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I don't recognize my people anymore. I feel Somalia is lost. There is no Somalia. It is just a name.

I don't have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it's not realistic to daydream about it.

Somalia is an important story in the world, and it needed to be told.

The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

I left Somalia when I was seven years old, but I witnessed a whole year in a war.

Going into Somalia, I didn't anticipate how many people's lives would be affected by it. In hindsight, I certainly wish I had taken more time to think about that, but I can't change it.

My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

Over the course of my life, I have made many transitions - most of them taking me further away from my Somali roots and steadily toward the enlightened mentality of Western democracy.

I was born in Somalia, which is in East Africa. My parents started with nothing: poor, poor, poor. They eloped, which was unheard of in my country, when my father was 17 and my mother was 14.

In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.