Ilhan Omar - This Is What America Looks Like

Mahadsanid to everyone who helped turn a refugees story into a book. A big thanks to my agent, Steve Ross, and the talented team over at Dey Street, including Rosy Tahan, Shelby Peak, Mumtaz Mustafa, Anwesha Basu, Kell Wilson, and Carrie Thornton. To my editor, Alessandra Bastagli, thank you for believing in this project from our first meeting. And to Rebecca Paley, who partnered with me in the writing process with patience, grace, and humor.

To my tireless congressional staff in Washington, D.C., and Minneapolismy story wouldnt be anything without the heroic work you do on behalf of our constituents.

To the organizers, activists, and table shakers who inspired me and helped me build two historic campaigns.

To my congressional guardian angels, friends, and colleagues, who help me courageously fight for a better America.

To our ancestral firsts, thank you for paving the way and cracking many ceilings.

To my sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins, thank you for being a reliable source of unconditional love, and, Aabe: thank you for championing me even when it came at a great cost.

To my best friend, thank you for helping me chase waterfalls and enjoy life as a spring breeze.

To Isra, Adnan, and Ilwad, you are my everything.

To the great people of Minnesota and District 60Bif I am a first, its because you had the vision to make me one.

And lastly to those fighting for democracy and the right to vote each and every day: never give up.

ILHAN OMAR currently serves as the U.S. representative for Minnesotas 5th congressional district. In November 2018, she became the first Somali American elected to Congress and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, as well as the first woman of color to serve as U.S. representative from Minnesota. Representative Omar and her family fled Somalias civil war when she was eight. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before emigrating to the United States. Omar currently lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Rebecca Paley is a #1 New York Times bestselling collaborator and coauthor of many books.

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19821988

Mogadishu, Somalia

The teacher quickly put a student in charge of my third-grade class before she stepped out of the room. This was not unusual in my elementary school, where students stayed in the same classroom while our teachers for different subjects rotated in and out. When transitioning between periods, teachers usually designated one child to keep the rest from getting too rowdy.

Like all kids, we were prone to abusing this position. Today, though, the boy in charge really let his newfound power go to his head. Almost immediately, he ordered another, smaller boy up to the chalkboard to write an assignment.

I beg you, said the boy being ordered to the board, leave me alone.

But the tall boy in charge was determined to humiliate his classmate, who was a minority in every sense. Poor, small, and an orphan, he didnt have the crisp white shirts, ironed uniform trousers, and shiny school shoes of the middle class that the large boy and I both came from.

The big boy continued to taunt his victim, escalating his threats when his classmate wouldnt rise from his seat, until finally he shouted, Hooyadawus! which means Go fuck your mother in Somali.

I burned in my seat. I always hate it when people use vulgar language, but I get really angry when it involves mothers, who I knew from the beginning were sacredeven if I didnt have one. I mean, everybody was always talking about how important mothers are. In Islam, my native countrys main religion, we learned that Paradise is under the feet of mothers. You were supposed to bow to your mother, abide by her every wish, not debase her.

There were also deeper forces at play than my seven-year-old brain could recognize in the moment. Although thanks to my older sisters and many loving aunties I didnt lack for mothering, my mother, my hooyo , had died when I was a preschooler. I dont have a single memory of her, even though I remember other things from that agelike family members fighting over whether or not I should start school. Some of my aunties and uncles thought I was too young, because technically you were supposed to wait at least until you lost your first two teeth. Shell lose her books, someone said. She wont know where to go, another argued, and the other kids will steal from her. But I didnt stop complaining until they let me go. And, no, I didnt lose my books or get robbed, even with all my baby teeth intact.

I remember all of that clearly, but my hooyo ? What she looked like, something she said, even what she died of? Nothing. As an adult, I went to a hypnotist to see if he could help evoke something, anythinga voice, a touchbut nothing emerged. I still find it so odd.

Whether it was an early commitment to my religions teachings or the fact that an absence can loom larger than any reality, mothers were a big deal to meand I didnt like anybody to disrespect them.

Hes not going to get up, I said to the bully. Youre supposed to make sure nobody gets out of their seat, not give us assignments. So youre just going to sit and shut up, and were going to wait for Teacher.

The boy, at least two heads taller than me, was not impressed. If you dont shut up, youll be sorry, he said menacingly.

I was a particularly tiny child, so anyone who didnt know me assumed I was a coward. The runt who always got bullied at school. But I wasnt afraid of fighting. I felt like I was bigger and stronger than everyone elseeven if I knew that wasnt really the case.

Ill meet you in the rear courtyard after school, I said. That was the place where all the kids went to fight.

Right before the next teacher entered the room, the boy who I had stood up for whispered to me, After school, Im going to run, because after they beat you, theyre going to beat me.

If you dont want them messing with you every day, I replied, youve got to stand up for yourself.

He might have been a wimp, but he was no liar. When school let out, he kept his word and ran.

With a crowd of kids screaming around us, the bully and I began fighting. I was small but a good fighter. I pulled the boy down and rubbed his face in the sand. When my brother, Malaaq, who was in the eighth grade, arrived to watch the fight and saw me grinding the boy into the ground, he shouted, Ilhan! What the hell?

My brother wasnt actually surprised to see me at the center of a fight, just annoyed. There was always a slew of parents coming to our house to complain that I had hurt their children. My dad would just laugh. The only child nobody should be coming here to complain about is my smallest baby.

YES, I WAS THE BABY OF A LARGE FAMILY, AND YES, I WAS SMALL. But that had nothing to do with the sticks growing in the bushes by the gate outside our house, which were perfect for beating back any kid who chased me home from school. I had the independent mindset of an only child. I didnt feel young, in no small part because I was never treated like a child. No one was patronized in my brilliant, loud family.

In our Mogadishu compoundfilled with African art, books of history and Somali poetry, and musicthe disagreements were constant. We were a multigenerational familyaunties, uncles, cousins, and siblings from my maternal side, all living together.

We were unlike a traditional hierarchical Somali family, where when the father or mother spoke no one else dared utter a word. Instead, everyone, even the youngest child, me, was brought into every decision. Sometimes I wished Baba, my grandfather, and my aabe , my father, would take on more authoritarian roles. They were annoyingly accommodating to each persons opinion and patient during the ensuing arguments. Everybody was always screaming about what we should do, even when it came to what we were going to eat for dinner. The constant conflict made us at once close and distant from one another. Despite our differing points of view, we all were accustomed to disputeswe had that in common.