Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi Nor Iftin's new book is Call Me American: A Memoir.

From the transcript of his interview with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro:

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'd like to take you back to the beginning where this book begins and your family's story, your parents, who were nomads. And they describe a sort of Somali life that I've really never heard about, of lush fields and a peaceful pastoral life.

IFTIN: It is. It is. My mother had - you know, her entire world was just her nomadic life - you know? - the animals, her family. And she had no idea that the country that she was living in was called Somalia. She had always told me, you know, Abdi, there's only two days - the day that you're born and then the day that you die. Everything else in the middle is just grazing and hanging out with the animals. And, you know, how easy life had been to my parents before the disaster had hit and wiped out all their animals.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And that disaster, of course, was the famine and the drought. And your life was marked very early on by war. What was your earliest memory of the conflict?

IFTIN: I was 6 years old when the civil war started, militias started, you know, pouring into the city and death and killings and torture. And I described the smell of Mogadishu. It was just, you know, the smell of gunpowder. And that had been...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue