It was in 1992

There I was

In Mogadishu

In Hawiyeland

Face to face

With the hero of the Hawiye

With the hegemon of the harlots & the hirelings

Of the Somali Horror Show!

Face to face

With General Mahammad Farah Aideed

The scourge of the Darod

The hero of the Hawiye

The man who swept Afwayne & Dafle & all

Their dirty Darod Mad MOD trash

Out of Mogadishu!

Face to face

With the Hawiye man of the hour

I was on a peace mission

I was

The Hawiye Ambassador to North America

I was the North American representative of  the

USC

The Hawiye's own

United Somali Congress

I talked to Aideed

As a human being

Deeply affected by the suffering he was inflicting

Upon our own Somali race

Deeply disaffected by his demented ways

I talked to him

As a Moslem

As a Mennonite

As an Abgal

As a fellow Hawiye member of the USC

Proud of

How he Humbled Afwayne & Dafle & their demented Darod druids

How he humiliated the mad MOD Darod Overlords

I talked to him

As a Somali

I talked to him

In Somali

In English

But first I listened

As Aideed recited from his own

Mein Kampf

To my utter amusement

I discovered

That I was a better story teller than Aideed

That I was a better raconteur

That I spoke better Somali than Aideed

Even though I had spent the better part of my life

In exile

>From Dafle & his Dhulbahante bed bugs

In North America

Living in English

To my utter amazement

I discovered

That Aideed was

No eloquent orator

No Af-tahan

No rich mouth in the runes of Somali rhetoric

Nor in any language known to Mankind

This Generalissimo convinced you

Not

With his brilliance & bravura

Not

With his brain

But

With his bullying

With his bullshit

With his brawn

With his brawl

With his bayonet

With his Kalashnikov

With his endless bray

To put to an end

To his endless litany of how he licked the Darod enemy

To break the spell of his dreary dreadful drone

I startled him with his heart’s desire

I broke in with

Thundering!

Announcing

Pronouncing

What he longed to be called

Mr. President!

A better music he had never heard in his whole life!

Aideed came crawling to me

On all fours

And sat down beside me

Hanging to every word I had said

Whenever I felt that I was losing his attention

I would shout

I would thunder

I would tease

I would tantalize

Mr. President!

Which assured me Aideed’s whole attention

I showed him Time magazine

Which rightly declared him

To be the strongest strongman in Somalia

He really lapped that up

I had him now eating out of my hand

I knew what to say to him

That very morning Allah instructed me

What I should tell Aideed

I sat

For three hours

On the open back of the small truck

Called

Sintay Manoagto!

Called

My hips never get tired!

No matter how many riders ride me!

That transported me

>From the Abgal side

Manifesto

To

Manacobio!

>From Abgal Political Accommodation

To Aideed's bedlam of my way or no way!

To Aideed’s side of the now divided city of Mogadishu

For three hours

I sat there

Listening to what every passenger had to say

For a change

I shut up

I heard

I listened

I learned

I understood

What the Somali people wanted

What the Somali people dreamed

What the Somali people deeply desired

What the Somali people prayed for

What the Somali people sadly begged for

What the Somali people considered

A consummation

Devoutly to be wished

On that fateful sunny Mogadishu morning

On that crowded truck

On those crowded hips of the vehicle

That boasted

My hips never tire!

As I sweated it out

In the hot Somali morning sunshine

I heard

>From every fellow passenger

The cry of all of the Somali people

For peace

I heard the cry of my country for peace

And now I was

Face to face

With the man who was the key

To the Somali clannish conundrum

To the Somali craziness

To the Somali syndrome

To the Somali stalemate

To the Somali checkmate

To the Somali Mexican stand-off

There was the common theme of peace

There was the common thread of peace

Running red

In the actual red blood of the Somali people

In every Somali wish I had heard

In every story I had heard

In every joke I had heard

In the very Somali laughter that I had joined in and had enjoyed

In every anecdote I had heard

In every proverb I had heard

In every sigh I had heard

In every silence between the stories

In the very Somali air we were breathing

In every move of the Sintay Manoagto I was riding

Finally

The last passenger scrambled on the back of the truck

An ancient dignified Somali Lady

With shriveled up dugs

That could have mothered

Both Aideed & Ali Mahdi

She sat down beside me

She wiped her perspiring

Autumnally beautiful Somali face

With her beautiful shawl

And prayed a prayer

That had me weeping

That had me bawling like a baby

That had me sobbing like the sad sorry Somali

I am

She prayed a prayer

That still makes the heart of every Somali ache

With anger

With hunger

With thirst

With anguish

With longing

With deep desire

For Peace

She prayed:

Elaahayow

Qabeel

Iyo

Qorigeessa Madow

Naga bad-baadi

Nagana bar-baari!

