That's Not a Fly in Your Soup
ABDI bin Asad walked from his hut in a Mogadishu shanty
town and raised his newborn son to the heavens. “I shall
call you Erasto,” he said. “Your name means peaceful man, and so you shall be.”
Before he returned to his wife inside the hut, Abdi was
hacked to death by a machetewielding pro-government militia.
Twenty-two years later,Erasto was one of more than 200 refugees aboard an Australia-bound boat. His mother, Aziza, and younger sister, Nadifa, died of dysentery before the vessel reached its destination and were
thrown overboard.
After being detained for three years at a refugee camp in South Australia, Erasto arrived in Sydney,where he eventually saved enough money to open a small Somali restaurant. The restaurant was a failure.
Gordon Ramsay, the famed English chef, responded to Erasto’s plea for help and arrived in Sydney with the
crew of his hit TV show,“Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”.
The verdict, delivered as Ramsay thrust his finger in
Erasto’s face, was: “I wouldn’t feed the bleeping crabmeat
stew to a bleeping dog, and I wager a steaming turd tastes
better than the bleeping sombusa. We need to shake things
up, Erasto. You now serve pork dishes and nothing else.”
“But Chef Ramsay, I’m a Muslim.”
“Listen, you skinny bleeping refugee. Your restaurant is
now called the bleeping ‘House of Pork’. Got it?”
Erasto, meat cleaver in hand, sighed deeply as the blood trickled down Ramsay’s forehead, and screamed insanely
as he butchered the star’s two-man crew.
The guest list for the relaunch was a who’s who of Sydney society.
“Hey, Erasto,” the Mayor of Sydney said. “I thought this was gonna be a pork restaurant. And where’s Ramsay?”
“Sorry, Mr Mayor. Chef Ramsay left unexpectedly.”
“What. I've got to eat Somali food?”
“Excuse me, waiter,” Nicole Kidman said, waving. “There's a penis in my soup.”
About the Author: I'm a veteran journalist, who recently moved back to Australia after six years in Bangkok.
More articles by Bodie
Print Article | Download PDF | 89 views | Jun 20 2008
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