I was boarding my flight to Mogadishu a few months back when a Somali friend sent me a short, ominous text message. It was a well-meant, practical warning: when in Somalia, keep the lowest possible profile. What made them think Mogadishu was now a safe bet to visit? When can you tell that a country has properly, unquestionably turned a corner? How do you balance a patriotic desire to help rebuild with an instinct for survival? These are disorientating times for those who fled Somalia in an exodus in the early s.
Some wars end with a peace treaty. Some countries, like South Africa in , get an historic election to mark the moment that those in exile are finally welcomed home. But the men and women boarding my flight in Istanbul had no such reliable signposts. Or whether the Islamist militants Al Shabaab, or some fresh disaster, would ruin things once again. It was something out of the ordinary, something, indeed, rather wonderful.
A book fair. A proper event at a big Mogadishu hotel, with its own hashtag, and panel discussions β a cultural milestone for a ruined capital that had not experienced anything like it for a generation; not since the old government collapsed in and a lovely port city of open-air cinemas, beaches and cafes was ground into the dunes.
And she loved it. It was hard not to be impressed, to be carried away by the almost fanatical optimism in the room. Hard, but not impossible. In the crowded courtyard outside the hotel banqueting hall, I heard a voice shouting out my name. She grew up in north London, and has the accent to prove it. The visit had not gone well. She fled to the airport, reached the departure gate, and began to relax.
But minutes before she was about to board her plane, an immigration official came over and confiscated her passport. Then he tried to push her back out into the city, presumably so the gunmen could have another opportunity. After some frantic phone calls and the intervention of the United Nations, Ilham was kept safe and flown out of Somalia the following morning. It was, she says, the work of powerful members of her own sub-clan β clans are a central part of Somali society β who had simply assumed Ilham had come back with plans to run for their allotted seat in the new parliament.
