|
Mandhow
Mahamud
My
son Mahamud
My
very own flesh & blood
My
very own Telemachus Togane
My
ace in the hole
For
our Somali Homeland
Boss-teye!
Write
down right now
Set
down right now
My
dardaran
My
last famous words
Report
me and my cause aright!
For
posterity
For
Patria
For
Somalia
In
this long life
"This
long Disease, my Life"
In
this long life
Of
my delightful diddling days of yore I adored
Of
my SYL yippee youth lore when I dwelt in the House
of Mirth
Of
this now weary dreary dark dreadful Dubya
days
of the House of Desolation
Of
this Kenyan Kikuyu Kalenjin Kold exile I curse
With
all my might
With
all my main
Like
Layton’s mother
Like
Keine Lazarovitch
In
this long life
Of
this Damean
Darod Dir Dayoos Doqon Dubya MOD days
Of
this Hutu Hottentot Hawiye Horrors
Of
this Habargidr Huns
Of
this creeping crabbed age I abhor now
Of
this “inescapable
lousiness of growing old”
I abhor now
Mandhow
Mahamud
In
this my long life
‘Much
have I seen and known—’
Cities
of Moslems & Galos
And
manners
And
climates
And
councils
And
governments—
And
among them stand out now
These
four Somali Generals.
1
First
& foremost
General
Da-ood was
Neither
pro Darod
Nor
pro Dir
Nor
pro Dayoos
General
Da-ood was
Pro
Patria
Pro
Somalia
General
Da-ood was
The
main Mandeq
of our glorious Somali heydays
General
Da-ood was
The
main camel of our Somali Camelot
His
life was gentle
And
the elements so mixed in him
That
Nature might stand up
And say to all the world
This
was a Somali!
This
was a man!
General
Da-ood died a happy brave death
Ready
to meet his Maker
Ready
to meet his Allah
Ready
to render his account to Allah
Who
only has eyes that inspire fear & awe
Allah!
The
best of reckoners
The
most swift of reckoners
To
whom we will all return.
Sooner
than Somalis think
In
a moment
In
the twinkling of an eye
In
the flash of the firefly
In
this dark starless Somali Afwayne night
At
the last trump
Mandhow
Mahamud
Memento
mori!
2
Then
came General Abshir
General
Abshir has been a faithful friend of Rer Togane
One
afternoon
Unannounced
At
our Bondhere home
Near
the well of Qasim Adow
General
Abshir showed up with his entourage to say
‘Siyad
Togane
We
are here
To
honor you
To
pay homage to your Somali Abgal genius
To
celebrate your Somali Abgal epigrammatic wit
Born
of such breath-taking beauty & brevity
We
are here
To
remember
To
commemorate
The
Night of Power
Your
Night of Power
Your
Night of Divine Afflatus
Your
especial SYL Awada
Jàw Abgal Night
When
the Holy Spirit descended upon you
When
your artful witty dodge demonstrated
How
damean
How
dumdum
How
Dubya
How
dimwitted the dagos of Mussolini were!
We
are here
To
pause
To
ponder
To
proclaim
The
beau
geste
of your brave Somali heart
When
you spat
Awada
Jàw Abgal!
Only
tonight am I Abgal!
Into
the fugly fascist face
Of
the Arkow
Of
the Carabiniere
Of
the wob
Of
the Italian Mussolini imperialist
We
are here
To
honor you
To
celebrate you
To
remember
Your
witty tricky truce of ruse
Worthy
of wily Ulysses
That
master of many masks
We
are here
To
honor you
To
celebrate you
To
remember
Your
witticism
Awada
Jàw Abgal!
That
still tickles the cockles of the desert hearts of
the Somali nation
That
still drenches our often sad sick desert Somali
hearts
With
the rich rain of rippling roars of raucous loud
laughter!
Mio
amigo
Hombre!
Awada
Jàw Abgal!
