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"I'll go anywhere, as long as I find work," he said, "anywhere that I can find something to eat."
A Disaster at Sea
Six hours from Mayfaah, on the outskirts of the port of Aden, is a vast Somali shantytown called Basatin, Arabic for gardens. To residents arriving from the coast, it is Little Mogadishu. Through its warren of alleys, infused with the stench of sewage and car exhaust, and in places lit by a single bulb strung from a rooftop, a calamity still reverberates, haunting a tailor named Suleiman Ali.
In May 2005, Ali's wife, Lul, and his five children -- Abdel Rahman, 10, Majida, 9, Ismail, 8, Zeinab, 4 and Walid, 1 -- had traveled across the Gulf of Aden to his wife's village to visit her ailing father. They arrived in Bosaso last October, waiting for money for the trip back.
"Whatever I got sewing in Aden, I sent it to her," Ali said.
In time, she received $300, which he hoped would pay for passage on a bigger, safer boat. It didn't. He asked her to wait. He had a Yemeni contact who could secure visas for her and the children, he said. When he called again four days later, he was told the family had already left, departing on Christmas. In all, four fishing boats carried 515 people, many of them fleeing fighting in Somalia.
He then called friends in Bir Ali.
"They told me the boat had arrived, but that the voyage was a disaster," Ali said.
Refugees managed to get off two of the boats when a Yemeni coast guard patrol, for reasons still unclear, opened fire under a half moon. The two other boats tried to escape back to sea. Passengers were terrified and, in the tumult, one of the boats capsized. The last vessel was driven back to shore by Yemeni forces. But 300 yards from the coast, it, too, capsized in heavy seas. One of the survivors told Ali that his wife had drifted with her and four others on debris for four hours in the dark. "Then they lost her," he said. No one saw his five children after the boat overturned.
The 17 smugglers lived and were arrested. In all, U.N. officials said, more than 150 people drowned.
Ali said he believes his children and wife were buried with 80 others in a mass grave along the beach.
As he recalled the story, Ali sat on the single mattress in a room he rents for the equivalent of $40 a month. The call to prayer floated through the streets outside. Against the walls were sacks packed with fabric. Next to them was a black, Chinese-made sewing machine that brings him $2, maybe $3 a day. His children used to sleep in an adjacent cinder-block room, but he now leaves it dark.
"It was written by God, and there's nothing I can do about it," he said. "I have to rely on God."
He turned silent for a moment. "But the memories keep coming back," he said, "over and over."
'For the Sake of Security'
Ali Ibrahim's journey ended in March 2005 in a camp called Kharaz, two hours west of Basatin, reached by a road of powdery dirt that shifts like blowing snow.
There is no majesty to the desert here; it is craggy and barren, save for its spindly acacia trees. Home to nearly 9,000 Somali refugees, along with several hundred Ethiopians, the camp is in a state of permanent transience, and its quarters speak to the refugees' tenure.
The refugees who have been here longest live in cinder-block homes, their walls fortified by adobe, painted doors bringing color to a landscape of gray. More recent arrivals reside in buildings with foundations of stones and walls of carpets, tree branches and corrugated iron painted in blue and green or left to rust. The newest homes are 28 tents, precisely laid out at the camp's edge. Ibrahim lives in one of them, with his 13-year-old son, Fattah.
"I stay here for the sake of security. That's it," he said.
In 1999, his father, mother, wife and two nephews were killed in a robbery in Mogadishu. He was shot, the scar on his right thigh now smooth. He fled with his son for Galcaio, about 400 miles to the north, where he worked as a mechanic. Six years later, he made the trek to Bir Ali.
Dust has all but blotted out the blue logo of the U.N. refugee agency on the top of his tent. Inside he has strung a brown blanket to serve as a wall. Blue canvas covers ground that is as hard as stone. He has no work; for income, he sells his and his son's monthly rations for $5, spending most of the money on meals at a shabby cafe in the camp.
"I can't live on that, but what else do I do?" he said.
He spoke without emotion, his eyes fixed in a blank stare.
"I wanted a future, and I wanted a future for my son," Ibrahim said. "I don't see that future now."