He likes spicy food, though he can’t eat too much of it.

“It gives me, like, gas,” he said, unembarrassed.

African-born Warsame, 27, ends almost all sentences with, “You know what I mean?” He learned it from the American black community when he arrived in the United States in 2001.

“That’s my style, you know what I mean? The black people say, ‘You know what I mean, you feel me?’”

Warsame was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, between 1977 and 1978. When asked about his birthday, he paused, thought and said, “October.” Then another pause. “No May. May 10th,” he concluded with certainty.

Finally he confessed that he doesn’t really know.

A Sunni Muslim, he holds little of the national pride that can be found in scores of immigrants who settled in Chicago before him. Rather, his pride is for his Mijertyn tribe and his family. He has 22 brothers and sisters, he said. Two others died as children. Their ages range from 4-year-old Yaha, a boy, to 34-year-old Sarpun, a woman. His father, 70, has four wives. Warsame’s mother, Nimco, 47, bore 12 children.

Civil war-torn Somalia in the horn of Africa has not had a working government since 1991. It is plagued by warring clans, although in recent years, businesses have become the unofficial rulers. It is 99.9 percent Muslim, with Somali as the official language.

For the first 12 to 13 years of his life, Warsame lived in peace with his family in the southern capital of Mogadishu, under Mohamed Siad Barre’s government. President Siad Barre had seized power in a coup in 1969 and turned Somalia into a socialist nation.

In 1981, Siad Barre excluded the Mijertyn and Isaq clans from government, filling jobs with people from his own Maehan clan.

“No one likes the government the last 10 years because it was like, clan, sub clan – reserve jobs for themselves,” Warsame said of Siad Barre. “It’s too much corruption. It’s one family ruling the country.”

In January 1991, opposition forced Siad Barre to flee, which lead to the government’s collapse and the end of socialism in Somalia. Thousands in Mogadishu fled and the beautiful Italian-influenced city was destroyed. Warsame and his family were caught in the middle of it all.

“The government was weak and came a group of guerillas. A lot of groups,” he said.

Warsame’s father, Mohamed, ran a business that imported clothing, livestock and food. Thanks to that business, Warsame was one of the lucky ones who escaped Mogadishu unharmed. The Warsames owned five houses in different villages, one for each wife and the father. All were destroyed.

Warsame said he was a “little bit afraid” during that period, but at 13, he didn’t fully understand the danger.

“I feel like excited, interested to go to another place, you know what I mean?” he said.

Warsame’s family fled in his father’s pick-up truck and evacuated to a rented a house in the southern coastal town of Marca .

The Warsames were lucky to escape alive. Street battles killed thousands. Many fled to the countryside, homeless. Thousands of others ended up in refugee camps. Countless buildings were destroyed, including hospitals and places of worship.

After six months the Warsames moved north to where they would finally settle in Bososo . Three more Warsames were born throughout the ordeal.

Despite leaving his home city and friends, Warsame’s tone is casual when speaking of the government overthrow.

“Every family was trying to flee, they’re running for their lives. You never know your mom will die, your family, you will never see again,” he said nonchalantly. He could have been talking about buying milk at White Hen.

He shared the memory of a childhood crush from before the government collapsed.

“I like a girl. I don’t know how to talk to her and she don’t know how to talk to me,” he said, laughing. “She looks at me, I look at her. I was thinking, ‘She likes me so much.’ It was funny.”

But war got in the way.

“We were at school and the civil war broke out and that’s it,” he said. He doesn’t know where she is now.

Once in Bososo, he attended a private school for about USD $5 per month.

“It’s dirt cheap,” he said. “I didn’t last long. I was lazy.”

So he dropped out of school to work for his father.

In December 1992, the United Nations sent a mission to Somalia called Operation Restore Hope to peace keep and deliver food to the starving south. Twenty-one nations participated, led by U.S. troops.

Warsame was working for his father in Bososo in October 1993, when an angry Somali crowd killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers in Mogadishu. The gruesome images of the tortured bodies being dragged through the streets shocked the world. Soon after, President Bill Clinton withdrew 30,000 U.S. troops from Somalia. One year later, the U.N. pulled out also.

“My father likes Americans. It was a big deal because it’s too much violence, too much people dying,” Warsame said.

In 1995, he and four siblings went to an Ethiopian refugee camp. They wanted to leave Somalia, but needed paperwork and couldn’t get it at home because Somalia had no consular or embassy.

“That country’s really poor country,” he said of Ethiopia. “They’re starving more than Somalia. Somalia is much better than that country.”

It was Warsame’s first time in a refugee camp. When asked what it was like, he merely answered, “It’s like, real bad. Old mattress.”

Meanwhile, Somalia, without a government and seemingly without international friends, tried several times to establish a government with the help of nearby countries. Clan chiefs met in Cairo in 1997 but didn’t resolve any disputes.

