As Salam Alaikum, folks. My name is Abdirashid Ismail, and I'm a young Somali Muslim man living in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden. There are over forty thousand people of Somali descent living in Sweden, and for this reason, we're among the most oppressed minorities there. Lots of Arabs and Turks also make their home in Sweden, but it's us Somalis that most of these people have a problem with. Sweden is thought of as a wealthy, liberal country. I guess the people who think so are either white or willfully ignore the racism of the Swedes. Me? I'm a fighter. No one will conquer me, Swedish racism be damned.
I stand six feet three inches tall, broad-shouldered and well-built, with medium brown skin and long, curly black hair. My features are very ethnic, and everyone knows that I am Somali just by looking at me. I am clean-shaven, and always dress impeccably because image matters to me. I speak Somali and Swedish fluently, and I am staunchly proud of my Somali heritage. Bigots and hatemongers would have you believe that Somalis come to Sweden because it's a welfare state and we're a lazy people. That is simply not true.
My father, Ali Ismail, spent fifteen years living in the City of Toronto, Canada, before moving to Sweden. My sister Halima and my younger brother Khaled were born in Toronto, actually. My father came to Gothenburg as a young man with a Master's degree in Business from the University of Toronto. Last time I checked, Canadian university degrees are valid around the world, especially business degrees. Yet my father spent years looking for work worthy of his education in cities around Sweden, and the local businessmen would have nothing to do with him because of his skin color and foreign birth.
Even when my father gained Swedish citizenship, the Swedes would not hire him. That's why he founded his own business. Hus Av Ali, that's the name of our Somali-themed restaurant. It means House Of Ali, for those of you who don't speak Swedish or are lousy at guessing. My sister Halima and I help our father at the restaurant, and we've recently hired a couple of Somali ladies as cooks, Fatima and Aisha.
The restaurant is family-owned and family-run, and that's how we like it. The Swedes won't give jobs to us Somalis, so we only hire our own at the businesses that we create. If you talk of reverse racism I will shove my Somali foot up your uptight European ass. We are Somalis, not African-Americans. We believe in defending ourselves and what we hold dear against the forces of European racism. We don't believe in chanting or marching or holding hands with racist white people who want to hurt us or worse. Enough with that shit, thank you very much.
Like most Somalis living in Sweden, I rejoiced when Abdirizak Waberi, a man of Somali descent, was elected to the Parliament of Sweden. Representing the Moderate Party, Mr. Waberi stepped into the history books when he became the first black man and the first Muslim elected to the Parliament of this nation. I celebrated and felt inspired by Waberi's ascent, but I am not naïve enough to believe that racism is over and anything stupid like that. Xenophobia runs in the blood of every European, and it can perk up at the worst of times in the last people you'd expect.
I am a student in the civil engineering programme at the University of Gothenburg. Are you shocked yet? I am a Somali male who is enrolled at a European institution of higher education. I am gainfully employed. My father owns the house where my family lives. We don't depend on the Swedish welfare state. We earn what we have. And we will defend it fiercely should any pale buffoon with a sense of entitlement try to take it away. Don't believe me? Try us. And keep in mind we Somalis are the ones who drove off the damn U.S. soldiers during the conflict shown in the movie Black Hawk Down. We don't believe pale men with guns are invincible. They bleed just like we do.
In my engineering classes at University of Gothenburg, I am considered somewhat of a troublemaker. You see, I have always loved mathematics and science. That's why I chose to study engineering. Not to brag or anything but sometimes, I know more than my professors. I love engineering. Science at its purest. In engineering, it's all about exact numbers, measurements and figures. If you do the math right, your results can be verified in real time by a guy in South Africa, a chick in Brazil or some old bozo in Sweden. Follow the math, and you will come to only one correct result. The beauty of engineering.
If I were a white dude, the professors would consider me brilliant, a genius and an apt pupil. Since I am an intelligent young black man with an Arabic name, they don't know what to make of me. I'm not supposed to be smart. I'm supposed to be a fool with a thick accent, and I'm supposed to be awed by European science, rather than crafty enough to point out the mistakes in a professor's equations on the board. Oh, well. Got to break some stereotypes, you know? Now, I know better than to challenge a professor in the classroom since I am but a student. The old prof in question called me out, thinking he'd have a good time at my expense. Well, I beat him at his own game. The white guys and the white chicks in class watched, stunned, as the smart-mouthed old professor got his ass handed to him, mathematically, by the tall, skinny dude from Somalia. You would have thought someone said the sun would not rise again. Wouldn't want to be a fly on that wall, let me tell you.
As I walked out of that intense three-hour lecture, I could feel all eyes on me. Sighing, I went to the University of Gothenburg library, where I ran into my friends Ahmad, a burly Iraqi dude, and Mehmet, a brother from Turkey, and sat next to each other in the computers and goofed off. I've known Ahmed and Mehmet ever since I was a newcomer to Gothenburg from Toronto. Along with my fellow Somali student Kader, we formed our very own "barbershop quartet". Seriously, we all get our haircuts at "Khadija Har Salong", a barbershop slash hair salon owned by Kader's mother Khadija.
