“The Proper Weight of Fear”
“The war in the 1990s had been primarily between the two largest Somali clans in the south and engulfed much of Somalia, though the north remained comparatively peaceful. Now, as the south flails blindly as it tries to piece itself back together, multiple regions inside the political borders of Somalia have declared themselves independent. To varying degrees of success, they function peaceably, with a semblance of political and clan-based autonomy and ever-disputed borders, as with Somaliland in the north, Puntland to the east, and Galmuduug in the south central. Somaliland is the most stable and long-term of these breakaway republics.
Culturally, linguistically, religiously, these regions are relatively homogenous. Some Somalis insist on maintaining unity within the wider borders decided by international parties. Other Somalis, a majority of them northerners, see little hope for peace in the south and are determined to make Somaliland independent. Technically, Somaliland is Somalia but in the hearts of many, Somaliland stands apart…
When we announced our decision for Tom to take the job, people — white, Midwestern American, middle-class, Christian — asked if we were afraid. Our new neighbors would be black, from the Horn of Africa, mostly poor, Muslim. I think people wanted us to be afraid. If we were afraid they could feel less guilty for their reticence to invest in the refugee down the street. If we were afraid they could pity us and feel relieved that they were staying. But I don’t remember feeling afraid. Sitting in an armchair and watching the world implode on the 6 o’clock news, that felt more damaging to our souls than the risk of moving to Somalia…
I struggle with which stories to tell and how to tell them well. I told a story of sexual harassment and people said, oh in Djibouti everyone sexually harasses women. I told a story of a successful businesswoman and people said, oh in Djibouti women earn plenty of money. Both assumptions, false.”
I always feel so many things about narratives of Africa (or India or Southeast Asia or South America or like “the inner city”) written by white Americans. I encounter way, way more of these kinds of narratives than I do narratives written by people who actually live there — which, I don’t know, I’m definitely not trying very hard but I also live in a cultural space where one would expect to encounter more than I do.
This one made me uncomfortable a little bit for all of the hard-to-express reasons (I picture the people she talks about and they look more like me than she does but I find that I don’t want to identify with them because they sound so hungry and sad and uneducated, and that is super complicated) but it is also informative and it’s what is there.
It’s the paragraph that I pulled about which stories to tell, which expresses a feeling I sometimes have when I talk about myself, when every piece of information given to white people about black people becomes very absolute and loses nuance.
But also, this line — “Safety is a Western illusion crafted into an idol and we refused to bow.” And this “I felt so much that fear never rose to the surface to be called out.”
