Abdi Nor Iftin - Call Me American (Adapted for Young Adults): The Extraordinary True Story of a Young Somali Immigrant

Since I arrived in America in 2014, I have had the privilege of meeting and speaking with students all over this country; they always have so many good questionssome of them hard to answer!which can only come from strong curiosity about the world.

My world as a kid was very different from yours, but I had the same passion to see beyond my horizon. On the streets of Mogadishu, Somaliahungry, scared, without shoes or much hope for a futuremy own curiosity about the world kept me going. In Hollywood movies, which I watched on a small TV screen in a dirt-floored shack, I saw American kids and teenagers, and I dreamed of their life. I wanted toys, freshly made beds, a refrigerator full of food, a roof over my head, clean clothes, schools and teachers. I couldnt have those things, but I pretended I was an American boy and even called myself Abdi American.

This did not make my parents happy. They had grown up as simple but proud nomadic herdspeople, roaming across hundreds of miles of bush land with their animals. They played on the hot sand, drank fresh camel milk, and chanted songs around fires at night to ward off the lions and hyenas. My mother and father both have scars from fights with those wild animals. Despite the dangers, they were totally free people. They had no laws other than what they believed God commanded; they owned only what they could carry; they had no traffic lights, no insurance policies, not even money.

But when a drought took their herd, they were forced to move to the big city where I was born. I did not grow up tending camels and cows, but every night my parents told me stories of that world so I would not forget where I came from.

I am proud of my nomad heritage, but I did not choose to be born in Somalia. No one gets a choice. It could have been you who was born in Somalia and lost everything at the age of five. It could have been you who wandered in the wilderness for months with sore and bloody feet, an empty belly, surrounded by hungry animals and brutal soldiers. Of course no child deserves what I went through. But it could happen to anyone.

You could say my story has a happy ending because I got out of that terrible place and now live in America. But my story includes my family, still in Africa, struggling to survive every day. They are lucky that I can support them, but I cant go there, nor can I protect them from the daily risk of sickness and violence.

Luck is a funny thing. I have had bad luck and good luck in my life. Either way, I always tried to be prepared when good luck came my way. So I taught myself English while watching those Hollywood movies, even though there was no use for English in Mogadishuin fact, speaking English there could be dangerous if the wrong people heard you. Then one day, English came in handy and changed my life. If you take one lesson from this book, I hope its that every life has some good luck and bad luck; what matters is what you make of it.

When I speak to school groups across America, I dont like telling young people they should be thankful for being born in a free and peaceful country, because it sounds like we should take pity on the less fortunate, or be sorry for their existence. The poor and desperate people of the world dont want our pity. Unlike me, most dont even want to become American. Like my parents, they cherish their own heritage and culture. They only want a fair chance, as fellow human beings on this planet. They dont want the random accident of their birthplace to mean a death sentence.

I know there are no easy solutions to the problems of the world. But a good place to start is understandingand that comes from listening to each others stories. As you read my story, I encourage you to think about your own story, and what you would say about yourself to people in faraway places like Somalia. Listen to your parents and grandparents stories; whether your ancestors were Native Americans or immigrants from Italy or enslaved people from West Africa or Pilgrims from England, they all have something to teach us. You can live in a small remote town or a big noisy city, in America or Europe or Africa or beyond. Wherever you live, wherever you come from, your story matters. We are all connected by our stories.