Hargeisa: Revisiting a Familiar Place

….and we do not expect people to be moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy, which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

On Wednesday 29 October 2008 the three suicide bombers launched their attacks in Hargeisa, on the residence and office of President Dahir Rayalle Kahin, the UNDP compound, and the Ethiopian commercial liaison premises. This article is in memory of the many victims who died, and is dedicated to those who suffered terrible injuries, and to their families. It is my own account of being in Hargeisa on that particular day and, furthermore, of being in Hargeisa Hospital on that horrifying morning as the dead and injured were brought in. I just want to share my story and try to shed some light on the hard, empty, despairing, dark agony and sadness endured by all the families who lost their loved ones, and the feelings they will experience every day, every week, every month and every year for the rest of their lives.

For most of the time in one’s life these bad and odd feelings are so stacked against you that if you thought about confronting them rationally, you would not even know how to begin to take them on. Following my own devastating personal experience in 1990 I have been in this same situation for nearly 20 years. I still have times when total darkness falls upon me and, roaring, envelopes me, and then I feel as if it happened today with the world around me collapsing.

In October 2008 I was in Hargeisa, on a brief visit to Somaliland, and I had never been to Hargeisa before. But there I was, ‘revisiting a familiar place’.

I was a young person when in 1975 I last left Somaliland. I had lived in Burao which was my birthplace. After I married a diplomat (see photograph on the left), Mogadishu was home for me; no matter where in the world I went, I always used to return to Mogadishu. My last memory of Mogadishu is of a morning in 1990 of such dismay and dreadfulness that having started as a ‘normal morning’ it ended with my world, internally and externally, going upside down and never subsequently returning to ‘normal’ for myself and my family.

The particular morning that my world, and world of my family, turned upside down, was that of Monday 4 December 1990. I woke up with my late husband, His Excellency Ambassador Hussein Hassan Farah, and our two daughters, Huda and Zainab, who were under 6 and 2 years old at the time, now young ladies of 22 and 26.

His Excellency Ambassador Hussein Hassan Farah inspecting troops on his way to the Nigerian Presidential Palace to present his accreditation to President Shehu Shagari, October 1980

We got ready for our everyday routine; my husband went to work and I dropped my eldest daughter at her school having planned to engage in some activities and charity work with some other mothers of my daughter’s classmates.

It was about 9am when I heard that my husband had been assassinated, shot dead, along with his driver, just before he reached his office in the old Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Also, I was told that whoever killed my husband would come and hunt for me and my daughters and there was no way that I could stay in our house. My daughter who was in school and I had to be taken to a safe place; my other daughter and her nanny had already been evacuated from our home.

From that Monday I never returned to my home in Mogadishu. I attended the funeral of my husband in complete and utterly hidden identity and received condolences in total security in a secret place, never having the chance to grieve properly with my family and friends. Three weeks later I fled with the two girls to London and joined my family here. From that morning my life, and the lives of my children, never returned to ‘normal’.

December 1990 is almost 20 years ago and I am still picking up the pieces and trying to fix what was smashed inside me on that day. Many times I have found myself combing the shelves of well-stocked bookstores, trying to find something that would reassure me that the relentless despair I was experiencing was anywhere close to being ‘normal’. I found many professional resources on the psychological impact of tragic loss by assassination as well as autobiographies of families whose loved ones had died in tragic circumstances like mine; yet still all that does not take away my pain; even my training as a psychotherapist has done little to soothe me. I have never been able to articulate or explain adequately to my daughters what happened to their father and why. From that day until now they still keep asking me the same question again and again, “Why was our father assassinated?” My answers are still the same: “I do not know”.

Similar feelings of helplessness in Nigeria and Egypt

His Excellency Ambassador Hussein Hassan Farah (right) at the ceremony in which he presented his accreditation to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (left), October 1982

I have been in trifling, powerless, helpless situations many times in my life. Being the wife of a diplomat is a very complicated position: on the one hand you are an impartial figure in a foreign country and you should not be a target at all; on the other hand you are in position of danger all the time. At the beginning of 1982 I remember myself and my late husband attending a reception in honour of Pope John Paul II, hosted by the Nigerian Government in Lagos. Outside the event an attacker was shot.

At the celebration ceremony on Egyptian National Day, 6 October 1985, an Islamic extremist forced his way in an attempt to kill President Hosni Mubarak. We were trapped under our seats until the situation was brought under control. People on both sides lost their lives. The annual celebrations always used to be a very sensitive time for diplomats as it was the date when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. On that occasion some diplomats lost their lives and many others were injured. I also remember when unexpected student demonstrators attacked both our home and the Somali Embassy in Egypt on 21 October 1988. Most of the time in those panicky situations you do not know what is happening. You place your safety in the hands of others; all you see is security officers swooping, whispering, atmospheric changes and scariness, if no more.

I arrived in Hargeisa on 22 October 2008

I arrived in Hargeisa on Wednesday 22 October 2008. As a volunteer I was to help for three weeks in the mental health wards of Hargeisa, Borama, and Burao Hospitals. I also gave lectures on mental and psychosocial health in the Hargeisa Nursing School and to nurses in the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital.

Wednesday 29 October was a ‘normal’ morning. I arrived in Hargeisa General Hospital by 8am and I had five other appointments for that day. I was standing in front of a blackboard, holding chalk in my hand and writing information about some of the patients; the ward nurses had selected patients for me to assess. When I heard the first blast I thought some of the mentally-ill patients had climbed on the roof and were hammering down the building. Other staff in the room said, “An explosion happened somewhere”. The second blast, louder than the first, shook the building, plunging some dust and dirt down upon us. Immediately running out of the building, we heard great commotion and howling coming from Main Street in front of the Hospital. Then the third blast hit the Presidential Residence which was just behind the Hospital and next to mental health ward itself. Half of the roof of the ward came down. There were many patients who were extremely ill, and they all huddled either in their beds, against walls or, outside the ward, under trees.

By then it had become clear to us that Hargeisa was under some sort of attack. The noises in the street got louder and louder; the howling increased; the street in front of the Hospital was by then full of school children running around aimlessly, and soldiers pointing guns and running aimlessly too. Some of the mentally-ill patients had run off into the streets. I remember my eyes passing fleetingly over what seemed to be another disaster in the making, with hundreds of school children and soldiers with heavy weapons in close proximity; and all I did was to stand in the middle of a world that seemed to have gone mad. I remember turning my head left and right with helpless, unknown and puzzled head and eyes.

In the mental health ward everybody start panicking. Should we have let all the mentally-ill patients leave, or not? There were about 82 inpatients and outpatients who had come for their medication. The latter had already run off into the disaster area. Within 10 minutes the first casualties arrived in the hospital. Some of them were carried in the arms of ordinary people; others were walking-wounded. Ambulances brought more, and other casualties arrived in private cars. Some had bad burns and multiple injuries. Others were dead and mutilated; they arrived in pieces, carried on sheets. I had never seen so much spilled, flowing blood.

So, I share with you all these direct experiences and more, plus my own personal tragedy, loss, despair and pain brought about by a brutal murder which I did not actually witness. Yet, one year after the Hargeisa bombings, I still feel that I have never witnessed a more ‘helpless’ situation than the one in Hargeisa on that day. Somaliland had little with which to respond to death and the pleas and moans of the wounded, nothing with which to stem the flow of dripping blood forming a trail along the route from the place of the explosion to the door of the hospital. And in the hospital what was to be done with the casualties? Leave them to sort themselves into the dead and the living? Yet, in the absence of resources, doctors, nurses, and countless others worked miracles. The demands on the community were out of all proportion. But with determination and passion many worked until next day, non-stop. A fighting spirit was alive and well.

Although we are all aware that death will come at its appointed time yet the slaughtering of innocents in this manner has an extreme, painful, mysterious psychological impact on the people who are left behind. All the victims of the bombings were innocent citizens who had left home that morning to go about their daily business: the mother who took her children to school but never collected them; the father who had gone to work for his family, never to return. How could anyone be so evil as to cause such distress? Why would they wish to? There are no easy ways to explain atrocities like the Hargeisa bombings, the 7 July bombings in London, and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York. What is the state of mind which plans destruction on these scales with such meticulous care and forethought. As human beings we are the creators of events, good or bad. We can choose between one and the other.

I flew from Hargeisa on the morning of Thursday 30 October 2008 and headed for London. Since then, reflection on that experience has never shifted from my mind and heart and it gives me nightmares from time to time. I have tried many times to make sense of this heartbreaking issue but this has inevitably reminded me of my own pain and despair that I have been trying to let go for 20 years.

- Fadumo has a M.Sc. degree in psychodynamic psychotherapy counselling and has worked for many psychological organisations in the UK. Currently she is a counsellor for the Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust Psychological Service within the National Health Service. Also she has private practice in West London. Her email is fadumo_m@hotmail.com

- The article was originally published in the Anglo Somali Society Journal (Issue No. 47 Spring 2010) and is reprinted here with the author's permission.

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Hargeisa: Revisiting a Familiar Place
By Fadumo Omar Mohamed
March 18, 2010

Mogadishu was home for a diplomat’s wife

Similar feelings of helplessness in Nigeria and Egypt

I arrived in Hargeisa on 22 October 2008

I left Hargeisa with a heavy heart on 30 October, 2008