MINNEAPOLIS â It’s the largest Somali mall in the world, according to its owner.
It’s also where Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., spent a significant chunk of her Friday â marking her first day back in the public eye after the Oct. 12 raid on her Washington, D.C., home.
Fox News Digital got a look inside the Karmel Mall of Somalia, which isn’t like typical American malls that sport brand-name shops situated around a vast food court and end-capped by large department stores.
Rather, the four-floor building has 900 vendors and resembles more of a storage facility. When shop owners arrive, they lift their metal garage doors, signifying that their stores are open. Scheduled opening and closing times don’t appear particularly stringent for shop owners.
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It was in the mall’s dining area, adorned with the Somali, Palestinian and American flags flying at the same height, that Omar dined among friends in the Somali community for lunch on Friday. State Attorney General Keith Ellison was also present. The ceiling of the food vendor area is painted light blue and emblazoned with a white star resembling the Somali flag.
Somali cafes sell traditional food, including sambusas, a flaky fried pastry filled with meat and spices, bijaye, which is fried cornmeal similar to a hush puppy or falafel, and goat meat and basmati rice. Many Somalis in the mall ate only with their hands, though Omar and her acquaintances could be seen using forks during their Friday lunch.
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Omar â who’s “real name” is Ilhan Nur Said Elmia, according to sources familiar with the criminal investigation into the congresswoman â was greeted by smiling patrons at the mall, some of whom she chatted with briefly and posed for photographs.
All the while, she and Ellison were surrounded by security guards.
Fox News Digital was allowed access into the mall by its Gaza-born owner, Basim Sabri, in order to film the congresswoman visit just after she and Ellison voted early at a Minneapolis polling station.
Prominently featured among the stores in the mall are shops selling prepaid electronic SIM cards for overseas calling and money transfer stores, including World Direct Link Corp., which advertises simple ways to send money to Somalia, Kenya and other East African nations.
There are also several travel agencies offering arrangements from the United States to the Middle East and East Africa. Traditional Somali clothiers sell their goods in the mall, while Somali barbers tend to customers in their own shops. English is the mall’s second language.
Elderly men, adorned in traditional Somali clothing and brimless white caps called koofiyad, sit in silence in metal chairs alongside the open walls of the mall, many staring onward, as if los
