Let’s Talk About Birthdays
A family meeting was called. I don’t remember when. They were called all the time for various reasons — both frivolous and important. But this one was different. It was about me.
My family, which comprised of my dad, mom, and two older brothers at the time gathered around the uncomfortably long rectangular mahogany dining table. A white, semi-lace tablecloth stretched on the table and dripped down to the floor — its edges always greyed out with floor dirt. My siblings and I adored the lengthy barrier because we hid behind it whenever we broke the rules, and Maama would run after us with a red, flappy slipper in one hand and a wood spoon in the other.
My brothers sat next to each other at the dining table, whispering to one another. We shared a look. Instantly, I knew they knew what this was about. I climbed onto the chair between my mom and dad. I remember I picked that seat because the look my brothers gave me as we locked eyes was alienating, and I needed to feel protected.
“Aya, we have something to tell you,” my dad broke the silence. He was always pithily candid; he didn’t sugar-coat his rhetoric. A quality I admire so much I adopted it.
I have a fake birth date and a real one.
* * *
When I tell people I have two different birth dates, they get confused.
“But how?” they ask as concerned puzzlement flushes their faces. “Do you get presents on both days?” “Do you eat cake twice?”
I was born in Alexandria, Egypt on February 27, 1995 at dusk. But my birth certificate reads March 3, 1995. When you’re born in a country such as Egypt, hospitals getting your birth date right is not a priority for them. My dad actually wrote March 3 on my birth certificate on purpose.
“Because I wanted us to have a birthday to celebrate every month for the first four months of the year,” he told me at one of our many family meetings when I asked him why he had penned the falsity that I have been celebrating for nearly 22 years. “Don’t you think it’s more fun that way? I was thinking ahead.” And I believe he genuinely meant it.
With my birthday in March, my family would have a birthday to celebrate for each month until April. My brother, Amin, was born in January, my dad in February, and my oldest brother, Ismail, in April. My dad did think ahead.
But in some ways, I wish he hadn’t. All my legal documents contain, and at times even prove, a falsehood. My Facebook friends don’t post ‘happy birthday’ on my virtual wall until days after I have aged. My favorite number is three, even though I don’t like odd, prime numbers; they make feel uneasy. And whenever passwords demand a numeric value, 33 is the first to come to mind because of the repetitive nature the date 3/3 carries. I presume my reuse of my birth date isn’t something my dad thought ahead about. He couldn’t have foreseen the synergy my birth date would create in my every-day life. But on the bright side, my zodiac sign remained the same, and that is something I have always been thankful for — although I highly doubt my dad took that into consideration.
But my complains about my fake birth date are frivolous next to the many people who don’t know when they were born.
Somali refugees who sought asylum in the land of the free in the 1990s often were unaware of their real birth date.1 They didn’t even have birth certificates. How can they? They were displaced fleeing clan-based warfare and droughts that forced them to be packed like sardines in refugee camps in Kenya.1 When it came time for refugees to fill immigration papers to resettle elsewhere, United Nations resettlement officials assigned January 1 as refugees’ legal birth date. Reassigned birthdates to refugees were merely an estimate.1 There was often a margin of error that could either age them or gracefully knock a couple years off their birth certificate. The refugees had no control over that.
As of 2013, more than 200,000 immigrants and refugees in America have January 1 as their birthday.3 As the world celebrates a new year, immigrants and refugees with no real on-the-record birth date also begin a new year — or at least the papers that granted them a chance at a new life tells them to age.
The papers that tell me when to age weren’t my chance at a new life, and that’s a privilege. I have the privilege of knowing the connection between my name and my birth date. I was born on the day that is closest to when Muslims believe the first verses of The Holy Quran were revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). And being that I am Muslim, my father named me “Aya,” because one meaning of the Arabic word “aya” is “verse.” Even though my real birth date is not the one I say on phone when a customer service representative wants to confirm that it is in fact Aya Elamroussi speaking, it is tied to my name, to my often-mispronounced name, because readers don’t know that it’s a long a and y is really an “e” sound. The connection my name has to my real birth date and the reason I was named Aya is what turns expected annoyance to pride and a teaching moment when my name is mispronounced time and time again.
But name mispronunciation is not what keeps refugees up at night; President Trump’s executive order to suspend admission of refugees into the U.S. is what did.2 The Washington Post reported that Mohammed Rashid, a Somali refugee in Kenya, watched CNN at night on television following closely the life-determining events of the travel ban proposed by President Trump. 3 I am sure many people who aren’t refugees watched the news. But I doubt they did in the way Rashid did. President Trump temporarily halted his chance at a new life, a new birth date — albeit a fake one like my own.
But my fake birthday was chosen. As I grew up, my dad set out to make birthdays special. The celebration ritual began the second I opened my eyes and my vision caught the blue, sparkly string hanging from the ceiling. The long-anticipated birthday present wrapped tightly in vibrant paper was suspended in the air at the end of the string. The string was ironic to me: its length mimicked my long anticipation for my birthday present, yet it was the tool that availed the present to me. I didn’t know whether to like the string for bringing me closer to what I desired or hate it because I perceived its length as almost a tease to my excitement. The celebration ritual continued with breakfast in bed, incoming like an airplane and landing safely on my lap. All my favorite breakfast foods sat on a tray I could barely reach across as a kid. My dad wanted to do this celebratory ritual every month — that’s why I have a fake birthday.
Mohamed Cali, a Somali-American refugee, has a fake birthday because he doesn’t remember his real one.1 Cali only knows the year he was born, but he doesn’t recall the day and month. So when he filled out immigration papers to come to America, he was assigned the famous January 1 birth date.1 In Somalia, people don’t inquire about a person’s birthdate.1 In America, he is one of the thousands Somali refugees who have a January 1 birth date. Cali’s fake birthday is what enables him to celebrate his eight children’s birthdays, who were all born the U.S., as it is the symbol of his commencement of a new life.
Ahmed Ismail Yusuf used to laugh when he saw his kids countdown the days to their birthdays in great anticipation.1 Being a Somali-American refugee himself, Yusuf is aware that he and his kids live in two different worlds when it comes to celebrating birthdays.1 Yusuf’s world doesn’t have presents hanging from a ceiling or a breakfast tray incoming like an airplane on his birthday.
Undocumented birthdays are telling of a system. If government facilities aren’t diligent in getting their people’s birth date right, then does the government value its people at all? If the day a human being comes into existence isn’t important enough to be inked on paper and saved for future use, is that indicative of a dissolved future that was never actually there?
A birthday is a privilege. I have two. I get ‘happy birthday’ twice in one year within the same week because my close friends and family know my odd birthday story.
Yet the current president of the United States of America wants to deprive refugees of one birthday. A birthday that would grant them a second chance at life. A birthday that could breed real birthday celebrations with gifts suspended in the air and breakfast food trays incoming like an airplane and landing safely.
Landing safely because refugees are welcome here. And only food should be dropped, not bombs.
Notes
1. Ibrahim Hirsi, “Why so many Somali-Americans celebrate their birthday on Jan. 1,” MinnPost, January 3, 2017.
2. Kevin Sieff. “Inside the world’s largest refugee camp, one man’s quest to explain Donald Trump to those now banned from America,” February 4, 2017.
3. Ross Pearson, “What’s My Age Again? The Immigrant Age Problem in the Criminal Justice System,” Minnesota Law Review Report, 2013
< http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Pearson_MLR.pdf >