We
are here
To
recognize you
To
laud your so vital contribution
To
the valiant SYL noble struggle of our Somali race
To
free ourselves from the fascist foreign Italian
yoke
Siyad
Togane!
Awada
Jàw Abgal!
Please
accept these ceremonial guns
As
a token
Of
the appreciation
Of
the gratitude
Of
the Somali nation-state
You
had helped bring about
In
that unforgettable Somali night
When
you were impeccable
When
you displayed uncommon courage
Under
fire
Under
pressure
Under
fascist Italian torture
When
you showed the whole world
What
a Somali can do
When
a Somali makes up his mind
That
he belongs
To
Allah
To
his Prophet Muhammad
May
peace be upon him!
AND
NOT TO
The
morally and mentally corrupt and bankrupt
Crazy
clannish cabal coterie Cosa Nostra called Abgal!’
3
Then
came
General
Siyad
Better
know to my generation
By
his moniker
Afwayne
Or
Mighty
Mouth
One
afternoon
Unannounced
At
our Bondhere home
Near
the well of Qasim Adow
General
Mighty Mouth showed up with his entourage to say:
‘Siyad
Sami
My
namesake
My
friend
I
can’t forget that
For
years
When
I first wandered into Mogadishu from the Ogaden
desert
When
I was a penniless beggar with not even a pot to
piss in
When
I was a poor friendless Ogaden refugee
When
I was a soldier-cum-flunky-cum-snitch
For
fascist Mussolini Imperial Italy
When
I depended on the kindness of strangers
Like
you
You
were hospitable to me
You
were humane to me
You
did not hold it against me that I was
What
I was born to be
A
Darod Marehan
And
not an Abgal Osman like you
You
treated me the way
A
Somali who is Gob treats another Somali
You
took me in
You
fed me free
At
your always welcome Abgal table
In
your restaurant
At
Tran
School
In
Mogadishu’s Hamar Jab-jab
I
can’t forget that
I
am mot an ingrate
Like
most Somalis
That
is why I always overrule Dafle
My
Dhulbahante Son-in-law
Who
is always itching
To
snatch you
To
stick you into one of his dreadful dungeons
Till
kingdom come
To
keep company with your bosom buddy
The
Majerten General Abshir
And
throw away the key
But
now
Siyad
Togane
I
do not trust you!
For
all your friends are now
Majerten!
My
formidable foes
Who
will never rest
As
long as a Marehan
Like
me
Is
lording it over them
But
now
Siyad
Togane
I
do not trust you!
All
your cronies are now
Majerten!
You
hold me personally in such utter contempt
That
you are now refusing to call yourself
Siyad
like me
That
you now call yourself
Sa-eed
instead of Siyad!
Because
you refuse to be
My
sami!
My
namesake!
I
also know that
Your
sons have flown away from Somalia
To
far fair havens
To
cold cantankerous Canada
Where
these wicked Somali woes I woo make them smile!
I
also know that
You
& your sons believe
Majerten
Abshir-Rashid-Rizaq to be of the Royal Gob
The
rest of us to be of the Rotten-Rotie-Rubbish
Marehan-Midgan Gûn
Therefore
We
are here to collect all the guns
That
General Abshir & his Majerten minions bestowed
upon you
Since
I rule this Kat-crazy nation now
By
fraud
By
fatude
By
force of arms
By
the naked black gun
By
violence
By
the law of the jungle
By
my might is always right
I
want all the guns in this country
In
the right Marehan-Midgan MOD hands!
Not
In
the hands of Abgal Majerten-philes!
I
cannot be safely thus with guns loose
In
the hands of Majerten sympathizers like you
Majertens!
Who
are now power-starved, mad, mealy-mouthed
Majertens!