Warsame in his taxi (Photo by Andrea James)

In 2001, Warsame moved to the United States to join his sister Qadra and her husband.

After coming to the United States, Warsame worked as a parking lot attendant and at a meat factory in Wisconsin. He soon grew bored with Wisconsin and moved to Chicago to join his brother, Aways, 33, who drives a taxi for the city.

Now, Warsame is a taxi driver in the suburbs, albeit not a very good one. His knowledge of Chicagoland geography is questionable and he depends on his passengers to give him directions. To him, all destinations stem from Lake Shore Drive, even if it is out of the way.

“I prefer to get out of that job,” he said.

But he likes Chicago, and wants to stay, despite the cold winters.

“It’s big city. I like big city, especially downtown. It’s just fun. A lot of people. A lot of things to do. I like to do a lot when I have time.”

Over dinner at the Pita Inn in Skokie, he discussed why he has no desire to return to Somalia.

“I don’t like Somalia, it’s third world, it’s not like . . . ” he trailed off and waved his hand toward the rest of the restaurant, which was full of fluorescent lights, Formica tables and plastic plants: a picture of modernity. He concludes, “It’s not like modern country.”

“I can’t handle it to go there. It is really like nothing. No air circulation. Not good like U.S. There is no good roads,” he said, adding, “The people are nice.”

If he did go home, he would find that stability hasn’t progressed much.

Despite 14 attempts at peace talks since the government collapsed in 1991, clan leaders cannot agree on a government, and Mogadishu remains in ruins.

In August 2000, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan was elected president, but other powerful warlords rejected the government, and although Hassan arrived in Mogadishu in October to a hero’s welcome, opposition to his government spurred more fighting.

“No one has power,” Warsame explained. “Southern have some power. Northern have some power. Hassan – he’s the interim government. He don’t have power in Somalia.”

The next year wasn’t much better. In 2001, rebels took over a southern town and attempted to form a new government. Hassan’s government opposed the move and in May 2001, dozens were killed in Mogadishu over fights between militia and Hassan’s transitional government.

Meanwhile, the U.N. appealed to the rest of the world for food to aid 500,000 people in the south, which suffered from drought.

Despite Somalia’s chaos, Warsame does not worry about his parents and siblings who continue to live in Bososo, which is in Puntland.

In 1998, the Puntland region in the northeast declared independence and Somaliland in the north had also declared independence in the early 1990s. Those areas have working governments and remain the most stable regions of the country. Puntland opened an office in Washington, D.C., in November with the mission of creating a united Somalia.

Warsame doesn’t call home because the phone system is unreliable. Unlike other Somalis, he doesn’t send money home because his family doesn’t need it.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the U.N. and European Union withdrew foreign aid workers, and in November, the U.S. froze the funds of al Barakaat, Somalia’s main remittance bank because of suspected ties to al-Qaeda. The move angered Somalis. The remittance bank was vital to Somalia’s economy because about 1 million Somalis live outside the country, many in North America. They send an estimated $1 billion annually back home.

Fighting continues today, with people dying daily, but the U.S. media rarely covers the tragedy. According to Reuters reports, 45 people near Mogadishu died during the second week of May 2004 because of clan fights.

Many outside of Somalia do not understand the complicated clan system or the reason for the fighting. As Reuters reported about recent clashes, “The reason for the fighting is still not clear.”

But, according to Warsame, it’s all really quite simple.

“We are Somalis, but we are different tribes – we fight. It seems like we are enemy,” he said. “Sometimes you will feel this is our brothers, and sometimes you don’t. That is the basic, you know what I mean?”

The Somalia National Reconciliation Conference in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi is ongoing. The clans are reluctant to surrender any power to come to an agreement. Most Somalis’ loyalties lie within sub-sub clans, making it hard to establish a national identity.

Warsame is no different than his countrymen in this regard. He doesn’t follow Somali news and doesn’t seem interested in Somalia’s future. He only laments the loss of his boyhood city.

“The capital, Mogadishu, that was a nice city. Beautiful buildings, a lot of houses – it’s all destroyed. Did you watch Black Hawk Down? It’s really ugly.”

Warsame doesn’t follow a personal timeline or have future plans. He is optimistic, although he isn’t sure about what. He is boyishly carefree and seems to want to fit into an American lifestyle.

He doesn’t want to practice polygamy like his father.

“This is modern, that was old,” he says of the practice.

His religion dictates that he should pray five times a day, but he doesn’t.

“I’m a bad, you know what I mean?”

When will he move his parents to the United States? When will he make use of his certificate in graphics design? Apply for American citizenship? Marry? Quit his taxi job?

To all questions about the future, he answers the same thing, “Whenever the chance comes.”

And, unaware of the irony, he has some advice for Americans.

“Don’t jog alone. America is like, dangerous country, you know what I mean?”