Sitting in the courtyard of a guarded residence where she has sought sanctuary, Mohamud pushes her glasses to her forehead as she slowly rubs her eyes and recounts her last three months.
A doctor she visited yesterday thought the chest and throat pain could be related to the pneumonia she contracted during her eight-day detention in a Kenyan jail.
Her headache? Not getting an answer to why Canada's High Commission here in Kenya's capital botched an investigation that contributed to her imprisonment.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, breaking weeks of silence, said the Canada Border Services Agency will have to answer for its role in Mohamud's plight.
"Our first priority as a government is obviously to see her get on a flight back to Canada," Harper said as he spoke out on the affair yesterday during a visit to Kitchener.
"In the case of the (CBSA), I know that Minister (of Public Safety Peter) Van Loan is asking that organization for a full accounting of their actions in this case and we'll obviously review those."
While there's innuendo and speculation in Ottawa, all that has been verified is that a Canadian diplomat here branded Mohamud an impostor because her lips looked different from her four-year-old passport picture.
"I never thought it was going to happen right after I became a Canadian citizen and I found a new home. I thought I (could) be far away from all this trouble," the 31-year-old Somalia-born Canadian says as she fidgets, twirling her long hair or twisting the ring on her thumb. "I really don't know what to say."
Others have spoken loudly on her behalf this week. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, federal opposition critics and dozens of rights groups, newspaper editorials and columnists have lambasted the Harper government for the neglect of Mohamud.
"I never knew Canadians have different classes, different levels, as a Canadian citizen. I thought we all had the same right to freedom," Mohamud says, echoing the criticism.
Mohamud was to be in court this morning to see whether the Kenyan government will dismiss charges of using a false passport and being in the country illegally – clearing the way for her return to Toronto. Then the only unresolved issue before leaving will be the return of the $2,500 her mother scraped together for bail.
She says she is trying to stay optimistic, but after so many bizarre twists in her case it's hard to believe she could be on a plane home tomorrow. Despite her weariness, she maintained her composure as she spoke to the Star. That is, until talk turned to her 12-year-old son Mohamed Hussein in Toronto.
"I miss my son. He's ..." Mohamud stops as the tears come, and then the single mom apologizes. "Anyway, I promised him that I'm coming back in two weeks and it's almost three months." She stops to cry again and takes off her glasses.
Mohamud's plight began May 21 as she tried to board a KLM flight home. She had been coming to Kenya to visit her mother annually without incident and says she was not surprised when she was stopped at the airport because she had heard passengers sometimes get hassled for bribes.
But immigration officials detained her, saying she did not look like her passport photo. Canadian officials later cancelled her passport, agreeing she was an impostor. On Monday, DNA testing finally proved the claims false.
Her time in prison here was excruciating. "I've never been in jail. I've never been guilty of anything in my life. It's a really horrible experience. Those eight days were horrible – a horrible time in my life."
After her release, she lived in a rundown hotel in a neighbourhood that is dangerous after dark. Eventually, a Star article about her case caught the attention of non-profit refugee organization Ecoterra International.
The German-founded group assigned her a Somali assistant and found a quiet and secure place to live just outside the city's downtown. (They asked the Star not to disclose the location.)
Mohamud now has a clean room looking out on a quiet grassy courtyard with small shrubs and the occasional massive marabou stork flying overhead, temporarily blocking the sun. She spends most of her time here, in her room, or the guesthouse's darkened cafeteria.
When she does go out, she takes along a friend and a small amount of cash. Being an illegal in Nairobi – which she is since the Canadian High Commission cancelled her passport, believing it wasn't hers – makes her a targe, she says. On more than one occasion, she says she has had to pay bribes to police officers who have stopped her, demanding her identification.
If there's one positive aspect from her predicament, it's the friends – the friends of friends and their friends – who have rallied around her to form a support group here and help her get home.
She knows the spotlight on her case is now intense and believes that's why the federal government is responding.
But more than anything, she says, she just wants to get home, back to her routine, and see her son.
With files from Raveena Aulakh in Kitchener