Who
are never at heart’s ease
While
I
A
Marehan
Does
bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus
And
petty Majerten men
Walk under my huge mighty mean mouth
And
peep about
To find themselves dishonourable graves in
Ethiopia
While
I bestride Somalia like a Colossus
While
they behold me
In
my Pomp
In
my Power
In
my Marehan powerful Pride
While
they behold a greater man than themselves
Who
is not of their Majerten clan…
Majertens!
Who
are now allied with our hated uncircumcised
Ethiopian enemies
I
cannot be safely thus
Though
bloated
With
Pelf
With
Power
The
ultimate aphrodisiac
Lolling
on a lewd day-bed
Buffeted
by the hot epigamic pretty bouncy buttocks
Of
callipygian Majerten maidens
Whose
fleshy waves I scale to surf their Seal!
I
am now
A
jolly thriving wooer
Whose
bestial insatiable lustful appetite
Stretches
even to servants daughters wives
I
made widows to woeful beds
Whose
bestial insatiable lustful appetite
Stretches
even to the wives of those whom I
Banished
Imprisoned
Or
Slaughtered!
Siyad
Sami
Mano
alto!
Hands
up!
Up
against the wall!
Stick’em
up!
Surrender
all the Majerten machineguns you got!
4
Then
Afwayne’s MOD fancy fat fart exploded into
Hawiye shit & shindig
For
all the devils of hell broke loose
And
descended upon Somalia
Mugdi
Mudug seized Mogadishu
Trailing
the twin evils
Of
Jalaf & Khalaf
The
Charybdis
&
Scylla
of
Somalia
Afwayne’s
terrible Marehan-Midgan MOD Troika
(M)arehan
(O)gaden
(D)hulbahante
Gave
a bloody bastard birth to
General
Aideed
Alias
General Wow
Alias
General Bedlamite
Alias
General Manocobio
Alias
General Hawiye Habargidir Hamburger
Alias
General Hawiye hound hog from hell
Who
preached
Who
practiced
Homo
homini lupis—man
is a wolf to man
Who
turned Somalia
Into
his very own Habargidir Hawiyah:
Into
the seventh division of Hell
Set
aside for Somali hypocrites
Mandhow
Mahamud
My
son Mahamud
Here
am I now
In
Nanyuki Kenya
Under
glowering angry Mount Kenya
Upon
my death bed
Uttering
my last testament
Uttering
my last famous dardaaran words
Hunted
out of my home Somalia
Hounded
out of my home Somalia
By
the Jalaf General Hawiye Habargidir Hamburger Hog
from hell
O
Somalia!
What
a wounded name!
Bear,
O my brave Somali heart!
Thou
hast borne a yet harder thing!
Mandhow
Mahamud
My
son Mahamud
If
thou didst ever hold me dear in thy heart
Absent
thee from felicity awhile
And
in this harsh Horrible Hutu Hottentot Hawiye world
Draw
thy breath in pain
To
tell my story of
How
I conned the Italian colonialists
By
my beau
geste
By
my Awada Jàw Abgal!
How
I pissed in their beer!
How
I watered down their fine Italian wine
How
I made them bake their own bread of bitterness
How
I led the Somali Sparticus
revolt against them
And
sacked
And
looted all their villas by the Lido Shark Bay!
How
I fought every obstacle course of the Italian
alien enemy
How
I fought the good SYL fight for Somalia
How
I finished the course for Somalia
How
I kept the faith for Somalia
How
my generation & I freed our Somali homeland
From
the enemy without
From
the limey in London
From
the wob in Rome
Now
Here
Take
my Mandela mantle
Don
my Mandela mantle
Now
It
is up to you
Now
It
is up to your generation
To
free Somalia
Your
homeland
Your
second mother
From
the more implacable enemy within
From
the home-grown enemy
From
the bastard Darod-Hawiye-Eedoar heirs of fascist
Afwayne
From
the rump-remnant Hawiye Habargidir Hogs of Aideed
From
Osman Atto’s Abgal gûn goons
From
this mean mischief of the mindless minion
myrmidons of Afwayne
From
this Afwaynissimo without Afwayne
From
these clannish calamities of the wannabe Afwaynist
cowards
Now
colluding in Kenya
Mandhow
Mahamud
My
son Mahamud
Boss-teye!
