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Editor's note: This is the second part of a four part series. In this piece, professor Said Samatar shows several things including his mastery of the language, an unwavering interest in literature and a total command of both the Somali culture and that of the West. Moreover, Samatar [de] mystifies the hold that clan identity seeks to have on a detribalized, westernized if you will, Somali individual through his own experience. This piece definitely establishes Samatar as both a literary scholar as well as a keen historian. As a product of the literary imagination, Captain Ahab is the major protagonist in Melville's novel Moby Dick , the classic work often cited as ushering in the coming of age of American literature. At once diabolical and ambition-crazed, Ahab is the poetic archetypal figure representing Western Europe 's lust for power, glory and gain--in short for conquest. He is descended, fictionally and spiritually, from the incomparable Dr. Faust, as well, the literary creation of the German playwright, Goethe. In a memorable scene in Goethe's play, Dr. Faust makes a historic bargain with Lucifer, dean of the satanic host, in which he offers his soul to the devil in return for the devil's grant to him of mastery over the world. Hence, the famous scriptural cautionary tale, "for what will it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his soul," does not resonate with Dr. Faust. He would gladly relinquish his soul to hell for the conquest of the globe. Dr. Faust and Captain Ahab are one and the same in spirit and imagery portraying the satanic side of the West that catapulted Europeans not only into a 500-year global hegemony enslaving, colonizing and ruthlessly exploiting the nations of Africa and Asia but also installing their absolute open season on the world, pillaging, raping and ravishing everywhere they went, leaving it desolate and devastated. Unlike the physically wholesome Dr. Faust, Ahab is a cripple with a wooden leg, a withered arm and a host of other assaults on his body sustained in the course of life-time of pursuing the elusive white whale through the high seas. His body may be battered but his spirit is indomitable. It was therefore a matter of unforgettable astonishment to encounter a latter-day Captain Ahab in Seattle , Washington , April 5, 1994 . His real name is Abdusamad, ethnically a Leelkase and therefore my own kinsman. Let me say at the outset that the likening of Abdusamad to Captain Ahab in the ensuing remarks is only metaphorical and that there is no intention to call my kinsman a devil. If anything he struck me, when in his best mood, as a gentleman's gentleman; still, he did radiate a lot of Ahab-like characteristics which call for comment. In the crazy crisscrossing quilt of ethnicities that make up Somali society, the Leelkase are composed of a small clan of mullahs (my kinsmen are likely to disown me for saying this) constituting a sub-lineage of the Daarood clan-family. There are tantalizing bits and pieces of evidence that suggest the Leelkase to have been almost completely wiped out in a massacre that occurred in some ancient, prehistoric time. For example, there are hills of human skeletons in eastern Somalia that are called "Lafa-Tanade," or the "Bones of the Tanade,"--Tanade being another name for the Leelkase. Who massacred them and why will probably never be known. In order to survive, the solitary remnants of the Leelkase then turned to religion, permanently leaving the struggle for material power and influence to larger clans. To paraphrase Professor I. M. Lewis, where Somalis fail to acquire power in the physical world, they seek it in the spiritual. Another name for the Leelkase is Xer, literally "Qur'anic disciples." They often specialized in setting up catechistic Qur'anic centers throughout Somalia teaching the diin , or religion, solemnizing marriages and receiving, in return, gifts (siyaaro) of livestock and tokens of honor from the host clans. It appears that in their role as wadaads (men of religion) and fiqihs (scholars of sacred law) the Leelkase prospered and multiplied in numbers; for by the middle of the century they took to trusting more to the sword than to the diin . They got into various and sundry feuds to the east with 'Umar Mohamuud Majeerteen and to the west with the Habar Gidir Hawiye. It was in a particularly lethal feud with the 'Umar Mohamuud in 1964-5 that Abdusamad, my Captain Ahab, enters into history as a legendary warrior, leading a Leelkase militia to fight off the powerful 'Umar Mohamuud to a standstill (this is the Leelkase version; the 'Umar Mohamuud claim they stopped short of finishing off the Leelkase for fear of divine retribution). Whatever the true version of events, the Leelkase came out of this feud with renewed confidence in their capacity to defend themselves by the sword. Abdusamad apparently played a major part in the Leelkase holding their own. And so it was he who, shortly after this feud, triumphantly boasted in a poetic couplet: "Allow iyo aayadii ka baxno Afdiinlaan ku aarsanaynaa." "We, the Leelkase have ceased and desisted from our vain pleas to Allah for protection, Instead we now employ the gun to avenge our dead!" Those who served with him describe him as a warrior's warrior whose tactical maneuvers in the field can only be matched by his death-defying bravery: he was left for dead at least once, his entire body is polka-dotted with bullet marks, his right leg blown off by a bazoka blast and his arm withered like a stunted branch. One should imagine that a man with so many assaults on his body would permanently quit warring. Not Abdusamad. When clannish violence broke out in earnest