Following his violent abduction and imprisonment, Yusuf Abdi, the director of an international agency that supported the democratic movement in Somalia, realized that he and his family could no longer stay in their country's war-torn capital, Mogadishu. Yusuf arranged for his wife, Faduma, who was pregnant at the time, to leave with their two youngest children, one of whom is severely disabled with muscular dystrophy. They made their way from Kenya through the United States to Canada, where Faduma sought refugee status in December 1989. Meanwhile, Yusuf tried to escape by boat to Kenya with his two oldest daughters, Amina and Filsan, and his only son, Fahiye. The overloaded boat capsized. The children made it to shore only to see their father drown while helping others.

The 17-year-old Amina, in shock, wandered among the wreckage on the shore and talked to other survivors from their boat. While Amina watched her father and her aunt die, she still had her sister and her brother with her. She met those who had lost their entire family. Amina took heart and counted herself lucky. It fell to her, the oldest, to try to keep the three of them together and alive.

In Toronto, Faduma feared that all four had perished. It was only later that she learned the truth. The three children were sent to a Red Cross refugee camp and later moved covertly to a relative's home in Nairobi. And it was not until July 1991 that the mother and children were reunited.

Today they live in a high-rise apartment block in Etobicoke. Five children are in school, with the youngest, Canadian-born Warsan, still at home. Faduma, a well-educated woman who worked as an accountant in Somalia, is frustrated at her unemployed status. With several other Somalis, she is establishing a local community group in Etobicoke to help Somali families in a similar predicament.