  O Lord

>From Tribalism

And

>From the Black Guns

He trucks in

Deliver us Somalis!

Civilize us Somalis

So as to outgrow Tribalism!

So as to despise Tribalism!

For the anachronism it is!

Everybody on that truck chorused

Crying

Aameen!

Amen!

Silence engulfed us all

Till I was ushered into the presence of Aideed

The man who could have given peace to the Somali people

The Hawiye man of the hour

Who could have delivered Somalia

>From self-slaughter!

The Hawiye hero

Who could have given peace to Somalia!

I said to Aideed

And I was proven right

Only you can snatch defeat

Out of the jaws of your own Somali Rer Jalaf Habar Gidir Hawiye victory!

No dirty Darod dare do that!

Be better than the dirty Darod!

No absurd Abgal dare rain on your Habar Gidir Jalaf parade!

All that the bovine Abgal need to hear from you now

Is

What they used to hear from the Macavity Majerten!

Tell them

Like the Macavity Majerten used to tell them

“I give you the treasures

Of the blessings of the Fatiha!

What better gift can I give you

Since the city of Mogadishu belongs

To you and to your donkeys!

Every Somali in Mog is the guest of the noble Abgal

And their donkeys!”

Aideed!

Do the work of the Lord

Be the blessed Somali Peacemaker

Be the blessed hero of the Somali People!

For blessed are the peacemakers

For they shall be called

The children of Allah

Wear the mantle of our Prophet Muhammad

Wear the mandala of Mandela

Remember Aideed

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Neither Darod

Nor Hawiye

Can stand in your way

To Villa Somalia

To victory

To fortune

To the Power & the Glory

To the Pomp & the Pride

Of the Somali Presidency

If you dare stand up and deliver

And you can

And you dare

And the whole Somali people want you to

Stand up & deliver!

What the Somali people

Are hungry for

Are thirsty for

Are literally dying for

Peace!

Brother!

Peace!

Nabad iyo Caano!

Peace and Milk!

Bashbash iyo Barwaaqo!

Alas

Betwixt the lip and the cup

There is many a slip!

The sorry sad Sa’ad SOB

Failed to stand up & deliver

In my report back

To the Moslems

To the Mennonites

To the Somalis

To the Canadians

To the Americans

To the Europeans

To all the friends of the Somali people

Who had sent me on that fateful dangerous peace mission

To Aideed

To Mogadishu

In 1992

I wrote:

It is maktoob now:

That there are now three likely scenarios in Somalia

(1)   For Somalis to crown Aideed with the royal diadem

To crown Aideed

King of all the Somali clans!

(2)    For Somalis to unite & kick crazy Aideed out of Somalia

To keep the Darod Kalab Afwayne company!

  In Nigeria!

To unite and kick crazy Aideed out of Somalia

Just like they had done it 

To the dirty Darod despot

Just like they had kicked Afwayne out of Somalia

All the way to Nigeria

(3)   For Somalis to kill the SOB Aideed right there

Where he is

In the Hutu Hawiye Nuthouse!

In moriyaan-mad Mogadishu!

Which made my audience cry:

“Togane

Prophesy!

Play Tiresias

You are the man

You were there

You saw Aideed

You suffered You nearly lost your life four times

Before you encountered

The Hawiye hero

Aideed

&

His Abgal nemesis

Ali Mahdi

Of the three scenarios you had cited

Which one is the most likely to come to pass  

Afwayne, the spiritual Papa Doc of Aideed, had the sense

To say

To himself

To his Darod confederacy:

“You are intelligent,

What better alternative is there

But run away from the wrath of the Somali race

To Nigeria

Where nigger dictators like me

May micturate away their last days

In peace!”

And then Papa Afwayne split from the Somali scene!

How will the Hawiye hero end up?

How will he meet his Maker?

How will he split from the Somali scene?

I stood up and delivered this prophesy

The Hawiye hero is a heel!

The Hawiye hero is a hellion!

The Hawiye hero is a hellhound

The Hawiye hero won’t have enough sense

To run away to Nigeria from the wrath of the Somali people!

The Hawiye hero will go down

In a hail of bullets from a Hawiye Kalashnikov

Right there in Mogadishu!

Four years later the words of Togane

The Somali Tiresias

Came to pass!

On August 2 1996

Mohamed Farah Aydiid

Danced to bullets

Danced his last

Danse macabre

Sic transit Gloria mundi Hawiye!

Thus passed away the glory of the Hawiye!

Thus passed away the hour of the glory of the Hawiye!

Thus Aideed & his Habar Kintir snatched defeat

Out of the jaws of victory!

Thus Aideed & his Habar Kintir killed the whole crazy concept called

Hawiye!

Mohamud Togane