My
champion!
Good
luck
God
bless
God
speed
Nabadgelyo!
May
you & Somalia enter Peace!
The
Peace that passeth all the understanding
Of
Jinni
Of
Insi!
-------MAHAMUD SIAD TOGANE
NOTES
Arkow:
(Somali) A contemptuous Abgalese for an ofay.
Awada
Jàw Abgal!:
(Somali) Only tonight do I deign to call myself an
Abgal! Siyad Togane’s celebrated and inspired
salvific retort to the Italian imperialist’s
impudent policy of divide and rule and to their
crazy clannish question of “ Are
you Dir Darod Dayoos Danyer or Doqon?”
While under duress; while under torture; thus
repudiating the crazy claims of his bovine Abgal
clan on his integrity & dignity as a free
Somali citizen, as an autonomous individual who
does not belong to Aideed’s Hawiye herd. That
was the practical beginning of the revolutionary
time of the SYL consciousness of the Somali race.
A time for every Somali to deny the crazy claims
of the Somali KKK —Dir Darod Dayoos Danyer Doqon—
upon him; a time to deny & eschew the evil of
clanism (the most insidious sort of racism) &
affirm friendship; a time to betray one’s clan
rather than one’s friends who are the medicine
of life. Needless to say that time is right now!
Togane’s SYL past was only the prologue to the
present of this Somali generation and many more
generations to come.
Beau
geste: (boh zhest') [Fr.]: a fine or noble
gesture.
Boss-teye:
(Somali) The Champ who puts bastards & bitches
in their proper place!
Camelot:
In this Somali context I mean the best years (from
1960-1969) in the life of the Somali nation when
we enjoyed what Lewis, ‘the biographer of the
Somali culture’, captured in his felicitous
title of his book: ‘A Pastoral
Democracy’, before the advent of the
tyranny of the fiend, Afwayne. Camelot comes from
a favourite lyric of President Kennedy in the
Lerner & Loewe musical Camelot:
Don’t
let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot!
It
also means:
(1)
The legendary location of King Arthur’s court.
(2) The nickname for President Kennedy’s
‘court’. See pp 61 & 249 of Nigel Rees.
Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. London:
Paragon Books, 1993.
Carabiniere:
(Italian) Military policeman.
Charybdis
&
Scylla:
Charybdis is
a black hole of a whirlpool into which
ships disappear forever. Scylla is a monster
that has six long necks and each head has three
rows of teeth. Odysseus or Ulysses sailed
closer to Scylla and sacrificed six of his men but
saved his ship. The expression “to
be caught between Charybdis
&
Scylla”
is like to be caught between Jalaf & Khalaf: a
conundrum out of which you just can’t con your
way out of; the conundrum in which Somalia is
caught right now.
Dagos:
(Pejorative) Wobs or Italians.
Damean:
(Somali) Intellectually challenged like Dubya:
George W Bush whose doctrine is, according to my
friend, Terry Mosher, “Keep
it stupid, simple…”
See page 42 of his book: OH,OH!…and
other recent cartoons by Aislin
Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2004.
Dayoos:
(Somali)
Meaning scalawag, dirty scoundrel.
Dubya:
The current dumdum damean in the White House.
Fatude:
(Somali) “…sincere delusions—that
is, lies which the liar believes.”
See
page 235of John Berryman. Recovery.
New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.
A
chip-on-the-shoulder delusional attitude informed
by ignorance & arrogance. A Somali word
meaning an attitude struck & stuck in the high
lazy latitudes of the doldrums of the doo-doos of
self-deception. Fatude
is a child
“of an idle brain, / Begot of nothing but vain
fantasy...”
