People Like Us

Walking through the aisles of a bookstore, the title “People Like Us” and the author’s name “Hashi Mohamed” struck me. A version of me who battles against the war of “fitting in” in a foreign (but loved) land started asking myself whether I am one of those people that the author is talking about. Without much thinking, I picked the book up as if it was the fix to the battle I was fighting! Well, though the book was not my fix, it was very inspirational for me on different levels. To a degree, it felt like I know Hashi Mohamed as a person and a voice from the book was telling me to wake up and find my own ways to navigate the process of fitting in. In the book, Barrister Hashi Mohamed, an inspiring Black, Muslim, Somali-British man talks about his journey of making it in modern Britain. The book is a fascinating insight into social mobility and inequality in Britain for someone who arrived in the UK as a child refugee after the Somali civil war, fought many hindrances against inequality, and finally rose in British society as a successful barrister.

Nahian | Oxford