Still searching for a Somali friend after 30 years: Larry Wilson
When, just out of college in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I worked as a technical editor at a massive construction project in Saudi Arabia, I didn’t make all that many Saudi friends.
British friends, Indian friends, Kenyan friends, yes. But the Saudis in our offices were often such princelings that they put in just a couple of hours during the middle of the day. Or they were older and very high up and there would be no reason to get to know a 23-year-old Yank.
Saeed was different. A year or two younger than me, he had been to college in the United States. He spoke fluent English. He was shy but friendly. Very observant, so that he stuck to Pepsi when he came to the young guys’ gatherings that — don’t be too shocked, now — involved bathtub hooch in a country in which alcohol is (supposedly) strictly forbidden.
While Saeed was a Saudi citizen, he was also clearly of African descent. I asked him about his name — Saeed Omer al-Somali. “Well, really, Larry, my name is Saeed Omer, plain and simple,” he said. “But when you are black like me, and are born here, they tag the country you came from onto your name on your passport.”
It would be as if we called someone, well, Juan Reyes the Guatemalan just because of where his parents are from — called them that officially, on a passport.
Actually, I was amazed at how multi-cultural and essentially non-racist Saudi society was. Muslim Africans were everywhere, some fairly high up in the social and business heirarchies. Saeed didn’t complain of discrimination.
He came from the merchant class, his father a sheep trader whose boats came around the Horn of Africa and up into the port of Jeddah laden with livestock. That’s how Saeed had been born in the Western Province where we lived and worked.
After my tour of duty was over, Saeed came back to Parsons’ Pasadena office and worked for a time. He brought his bride-to-be, the lovely Amal, and they were married in a house on Woodbury Road in Altadena. I introduced him to my parents. When I went off to graduate school in international management, I wrote my thesis based on an imaginary import-export business Saeed and I would set up, and he helped me with some of the Saudi legal rigamarole.
That was 30 years ago, and at some point in the mid-’80s we lost touch. Years later, I tried to contact him by going through folks in Parsons’ HR department. They said they had no record of a Saeed Omer al-Somali as an employee. None. Hmmm.
Thursday night, when I caught the current flick “Captain Phillips,” I was startled into memories of Saeed at the first sight of the young Somali-American actor who plays the lead pirate in the flick. They bear a marked resemblance — though the actor is much scrawnier. We were very well-fed in the company cafeteria in Yanbu.
At home last night, I did another internet search for Saeed. Nothing. Well, there are people with similar names out there, but not the right person.
As I was leaving Yanbu, my Yemeni friend Saleh gave me a hug and said: “Larry, my brother, Saleh is not my real name, I must tell you, after all this time. I came across the border illegally. I can’t tell you my real name. Goodbye.”
Perhaps Saeed Omer wasn’t my other friend’s real name, either. Who knows? But I miss you, Saeed. Whenever I hear of Somalia, and all the strife in your ancestral homeland, I think of you, and of Amal, and I hope you are keeping well.
Larry Wilson is a member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles News Group. larry.wilson@langnews.com.