The two women's paths never crossed in their homeland -- and if they had, it would not have been in friendship.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Ralia Derow (front) has welcomed Fadumo Abshir to her home in Lawrenceville. Derow, who is a Bantu, and Abshir, who is Marehan, first met in a refugee camp in Kenya in 1991; they were reunited in Pittsburgh two weeks ago. Click photo for larger image. Related article In countries where mothers fare well, so do their children

Fadumo Abshir was at the top level of society in Somalia, and Ralia Derow was at the bottom. Sharing a meal or discussing their children would have been unthinkable.

But war, widowhood and displacement brought the two mothers equally low. They wound up as neighbors in a refugee camp in Kenya, where hardship dissolved their differences. Struggling to keep themselves and their children alive, they became friends. So did their families.

That in itself would be a tale worth telling. But the story doesn't end there. The women would be separated twice -- when they changed refugee camps and again when they resettled in America. Each time fate brought them back together. And two weeks ago Ralia Derow, who once lived in a hut, took Fadumo Abshir, who'd lived in a palace, into her Pittsburgh home like a sister.

Derow works in a laundry for minimum wage and lives in a three-bedroom house in Lawrenceville with her four children and one grandchild, ages 5 to 22. The only bathroom is in the basement.

It's a snug fit made tighter still with Abshir and her children: daughter Sagal Jama, 22; and sons Jama Jama, 21, and Farah Jama, 16. But the close quarters and Derow's meager income were not going to stop her from tossing her friend a lifeline.

The shared housing probably won't be for long, said Khadra Mohammed, director of the Pittsburgh Refugee Center, who translated as the women told their stories. Last week, center volunteers were working to find Abshir's family a living space close to Derow and already had submitted a job application for her at the laundry. They also were seeking jobs for the two older children, and the youngest son was being enrolled at Schenley High School.

Just looking at the two women tells part of their tale. Derow is short and round, with the dark skin and broad nose of her Bantu blood line. These features set her people apart in the country where they'd lived as third-class citizens for 200 years, until marauding clans sent them fleeing for their lives in 1991.

Abshir, on the other hand, is tall and thin, with sloe eyes set in a narrow face above a long nose. Her angularity is reminiscent of the fashion model Iman -- who, like Abshir, was born in Mogadishu in 1955.

As a member of the Marehan clan, Abshir is related to Mohammed Siad Barre, who ran Somalia from 1969 to 1991. Her husband, a successful businessman from a lower-ranking clan, owned a large supermarket in Mogadishu.

The couple lived in a fancy house with their seven children (six after one died of illness). They employed as many as 20 domestic workers, and people from all over would come to them seeking favors -- food, jobs, bailing someone out of jail.

That life crumbled when Barre was driven from power. Rival clansmen killed Abshir's husband and 10-year-old son, looted the store and then moved on to the house, where they gang-raped Abshir, three months pregnant at the time, and threw the family out onto the street.

She found refuge with a neighbor for herself and three of the children. The two oldest daughters were out at the time of the raid and Abshir had no way to contact them. That night, the family of four fled in the back of a lorry to the port city of Kismaya. They stayed there for four months, hoping for word of the two missing girls, Ayan and Sagal. Abshir gave birth to the baby, who lived only a few weeks.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Ralia Derow, left, leads her newly relocated friend, Fadumo Abshir, down Penn Avenue on a recent Saturday morning shopping trip to the Strip District. Click photo for larger image.

Desperation eventually drove them to make the weeklong trek across the border to Dadaab, Kenya, where the United Nations gave them refugee cards and placed them in the hut next to Derow.

It was the first time Abshir had ever actually met a Bantu, whom other Somalians derisively call "Jrir," which means "fuzzy hair."

"[The Bantu] are everywhere in Somalia," Abshir said, "but there is no personal relationship. They are the laborers."

Derow harbored no ill will toward Abshir and cared nothing about their former stations in life. "Everyone is the same as refugees," she said. "No matter how they arrive, everyone becomes equal."

"We bonded right away," said Abshir. "We were both widows with no one to rely on but each other."

In the camp, the women's priorities were identical -- feeding their children on subsistence rations and trying to stay alive.

But there were other Somalis in Dadaab from other clans, and they jumped at the chance to ridicule this once-influential woman, knocked from her lofty perch. "How do you like it now?" they would taunt. "You are so pathetic you have to associate with Jrir."

