MOGADISHU, SOMALIA — The voice on the other end of my cellphone was oddly calm, but intent.
"Abukar, I am calling to inform you that we have decided to take your life," the caller said. I glanced down at my phone to see the caller ID, which read "private."
"You're not worthy to live," the man continued. "You have three hours to tell your family and say your last words."
"Who is this?" I demanded.
"I am a man," was the reply.
It wasn't my first death threat. As a journalist in Somalia, I've received more than I'd care to count. In some, angry callers curse me as a "puppet" of the U.N.-backed transitional government in Baidoa and the Ethiopian troops that support it. Others accuse me of being a "terrorist" supporting the Islamic insurgents.
But this call came at the end of one of the darkest days of my life. Just a few hours earlier, I'd attended the funeral of a friend and colleague, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, a radio host gunned down that August morning. Then, as my fellow journalists and I drove back from the burial, a roadside bomb struck our convoy, killing Ali Iman Sharmarke, another prominent media figure in Mogadishu.
This month, gunmen shot another friend, Bashir Nur Gedi, acting manager of Shabelle Radio, who had been arrested and detained by government forces in September.
International journalist organizations say at least seven reporters have been killed in Somalia this year. No one has been caught or punished in any of these attacks.
After I hung up, dozens of questions ran through my mind: What am I guilty of? Who is my enemy? Why am I being targeted?
But for the first time, one question would not go away: Should I leave Somalia?
Many times I'd stood over the graves of friends. Now I imagined friends and family weeping over mine.
I began working as a journalist 10 years ago, at age 19, because I wanted to alert the world to the untold stories of Somalia. I had always admired an older cousin who had worked as a radio correspondent during the Mohamed Siad Barre regime, which fell in 1991.
As a journalist in the capital, Mogadishu, I've covered street battles, assassinations and public executions. I've had guns pointed at my head and I've stepped over twisted bodies on the road. I've been summoned to news conferences in the presidential palace only to be detained by corrupt officials who demanded a bribe.
