Name:
Abdirahman al-Jalil ibn-Gamali Abdulaziz al-Sumal.
(Commonly known as Abdirahman bin Gamali, Dirah and Mr. Gamali)
Age:
Twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He doesn't know his birthday.
Gender:
Male.
Appearance:
The one thing that distinguishes Dirah from most other non-Somali Africans is that, if you ignore his hair and skin colour, he doesn't actually look very African. Some say that he just looks like a very dark-skinned European. His occasional smile is twisted by a disfiguring scar running down the left side of his face, which he often claws at when he's stressed or frustrated. He's blind in his left eye because of this scar.
Dirah was quite tall compared to most others he knew back home, but around here he's considered to be at a pretty much average height. He's put on a bit of weight since he arrived in England (wow, the food in this place is brilliant! Well, as long as it's not English food) but he still looks like he just crawled out of a refugee camp. As a teacher, he tries to look the part by wearing suits, which are usually a couple of sizes too big, and nice ties.
Personality:
Dirah appears to be so devoted to his religion that some of the more paranoid/judgemental kids are just waiting for the day when the school blows up. This isn't likely to happen, however, at least not in the hands of this Muslim, as he's against terrorism in all shapes and forms. Now that I've gotten that out of the way...
If you're one of the really messed up kids who has to have daily sessions with Dirah so that he can “monitor your progress” then you'll probably find that sitting alone in the office with him is rather...awkward. This is mainly because he doesn't talk much and whenever he does he speaks really softly, and that combined with his accent and sometimes rather broken English sometimes makes him a little difficult to understand. He does raise his voice occasionally, however. Occasionally meaning more often than you'd think. He's one of those people who holds everything in until they snap and, although he's never been able to lay a finger on one of the kids during one of his rampages, he does often have urges to do unspeakably violent things to the little western brats, even when he's feeling perfectly calm, and isn't afraid to describe these urges to them when they're being difficult.
Like many people from his country, Dirah's quite a hospitable guy. Although he's wary of strangers, he does try to make people feel welcome by giving them gifts, providing he likes the look of the person, and will take it as a personal insult if they don't accept . He also likes cooking, and Goddxmn is he a good cook (traditional Somali recipes, bro. They always turn out nice.)
History:
Dirah was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a poor couple who lived in a run-down little shack that coul barely be called a house. Despite this, his early childhood years were quite happy times. Sure, the family were poor and often went hungry, but they tried to appreciate what little they had and were too busy working their asses off to try and claw their way out of poverty to sit around grieving about their financial situation. Many Mogadishuins (yeah, I just made up that word) lived like this, so it's not like they were an exception or anything.
When Dirah was seven the Somali Civil War broke out. His father, Gamali, left the family to join the military once again, just like he had during the Ogaden War, only this time the military wasn't officially...well, a military. He was never heard of again, so Dirah's mother, Buthayna, had to raise her three children on her own, which was more difficult than it would have been before now that the government had collapsed, leaving Mogadishu to be ruled over by warlords.
Two years later tragedy struck. The family's clan were once again a target for genocide. Militia, wearing masks so that the victims wouldn't know who was killing them, went around their neighbourhood, shooting anybody who was said to be part of that particular clan – including Buthayna and the youngest child of the family, Mas'ouda. Najib, the oldest child, and Dirah had only survived because they had found a splendid new playground which happened to be a tank some military guys had left behind for whatever reason. Najib declared that it was time to go. They fled to Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya near the Kenya-Somali border, with the help of their uncle Walliyullah, who had been wounded and lost his wife and six children in the massacre.
Walliyullah died of his wounds soon after their arrival – the wounds weren't major, but bad enough to become infected in the camp's crowded, unsanitary conditions. Najib committed suicide four years later, leaving Dirah on his own. He started to become cranky. Well, sure, he had always been cranky, but now he was cranky to the point of picking completely unprovoked fights with random people, most of whom were bigger and stronger than he was. He targeted mainly Christians and Bantu Somalis, but one non-Christian, non-Bantu Somali Dirah had quite honestly tried to throttle to death for stealing part of his ration had a knife on them. Dirah's scar is a permanent reminder of that incident. At least it got him to calm down a little. He eventually decided to give up all hope of ever leaving this place or becoming the least bit successful and not being deported if he did and started using khat to solve his problems, despite the Qu'ran he had relied on to keep him going for the past few years forbidding the use of anything that was harmful to the body.
Dirah did leave the camp eventually, about ten years after he'd arrived there. By that point he wasn't sure if he even wanted out. It's not that he liked the camp, he just had no idea what to do with his life after it had pretty much come to a hault for ten years. He lived in Mombasa for a few months then, deciding that he didn't like it there, went to Nairobi to get work. After that failed he used what little money he had to hire an agent, who helped him get to Yemen and then the UK, where he claimed asylum upon his arrival.
His claim was approved quickly (by UK standards) and, after learning English, he decided to fulfil the career his brother had dreamed of before the refugee crap – which, like many ambitious African kids, was to be a teacher. A boarding school – Kensington or something weird like that – didn't seem to require too many qualifications to work there besides obviously knowing how to read and write (skills which almost all Somalis had) so he signed up. Unfortunately, the only space available was the guidance counsellor after the last one apparently had a mental breakdown. Oh well, that would do for now. Maybe these kids' first world problems would cheer him up a little.
What's wrong with them?:
Dirah hasn't been diagnosed with any specific mental disorders, but there's a possibility of depression and...probably something else, he doesn't know and doesn't care.
Other:
He's the guidance counsellor (durr) who totally cares about these kids' problems.
Any smartass kids who make pirate jokes will have earned themselves a well-deserved “talking to”.Piggehs.
----------
Santo was about to say something that probably had something to do with his much-needed coffee when Clarice distracted him.
“Clarissa-” he liked that name better than the name Clarice - “-for the love of God, grow the fxck up. What are you, two?” He grabbed the screaming girl by the hair then dragged her to her feet, “If you want cereal then go and fxcking get yourself some cereal. Why should somebody else do it for you, you lazy prat? Oh, and my name is Santo. Santoooo. It's Italian for “saint”. Do I look fat and jolly to you? No!” Again, he was trying to remain calm and collected even though Clarissa, as he called her, was now...urgh, Jesus, he could almost feel his blood quite literally boiling. He let go of her hair and wiped his hands on his jeans as if he'd just touched something disgusting, then turned back to Gloria, his blood cooling down to its normal, probably ice-cold temperature, “Oh, you bxtch! How are you allow- oh right, yeah. You're the head girl or some shxt like that. You run this place like some crazy dictator. Hey, can you ask them if I can have coffee? And maybe a bit of toast? And cereal for this brat, of course-” he nodded in Clarice's direction, “- Come on, do it. Because you seem pretty cool and cool girls get Santo coffee.”
Gah, his manipulation skills were far from their best this morning. Hopefully they'd work anyway, because he really, really wanted that coffee.
