Success stories - ‘I found everything I need’

Hassan survived hell. He thanks Canada for his fresh start

January 2010

Hassan Ali Said is now a happy guy.

Before he turned 18, he’d lost his entire family during a deadly civil war in Somalia.

For 12 years he lived in exile in Uganda.

While there, he was brutally attacked. The attempt on his life was because he was “of two nations” — his father was Somali, his mother Ethiopian.

For the next eight years, he stayed in a protective custody compound with a 6 p.m. curfew.

Then he came here. On Nov. 23, he became a Canadian citizen.

“Now my tears come because of happiness,” he says.

His appreciation — for the United Nations, the Refugee Law Project, the government of Canada and anyone who has helped him get to this peaceful place — is effusive.

So much so that Said recently took out an ad in The Spectator summarizing his story and thanking the Canadian government for being his “everything.”

“I had no hope, home or family, but in Canada I found everything I need in life,” he says in the ad. “Education, job, opportunity, freedom and the ability to help others.”

Said was born in Somalia on October 26, 1970. He was in his late teens — he doesn’t remember his exact age — when he came back from school to find his family home in Mogadishu smoking from fire. He believes his father, mother and four siblings were killed.

He fled with only the clothes on his back.

After about two weeks he ended up in Uganda, where he found the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. But he didn’t have anywhere to go while his paperwork was processed and ended up on the streets, sleeping in a broken-down car and begging for food.

After a few months, a Dutch graduate student researching the refugee problem in Africa sponsored Said and paid for accommodation.

He was attacked while at a UN camp he says he had to stay at from time to time. While walking to a friend’s quarters when it was almost dark, Said was grabbed around the neck from behind.

Something was thrown over his head and his hands were pulled back. He was forced to his knees and placed in a sack.

He has no idea who the men were but says they intended to throw him into the river and kill him simply because he had more than one blood line.

He was saved after people saw what was happening and began shouting.

After that, Said was moved to a secure compound, where he stayed for eight years before coming to Canada in July 2005.

“I have a right to talk … I have a right to say something. Even if I walk at night no one will bother me here. I’m peaceful,” he says. “That’s why I say I’m … full of freedom.”

Said’s life isn’t glamorous. He’s lived in the same bachelor apartment for the past four years, a place he rents from CityHousing. On the far wall is a huge Canadian flag. On the next, Somali and Ethiopian flags. Right now, Said works at a parking lot near Hamilton General Hospital, taking home a few hundred dollars every week. He’s also held jobs as a machine operator and in security.

He attended Mohawk College’s English as a Second Language program, but was one point shy in three of the four categories he needed to pursue his Grade 12.

He left school about two years ago when he headed to Ethiopia to get married. Said’s bride was expected to buy a ticket yesterday and join him in Canada by Christmas. He’ll seek a bigger apartment and hopes one day to finish school and find a humanitarian job where he can help others, as he does with newcomers now.

He also wants to write a book about his life.

“My life now I can say (is) beautiful,” Said says, already dreaming of the time his wife is by his side and they are parents of a baby boy or girl.

Source: Dana Brown, The Hamilton Spectator

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