See
Romeo & Juliet
(1.
iv. 97-98).
It
is a typical Somali Mugdi Mudug
attitude
of bullshit & bluster.
The English tongue has borrowed many a word
from the Somali tongue, such as yahoo, nag, ninny,
seal, was, goose, fug,
etc.
I predict the English language will soon
appropriate fatude. It is just a matter of time
before it too begins to roll off the English
tongue just like
yahoo.
See
“A
Short lesson In Comparative Languages”,
p.
5 of M. S. Togane.
The Bottle & The Bushman:
Poems of The Prodigal Son. Ste-Anne
de Bellevue (Québec): The Muses’Company, 1986.
Fatude aptly describes the common Somali
affliction of disconnection from reality. It also
means a rude, crude attitude based on farce and
according to Alfred Kazin,
“Farce is catastrophe without a context and
without a solution.”
A perfect description & definition of the
Somali
syndrome
& the malady of Mog.
See
page 95 of Alfred Kazin.
God & the American Writer.
New
York: Alfred A Knopf, 1997.
If
thou didst ever hold me dear in thy heart:
See Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(V. ii. 355).
Inescapable
lousiness of growing old:
From the poem ("Keine
Lazarovitch: 1870-1959")
by Irving Layton.
Gal:
(Somali
singular;
Galo
plural)
Honky
Kaffir enemy alien infidel.
In
the flash of the firefly in the night:
This is how Chief Crowfoot defined life:
It
is the flash of the firefly
in
the night.
It
is the breath of the buffalo
in
wintertime.
It
is as the little shadow
that
runs across the grass
and
loses itself in the sunset.
Gob:
(Somali)
High born; high caste; blue blood; of the
aristocracy; opposite of Gûn. “But
Gob has a larger connotation since it is applied
as a term of praise to honor the accomplishment of
an admirable action…And since strength is one of
the supreme Somali virtues the members of the
‘short branch’ lineages are sometimes taunted
as gûn by their ‘long branch’ kinsmen who
count themselves aristocrats (gob). This indeed is
the sense of the proverb which blatantly announces
that ‘he who is weak in numbers is the son of
lowliness[ gûn](Ninkii yari waa inan gumeed).”
See pages 29 & 192 of Lewis. A
Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism &
Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of
Africa.
London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
That is why so far it has been impossible
to take a census in Somalia: no clan wants to be
designated as gûn; as a minority. When the
Majerten had power in the good old Camelot days of
Abshir-Rasheed-Rizaaq, they designated themselves
by fiat as the strongest clan of the Somali
Republic by simply declaring officially that the
Majerten are equal in number to the rest of the
nation (Majerten
iyo inta madaha madoa aa is siman!)
That is why the Hawiye & the Issaaq & all
other Somali clans will never forgive Sa-eed
Sheikh Samatar for committing to writing his
blatant learned erudite Darod Laylkassse lie
backed up by bullshit Piled high & Deep (his
Darod PhD) that simply asserts without offering
any documentary evidence or proof: ‘…the
Daarood (who number over a million)…’ See
page 12 of Somalia: A Nation
in Turmoil: a Minority Rights Group Report.
London: 1991/4). What we have here is the triumph
of Darod Laylkasse racist clannish bushwa over
objective scholarship & that is why many a
Somali says to me now, “Ask
your Darod lackadaisical Laylkasse friend, the
so-called professor Sa-eed, how come, if his Darod
were as numerous as the sands of the Somali
seashore & the stars of the Somali blue sky as
he claims; ask him, how come they came a cropper;
how come they were swept away like the dirt they
are; how come they were ethnically & ethically
cleansed out of Mogadishu in a nanosecond, in a
moment, in a Darod Jaaji’s jiffy, in the
twinkling of Aideed’s iIl-jex eye! Tell your
Laylkasse Professor of lies, Dad kaa badan iyo
biyo daad way ku hanfiyaan: Folks who outnumber
you & flood waters overwhelm you & knock
you down on your Darod duff, knock out of the way
anything that gets in their way! That is why
Aideed’s Hawiye hordes overwhelmed &
overcame the Darod who were proved to be nothing
but self-glorified gûn; no more than a dirty
dozen—ok, a baker’s dozen at the most.”
