By Leisa Scott and Rebecca Armstrong, 12 July 2026
Naima Ali Farah is having her make-up done.
It’s an ordinary scene at this cosmetic store in Melbourne’s northern suburbs but it doesn’t feel ordinary for Naima.
“It’s something that I’ve been dreaming to have when I get to safety,” Naima tells Australian Story. “Just feel like a woman again and have everything a woman should have.”
Safety, freedom and choice are luxuries Naima never really knew.
The girl from a poor Muslim family had no choice in being married at 14 in her home country of Somalia; no choice when she was kidnapped off the streets of Mogadishu about 15 years later by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group Al-Shabaab and subjected to physical and sexual violence.
She had no choice but to flee her country and head to Kenya if she wanted to escape the deadly wrath of Al-Shabaab and give her son, Feisal Abdi Sugal, a chance in life.
So, being free to choose how she lives her life since arriving last year in Melbourne with Feisal, after nine years as refugees in Nairobi, still fills Naima with wonder.
“Women here rule, they have powers,” Naima, 40, says. “Not the women where I came from. They can’t do anything they want to do … they’re under the rules of the husbands.
“But here, a woman can wake up in the morning, do her make-up, dress up, take her car and go to work. That is what’s called power. And that’s what I want to do.”
Naima knows, too, that she is free to decide who she calls a friend.
And she’s decided that six people who met her and Feisal at the Melbourne airport on a freezing, wet night in June last year and helped them settle into their new home are some of the best of friends.
The fact these friends are Jewish makes no difference.
“In our group, no Jews, no Muslim,” Naima says. “We are one big family.”
The six friends were volunteers in a federal government initiative called the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Program (CRISP), which matches refugees who have no family ties in Australia with a group of five or more locals who help them navigate life here.
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