in the collapse of the state in early 1991, he was at the head of a Leelkase militia duelling it out with Habar Gidir militia. The Leelkase claim(a claim which is more of a boast than substance) that they have single-handedly driven the Habar Gidir from their grazing grounds in Mudugh province into Benaadir province where the latter under General Aydiid have wreaked havoc, variously, on the Abgaal, Hawaadle, Murursade and Rahanwayn. Again Abdusamad was hit, this time in the head with one eye shot off and the forehead re-arranged from the effect of flying shrapnel. How he ended up in Seattle remains a mystery, but there he was all right that morning when I arrived at the shiny lecture hall of Seattle Pacific University to deliver a talk to rosy-cheeked American students. The gist of my lecture was to try to put a semblance of logic on the Somali muddle to a mildly bemused roomful of Americans, wondering why their boys got killed in a distant and savage place called Somalia . The audience's questions during discussion bore a striking resemblance to Chancellor Bismarck's near the end of the nineteenth century: when asked to provide fresh troops for the conquest of New Guinea, the Iron Chancellor replied with characteristic bluntness, "New Guinea head-hunters are not worthy of the healthy bones of one Prussian grenadier!" Was Somalia worth the healthy bones of one American Ranger? After the lecture Abdusamad was introduced by three other Leelkases as the "General." The General? This withered shade? I reflected. We drove to a five-star hotel in downtown Seattle . The car parked, we got out and when he attempted to walk, he wheezed and rattled and shuffled, dragging the wooden leg after the other. I began to see that half his body was made up of wooden supports, the original organs having been blasted off by steel. Our waitress was a luscious blonde with radiant skin and sumptuous eyes whose comings and goings coupled with imagination served to whet the appetite. The lunch (which one of the Leelkases paid for) was not, as it turned out, the point of our gathering; it was in fact a ruse designed to rough me up by Captain Ahab aka Abdusamad. As soon as we were seated, he rounded on me with the one working eye sparkling. Said he: "Are you a man with xiniinyo or (balls)?" More disoriented than annoyed by the forwardness of his manners, I said, "Pardon me!" He learned the tone of irritation in those two words, for he stammered and said with less force: "We Leelkases have proven our fighting capabilities in the recent explosion of clan warfare that followed Siad Barre's fall. We do not initiate fights, but when fights are forced upon us, we punish mightily; every clan that picked up a quarrel with us came to regret it. We vanquished--" he rattled off a series of clan names, and tapped vigorously on the wooden leg with the edge of his palm, and by God, it was hollowed out and had the reverberating acoustics of a durbaan , or drum! Did he do this for effect to freak me out? I said, "Enough. I do not want to hear the gory details of one bloody tribal skirmish after another." He said, "Do you know the new names of the Leelkase, as a result of our prowess in the recent feuds?" I said I did not. He said, "One name is gaas-dhagoole ," which may be translated as the "deaf legion." I said, "Why gaas-dhagoole ?" He said, "Because once the Leelkase take up the field, they become deaf as to the rumble of shells. When in action we become deaf and mute to death. We defy death, knowing this mortal body can go but once." This reminded me of Julius Caesar's legendary cogitations on life and death: "Cowards die many times but the valiant never taste of death but once." By all the stars, when Caesar made those words famous he had just vanquished the Iberian peninsula and Gaul, the name then for the territories now making up France, Switzerland, half of Germany and all the lands adjacent to the English Channel, thus making possible the conquest of Britain by the lame emperor Claudius. In other words, Caesar would die in the forging of empires, reducing cities and compelling nations to bow before him; whereas my kinsman would glorify death in a senseless, soap-opera-like, endless and purposeless cycle of tribal violence. "Really?" I said, incredulously. "When we take to the field," the shade continued, "we would not abandon it, come what may. We'd die to the last man." "In that case," I said, "count me out." "Are you a coward?" "Pardon me!" One of the others interrupted with some gratuitous remark designed to provide comic relief. Captain Ahab started off again, "Do you know what the other name is?" I said, "Indulge me." He said, "Darbe-Daarood," which translates as: "the Daarood Wall." "Because," he said, squinting the one serviceable eye, "when the Daarood were in desperate trouble on all sides in the recent wars, it was we who stood between them and other clans." "Ask the Warsangali [another Daarood sub-clan]," he continued, "to confirm the truth of what I am saying. It was they who dubbed us, 'the Daarood Wall,' in grateful recognition of our defending role." The luscious white chick returned to clear the table; kids (white and black) toyed on the electronic Star Wars box. The jacuzzi fountains made plangent caressing sounds. The people, the streets, the cars, the lights--the city hummed outside. And here we were four Leelkases engaged in a cosmological clan discourse. This was surreal, I thought. Captain Ahab continued to harass me. Said he, "We are as good in peace as in war. Because we are men of religion, we deal honestly with others. We do not double-talk. Our word is as good as faith itself." Ahab paused, wheezing; then began again, "We'd prefer to have our necks cut off than break our word. That is why," the serviceable eye glistened, "we are universally trusted by all other clans. There is a great future for us in Somalia as power brokers, if not power holders in the country." " A great future for us in Somalia !" I could hardly believe I heard what I had heard. "Maledetto te, pazzo," I cussed in Italian under my breath. Fortunately for my skin, knowledge of Italian did not number in his satanic C.V., otherwise he would surely have bounced on me, wooden limbs and all! "Now, as for you," the shade opened up again, "We need you. Are you going to play an honorable role in this future? Are you going to lend us your academic thing and international contacts? Are you going to join us?" He gave me a look that froze me, making me feel creepy all over. "Are you going to be part of us, or simply satisfied to fatten off of American food stamps?" "The sucker," I cussed again. "Does he think I am on the dole?" He must have noticed my angry scowl, for at this he began to let up, warming up to me and judging it necessary to inform me, "The Fiqih Ismaa'iil [my own sub-branch of the Leelkase] have always demonstrated qualities of leadership in the clan." What was he buttering up to me for? There was no way of knowing, because he broke off and went into a trance (he was also suffering from Khat withdrawals), spewing out a stream of primeval monologue, half poetry, half singsong, mumbling the words: "Alla waan hawoonayoo, alla hawa na haysa, ee." "Alas, ambition–ambition stirs in us, ambition--ambition we seek." Back in my hotel room, I transcribed the outlines of the visit into my diary. Then I was assailed with one impulse and two thoughts. First, the impulse: this wraith of a man whose broken frame is pitted through and through with the mark of steel, only the one eye remaining whole of his entire body, and yet so animated, so lively, so resilient, his spirit so indomitable. The Somali civil war was not overabundant with examples of valiance in its purest essence, but this one was courage personified. I was awed! To paraphrase Mark Anthony on the slain Brutus, "All the elements unite to say this was truly a man." But my awe, even admiration was thoroughly dissipated by my growing scorn for his mad ambition. I learned by and by that he came to the U.S. on a refugee asylum program, that he was resettled in Seattle to start up a new life, that his needs in shelter, food and medication were met by American generosity, the cost of his upkeep being split between the state of Washington and the Federal Government. As such, one should suppose that with this largesse, he'd settle and end out his remaining days in peace and tranquility, living off America 's kindness, gazing blissfully on the busty, leggy blondes that populate the swank avenues of Seattle . No, his heart was not in these but in "ambition" and thoughts of "a great future" in Somalia ! What a mad son of a gun! If the whole world were offered to him on a silver platter, what good would this do him, given that he is so wasted? How could he, in the broken condition of his body, savor the ease, the comfort and delights of power, to say nothing of coping with its cares--this apparition of re-arranged wood and mended skeleton? As to the first thought that assailed: it was stirred by the specter's question, "Are you going to join us?" This resonated with me because it brought to mind one Abdirahman Hajji Hirsi, a first cousin, a medical doctor by vocation and a multi-sided genius who commanded mastery--I mean absolute mastery--over five languages: Arabic, English, French, Italian and Russian, in addition to his native Somali. When Somalia erupted, he moved to Kisimayu to serve as the only doctor in a children's hospital housing several hundred orphans. The Belgian paratroopers who manned Kisimayu and its environs had no end of praise for this doctor's, as one of the paratroopers put it, "integrity, hard work and dedication to his lowly orphanage." Well, one evening a gunman showed up at the orphanage premises and asked Dr. Hirsi to hand over to him the entire store of medicine in the orphanage. The doctor balked, whereupon he was shot at point-blank range. He died instantly. This incident in turn brought to mind a similar murder-by-shooting of another doctor, one Dr. Mohammed Warsame, who, after being hounded by the pleas of Roman Catholic nuns to help bind the wounds of his people, had reluctantly returned to Mogadishu to care for a large orphanage. General Aydiid ordered him killed for reasons of clan considerations in the fall of 1992. In the entire world, even in benighted Africa , a doctor's person is considered sacrosanct and treated as such. In the entire world, that is, except in mad Somalia . Dr. Hirsi, by reason of his medical skills and genius of mind, would, by international standards, have rated as worth more than the entire lot of the Leelkase put together. Yet, like so many others, he died senselessly and in vain and, from what I have been able to piece together, at the hands of another Leelkase. No, Captain, I'd rather not join you! The other thought that crossed my mind was even more frightening; to wit, if the Leelkase, largely a clan of mullahs with no material or numerical significance (I daresay my kinsmen are likely to disown me for saying this) are so inflamed and obsessed with brokering power in Somalia, if not seizing it, what about the much larger clans with many more resources in men and material? What heights of lust for power and gain must consume their souls? Then I understood why Somalia collapsed. This is a nation of greed and ambition gone mad. Said Samatar New Jersey part 2 of a 4 parts Article
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