Part 2: The Disconect
By the time Ismail entered high school, the feeling of being caught between two worlds had only deepened. He had perfected the art of silence, floating through his days like a ghost, trying not to attract too much attention. He knew he didn’t fit in with the Somali kids. His Somali wasn’t strong enough to follow their rapid-fire conversations, and whenever he spoke, they would laugh at his pronunciation or correct him with a condescending smirk.
“You sound like a little kid,” one of the older boys told him once, his tone dripping with mockery. Ismail had nodded, pretending it didn’t bother him, but that comment stuck with him, replaying in his mind whenever he tried to speak Somali at home.
He hated how different he felt from his peers, both Somali and Black. The black kids at school didn’t understand his background. They’d slap him on the back and call him “African” in a way that felt like a reminder of the distance between them. Some days, it was easier to just laugh along with them, pretending that the divide didn’t sting.
There were moments when he would try to connect, pushing past his discomfort. One afternoon, he was hanging out in the schoolyard after class, listening to a group of black kids talk about basketball and rap. Ismail had jumped in, mentioning Nas, hoping it would spark a connection.
“Nah, man,” one of them said, shaking his head. “That’s old-school. You gotta listen to Kendrick or J. Cole. You’re stuck in the ’90s.”
The conversation quickly moved on, leaving Ismail on the fringes again. He couldn’t keep up, and whenever he tried, it felt like he was trying on clothes that didn’t fit. The rap music he listened to alone at night felt like a world he could understand, but in front of them, it felt like a mask he couldn’t wear convincingly.
At home, it was no easier. His parents’ expectations weighed heavily on him, an unspoken burden that pressed on his shoulders every day. His father always reminded him of their sacrifices and the life they had left behind in Somalia. They had lost so much, and now everything rested on Ismail’s success. His education was supposed to be his way out, but to him, it felt like another reminder that he didn’t belong.
He loved learning; that much was true. But the school had become a battlefield, a place where his accent and background were constant targets for ridicule. He’d raise his hand in class, eager to contribute, only to be met with stifled laughter when he mispronounced a word. His teachers would correct him gently, but he could feel the eyes of his classmates on him, waiting for him to slip up again.
It didn’t help that his parents’ dreams for him felt impossible. They expected him to excel, to be the model Somali son, but they couldn’t see how hard it was to bridge the gap between their world and the one he was forced to navigate at school. When he stumbled over his Somali, his mother would sigh in frustration, her voice tinged with disappointment.
“You’ve been here too long,” she’d say. “You’re forgetting who you are.”
Ismail wanted to ask her who that was. Who was he supposed to be? He wasn’t fully Somali anymore, not in the way his parents were. And he wasn’t Black American either, no matter how hard he tried to mold himself into that identity. He was always in between, floating in the space between two cultures that seemed to reject him equally.
One afternoon, after a particularly tough day, Ismail decided to try something different. He was tired of feeling disconnected from his heritage, from a part of himself that his parents desperately wanted him to hold onto. He opened his music app and searched for Somali songs, hoping that something might make him feel closer to home. He remembered his father mentioning old Qarami songs, traditional Somali love ballads, and poems set to music. Ismail found a playlist and hit play.
The first song that came on was a classic his father used to hum when cooking dinner. The voice of the singer, rich and filled with emotion, filled his room. The soft beats of the drum and the plucking of the oud sent shivers down Ismail’s spine. As he listened, he found himself understanding the lyrics—words of love, longing, and sorrow—but they felt distant, as though he were listening through a thick fog. He understood the language, but it didn’t feel like his own.
For the next week, he made an effort to immerse himself in Somali music, hoping it would bridge the gap between him and his parents, between him and his heritage. But the more he listened, the more frustrated he became. While he could grasp the meaning, he couldn’t use the language like the singers did. It felt foreign, just like the Somali conversations he overheard but couldn’t join.
Yet, something in the music stuck with him. There was a kind of comfort in it, even if he couldn’t fully connect. He wasn’t sure what it was—maybe the familiarity, or maybe it was the simple fact that it was part of where he came from. It wasn’t the solution to his identity crisis, but it was a step.
One night, after scrolling through more Somali music, Ismail stumbled upon a different kind of artist. He found K’naan, a Somali-Canadian rapper who blended Somali roots with Western hip-hop. Curious, he clicked on a song.
The first line hit him like a punch. The mix of English and Somali, the poetic lyrics, and the raw emotion felt like someone had finally put his feelings into words. K’naan wasn’t just rapping about Somalia or life in the West—he was rapping about both. He was the bridge Ismail had been searching for, someone who straddled two worlds, just like him.
K’naan’s music became Ismail’s refuge. He would listen to it for hours, letting the beats and the words wash over him. It was as though someone had finally permitted him to be both Somali and something else, to live in the hyphen between identities without needing to choose one over the other. Whenever Ismail felt overwhelmed by his struggles at school or the pressure from his parents, he would plug in his headphones and disappear into K’naan’s world.
It was in K’naan’s music that Ismail found a companion—someone who understood the feeling of disconnection, the struggle of trying to belong in two different places at once. The songs spoke to his loneliness, but they also offered him something he hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.
Through K’naan’s music, Ismail began to realize that he didn’t have to fit neatly into one box. He could take pieces of both worlds and make something of his own. It wasn’t easy, and he still struggled with the weight of expectations and the constant feeling of not being enough. But for the first time, he felt like he had found a voice that understood him.
One night, after a particularly tough argument with his father about his future, Ismail sat down with his notebook and wrote:
“Between two lands,
I sing with one voice,
Echoes of a past I don’t remember,
And dreams of a future I can’t see.
I am the bridge between words,
The rhythm of two hearts.
Neither here nor there,
But somewhere in between,
I am home.”
As the words poured out of him, Ismail knew that his journey was far from over. He was still searching for his place, still navigating the challenges of being Somali, Black, and American all at once. But with K’naan’s music as his guide, he felt a little less alone. He didn’t have all the answers yet, but at least now he had a rhythm to follow…
Mohamed Eid