City of Thorns

In City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, author Ben Rawlence offers a glimpse into conditions at Dadaab in Kenya, and the fates of nine individuals who live there. It’s home to 350,000 residents scraping by in desperate conditions. Dadaab is known as a humanitarian crisis and as a breeding ground for terrorists due to the political and social forces that leave residents stranded there. The book was published in the UK in 2016. Rawlence spent seven years working for the Human Rights Watch and is the author of several books on human rights violations in various parts of Africa.

The city of Dadaab, on the border between Kenya and Somalia, has been a refugee camp since 1992 and the Somali civil war. By now, many the Somali refugees living in Dadaab have spent their entire lives there, knowing no other way of life. They are trapped in limbo at best and in grave danger at worst.

Rawlence first visited the city in 2010 as a member of the Human Rights Watch, and came back over a period of years to conduct interviews and gather information for his book. He backs his nine narratives with context on the local political factors and international humanitarian efforts that shape the camp and its conditions. The Somali people in Dadaab are targets of hatred; Kenyans have a troubled history that renders them suspicious of the nomadic Somali people, and the fear of Islamic terrorism that grips the Western world has left many fearful of Muslims, no matter their ideologies.



One individual Rawlence profiles is Guled, a teenager the reader first encounters seeking shelter on a football field with his sister. Like many other young men, Guled was once captured by a terrorist group called al-Shabaab. He managed to escape and became a Dadaab refugee. Here, he is hated on all sides: Kenyans would see him as a likely terrorist, while to al-Shabaab he is a traitor to the cause. Guled lives in fear that the terrorist group will track him down and kidnap him again. Recent terrorist activity in Kenya makes his prospects worse as Kenyans’ fear of Muslim Somalis grows.

Rawlence describes many narratives of perseverance against all odds. The camp does provide some resources, including educational facilities, that are like a beacon of hope to residents and a possible way out. One student, Tawane, is profiled: he is bright and articulate, and he and his friends have taught themselves to organize meetings and lobby those in positions of power for aid. A young woman, Kheyro, is able to receive an education when her conservative background might otherwise have prevented it. Here, Dadaab offers a surprising freedom. She dares to walk in public without male chaperones and find a job of her own so she can support her family.

Isha, a mother to several boys, is eager to educate her children, who proudly display their ability to write in English by scrawling on the walls of their house. Rawlence notes that although Dadaab has a reputation as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism, many residents are liberal and well-informed, able to speak knowledgeably about both the United Nations and the complexity of gender identities. The terrible irony is that these residents understand human rights and freedom of expression so well but possess so little freedom themselves. The women of the camp live in fear of rape from the lawless Kenyan police.



While there are flashes of hope, Rawlence is clear that these refugees suffer deep psychological trauma. They are under constant stress from fear of violence, injury, and death. Some men lose their minds from their sheer inability to provide for their families; at one point, when rations are cut, other men starve themselves so they can feed their families. Women fear for how they will feed their children while bearing more all the time.

Some refugees simply give up, resorting to substance abuse as a form of self-medication and oblivion from the problems that are out of their control. Elsewhere, tensions and frustrations are always high.

There are few ways to leave the camps. Some young men brave crossing the Mediterranean to find freedom; for most, that journey is too dangerous. There is a resettlement lottery, but it operates on a scale too small for the vast number of refugees, and many possible exits are tangled in bureaucratic red tape and slow-moving processes.



In 2013, Kenya orders the camp closed, but none of the residents can simply “go home,” whatever the government orders. Today, Dadaab still operates. Freedom comes for some: a mixed Christian and Muslim couple named Monday and Muna escape religious persecution through an emergency resettlement to Australia. But theirs is just one success in a sea of others who have no way out. What’s more, the family has already experienced trauma that leaves them with deep psychological scars.

Residents of Dadaab have their own word for their situation: buufis, a longing to be elsewhere. As other global crises and refugee groups, such as those from Syria, displace funds, aid, and resources from the UN, Dadaab refugees are left behind. Most remain stuck in their state of buufis with no end and no resolution.

Readers called City of Thorns “heartbreaking”; a New York Times review called the book “a deeply disturbing and depressing portrait.” The book was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction.