Dr. Said Samatar - Professor of History - Rugters University

I AM A CONTRADICTORY MAN-CHILD. On the outskirts of the biblical three score of my life, I sport a silver head and an uncertain eyesight. But I have a youthful heart, too, as bubbly and playful as a giggling schoolgirl. Perhaps I am meant to be a riddle of some sort, an enigma even to myself. In any case, I have a secret to reveal: I like parties well enough, but I am crazy about wedding parties.

       When I was picked up on the eve of May 27, 2005, at Union Station, Washington D.C., by Abdirizak M A. Hamud, to be at a wedding party the following night at the Bethesda (Maryland) Marriott Hotel, I had just bounded off the criss-crossing escalators out into the open to be serenaded by the scents and sounds of the great city–the city that serves as the seat and center of the civilization that the late Ayatollah Khomeini referred to as a “World Devouring Great Satan.”   Abdirazak, brother of the bride-to-be, is eucalyptus-tree tall, like his old man who happens to be an ancient buddy of mine. I stayed that Friday night at the Holiday Inn on Wisconsin Avenue , after being double-crossed by the Marriott establishment on an important detail.  

Bethesda, MD USA

     Saturday morning–I lumbered about aimlessly in downtown Bethesda , a suburb of Washington, the city of movers and shakers. Bethesda bustled with people, buses and a countless assortment of smaller vehicles. Out of this million moving creatures and cars, I took an interest in a couple of luscious East Indian females accompanied by their sari-ed mother, belly protruding. On the other side of the road: three crippled GI's hobbled along. They looked freshly injured. Did they get it in Fallujah? Woe unto the Boss that places other people's boys and girls in harm's way, by dispatching them into unnecessary wars, while having his own party in the backyard lawn.  

     The wounded boys reminded me: Bethesda is world-famous as the venue of a great naval hospital that specializes in repairing the body parts of wounded warriors.   Thus, the hospital gives the town its claim on world history, a distinguishing landmark that lifts it into glory and fame from the obscurity of thousands of otherwise similar American suburbs. The hospital, in short, not only marks Bethesda 's envied soul as a town that heals, but also, to a borrow a sports metaphor, its First Innings. The Somali wedding was to bestow its Second

     The great event got underway at 8:00pm –Somalis everywhere, in lobbies, alleys and byways, throngs of Somali men and women in a bewildering array of dresses, the women from body-concealing head-to-toe covers to low-cut cuties, the men generally in suits adorned with white Koffias, which added to the colorful curiosity of the scenery. The last time I had sighted a large gathering of Somalis was in the waning days of 1992. Somalia's once proud city of Mogadishu lay in ruins, having been just humbled and brought low by the vermin-like infestation of Khat-crazed, wild-eyed gangs of rampaging goons who ravished the city and raped the women. Nineteen ninety-two especially--and dreadfully–will stand, infamously, as the YEAR OF THE GREAT RAPE ...of Benadiri Muhhajabat--by two warlords' (I shall refrain from naming names for reasons of charity, perhaps of self-interest) militias at the sanctuary of Masjid Araba'a Rukun where the hapless girls fled for protection, it being the holy house of God.

     According to Benadiri eye-witnesses the women, while being violated by scruffy, filth-encrusted Bedouins (Reer Baadiye), had copies of the Koran pressed to their bosoms in the holy-of-holiest of the mosque, crying: "La Ilaah Illalah...Iyyaaka na'abudu wa Iyyaaka Nasta'iin." When I reflect that God is just, to plagiarize Thomas Jefferson, I tremble for the Somalia in which such atrocities occurred.   (Similar outrages on Benadiri women took place, too, in both Merka and Baraawe on a grand scale.)   Many of the perpetrators of these crimes, far from being called to account, are counted among the contenders for leadership in today's Somalia .

     With these experiences and anxieties in the back of my mind, it was a nerve-soothing relief to come upon a crowd of Somalis in the Marriott Hotel who were not itching to kill one another, but rather happy, festive and celebrating, embracing and schmoozing, instead of gouging each other's eyes out.  

     Membership has its own privileges. I was hand-led by the ushers to be seated at the leading dignitaries' table--former diplomats, ministers, senior government officials, in short the "big men" of the "Beautiful Somalia" of yesteryear and today's wreckage of the same name. Would that I could recall all the names of the gentlemen who graced the table. To attempt a few: to my immediate left was the inimitable Abdullahi Addou, or the White Abdullahi who looked remarkably youthful despite his years; further to Addou's left was Mohamuud H. Noor, a venerable diplomat, for years Somalia's Washington man, who I came to know fairly well in the course of my off-and-on trips to Washington; further to Mohamuud's left a well-dressed personage of slight physical build with the lean and hungry look of Meles Zennawi.                            

    To Addou I said: "Doesn't his visage favor the Ethiopian prime minister?”
    He assented readily. "Nay," said he, "A carbon copy of Meles."  

I added facetiously: "A clone of Zennawi." Then I remembered the Arabic proverb: "Al-Qasiir, Basiir."   "Short men are wily." Could this shortish man outfox the lot of this crowd, just as the diminutive Zennawi outsmarted the tall Siye Abraham--his comrade in arms--and others?

     Now to my right: Mohamed Abdi Hashi--until lately, president of Puntland.   He had lost out, through an election, to the dour 'Adde Muuse Hirsi, current leader of Puntland. Mr. Hashi, with his paws on the table and general bearing, looked tigerish enough. Still, his nemesis in Puntland, no doubt, out-tigered him. Hashi was touchingly winsome in conversation. Whenever the inimitable Addou held forth, Hashi would delicately intone: "Waa Sida, Waa sida, Waa Sida"-- in the fashion of his pastoral forebears. I myself being born and bred in Somalia 's pastoral wilderness, the remarkable Hashi's "Waa Sida" moved me, touching off in me as it did nostalgic memories of my bucolic adolescent days.

     Further to Hashi's right was none other than the Garaad, or Chief, of the Warsangali clan-family, Garaad Mahamed Garaad Mohamoud Ali Shire. Along with the suit, he wore the inevitable Koofia, the traditional Somali headgear. He held himself with an aloof and stately composure, as befits the dignity of the leading noble man of the Warsangali. Recently, there was featured in the pages of WardheerNews.com a riveting tale entitled, "Touching Glimpses of History," of this Garaad's father falling out with the British Somaliland Protectorate Administration in the early decades of the 20th Century. As a result, the Garaad Ina Ali Shire was exiled to the Seychelles along with kings Kabarega of Bunyoro ( East Africa ) and Prempeh II of Asante (Ghana.)

     While marking time in exile, the great Garaad had, apparently, got other businesses going, one of which was to respond to the call of nature by siring a number of progeny in the Seychelles. The manly Garaad, in other words, managed to sow a pair of wild oats even under banishment! Upon return from exile to Somalia the Garaad lost all contact with his offspring in the land of his exile. So the virile Garaad ended up fathering a duplex household with two branches in the making, a Seychellian and a Somali.  Only recently did members of the two branches find out about each other in--of all places-- Japan .

     This remarkable tale puts me in mind of the bizarre story of an Ogaadeen chieftain of the Maalinguur sub-clan. He, too, ran afoul of the British Raj and was, consequently flung in jail as "a born agitator" for his pains in Kisimayu, the administrative center of the then British Jubaland. After languishing for yeas in confinement, the chieftain made a daring dash for freedom, breaking loose from prison, and he betook himself to the headwaters of the Shabeelle, or the River of Leopards , in Imi (Iimay). The Ogaadeen bushlands were "Pathless to us [the British]," as Sir Charles Eliot, then Governor of British East Africa (now Kenya ), put it, "but an open highway to the Somalis." Savoring his freedom in remote Imi, the flamboyant Maalinguur flim-flammer dashed off a note to the British Resident in Kisimayu:

    "Sir: This is to inform you that I found a change of climate extremely necessary for my health."By the by," the irrepressibly Maalinguur man concluded, "I left a wife and a Koran behind." Do not," he advised, "trouble to return either!" As he shook off Seychellean dust off his feet, the unflappable Garaad could have said to the British Raj: “I've increased the population of this lamentable Island by two souls.   Do not trouble to return either.”

     Back to Marriott: I am sorry to own that I do not remember the name of the prepossessing gentleman who occupied the right flank of the Garaad. Organized and supervised by a team led by the very able Faisal Roble (please read his " Mogadishu: The Spy City of the Day" in WardheerNews), the wedding could not be anything but a great success. While Faisal saw to the implementation of every detail, it was a young dude, Rashiid Ahmed Osman--handsome, impeccably dressed with a winning cheerful demeanor--who served as the MC. During one intermission, he came over to shake hands with me. I took an instant liking to him.  

     The wedding party—bride (Yasmeen M. Hamud), groom (Abdelkarim A. Hassan), best man, maids and all--were lodged in the very back of the room with girl and man perched prominently on a pair of raised stalls. The girl, in her white shimmering gown with silken fringes, looked stately, luscious, sensational. The groom cut a commanding presence. Did he wear a bow tie with his black jacket? Right then and there, in a moment of dreamy absent-mindedness, I mumbled, mainly to myself, "I say, God or the devil or whatever capricious agencies that created and run the world, played a cruel practical joke on us Somalis, making us uncommonly attractive creatures and yet withholding from us the balancing gene to get along. Can anybody divine the ways of the curmudgeon called Allah?"

     The music: Somali lyrics accompanied, rhythmically, with what sounded like “Rock” drums. A white chap was, in the fashion of the old swing, gyrating suggestively with a luminous Somali chick. A twinge of xenophobic jealousy assailed me, no doubt, rooted in the Somali exclusionist national character and expressing itself in the question: what is my sister doing with the gaal? Jealousy is a regrettably primitive emotion, but it cannot be lightly shaken off, as Cain, the first murderer in history knew. In any case, what is good for the goose is good for the gander–I myself, in my time, have done my share of gyrating with white chicks.   So, as the saying goes, people in glass houses should not throw stones!

     The dancing Somali girls, like the black-attired matrons in the audience, sported every conceivable kind of clothing from the guntiino to traditional Somali–that is, transparent dira'is to modern American to the notorious Hijaab, or Black Veil. To confirm an inner compulsion of mine, I am superstitious where this odious black monstrosity is concerned.  Its very sight causes me to freak out, shaking all over, uncontrollably, with disdain. Sometimes I spit contemptuously, if spittle is handy.   Temperament, I suppose. No, more than just mere temperament. You see the thing is an odious fraud, neither part of Somali traditional culture, nor even part of the early Islamic community whose damsels (forerunners of the Houris, or heavenly maidens with black eye lashes to come) veiled. To my knowledge, there are only two references of veiling in the Koran (XXXIII, 53 cf XXXIII, 32) and both pertain to the exceptional females of the Prophet's (PBUH) exceptional household. No injunction from the sacred scriptures of the Koran enjoins the generality of Muslim women to veil. Veiling as a cultural practice comes to the Muslims from Persia where it was the pre-Islamic habit of pagan Persian upper class ladies to veil in order to distinguish themselves from the “street rabble.” Therefore, the custom of veiling became a widespread practice among Muslims only after the incorporation of Persia into the Muslim world a century later. Thus, it turned out to be a matter of poetic justice that where the Muslims succeeded in making a religious conquest of Persia, replacing their antique Zoroastrian belief systems with the tenets of al-Islam, the Persians took their revenge by making a cultural conquest of the Umma, or the Islamic world community of faith, through the universal imposition of the Black Monstrosity.    

     And now, to the symbolic misfortune of the unfortunate Somalis, with the collapse of the Somali state and consequent apocalyptic cataclysms that roiled the Somalis, the Saudi Wahhabis with their big money and primitive ways have invaded unguarded Somalia with this malignant custom. Hence, where you used to see Somali women in elegant dira'is and the provocative partially-exposed take-a-peek-at-my-left-breast guntiinos, you have to settle in today's Somalia for a parodistic parade of weird Black Apparitions, to borrow a Somali expression, “Oo sidii Gorayadii u humbaalaynaya.” “Slinking about like ghastly male ostriches!”

     I turned away from one ostrich waddling about the floor like a beached seal, and my eyes fell on a modern dressed bevy–tall, turtle-necked–low-cut and all.   Nudging him in the rib, I said to Ahmed Nasir, my buddy, “Look at them!”

      He smiled wickedly and said, “Those are my daughters, the one from my ex-Somali, the other from my late black-sister wife.”

     I felt utterly chagrined, then muttered to myself: “Son of a gun. So he had sown wild oats, too, in his time, and no less than in two distant continents!”   Seeking a moment of comic relief, in order to redeem myself after my discomfiture with my Dirty-Old-Man leer at his daughters, I chatted with his current wife, a beauty, who reminded me that we spoke over the phone a couple of times.   

     Moving off to join a throng of dancers, I selected, silently, to dance with a lady in traditional white. Now, the dance was complicated enough without me; with me it became even more so! As I inched towards her–with my legs, arms and neck flailing every which way, she began to inch away from me, laughing nervously all the while. I wondered why she was bolting.  Did I make an ungentlemanly gesture? Or more likely, did she fear for her life that a rogue, runaway limb of mine might knock her dead? Maybe both.

     In the course of these festive larks, I managed a meaningful conversation only with Addou. I initiated it by asking him if he would be good enough to give me a sketch of his life.  He obliged graciously. Said he was born in Baraawe, deep in southern Somalia (a revelation to me, considering that his kin inhabit central Somalia, hundreds of kilometers away); he grew up a rajjay (orphan) child, losing both parents at an early age; that on account of the upheavals of WW II, he was catapulted to the Ogaadeen (did he specify Qabri-Dahare?); went back to proper Somalia after the war; schooled in Somalia, then went on to a scholarship in Italy as a police cadet. The rest is history. I inquired:

     “What was the happiest time of your life?” He said without hesitation and with an apparent sincerity:
     “The year 1958.”
      “What was happy about 1958?”

      “When as a second lieutenant, back fresh from my training in Italy, I was posted to Boosaaso to take the command of the police post there.”

     “Conversely,” I persisted, “What was the darkest moment of your life?”

     “In the early 1990s when the country exploded in civil war and the clan anarchy got out of hand.” He grew pensive, which pensiveness prompted me to sigh sadly.   I asked:

     “What about clanism in Somali life? Can it be eliminated?”

      “No,” he said in his opinion, “As long as the base of the society is informed by vagrant nomadism. It just can't be done away with.” “For example,” he went on, “a complete stranger would show up at your door one day, declare confidently that ‘I am your kinsman. It is your obligation, therefore, to feed, clothe and shelter me'.”

     “And if you refuse?” I asked him.

     “Then the whole bloody clan will blacken your name with satiric poetic assaults.”

“Further,” he went on, “It is now a proven fact that no Somali clan can prevail over another. No Somali ethnic group can conquer and permanently subjugate another.”   Right on. Without the benefit of anthropological theory, Addou, by dint of sheer natural intelligence, got it on the money. The answer, of course, lies in the system of “lineage segmentation” that forms the heart of Somali social organization, so eloquently recounted by Enrico Cerulli, I. M. Lewis and other social anthropologists who have turned their attention to the study of Somali society.

     I wanted to mention that, on December 8, 1992, I was almost murdered in his palace of a compound on the western outskirts of Mogadishu by his kinsman warlord, the late Gen. M. F. Aydiid. But I refrained, for reasons of taste. I said, “What do you think of the current TFG–so-called Transitional Federal Government?   Is it a viable entity? Or likely to suffer the fate and failures of all previous attempts?” He livened up, and said:

     “The issue is not whether it is viable or not. The issue is that this is an elected         government, and that fact must be kept in mind.”   I reflected quietly:

      So...he respects the principle sacred to all democracies of being elected.   I wonder how many Somalis share his belief in the sanctity of elections?   Very few.

      Was he sincere?   Or was he saying all this with an eye to the crazy, chemical alchemy of Somali clanism? Time will tell. In any case, this man appears to support, out of respect for elections, Mr. Yuusuf's rickety fledging figleaf of a government.   And he seems to have spoken out of conviction.

     Time to reflect: I have heard this man vilified and bad-mouthed beyond measure by various and sundry Somalis. Is he a villain or are his accusers inflamed venously by envy, his detractors being jealous of his success?  My own bitter experience has taught me that we Somalis are cursed with a national disease, that of maligning a person's character on mere kutiri-kuteen, or malicious false rumors, without finding out or verifying the true facts of the personality and life-history of a fellow citizen.   Are we such a sick society as to thrive on mere rumor, innuendo and character assassination? For my single self, Mr. Addou struck me as a decent, intelligent man with a patriotic sense of pain over our national catastrophe.  

     The good ambassador Mohamud awakened me from my dreamy mood by motioning with a flip of the hand: “This is my son.” A handsome youth, full of vim and vigor and adolescent guilelessness standing behind him smiled at me. I nodded to acknowledge him. A few moments later, the ambassador motioned again.   This time it was his wife. I rose, moved to her and bowed politely with a downward tilt of the head. She was tall, dignified and conservatively dressed in black–not a veil, though. I at once saw where the lad got his good looks. She exuded a great aura, too. I attempted a few words in the way of a conversation. I believe my words did bumble like those of a bubbling idiot. Then impulsively, I planted a kiss on her cheek.   Horrors. Was it Somali-culturally kosher to do this?

     I took leave and bolted away. It was then that I ran into another ambassador–Abdullahi Saeed Osman, for years head of the Somali mission to the U.N. He had been a jolly good colleague, kindly inviting me to the annual receptions of national days in New York. Which reminded me that I had in my office a pair of excellent photos–Abdullahi, his gracious wife, my friend deputy Mayor (Newark) Sylvia Guarino and myself, taken in one of those national days. I promised him to dispatch copies, a promise that I have yet to discharge.  

     After completion of the pleasantries with Ambassador Osman, a well-clad gentleman walked up to me and introduced himself as Abdullahi Hiirad (Hiraad?), an ex-minister. We chatted briefly and he moved off. I was about to resume my fine visit with Addou when a fellow, swarthy-hued and sporting a mean scowl, darted at me and, with a face flushed with rage, growled menacingly:

     “What are you doing in the company of that man?”   His hot breath seething with hatred nearly seared my neck. Taken aback, I said, “What man?”

     “That man,” he grunted, pointing to Mr. Addou. My rising annoyance helped to restore my composure. I fired back:

     “Why shouldn't I...and who the F–“, I said deploying the first dose of my daily ration of obscenities, “Who the F...are you to tell me who I should or should not camaraderie with?”   He turned and darted off.

     What was his beef with Addou? I couldn't help wondering. Did Addou, who had held senior government posts–from the inception of the Somali state to near the end of its demise–earn his grudge–he feeling that his career had been somehow thwarted by Addou?   Just as a long history of judicial rulings–what the press calls “paper trail”–doomed the nomination to the United States Supreme Court of Robert Bork, might Addou, after nearly half a century of holding high government positions, perforce have made a legion of enemies. Might they, as I expressed earlier, plainly be jealous of his successful survival in an environment of jackals? Or worse still, did my confronter consider me as closer to him in ethnic affiliation in the insane alchemy of lineage segmentation, and therefore, counted me in, and Addou out?   I will never know, and do not want to know.

     If only my fellow Somalis could learn to refrain from the seductive rush, all too human, to judgement! Many, for example–I will not name names–have, no doubt for partisan reasons, tried, vainly, to convince me that Addou was in on Aydiid's plot to assassinate me in 1992. I say now, as I said then, “Bull...!” For one thing, I was then staying in Addou's house, and a salient feature in Somali culture, even in the Afweyne-degraded period of Somali culture, a man in your house necessarily becomes your sacred charge, and you his abbaan, or protector. No matter how bitter the quarrel between your ethnic groups, your abbaan would lose life and limb to see to it that no harm comes to you as his ward.  

     For another, Addou and Aydiid were never in each other's good graces considering, again, Addou's survival in government during Afweyne's tyranny and Aydiid's long imprisonment--which imprisonment is alleged to have so unhinged the General that he took to splurging, like a succulent dish, on bars of washing soap.   I, therefore, should practice what I've been preaching throughout this piece by refraining from impugning the character of a man, Addou, that is, who, as far as I know, has done me no wrong. And I wish, as a matter of fairness, I had a way to contact Addou to go over with him these recollections of our conversation before releasing it to the public. Apparently--and interestingly--I was not alone in being impressed by Mr. Addou. Faisal Roble, who in the past wrote critically of him, told me that he, Faisal, was beginning to have second--positive--thoughts about Addou. And this shows Mr. Addou to have a demeanor--and personal presence--that changes minds!  

     By now the night was advancing and I as was under the weather, wheezing and heaving with a bad cold. I stepped out for a bit of fresh air and ran into a throng of Somalis smoking.  One of them, a middle-aged figure, with a lot of care on his countenance, stepped forward, and reminded me of my Cairo visit and how he had us in his house for a meal. Light dawned me. He was right, and it was in 1985.   My late friend, Professor Wendell Jean-Pierre and I were in Cairo to read papers at a conference on the Horn of Africa, sponsored by the university of Cairo's African Studies Program. The Ethiopian and Somali embassies were vying with each other as to which embassy would have the honor of having the scholars for a hospitality evening. I and Jean-Pierre went with the Somalis; the others went with the Ethiopians. A video of a Somali band was shown and the old man–Pierre–fell in love in absentia with the girl singer in the video, and by reason of that he begged to be inducted as a Somali citizen. Ayyaam Zemaan, Kaanat Ayyaam (the Sudanese entertainer Muhammad Wardi)–those were the days when we had a flag, a passport, a nation and a corner of the earth and, therefore, were counted a member of the community of nations. Ayyaam Zemaan!

     Back in the ballroom. I informed the man known as Nine of my physical infirmities–what with the cold that had the wind knocked out of me; he had a super fair-skinned infant on his lap, which he introduced as a “grandchild.” Cuddly and cute, the child could pass for a Caucasian.

     Jabiye, or the Breaker, was detailed to bounce me over to the hotel.  Of medium build and brawny, Jabiye was wiry-lean, but not hungry-looking, though if crossed, I gather, he could leap like a leopard. Attempting a conversation, I said, “Tell me about you.” Obligingly, he sketched the general outlines: began career in the Somali army; taken to Egypt (in the 1980s) for officer training; befriended a Somali-American lady from a well-known family, who was then knocking about in Egypt; wedded her. With three children, they now have their residence in a ritzy Virginia suburb.

     Much like the fate of the cat, curiosity often threatens to kill me. Jabiye's name, by reason only of semantic associations, put me in mind of the late but unlamented Siyaad Barre's Dhabar-Jabinta, or Back-Breaker military intelligence. I said, “Ammaad Caawa I Jabisaa?” Startled at my query, his countenance lit up. Then he chuckled, “Maya, Adeer.”

     A little later Nine came accompanied by Said Saleh; he too, Saleh, that is, was lean and wiry, and spoke in slow measured tones. Sometimes I become indiscreet, and for the same reason that Othello's Cassio became indiscreet: “Reputation, reputation, O Iago, I have lost my reputation.” I know not how but I think I crossed my namesake. Therefore, herewith an apology.

     At breakfast the next day, I reminded Nine of his long-standing offer to give me a “Seminar” on how to approach–nay, how to ensnare the Somali fair sex.   He renewed the offer, there and then. But inasmuch as he resides in distant Minnesota, and I in Jersey, the tutorials can only be conducted as a correspondence course.    “Dawacadu,” say Somalis, “Qabatinta Neefkay taqaan.” “A jackal is sufficiently skilled to know the vantage point from which to tackle the goat.”   How much tact, skill and patience does it take to tackle a Somali lass? Confident that Nine will acquit himself competently in his sacred charge, I now await the first segment of the “Seminar” on the art of seducing Somali women. Thus am I likely, one year shy of sixty, to be minted anew as a latter-day Shabeel Naagood, or Leopard Among the Women!

     To repeat the line that started these meandering observations, the Hospital earned Bethesda its First innings. The Somali wedding has now bestowed its Second. A remarkable matrimonial achievement for a marriage held in exile.  

Coda: the only sad and sour note about this otherwise felicitous event relates to the symbolic significance of the illustrious company at that table–ambassadors, ministers, businessmen and professionals. Creme de la creme, that is, of the Somali nation, all making do in cold north America; while Somalia itself is left to the tender care of malcontents, misfits and mooryaans. Life would be dull without its ironies.

Dr. Said S. Samatar
Newark, New Jersey

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