“If only we remembered, we

’d been here before."

Helen Cammock, 2025

Chapter I

Ibrahim Ismaa’il

Faarah Samaakab’s Boarding House, Cardiff. June 13th, 1919

It was morning when they arrived. Two Warsangali Somali sailors, looking broken and

panicked, in the boarding house with me. Faarah, the owner of the boarding house, had let them in - this had put me in a state of horrible anxiety, because, before I saw them, I did not know whether they would be kinsmen or rioters. But I was relieved to see they were kinsmen and, more, I recognised them from Abdi Langara’s boarding house, on Millicent Street, in Butetown. It was these men who had turned me away from that house yesterday, when I had arrived to offer my protection against the riots.‘You are too young', they told me, and sent me to this boarding house, Faarah Samakaab’s, further from the European part of town where they predicted the attacks would be more severe.

There had been several W arsangali seamen protecting Abdi Langara’s boarding house, as I had seen before I was sent away. The fact that only two of them had come to see me, now, prompted me to expect the worst - where were the others? What had happened last night, on Millicent Street? Had our predictions been right?

As the men recounted the events of last night, I felt memories crest within me, like waves,

crashing against the images the Warsangalis’ words conjured in my mind. They spoke

about the hundreds of weapon-wielding white people who swarmed the streets, and who

surrounded their boarding house, at dusk fall. I imagined this mob as if they were a sea,

closing in and threatening to drown all in its wake, and I recalled the countless storm-ridden seas I had narrowly survived during my turbulent life. The tempests I had endured on dhows in North Africa, or on man-of-wars in Somalia, or on ships between France and London.

The Warsangali told me they had fought the mob fairly long into the night, before the

attackers finally breached the house, overpowered the first floor and, with paraffin oil, set

it on fire. And in my mind, I pictured this fire, and I too remembered the fire that almost

claimed my life, aboard an English ship, after an explosion during the Great W ar, when I

served as a ship’s fireman. I could almost feel the searing heat of the blaze against my skin,

again; the memories felt so vivid. It was scolding and ravenous, like an enraged djinn.

And the police, the men said, had arrived soon after the flames enraptured the house

floor. They wielded batons and shackles, cold and heavy, which battered bodies and led

many of our countrymen away, into the night, and to the shooki*. One of these men,

however, who suffered the wrath of a baton, did not survive in the darkness. Instead, he was found dead, with a bludgeoned skull, whilst his murderer melted into the night, never to be held to justice. And beside this shocking truth, my mind swelled with the memory of the boy I had laid asleep beside whilst I was homeless, at just ten years old, on the streets of Aden. I recalled the devastating smashing sound that woke me from my sleep one night, which I realised, with horror, had been the result of another boy, who had once been our friend, dropping a rock on the head of the boy beside me, and then dashing deep into the darkening night, before I could catch him.

The man we lost last night was Mohammed Abdullah - a Somali, and a ship’s fireman, like me, who had been only twenty-one years old. It was his brother, Hassan, who had found him, on Bute Street, after the attackers finally retreated and the riots receded. And I wondered if, like me, Mohammed had more family out in the world, perhaps back home in Somalia, who he had been preparing to unite with, after he had accrued enough wealth working at sea to finally be able to bless them. A mother and a father, perhaps. Who would be waiting, in vain, for their son to come home.

The morning sky was now grey and shimmering outside; a product of the storm that had

raged prior to last night. The storm, I knew, had started two days ago, and disrupted what had been one of the hottest days of the year, here in Cardiff. I pictured the monstrous rainclouds that darkened the once sun-lightened blue, and the downpours they bled upon the city, and the gale that billowed through the streets like a restless ghost. Now, beside the memory of the storm, I could place another storm - one that happened not in the sky, but in the streets below. I thought about the devastating crowds of rioters, like clouds, unleashing their downpours of stones, sticks, blades, and batons. I considered their hatred, like winds: gales hungry for irrational vengeance. And now, the quiet, vacant, traumatised streets outside reminded me of the morning sky which, although being clear and without rain, could never make me forget the storm that had struck us.

