Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Side 37

AT L A N T I CA 35
10 am: Al-Amin Halal Market
Behind the market’s counter a Somali man cuts
chicken legs on a scale. Dog-eared posters adver-
tising calling card rates from “I ♥ Africa” and
“Mother Africa” are taped in the window of the
Al-Amin Halal Market, situated in a downtrodden
neighborhood of strip malls and bus depots on
the outskirts of Portland’s hip, brick-lined down-
town with views of the schooner and trawler-
clogged harbor.
Al Hamin roughly translates to “trust place.”
The market doubles as a restaurant and, as it
turns out, a community center, where fellow
Somalis get together to hang out and gossip.
Jars of ghee, seven-ounce bags of golden rai-
sins, cans of baby formula, and bedding sheathed
in thick, dusty plastic line the shelves. Ten-kilo-
gram sacks of Aahu Barah basmati rice lie hap-
hazardly stacked on the floor below a Somali flag
that hangs from the ceiling.
The level of cleanliness appears questionable,
at best. When my eyes bulge at the amount of
meat contained in the adjacent freezer, the butch-
er, who also cameos as the cashier, explains that
all of it – beef, goat, chicken, fish, and camel – is
halal, the Muslim equivalent of kosher. In Arabic,
halal means “permissible;” that is, acceptable to
eat according to Islamic law.
“We gather here, get information, it’s where
many of us meet,” says Mohammed Barre, who
enters the market on one crutch. “It’s easy, it’s
in the middle. And we can buy all our groceries
here.” Barre, 46, was a linguistic anthropologist
in his native Somalia and migrated to the United
States ten years ago via Kenya, where he was a
refugee. He and his family have lived in Maine for
the last five years. It’s a place, he says, that feels
safer than anywhere he’s lived.
“I’ve never felt threatened here,” Barre says.
“My name is Mohammad, you see, and some-
times that’s a very bad name.”
Officially, 36,689 immigrants resided in Maine as
of 2000, the most recent census year. That’s about
three percent of the state’s population of 1.3 mil-
lion. But because of inherent problems in census
data gathering, attorney and Executive Director
of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project Beth
“I knew a friend of a friend. I said,
‘Ahmed, how do I get Maine?’”
MAINE a
MOHAMMED BARRE
Scenes from Portland, Cumberland, and Kennebunkport, Maine.
034-44MainAtl606.indd 35 18.10.2006 21:55:35