His yellow taxi is parked in its usual spot between my apartment and the hotel next door. In the alcove where one building ends and the other begins, he unrolls his prayer mat and places it over the cigarette-strewn cement. He angles it towards the Blockbuster video on the other side of our mega-road, and loses himself in prayer.

I pass him on my way into the apartment, his lips moving in silence and eyes half closed.

If you ever ask him if heís been to Mecca, his expression will darken and he’ll answer “no.”

He says that he came close to making the pilgrimage at one point, many years ago. That was when his days were long and his life was slow. Growing crops and herding goats. The river fed his fields and his family did not live in need. He always believed that he too would go to Mecca.

All of this changed one day when the clan warfare spreading through Somalia arrived in his village. Fields were razed and women raped. Guns fired freely.

He left with his family in the middle of an August night. They escaped their country on foot, hitching rides when they could with the lone passing trucks. After three months of walking, they settled in a camp on the Kenyan border with nothing to their name.

But those Kenyan days were no safer than their last days spent at home. Screams still pierced the nights, and roaming men still searched for prey. His family was not safe. They had traded one hell for another, and had lost everything in between.

He remembers one morning particularly well. He was sitting under a tree thinking that all life had left for him was fear and dust and dirt. A group of men from the camp walked by, talking in loud voices about America. They were saying that the big power now wanted to take in refugees. Somalis were being invited to America.

When he heard the news, he laughed in disbelief. Why would America want his people? How would he and his family ever get there? Would he swim across the seas with his wife and children in tow? And once he was there, would he tend Americaís land just as he had tended his? He doubted that Americans even grew dura.

A few days passed, and a great big white paper appeared near the food station. Everyone crowded around it, and names were read off. Hashim - Buffalo, New York. Abdallah - Seattle, Washington. Some families were on the list, some were not. His family was moving to America.

He sits in his taxi, many years later. His children are grown. He is happy that they are educated, he just wishes that they would remember their Somali ways. His wife cleans rooms in a hotel downtown. He often wonders how many of his morningsí businessmen woke up in beds made by his wife.

He sees a lot of America from his car. Couples walk by and shamelessly embrace. Business ladies march down the street, the clacking of their heels passing through his open window. He has given rides to the rude, the rushed, the drunk and the rich. He has met good people too, he assures me. But he remembers best the others.

Every evening, like every other evening for as long as he can remember, he readies himself to pray. Just as he used to do in his village mosque, in the Kenyan camp, and also during those months of walking, he now does on the side of an American highway.

He faces towards Mecca and recites the words of Allah, looking for the strength to patiently persevere.