My So-Called Failed State

[Deeq A.]

I spent my younger years trying to assimilate. Now I know better.

BY SAFY-HALLAN FARAH

 

Growing up as a Somali girl in the 90s, I saw Somalia’s civil war everywhere.

I saw it on television, where countless shows would reference some variation of “starving children in Somalia,” usually as a punch line. I saw it in movies like “She’s All That,” where an early scene showed Rachel Leigh Cook’s character making art that represents the “pain” from a night a “riot” took place in Mogadishu, Somalia. And, of course, I saw it on the news, where one day, while watching CNN with my dad, I noticed the chyron read, “THE CIVIL WAR IN SOMALIA.”

“What civil war?” I asked him.

But he avoided the question — because while Somalia’s civil war was a topic of discussion pretty much everywhere else, the only place it was never acknowledged was in my own home.

I do not fault my parents for this. They wanted to preserve my carefree-ness, a resource I’ve learned over the years is finite for someone like me, who is terminally concerned. But much to the chagrin of my parents, I eventually put two and two together. And unfortunately, this meant I learned about the civil war the same way most kids who didn’t get the “sex talk” learn about sex: through real and fictional people — on television, in books — who aren’t my parents.

Over the years, my relationship to Somalia, and by extension myself, has mostly been filtered through the media, which has not been friendly to my people. Prominent images of us include the AK-47-wielding “warlord”; the “pirate”; the “terrorist”; and the young woman whose circumcision is at the crux of her narrative, because white people can’t seem to look past the fact of it. I could never see myself in these crude, alienating images and narratives. And even though I knew I wasn’t getting the full picture, I still believed what I saw: Somalia is a failednation. Somalia is scary. Why don’t we stop killing each other? I was convinced we were the sole problem. Never once did I level blame — full or partial — at our colonizers, Western media conglomerates, and everyone else with blood on their hands. I used words like “failed” and “war-torn” to describe Somalia — when in truth, Somalia could more aptly be described as “beautiful” and “rich in natural resources.”

My parents, who had put a concerted effort into shielding me from negativity, unknowingly created distance where there should have been an opportunity for early intervention. In the same way I had learned white was right à la Mary Kate and Ashley, I learned Somalis were pariahs and I had to do everything in my power to not confirm biases people may have about us.

When kids at school would ask me, “Why are all Somalians (note: not Somalis) scared of dogs?,” I would reply, “Because house pets aren’t a part of our everyday lives, so sometimes they startle us.” Then, I’d do my best to pretend that I wasn’t scared of dogs, either, even though I totally was. On numerous occasions, I almost shit myself in terror just to avoid this stereotype. My best friend at the time, who had immigrated from China the year before, watched me chase this sort of elusive approval so often, that she eventually tried to give me some perspective on the matter: One day, she took me aside and said, “At least they don’t think you eatdogs.”

At my lowest, I reveled in compliments from my non-Somali peers, essentially praising me for not doing that thing your people do, good job! I knew they didn’t like me for me, but I wanted to be liked regardless — and more importantly, I wanted to fit in — so assimilation was at the top of my priorities, every single day.

I know now that the onus shouldn’t have been on me to dispel stereotypes. I was but one little girl, who shouldn’t have been expending her energy on anything outside of school, my Neopets obsession, the cast of “Holes,” and buzz bands. But it took time to get there.

The turning point for me was when my dad sent me to an Afrocentric charter school (whose name comically borrows from a famous black movie). In retrospect, it might have been a cult: At this school, the students had to sing songs in praise of the school and were only allowed to wear red, black, yellow, and green — the colors of the Pan-African flag. We even had a song about it: “red, black, yellow, and green / these are the colors of our liberation.”

Suddenly, I was forced to assimilate to a very specific idea of blackness that excluded my Somaliness. But it was there I learned to embrace stereotypes against Somalis, because it was the only way to keep my sense of self — which the school was trying to systematically erode — intact. It was also at this school that I realized that stereotypes can often be aspirational: A lot of the Somali girls at my school, the ones who didn’t want to be nurses, teachers, or lawyers, either wanted to be models or have their life story written for them like “The Caged Virgin” or “Desert Flower,” because that seemed like the only path to real existence in the eyes of people who aren’t Somalis. This was before the Warsan Shires and Nadifa Mohameds of the world — when Fatima Said, who competed on cycle 10 of “America’s Next Top Model” (and sobbed about her circumcision on national TV), was the closest thing to a psychic culmination of their aspirations. These were often the most interesting Somali girls, with complicated personal histories I couldn’t relate to and enthralling personalities that magnetized our peers.

Little has changed since then, and we still have work to do in how the media presents Somalia and Somalis. In 2014, when the producers of “Captain Phillips” came to Minneapolis to find pirates, my mom’s slick-haired first cousin Rinji auditioned for a role. The criteria was simple: dark-skinned, lanky, tall — what many Somali men, Rinji included, naturally look like. He showed up to the Brian Coyle Center near the Cedar Riverside apartments where the auditions were taking place, fully convinced he’d become an overnight celebrity — not the “next” of something, but a long-overdue first. He was precisely what they were looking for, after all. When he didn’t receive a callback, and it was announced on television that the producers had found their pirate, Barkhad Abdi, Rinji screamed at the TV, “Man, I thought they said dark-skinned and skinny, not ugly as hell!” I cackled for days every time I recalled Rinji’s reaction, not because I found Barkhad Abdi particularly ugly, but because Hollywood’s stereotypes are absurd — and represent just how much work we have left to do.

Despite the unlearning I’ve done over the years, I still struggle to see myself doing something the world hasn’t seen yet — like writing a show or book whose protagonist looks like me and hails from my culture. This year, I vowed to myself that I will actively work to combat the limitations of my own imagination, so I started a zine with my friends, called 1991. The name comes from the fact that Somalia’s civil war broke out that year. And while Somalis’ stories — especially my own — don’t start or end there, the year was a turning point for us globally, and it’s more than ripe for art that goes beyond stereotypes.

I wonder now, had my father and mother been frank with me, if I would have reached these conclusions any faster. My instinct is to say it would have went down the same way, but I’ll never truly know. What I do know is that I have a chance to be a part of the changing narrative, and create new images of us — ones that aren’t interpolated with the white gaze — something I can’t wait to do for the rest of my life.

Safy-Hallan Farah is a writer whose work has appeared in the Awl, Vogue, GQ, and Nylon Magazine.

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