I thanked the two men who had come to see me, and we considered whether it would be safe for us to travel to our mosque, to hold our dhuhr*prayer. Perhaps by that time, I thought, the sun would have reached its highest point in the sky, and might then peak over the greyness once more, scattering the remnants of the storm. Or maybe the storm would return, more furious than before, and would shake the city with its rage.

I did not know for certain, of course, what the future would hold. But I could feel in my heart, like the warmth of a summer’s day, that I would be more capable of tackling what was to come, with the companionship of my kinsmen, who reminded me - in spite of the atrocities that had inflamed this city - of the compassion and community humanity was capable of. And so, as the morning crept towards noon, we began our commute to the mosque. I was ready to pray; that the storms that threatened the streets of Cardiff, and every other city in this solemn, broken world, would cease.

*shooki: a Somali word used in Ibrahim Ismaa’il’s autobiography, to describe a police station.

*dhuhr: the second of the five daily obligatory prayers in Islam, performed at midday after the sun has passed its zenith and before the afternoon prayer, Asr, begins.

“There are no stories in the riots, only the ghosts of other stories."

John Akomfrah, 1984

Chapter II

James Gillespie

296 Holton Road, Barry. November 21st, 1919

It had been four months since my life had been thrown into disarray. Four months: since the crowds, on the 12th June, had destroyed my wife’s shop, and our home, with stones. Four months: since I had to start pawning off our furniture, just so that we could get by, after the riots’ attacks on our property had left me £227*in debt.

Four months, in fact, since I concluded it was not safe for me, or my family, to stay here,

in Barry, and we decided, instead, that we must move to my homeland, in Jamaica. And it

was only now, after the countless documents I sent to the government, that the Home Office finally replied to my requests for support. And what did they tell me? They told me: that I must either travel to Jamaica, but leave my family behind; or that I must stay here with my family in Cardiff, but receive no financial compensation for the riots ’damages to my house or to my wife’s shop.

Indeed, I had spent four months trying to keep the wolf from the door, so-to-speak. Four

months, living in precarity, trying to keep my family protected whilst never truly knowing whether we would be safe, or whether the riots would renew. Four months, it had taken, for the government to show me just how little they truly cared about me. They were forcing me, inhumanely, to choose: to lose my family or to embrace financial ruin. The wolf I had been trying to keep from the door, I realised, had been governing me all along.

I had been taught, in Jamaica, that the British Empire was the mother of my homeland. I

was taught to both fear and protect this “mother”, whilst learning to believe that they were superior to me. As Jamaicans, we were therefore sons and daughters of the Empire; or so we had been taught to tell ourselves. And this, I understood - while I served in the Great War aboard British ships - was why the British W est Indian Regiment had travelled from the Caribbean to defend Britain, as per the explicit request of King George. But this was also why many of those same Caribbean soldiers were relegated from fighting alongside their white counterparts, and were instead made to build roads, dig trenches, and transport ammunition - all for much lower pay.

I had heard rumours that the British did not want to risk Black soldiers fighting alongside

white soldiers unless absolutely necessary, because if Black soldiers outperformed white soldiers, the Black soldiers might stop believing that the British, and their Imperial rule, were superior. Perhaps that is part of the reason why the rioters attacked me and my family, or why the government was trying to separate us. Because they believed, like in Jim Crow America, that Black people and white people should not live on equal terms.

But my love for my wife and my son would always transcend colour, and despite this country's attempts to scare me away, my love for them was stronger than my fear of any riot, government, or Empire. The wolf that had been hounding my door, would not win. I would not allow it.

And thus, with the resolution that leaving my family was not, and would never be, an option, I went about writing my response to the Home Office, requesting that I be treated like a human being, even when the world seemed to be trying to make me feel like I was anything but. And as I wrote, I could feel the wolf at the door beginning, ever so slowly, but certainly, to retreat. It backed away from the door, out into the merkiness beyond, where a storm was beginning to fade, and the sky was starting to clear.

*£227 in 1919 equates to approximately £10,230.76, as of October 2025

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