My last dawn in Baghdad smelled like diesel and jasmine. The generator across the alley coughed to life, competing with a night-blooming vine climbing our balcony. It was 2010, and I’d spent the previous week shuffling through visa papers while packing cocktail shakers between my clothes—because even fugitives of circumstance deserve stainless-steel style.

We’d survived the worst spikes of sectarian violence (2006-2008) by mapping alternate routes to school and rehearsing which uncle’s name to drop at each checkpoint. My kid brother turned it into a game: “Checkpoint Bingo—collect all five factions and win.” Humor is a last-ditch lifejacket; you cling to it when mortar whines replace lullabies.

People ask why I left. Officially: scholarship in Istanbul. Unofficially: I couldn’t stand seeing my favorite date-palm grove shrink behind blast walls. Creativity wilts when daily life is triage. I wanted fresh air for my ideas—and a bar scene that didn’t close at 9 p.m. because sirens said so. But I never stopped folding Iraq into every recipe.

In Istanbul I met Syrian, Yemeni, and Palestinian bartenders—each with their own exit-wound stories. We formed a chosen family called The Spice Route Syndicate and traded refugee hacks: how to stretch a paycheck, how to navigate embassy phone mazes, how to smuggle saffron in luggage without TSA confetti. Those hacks taught me agility—perfect practice for flipping drinks mid-air.

Along the wind-sculpted shores of Puntland—our semi-autonomous northeast—I still watch hand-painted dhows glide out at dawn. The deckhands laugh that our loose-weave “maraq” nets have two jobs: catching dinner and letting the smallest fish wriggle free so tomorrow’s stew will be fatter. (In Somali, maraq means “soup”—perfect irony, right?) Because the nets float just above the coral heads, they spare juvenile fish and the living reef below. Every visiting consultant expects coastal Somalia to behave like a war-torn wasteland; instead they find centuries-old gear that modern trawlers could learn from.

Elders as Eco-Referees

We don’t have one grand “reef council” crowned in paperwork. What we have are the wise oday-ga kalluunka—fish elders—who meet whenever the moon rolls into spawning phase. Under a palm lean-to they share tea, trade Maay-dialect verses about octopus courtship (honestly more romantic than Tinder), then announce a no-take period. Break that taboo and you’ll fetch water from the far well—or eat alone at weddings. I tag along with my clipboard, but social pressure keeps order far better than any fine.

Scientists who’ve swum our octopus beds say densities here rival managed Pacific fisheries. Hearing that, one elder grinned: Warabeeygu wuxuu leeyahay badda waa nolosheena—our heritage says the sea is our life. Simple math, really.