Advertisement
Books

This is the moment I discovered I was born a refugee

A trip to Calais as a young journalist led Aamna Mohdin to a shocking revelation about her early life

I’ve always been very close to my parents, my mum especially. When people ask, I call us the Somali Gilmore Girls, but a lot funnier and with more traumatic baggage. Family is at the heart of my life and my culture.

But a trip to Calais as a young journalist led me to a shocking revelation about my parents and my early childhood – that I was born a refugee. My mum had told me this after I returned from my first reporting trip to the refugee camp in Calais. 

I didn’t know what to say when she asked if I had truly forgotten what we had been through. I couldn’t really remember these formative years of my life – which was hugely disorienting and strange.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

And so I set off to uncover the past, interviewing my parents over the course of four years: in what would become my memoir Scattered. I talked about the lives they built as young people in the newly independent Somalia before the war; about their courtship and early marriage; about what happened to them as the country descended into chaos and they decided to leave. I saw my parents in a new light; I saw them for the resilient survivors that they were, not just the victims of the system designed to crush them.

I was hearing my family’s history in my parents’ own words for the first time; I was hearing about the challenges they faced while they were still younger than I am now. I was hearing of how they came to their tortuous decision to leave Somalia, the risk they took when they got on a fishing boat to reach Kenya, and the normality they tried to build for us in the refugee camp we called home. 

Advertisement
Advertisement

It made me understand my parents in a new light: not just as the people they had been in the past, but the ways in which it shaped who they are in the present. I understood where their dark sense of humour had come from, their strength and resilience, and, most importantly, why they continue to hold on to the hope that tomorrow will be a better day. 

I also learned a second shocking revelation after I had begun work on the book: that my mother and I had been separated for a year when she was deported. This was both a revelation about our family and our family’s history, but also threw memories of my childhood into sharp relief.

I remembered when I was around nine years old, I’d woken up at the break of dawn and found an empty space where my cousin, who was at mine for a sleepover, had been. I panicked. I spent the next few hours looking for her in our small flat while my parents slept. 

I had searched the same place; under the couch or bed, in the kitchen cupboards, or out in the landing, in some desperate hope that she would magically reappear. My aunt had taken her home when I was asleep, I was later told. I had so desperately wanted her to be with me.

I finally understood why I had been so desperate then and in other similar moments in my life. Those events in my early childhood had long reverberations for me, too. I couldn’t access all the memories I’d repressed, but going to therapy allowed me a safe space to imagine myself back there.

As a journalist, I have always been drawn to stories about displacement: and I realised that, however unconsciously, this was for a personal reason as well as a political one. 

When I heard the young girl on the radio talking about Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, I was overcome with emotion – her story mirrored that of mine and my mum’s, but my mum and I had been lucky enough to be reunited.

Today my parents and I are closer than ever; but it has been a long journey, both literal and emotional, to understand and uncover everything that we went through as a family.

Writing my book has taught me so much about my family history and myself; and becoming a mother myself in the last year has deepened my understanding too. 

When I look at my child, I can’t imagine the pain of being taken from him, but I know I’d do just about anything to be reunited with him. 

I hope to use the revelations I learnt and the experience of writing Scattered in my reporting going forward. I want to better understand and report on what unaccompanied refugee children experience in the UK and Europe; and the lifelong impact being separated from your parents continues to have on children.

Scattered by Aamna Mohdin is out now (Bloomsbury, £18.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us moreBig Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertisement

Become a Big Issue member

3.8 million people in the UK live in extreme poverty. Turn your anger into action - become a Big Issue member and give us the power to take poverty to zero.

Recommended for you

Read All
Top 5 revolutionary books, chosen by historian and author Alice Hunt
Books

Top 5 revolutionary books, chosen by historian and author Alice Hunt

Every family has a secret. By uncovering mine, I liberated my grandmother's sorrowful story
Family secrets

Every family has a secret. By uncovering mine, I liberated my grandmother's sorrowful story

The Most by Jessica Anthony review – cracks just beneath the surface of an all-American family
Books

The Most by Jessica Anthony review – cracks just beneath the surface of an all-American family

An interstellar, alien meteor collided with Earth. This is what happened
Science

An interstellar, alien meteor collided with Earth. This is what happened

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue