[somber brass music]
- Najat Hamza: The day started like any other day for me,
but school ended and we were told
to get ready to leave forever.
We didn't know when, or if, we were going to come back.
I had to leave my little brothers and my mom behind.
One thing that I have never, ever forgotten
was that I was shivering
as I waved goodbye to my mother for the last time.
And in her last attempt of being a motherly figure,
she walks back inside our house and grabs this blue sweater
and brings it out.
And, and she puts it on me, you know, with her hands.
And that was her way of sending me off to the world with care.
That blue sweater travelled with me and it,
it is here with me in my closet.
It was something that I looked at and reached for
whenever I thought about her.
That is what distances do: break apart bonds
that can never be brought back.
I'm pretty sure all my high school friends
that I went to school with here in Minnesota
wouldn't know what I thought about
when I would sit in a corner, away from them,
while we're learning about math or what have you.
They have no idea what a refugee child
from such a background carries.
And, of course, you can look at me and go,
"What are you talking about Najat?
You went to college here, you went to high school."
On the surface, yes.
But home is the familiar.
Home is a space that belongs to you.
Home is going outside and just staring into the night sky
and not have worries in the world.
Even though I'm a full-fledged U.S. citizen,
my heart will always belong to Oromia,
or as the world knows it, Ethiopia.
["We're from Near and Far" by Ending Satellites]