A Life Limited by a Passport

A few months ago — sometime between October and December 2025 — I came across a Facebook post that made me stop scrolling.

It was an announcement from Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan’s Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence, inviting people to take part in My UAE Story — a competition encouraging everyone, especially residents, to share personal narratives of hope, dreams, and belonging in order to help build a national identity rooted in diversity.

I didn’t write anything. Not because I didn’t have a story, but because I had too much of one.

Writing my UAE story felt heavy. I was born there. I grew up there. The UAE shaped my earliest understanding of safety and home. And yet, my relationship with it has never been simple. Putting it into words meant reopening memories I had learned to live around, not through.

So I stayed silent.

Weeks passed. The post faded from my feed, but not from my mind. Then something else shifted — not inspiration, not courage, but necessity. I came across a video explaining that stories could earn money simply by being read.

My story wasn’t poetic.

It wasn’t noble.

But it was honest. And in that moment, I realized that if I was ever going to reopen this chapter of my life, it might as well be for a reason that acknowledged reality. Survival has always been part of my story.

So I started writing.

I was born into displacement before I ever understood what the word meant.

I was born in 1987, in Al Ain. Less than a year later, the north of Somalia descended into what history often softens by calling a civil war. For the Isaaq people of the north, it was something else entirely.

It was a campaign of mass violence.

In 1988, cities like Hargeisa were bombarded, civilians were targeted, and entire communities were forced to flee. What followed was a three-year war that did not end until 1991, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced.

This part of my story does not come from memory.

It comes from my mother.

At the time, my father’s work in the oil and gas sector required him to be away for long periods, traveling to remote inland sites. My mother was often alone in the UAE with a newborn. She later told me that something unsettled her — a feeling she couldn’t explain. She decided to return north, to Hargeisa, believing my father would continue working and travel back and forth to see us.

The year she made that decision was 1988, just two months before the mass violence began.

The word reached my Father, the news of the war and the violence broke. He took the decision to travel back to the war-torn country and found us in the midst of chaos. Together, we fled alongside family members and others escaping the destruction — my mother carrying me on her back as an infant. At the same time, she was pregnant.

They walked for days across unforgiving terrain, covering nearly 150 kilometers on foot to reach Harshin, Ethiopia. There was no transport. No shelter. Only movement. The danger was not only from bombardment or pursuit, but from the environment itself — hunger, exhaustion, wildlife, and constant fear.

Along that journey, my mother lost the child she was carrying.

She never dramatized it when she told me. She stated it plainly, as something that happened while survival demanded everything her body had left to give.

I survived that journey without knowing it — not because I was strong, but because my mother endured what no one should have to endure.

Long before I struggled with borders, visas, and passports, displacement had already shaped the beginning of my life.

After reaching Harshin, Ethiopia, the danger did not end — but the movement did. From there, my parents eventually found a way to return to the UAE with me. I was still an infant. The journey back marked a fragile shift from survival to shelter — from running to breathing again.

My mother later told me that shortly after we returned to the UAE, she once left me watching television. A cartoon was playing — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In one scene, a helicopter appeared on the screen.

According to her, I became visibly distressed. I cried uncontrollably.

At the time, she didn’t understand why. Years later, she wondered whether the sound or the image triggered something — a reminder of pursuit, noise, or fear carried by a body too young to remember, but not too young to feel.

I don’t know if that is true.

What I do know is that survival doesn’t always end when danger stops. Sometimes, it lingers quietly — in the body, in reflexes, in moments we don’t consciously recall.

I was raised in the UAE by a hardworking Somali father who began working as a teenager and later built a career with an oil and gas company called GASCO. His job required long absences, traveling to remote inland sites for extended periods. In the year 2000, cancer took my father at the age of 50. I don’t even know the details of his grave to this day.

On the day he passed away, people gathered to offer condolences to my mother and me — neighbors, friends, coworkers. I remember being outside, chasing a football with neighborhood kids, unaware that my life had already changed forever.

To this day, I ask myself what I might have done differently if I had been older — if I had understood what loss truly meant.

Our legal stay in the UAE ended after his death. My mother had to sell products door-to-door to make ends meet. This kind of work was illegal. She carried 20–30 kilogram bags over long distances, constantly trying to avoid authorities and prevent her merchandise from being confiscated.

By 2009, after managing to finish high school, I was forced to leave the UAE. Once you reach a certain age, staying requires either a work visa or sponsorship. Without a parent to sponsor me, I had no legal path to remain. So I left for Malaysia to pursue my higher education.

On April 9, 2009, I boarded a Yemeni Airlines flight from Dubai to Kuala Lumpur. The flight stopped in Jakarta, where more passengers boarded. It was my first long-distance flight. The turbulence between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur was so severe that, for a moment, I thought I was going to die.

But I arrived.

From 2009 to 2014, Malaysia became my chapter of independence. I studied, lived on my own, and learned what it meant to survive without safety nets. Those years shaped me — but they were never meant to be permanent.

From the beginning, my plan was simple.

Graduate.

Return to the UAE.

Build a life.

I completed my final exams in December 2013. That day marked the end of my studies — and the beginning of another struggle.

By then, political tensions between Somalia and the UAE had made travel with a Somali passport nearly impossible. While holders of Western passports could enter easily, and others could obtain tourist or residence visas, my passport offered no path back.

I returned briefly to Somaliland, to Hargeisa, searching for a way forward.

There, in desperation, I made a decision that would later define my fate.

I paid $1,000 for a forged Djibouti passport — not to gain privilege, but to return to the only place I had ever felt at home. Using that passport, I obtained a visa, entered the UAE, secured employment, and lived there legally under a residence visa for three years.

I belonged again.

Or at least, I believed I did.

When my residence visa came up for renewal, I prepared for a routine process — a short exit and re-entry, something thousands of expatriates do every day. That trip never happened.

Immigration authorities flagged my documents. The borrowed identity I had lived under quietly was exposed. I was arrested and detained for six months.

Six months of confinement.

Six months of reflection.

Six months to understand the cost of desperation.

After that, I was deported to Somalia with a lifetime ban from re-entering UAE.

Since 2017, I have remained here — unable to travel, unable to move freely, living with the weight of borders that were never of my choosing.

I don’t tell this story to justify my mistakes.

I tell it to explain how a life can be shaped — and sometimes trapped — by a document most people never think twice about.

A passport is supposed to prove who you are. For many of us, it becomes a ceiling.

This is not just my story. It is the story of millions who grow up in countries that will never claim them, and who hold passports that open almost no doors.

Home, I’ve learned, is not always where you are allowed to stay.

Sometimes, it is simply where your heart refuses to leave.

Author’s Note: This story is based on personal experience and family testimony. The process of writing it was emotionally difficult, and I received editorial assistance using an AI writing tool to help organize and articulate the narrative. The experiences and reflections shared here are my own.