In Mogadishu, a New Moral Code Emerges

Faysal Dhaqane, 22, still carefully styles his hair and has elaborately manicured fingernails. But when he sees the Islamic militias approaching, he said, he pulls a cap over his head and stuffs his hands in his pockets. As the militias gained control, he also closed out of fear his business of playing music at weddings. Some Islamic militiamen once ordered him to turn off his sound system.

"It is forbidden," Dhaqane recalled being told.

Like some other youths, he longs for the days before the Islamic militias came to power. "During the days of the warlords," he said, "we were free."

Noriftin once felt such unalloyed joy at all things American that he would walk down the streets of Mogadishu listening to American music, speaking in American-accented English. During movies, he delighted in words that caught his ear.

"Stick around. Stick around. Stick around," he said with a wide, toothy smile, his eyes bright and beaming. "I like that phrase. When I hear that, I sometimes burst out laughing. 'Stick around' is my favorite word."

His fascination with the United States dates from the American military intervention that ended after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993 and 18 U.S. servicemen were killed.

Before the souring of that mission, it was the servicewomen who caught Noriftin's eye. A tall, attractively built, brown-haired female soldier entered his home once and gave him two pieces of candy, he recalled. Later, another female soldier, dressed in far less than Somali women would consider decent, used to jog near his house and eventually learned his name.

The departure of the Americans deeply upset Noriftin, he said, but he soon reconnected in the movie houses and, more recently, with CNN broadcasts beamed into his house through a satellite dish. He studied American accents so relentlessly that he eventually opened a private school for teaching English, gaining dozens of eager students and a modest, if steady, income, he said.

His American ways do not always endear him to Somalis. Once, after watching a restaurant scene in a movie, he went to a neighborhood eatery and tried to order a hot dog, greatly irritating the staff there, he said. Other times, young men would accuse him of being crazy as he walked down the street chatting to himself in English. In the most serious incident, he said, a neighborhood religious leader last year sent an e-mail ordering him to drop the nickname. He didn't.

Noriftin's ways also won him Hassan, who found herself attracted to the way he spoke, she said. It was at her request that he learned to roll his right shoulder in a mock James-Bond walk -- even though he could not bear to learn his unappealingly British accent.

Now they dream of marrying and of moving to the United States, where Hassan's 30-year-old sister lives, raising her children and cleaning homes in Washington, D.C.

They also dream of someday returning to the beach. But not in Mogadishu.

"In America," Hassan said.

"It's really the best thing," Noriftin said, smiling at the memory, "to kiss a girl while in the water."