Postby Twist » Mon Jan 23, 2017 6:09 pm
Has anyone of you ever stayed inside three different airports for one full week? I have, and it's something I will never forget.
It was in January 2002, the first time I flew out of Somalia (and the last, since I didn't return yet). I was with a group of other Somalis as university students who got scholarship from the then Somali embassy in Iraq, back when A/Qasim Salat was elected president from that Djibouti reconciliation conference. A guy he appointed as the new Somali ambassador to Iraq (the embassy was still open, and the ex ambassador was still there. It was a big mess, but won't get into that now) got thirty scholarships from the Iraqi government, and since Bush was already making threats to attack Iraq since 9/11, not many people wanted to go to Iraq. I persuaded my brother to get me a ticket and send me there, since I wasn't doing anything at the time. He talked to the mukhalas guy in Xamar, and that's when they messed up things that will get us stuck in three different Middle Eastern airports for seven nights.
We flew out of Mogadishu on the 2d of January, 2002, on a Jubba Airways, and were given a scholarship letter from the Iraqi government. We were told that our route will be Mogadishu>Dubai>Doha>Damascus and then someone will bring us a bus and pick us up from the aiport to Baghdad, so we didn't need visas. Big mistake! We stayed in Dubai International airport for three days and flew to Doha on the third day, and on the same day we switched to another flight to Damascus. When we got there, we were asked where we were headed and how come we didn't have visas. We told them we were uni student and were on our way to Iraq. They told us we can't get into the country without visas whether we were students or not. They took us into a holding room in the airport, and in the evening a guy from the Somali embassy in Damascus visited us. He openly told us if we pay the ambassador he could issue us visas. Since most of us had like $100 each, and couldn't afford to give that up since we didn't know what was awaiting us ahead, we said we didn't have the money. We stayed in Damascus airport that night. They put us on a Qatari airways (it took us from Dubai airport) on the next day in the afternoon and handed our passports to the crew (they didn't give us our passports since we landed there). We reached Doha in the evening and had to stay in the airport for a night (that's the fifth night staying in airports). We were booked on a return flight to Dubai the next day, and when we got there the Dubai airport officials asked us why were returned. We told them we were uni students going to Iraq and we were told we didn't need visas to go to Iraq via Syria on land, and that's why we were returned. Since Jubba Airways brought us from Somalia, they were told to get us out of there and foot the bill. We bloody came too close to be sent back to Xamar, but the ticket cost was too high for them to pay out of their pockets (there were some Somalis returning from the diaspora at the time when A/Qasim was elected), so they actually bought us a $50 pp tickets to Basra, Iraq. We had to stay in Dubai IA for two more nights, and sailed out of there on the evening of Thursday, the 10th of January. We stayed five nights in Dubai International Airports altogether, and one night each in Doha & Damascus airports. Seven nights of sleeping on airport chairs for a group of mar-dhoof Maryooleys. Shit will be in my memory bank for many years to come.
