Faisal Roble
Friday August 27, 2007

On the evening of Friday, August 17, 2007, under heavy and thunderous skies of Columbus city in Ohio, one of Somalia’s eminent scholars, Dr. Hussein M. Adam, was honored by the Somali Studies International Association (SSIA) for his sustained contributions to Somali Studies. 

Professor Said S. Samatar of Rutgers University, who skillfully served as the MC, organized a by-invitation-only dinner; it was to be an exclusive banquet, or so we thought, until a horde of uninvited individuals crashed in, prompting Professor Samatar to snap at them, in order to shame and eventually steer them into paying up, but to no avail.  Ala Somali culture, they quickly transformed themselves into hard-to-ignore guests, just like the nomad who for the first time came to a city and, when ignored by its pedestrians, retorted “ Magaaloy waligaaba i dhaaf dhaaf, haddee aduun baa marti laguu yahay.”

In its thirty years of existence, founded in 1978, the Association did not give such an honor until now to anyone of its elders or founding members.  As a founding president and the inventor of the very name of the association, Said‘s eloquently delivered an engaging tribute, with which he entertained us during the course of a three-meal delicious dinner, that introduced Hussein the author, the activist and the extraordinaire intellectual to a captive audience.

In honoring Hussein, or, as he is nick-named, “Hussein Tanzani”, Professor Samater hit a home-run for his effort to familiarize us with Hussein the prodigious child, the man, and the soon-to-be senior citizen.  In between is a long narrative of his survival, the premier learning institutions he has attended, a range of contributions to a nation-building campaign.  But above all, we came to know the stick-to-it and loving husband that he is to his ailing wife, Fadumo Abulsamad.

With his unparalleled command, and, may I say, agility, to tap dance around and massage the written word, thence mincing at each line that he artfully weaved into a tasty and pertinent text, the master of ceremony of the night took us to the foothills of Kilimanjaro and the environment that shaped Hussein’s childhood, a child longing for returning to his forefathers landscape in exchange for East Africa’s alienating society.  Born to and raised in a mosaic world of a Somali father, a Masia and Indian mother, Hussein, we came to know, had been an outsider and has always defied categorization for most of his 63 years; he longed for a social and political space of Somali dominance, to mainly embrace its values and in turn be embraced.

I first met Dr. Hussein in 1978 when I was a junior at Lafoole College, Somali National University, where Dr. Hussein’s footprints are hard to erase.  My early impressions about his intellectual browse and his leftist orientation were cemented at the wake of the 1979 Annual International Franz Fanon Conference, held in Mogadishu, Somalia.  The “who is who” of Pan-Africanism (Amiru Baraka, Granga, founder of the “Kwanza” tradition, Claudia Mitchell-Kernnon, Vice chancellor of UCLA, who was instrumental in my admission to that institution in 1982, thanks to her unbridled love for Somalis after that conference, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, yes, that Abdulkarim-Jabar! et al) descended into the Mogadishu of 1979, a city of peace and prosperity. 

It is fitting here to add that Dr. Hussein wrote his dissertation for his Harvard Ph.D. (in Political Science) on “The Social and Political Thoughts of Frantz Fanon” - a manuscript that I devoured on  (in 1978) at the then bustling but modestly stocked Lafoole library.  As a young Marxist, or so I thought of myself, who fled Ethiopia’s oppressive conditions, Hussein’s dissertation, a comprehensive review of Marxism in the tradition of Fanon, left me with lasting impressions.  (Hussein Bulhan’s follow up, “Fanon and the psychology of the Oppressed” is a fitting companion to this now disappearing Somalia’s intelligentsia tradition). 

Moreover, Hussein’s earlier pan-Somali writings, partly a product of his intellectual activism and, as Samatar reported in his tribute, a promise he dearly protected in his prophetic mission to do something good for his ancestral land, Somalia, is captured by this endearing and theoretically sweeping quote from one of his treatise:  “Clan and lineage antagonisms do not preclude a will to unite or a feeling of common destiny, especially with regard to the common foe.  Somali (tribal) genealogies serve both to distinguish clan-families and clans and, at the same time, to remind them all of common ancestry.” 

Well, to those who are sharpening their pencils to hastily doodle their first lines of the obituary for the demise of Somalis, Hussein’s concept of the organic nature of the Somali society may serve them as a cautionary note to hold on their horses!  At least for now!
The evening also featured another [Somalia’s] eminent and patriotic scholar, Dr. Ahmed Ismail Samatar of Macalester College, MN, who humbly reminded the audience the undyingly valuable advice that only an older brother, in this case Dr. Hussein, gave to his upcoming [younger] brotherly scholar(s) - that is the Samatar brothers.  From the intimate accounts by Professor Charles Gashekter, to Bereket Habte Sellasie's emotional words, to Lee Cassanelli’s at times fanny, friendlier, and uplifting words, to John Johnson’s sobbing and heavily southern accented remarks, to the words of gratitude by Endow and a women whose name eluded me who bore  witness to Hussein’s helping hand which he kindly gave many a times to admission-weary prospective young Somali graduates, all spoke to the honoree’s energetic commitment to scholarship.  But a theme that none left out is the extraordinary husband and father of seven beautiful children that he is.

Some thirty (30) years ago, this association hosted its first and most memorable conference in Mogadishu with a smashing success – a subject I will revisit next week as part of my own personal experiences in Columbus.  Thirty years later, when the very existence of the Somali nation is confronted with localism and an unfettered dissipation of the very sense of oneness that Dr. Hussein expressed numerous times, SSIA’s timely choice to honor him and Professor Said’s gigantic tribute to familiarize us with him in the city of Columbus, in the state of Ohio, home to a bustling thirty-thousand strong Somali community is a prospect to revel on.

I am honored to be part of this special and overdue tribute which the association extended to Dr. Hussein. 

Faisal Roble
WardheerNews
E-Mail:Fabroble@aol.com
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