AMMAN - Nissa hurried down the glass-strewn alleyway, refusing to lift up her head until she slipped into the two-room apartment she calls home.

Although talkative by nature, the teenager barely speaks a word in public, avoiding eye contact as if desperately trying to conceal a secret that is plain for all to see: She is a Somali.

On a crowded street tucked away on the northern slope of Jabal Amman, dozens of refugees of a forgotten conflict carry on as they have for years, silently awaiting better days.

Holding out hope for a better tomorrow, many find that silver linings in the ramshackle Somali neighbourhood in Hay Al Masawreh are few and far between.

A neighborhood built by war

The first Somalis in Hay Al Masawreh date back to the early 1990s, when a handful of expatriate workers were forced to flee Kuwait during the first Gulf war.

Caught between Saddam Hussein’s oncoming forces and a homeland already ravaged by civil war, the Somalis sought safety in the hills of nearby Amman.

Over the years, more Somalis made their way to the Kingdom as the violence in their country dragged on and took unexpected turns: feuding warlords, the Islamic Courts Union, Ethiopian intervention and the Shabab militias.

Without fail, upon arrival, each batch of Somalis was directed by shopkeepers and bystanders down the hill from Jabal Amman.

For the Egyptians and Palestinians already living in the area, clues to the identity of their new neighbours came in bits and pieces: sounds of the Somali drifting from half-shuttered windows and the smell of freshly baked anjina bread filling the street on summer afternoons.

But as their numbers in the neighbourhood grew, now totalling 300, so too did an unlikely sense of community.

Somalis hosted new arrivals in their already crowded apartments, donated blankets and mattresses and helped them navigate the daily practicalities of being Amman residents.

Reham was one of dozens who relied on the tight-knit community when she arrived in the Kingdom from the UAE last year in search of assistance from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Separated from her husband and down to her last dinars, she came to Hay Al Masawreh looking for assistance. She found Nissa.

When the teenager heard that the 26-year-old and her children needed a place to stay, she immediately opened the door of their apartment. The two now share rent, meals and a new outlook on life.

“We are all one big family here,” Nissa said.

For Reham, finding a home connection amidst the winding back alleys of Jabal Amman was an unexpected source of relief.

“I didn’t even know there were Somalis in Jordan.”

‘Learning curve’

For many Somalis, the transition to life in the Kingdom is far from simple.

Ahmad, who has spent nine years in the Kingdom and acts as a community representative, said that despite cultural similarities, Somalis face a tough adjustment period learning the ins and outs of their adopted home.

While some Somalis came to Jordan from the Gulf with years of Arabic under their belt, others cling to their Somali dialect, struggling with daily tasks ranging from purchasing vegetables to navigating public transportation.

Some claim that newcomers face special “Somali prices”, as some unscrupulous traders try to take advantage of their unfamiliarity with the going rates for various goods to pad their profit margins.

“Sometimes they say ‘we know you can pay more because you take assistance from the UN’,” Nissa said.

The occasional greed extends beyond the corner grocer; some Hay Al Masawreh landlords charge Somali families up to JD150 for unfurnished two-room apartments, according to residents, more than double the JD70 registered refugees receive in cash assistance from UNHCR.

With the first rains, Somalis quickly learn that Jordanian weather is unlike the temperate Somali climate they left behind.

“That first winter really hits your body hard,” Ahmad said.

More than wet winter mornings and conversations lost in translation, the greatest challenge facing most Somalis is securing gainful employment, according to community members.

With few holding official documents and even fewer employers willing to sponsor refugees without diplomatic representation in Amman, legal employment for many Hay Al Masawreh residents is hard to come by, they claim.

“It’s easy for Egyptians to come and get work, but you don’t see a single Somali with a job,” said Othman, who did not wish to use his real name.

Somalis say it is this very lack of financial independence that cuts off the community from the rest of society.

“You can’t be part of society if you can’t make a living,” Ahmad said.

Left without work, splitting their time between the mosque and home, Othman said most Somalis live up to their reputation as the capital’s “invisible residents”.

Waiting

With violence and lawlessness gripping large swathes of Somalia and traditional social networks torn apart by migration, home for most Hay Al Masawreh residents exists only in memories and tales of the past.

Nissa’s grandmother, Khadija, spends many an afternoon entertaining her grandchildren with stories of Mogadishu before the war: bustling souks, village festivals, family outings at seaside cafés.

For those who spent their entire lives in conflict and refuge, pre-war Somalia seems another world away.

“I don’t remember Somalia without the violence,” Nissa said.

In contrast to the daily door-to-door rounds in Hay Al Masawreh, contacts with the motherland are few and far between.

Due to the high tariffs, most Somalis share phone cards, limiting their phone calls to one to two minutes; just enough time to confirm that their loved ones still live.

For many like Reham, who has not heard from her family in nearly a decade, there are no phone calls to make and nothing to return to other than broken promises of lives that will never be lived.

With poor prospects back home and little work to be had in Amman, the solution for the vast majority of Somalis in Jordan is resettlement.

The pace of resettlement has been gradual: Since 2008, UNHCR has registered 360 Somali refugees in Jordan and 161 have been resettled.

Nissa’s family is one of several slated to be resettled in the US, and they are already preparing for their new life by learning the name of their future home: Michigan.

But the future is not so clear for all Hay Al Maswreh residents. Some say they have been refused resettlement, while others have failed to qualify for refugee status.

For those who have fallen through the cracks of the refugee system, entire years can be boiled down to one word: waiting.

Separated from relatives, unable to work, holding unrecognised passports, many Somalis in Jordan say they have nowhere else to turn.

“What can we do? We can’t travel to another country and we can’t go back home,” Othman said.

“We live in an open prison.”

Othman and Amman’s other invisible residents find minor comfort in the fact that amidst lives dictated by uncertainty, there will always be one last place to turn to.

“We may have lost our homes,” Khadija said as she wrapped her arms around her granddaughter.

“But here we have not lost our sense of family.”

www.jordantimes.com