybody else, you know, someone from Canada or England. So I was not given a refugee assistance. I was not given a trauma counseling or anything like that. So because this was a diversity lottery. And diversity lottery is not a refugee lottery. So they said, you know, welcome to the United States.

And now you're on your own. So you need to find a place to stay. and you need to find a job, but you're legal. We're going to give you your green card. So that's basically what happened. And, you know, the family that I stayed with, I was so lucky because they gave me a place to stay. And then the second day, going to Dunkin' Donuts for hot chocolate was part of the orientation that I had received that day, beginning from how to make breakfast, you know, with eggs and toast

and how to use the dishwasher and, you know, the oven and everything else. You know, so going to Dunkin' Donuts was part of the orientation because it was like a two-mile walk from where we lived and we walked down and I walked into it and I couldn't read the menu. But then, you know, as I talked to people, I realized the only tastiest thing that you could have was a hot chocolate and I was sticking with it for a while. That means you're not just an American, you're in New England or my friends. So welcome. Welcome. We'll teach you all our angry, weird ways. Back to serious things.

You mentioned the Muslim ban earlier. That decision by President Trump, that executive order, impacted you personally in a number of ways. I mean, one, you were advised not to leave the country because you wouldn't be able to get back in despite having a green card. And then, I mean, to me, even more devastating in reading in the book was that your brother, Hassan, was denied finally his refugee application. I believe he was still in Kenya at the time. What is that process been like for you? You also write about how the Muslim community in Maine was truly frightened when Trump was

elected because they were worried about being targeted again. Can you just talk about that emotion? Well, first of all, we're still frightened. I never wake up the same feeling every day after Trump was elected. I'm a combination of everything that Trump demonizes and he talks about and that the White House talk about. For example, I'm a Muslim. I'm a person of color. I'm a Somali.

I'm a refugee. I'm an immigrant. I'm a diversity visa immigrant. A diversity immigrant visa lottery winner. So these are the things that are on the news when you look at it. And if I look at myself with the combination of all of these, it reminds me of the fear of person. execution and threat that I had faced both in Somalia and in Kenya. Imagine I was in Somalia and I was being targeted for being an American.

The name America almost got me killed. Speaking English, I was threatened. Exercise in democracy and freedom and liberty in Somalia almost killed me. And I thought that the only way out of this is to go to America and I would feel happy and could never feel threatened of who I was. I came to Kenya and I was threatened because of my race as a Somali and then they thought I was a terrorist, which actually I was not. I cannot believe that I'm in America today and the U.S. president, the president of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, is saying that a Muslim, a Somali, you know, a diversity lottery winner is a problem. We need to stop this.

It scares me. It frightens me and it weakens my understanding. of the American image, you know, because to me, the American image was great and wonderful. And what made America was how exceptional this nation looked before the eyes of everybody else. Now I'm, you know, my friends who are still in Somalia have no hope of coming to America. And they might easily fall into the hands of al-Shabaab, which scares me as well, because if that happens, they know everything about myself. So at some point, it puts my life at risk of what you know, the President and the White House is doing. And I just wrote a book and I'm a New Englander.

I'm an American. Actually, not as a citizenship, but I still call myself an American. I love to say I'm an American. And I'm contributing so much to America. I work so hard every day and I, you know, help the people who need my assistance in any ways. But the the travel ban is, I don't know, they haven't really thought of this, I think, but it increases and it strengthens the image of America's enemy, including al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda and ISIS. It increases their image because they can say, look, I told you, America is the enemy of Islam. And that's exactly what al-Shabaab used to say. And that's the things that al-Shabaab said to recruit young men.

But today, they have a perfect chance to go all over the place and tell people, I told you. See? They hate Muslims. And in this case, some people might accept that. I could never accept them, you know, when I was back in Somalia. And I always thought America was great and that the U.S. president could never be saying something about this. But let me say this. I'm not really disappointed.

This is the thing about America. He's not the king. The White House, there's no one who owns the White House. You know, they're here. They're going to go. But the way I understand to fight this is to stand up and speak up and tell the stories. That's why what my book talks about. It tells the counter-nerative of what they're trying to say.

We're not bad people. Even though I'm a Muslim, a Somali, an immigrant, a refugee, but my love for America was unbreakable. Everything happened. I was almost recruited, but I could never say yes. to those propagandas that I have heard, you know, coming to my door because America was more important and more, you know, grateful than anything else. I mean, few things. Everything about America was fantastic.

And I would love to say that I have read The Art of the Deal. Yes. You read it while you and your brother read it while you're in Kenya or in Mogadishu, right? No, we were in Kenya and we were, this was the time when we couldn't get out and, you know, that we, We had the book and somehow, I can't, it's so funny because this is when the Ken police were looking for us. And we read the book with a huge smile and wondering how amazing America looks in the stories that we were reading. And this, we were not exposed to so many books in America, but we didn't understand the difference between Democratic Party or the Republican Party. To us, everything in America was a wonderful thing.

So Trump, at that time when we read his book, he was a product of America, you know, an America that produces people like him. Today, I regret him. Looking back at reading that book, I just say, I wish I knew that he would, you know, he was going to be like this. And I wish I hadn't smiled. Yeah, well, it's okay. A lot of people read that book, and to be honest, he didn't actually write it.

don't feel bad. My last question for you is, you know, Somalia has been through this horrific several decades of civil war and fighting and total lack of governance. You know, what do you think has to be done to fix things to get a legitimate government in place that is strong enough to whole territory and to provide services to people and allow, you know, a lot of the Somalis that you know, even in Maine, would hope to move back one day and make their lives in Somalia. So, like, what do you think has to happen to allow them to do that someday? That's a good question. If you're asking me this question before 2006, there's a way that I could respond it. But now, after 2006, Somalia becomes a Islamic state where al-Shabaab

and ISIS is also in the northern Somalia. So what could be done? I think what we could do is for those people who are trying to avoid the crisis, you know, the things that are happening, the recruitment, the militias. This generation need to receive education. And the best way to do that is to go where they are. Like, let's talk about Dada, the largest, actually it may not be the largest now, but it used to be the larger refugee camp in the entire world. And it hosts almost half a million Somalis. And more than half of those are young men who were. were born in the camps and have no identity and are struggling with to figure out what they need to be.

So those type of people and the ones that come to America and the ones that go to Europe, we need to give them a platform and education to give them some training in many ways that they could be able to eventually go. Like, you know, if I say an example myself, I realize that there's no way I'm going to give up on Somalia at all. And every day that I wake up in America, I realize how so much things I could do to save Somalia. But to do that, I need not only myself, but I need so many Somalis to be on my side. And for that to happen, I think the world needs to invest and try to help all these generations that had displaced and relocated themselves into other places before they fall into the drop

of al-Shabaab. So the best thing I could do is America should not put a ban on countries, but they could encourage to do things for them instead. And that could probably in the future help rebuild Somalia. Yeah. Abdi, thank you for talking with me. The book is called Call Me American. It is a truly incredible story of survival and, you know, an inspiring one of, you know, a guy who just would not give up.

So thank you for talking with me today for writing the. book. Thank you for having me. It was an honor. You know, and for telling a story about coming to this country that is positive and exciting and what, you know, everyone should aspire to. So happy Fourth of July. You too.