Photo credit: Michael Lionstar
It is hard to be different in Somalia. It can get you disowned, or even killed. Parents make decisions, kids listen, accept, and follow. The other authority figures are the sheikhs and the madrassa teachers. Somalis are proud Sunni Muslims who grow up with the teachings of the Koran, as well as the Prophet Mohammed’s
sunna or laws. Even during the recent civil wars, the war lords and their brutal militias killed in the name of Mohammed and Allah; they asked their victims to say those names before they shot them. When I was a kid I thought the only world that existed was Somalia and Saudi Arabia, because every story my mother told was either about her own nomadic childhood in the bush or her dream of visiting the holy lands in Saudi Arabia...