Turjumaad ayaa la diyaarinayaa

In Somaliland, the pursuit of statehood has come with a bitter irony.

By Farah Bakaari The last time I was able to go home was ten years ago, when I had just finished my first year of college. It would take me about fifty hours to travel from central Iowa to the Horn of Africa. Though I would eventually end up in Somaliland, where I was born and where my parents live, I had to first stop in neighboring Djibouti for an appointment at the U.S. embassy to interview for my re-entry visa. The visa would take three months to process, months I would spend in Somaliland trying to get reacquainted with my parents but mostly watching Bollywood movies and Turkish soaps dubbed in Arabic and eating with an acute awareness of my imminent return to the Midwest.

At the end of summer my visa was ready, and I flew to Djibouti to pick it up before heading back to the States. At the embassy, the agent didn’t stamp my passport. Instead, she stamped a piece of paper, which she then folded in half, in half again, then stapled inside my passport. Printed somewhere in the back of this paper were the words: “The below named traveler has a passport that is not recognized by the U.S. Department of State or has had the passport requirement waived. This visa is being issued per 22 CFR 41.113(b).”

The absurdity of this little diplomatic gymnastic has always struck me as both deeply humiliating and deeply hilarious. How could an otherwise empty piece of paper be deemed more worthwhile, more trustworthy than my passport, which bore the seal of the Republic of Somaliland? Did the agent know what it cost? That, although no country in the world at the time recognized Somaliland’s sovereignty, hundreds of thousands of people had died for its name?