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The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Ernesto Portillo Jr. Column: It Took 14 Years, but Five Somali Refugees Are Together Again

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Ernesto Portillo Jr., The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Jun. 28--Asha Dirir stood on the balcony of her daughter's East Side condo and inhaled the summer air after a brief rainfall Monday.

It smelled of freedom for the 61-year-old Somali refugee, whose head and shoulders were draped in her turquoise and black hijab.

On May 25, Dirir and her youngest daughter joined an older daughter and two grandsons in Tucson.

The partial family reunion was something Dirir's daughter, Fatuma Ahmed, also a refugee, had been waiting and hoping for for 14 years.

It began at Tucson International Airport when Ahmed's mother and 21-year-old sister, Zeinab Ahmed, walked into the airport's waiting area, where Ahmed, her two sons and a few friends waited.

"Oh my God, that's my mom!" Ahmed said. "We just cried. Everybody cried."

The family's story of dissolution and reunion began in the early 1990s, when civil war in Somalia forced the family to flee in different directions.

Ahmed, 28, left for neighboring Kenya in 1992. Her mother and sister also fled to Kenya; two brothers went to Sweden.

Her family belongs to the Majerten ethnic group, which was caught between warring clans in a civil war that continues to grip the East African nation.

In Nairobi, Kenya's capital, Ahmed secretly went to school although, as an illegal immigrant, she was not permitted to do so. Kenyan police harassed, beat and arrested Somali refugees, Ahmed said.

Harassment was an everyday expectation for refugees who did not have identification, said Ahmed, who learned English in Nairobi. To survive, refugees constantly bribed police, she said.

Ahmed eventually left Kenya for Uganda, where life was slightly better. In Uganda, she began the long process of getting to America as a refugee.

The United States will accept about 54,000 refugees for resettlement in 2006, more than any other country, the U.S. State Department said. Over the last 30 years, the United States has resettled 2.6 million refugees.

In 2000, several weeks before Ahmed received the much-anticipated letter allowing her to come to the United States, she visited with her mother. They had not seen each other in eight years. Ahmed, who had married and had a son, was pregnant with her second son.

"I was so happy and joyful to see her, but she couldn't come with me," said Ahmed.

While her mother and younger sister stayed in Nairobi, Ahmed, now divorced, made a new life for herself and her two sons.

Catholic Social Service Migration & Refugee Services sponsored Ahmed and her family.

But for an African Muslim woman wearing a hajib, her head covering, getting a job was difficult, she said. Once she discarded her hajib, she was hired.

Today, Ahmed, a legal resident, works for Catholic Social Services, helping settle refugees in Tucson from nearly every country. Her two sons, Adam Mohamed, 7, and Ali Mohamed, 5, know more English than Somali.

But it was her mother and sister Ahmed wanted to help the most. They remained in Nairobi, virtual prisoners in their home, afraid of robberies and beatings.

The lengthy refugee application process halted after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. When it resumed, so did hope for Ahmed and her family.

Dirir's permission letter finally arrived. All the horror, sleepless nights, fear and uncertainty were released when she opened the envelope.

"I was able to breathe," Dirir said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Arizona Daily Star

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