Abshir withdrew into her hut. But Derow was strong -- her life was hard even before her husband and parents were murdered in front of her eyes by marauding clansmen in 1991 -- and she took over mothering Abshir's children. They began to call her Auntie Ralia.

Seven years ground by. Rape is epidemic in the camps, and Abshir was an especially tempting target for those bent on revenge. She was gang-raped again while gathering firewood and harassed wherever she went, but Derow was steadfast in her friendship.

In 1998, Abshir and her children moved to Kakuma, a collection of sprawling refugee compounds in northern Kenya. She never expected to see Derow again.

Then, in 2001, two good things happened. First, she was reunited with daughter Sagal, who had stayed alive in Mogadishu by concealing her identity and working as a maid. She learned her family was in Kakuma from a BBC program that broadcasts the names of displaced persons who are seeking relatives and traveled there to find them. The oldest daughter, Ayan, remains missing.

Also in 2001, the Somali Bantus were moved to Kakuma. Soon enough, Derow's son, Mohamed Darbane, then 18, and Abshir's son, Jama, spotted each other at the camp, and the mothers were reunited. Their compounds were 5 kilometers apart, but they visited as often as they could.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette "Other Somalis look down on the Bantu like they are nothing, but they have never mistreated me, and I have never seen anyone better than Ralia [Derow] in my whole life." -- Fadumo Abshir, far left. Click photo for larger image.

In February 2004, Derow and her family left Africa on a flight bound for Pittsburgh. That October, Abshir and her family were on a flight themselves, destination Springfield, Mass.

Derow's resettlement was difficult in the ways that one might expect for someone with no English -- or written language for that matter -- moving from an 18th-century agrarian society to a 21st-century post-industrial one. But with help, the family has been adjusting.

Abshir, on the other hand, was educated and familiar with modern life, yet her transition has been harder in some ways. Her arrival in the U.S. did not end her status as a scorned outcast, she said, because the resettlement agency used Somalis as translators and case workers, and they, too, were members of rival clans. The workers, she said, made her life miserable, refusing to give the help that other Somali refugees received. The agency's resettlement director said confidentiality prevented his commenting on specific cases, but that safeguards were in place to prevent such situations.

After four months, the family left Springfield for Denver, where a relative of Abshir's late husband had promised to let them stay. That lasted for a month, and then the family took a bus to Columbus, Ohio, hoping to blend into the large Somali community there.

Once again, Abshir said, there was no escaping her clan association, and she was at the end of her rope -- until one day, when she was in a Somali-owned store seeking a job, Mohamed Darbane walked in and spotted her.

He immediately called his mother and put Abshir on the line; both women burst into tears. Abshir poured out her heart. In the camps, she said, at least we had hope for a new life in the U.S. But now we are here, and there is no place for us.

"I told Ralia that life is so bad, I am discriminated against wherever I go. The children are mad because I keep dragging them from place to place," she said.

Derow's reply: "Come live with me. If we could do it in the refugee camp we can do it here.

"When you come to my house," she continued, "we will pretend you are just arriving in the United States. We will make a new start, sleep in the same room and eat from the same pot."

Derow scraped together the bus fare for Abshir and three of her children -- the fourth, daughter Fardowsa Jama, 19, found a job in Columbus and elected to stay.

Sitting on Derow's donated sofa two days after her arrival, Abshir couldn't say enough about her friend.

"Other Somalis look down on the Bantu like they are nothing, but they have never mistreated me, and I have never seen anyone better than Ralia in my whole life," she said.

Between sentences, the newcomer stared at the floor, shook her head, choked back tears and wondered if her life would ever improve. Derow said she was much the same when she first arrived in Lawrenceville. But 15 months later, she is getting used to the surroundings. She laughs easily, goes to work, sends the children to school -- Miller African Academy in the Hill District for the three youngest and Schenley High School for daughter Sowdo Darbane, 16.

"I was the same as you when I got here," Derow assured her friend. "But look, I am doing better now, and one day you will be better, too."

War, the women agree, is like fire. It eats everything in its path, and those who survive are scarred forever.

But mothers need to keep going for the sake of their children. And if, amid the ashes, an unlikely friendship should take root, even those who feel as if they've lost everything might find themselves with something after all.