Gûn:
(Somali: lit. bottom) A subject base born race of
niggers & kaffirs. Gûn “is a term of
abuse and only used openly when the speaker wishes
to antagonize those whom he derides in this way.
The opposition between gûn and gob, which might
be translated loosely as aristocrats, refers
specifically to the distinction between the puny
and weak and the numerous and strong. But gob has
a larger connotation since it is applied as a term
of praise to honour the accomplishment of an
admirable action. It is the word of praise given
to a man whose deeds notably sustain the ideal
values of the pastoralists.”
“Ninki
faralaha frenji baa loo helay.”
As
this Somali proverb bluntly puts it,
“he who is weak has found whitey as his
protector.” Now
I understand why everywhere in Africa the message
is the same: “Tell
the white man, tell Tarzan to come back to Africa
to restore law & order. The natives are
murderously rude & restless; tell whitey
everything is forgiven! Tell the Queen to come
back!”
See pages 29 and 192 of I. M. Lewis. A
Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism &
Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of
Africa.
London:
Oxford University Press, 1961
Insi:
(Somali) Humans.
Limey:
A derogatory word for an Englishman.
Hawiyah:
(Arabic: the Abyss). The
seventh division of Hell set aside for hypocrites.
According
to The Glorious Koran (Sura
15: 40), Hell
“hath
seven gates; unto every gate a distinct company of
them shall be assigned.”
See under Hell in See Rev. E. Cobham Brewer.
A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. London:
Cassell and Company, Ltd; no date of publication
given.
Mandeq:
A
Somali camel: metaphorically Somali independence
from foreign powers; an apt metaphor since in the
world of Somalis, the camel, which they revere as
“the
mother of men”,
is a very independent animal that roams where it
wills; that just like the wind bloweth where it
listeth.
Mandhow:
(Somali) Meaning my son.
Much
have I seen and known—cities of men
And
manners, climates, councils, governments…:
From the poem Ulysses
by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
Memento
mori:
(Latin) Remember that you must die.
Manocobio:
Mispronunciation
of the Italian word,
manicomio,
meaning bedlam; the funny farm; the nuthouse; the
side of Mogadishu controlled by General Wow AKA
Mohamed Farah Aideed & his hysterical
Habarkintir Huns & their running dogs.
The
Night of power (al
Qadr):
Sura 97 of the Koran; one of the last ten nights
of Ramadan when Prophet Mohammed (SAW) received
his first revelations of the Glorious Koran; The
Night of Gnosis; The Night of Afflatus. In the
context of this poem, it means The Night of Honour
& Dignity when the idea of being a Somali who
belongs to God and not to a crazy clan was
revealed to Siyad Togane..
And
what shall make thee understand
How
excellent the Night of Al Qadr is?
The
night of Power is better
Than
a thousand months…
Pro
Patria:
(Latin) For one’s country.
Sami:
(Somali) Namesake.
Spartacus:
Rebellious
slave Spartacus (played by Kirk Douglas) led a
freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire.
SYL:
Somali Youth League: the party that ushered in the
liberation of Somalia from the foreign yoke.
Telemachus:
Son of Ulysses & Penelope. See The
Odyssey by
Homer.
This
long Disease, my Life:
Alexander pope’s apt phrase describing his
difficult life.
Tran
School:
Somali for the Mogadishu Hamar Jab-Jab training
school the British established for Somali soldiers
in the mid-forties.
Ulysses,
or Odysseus:
(The hater) A wise, eloquent Chieftain of the
Greeks; the hero of The
Odyssey
by Homer whose artifices are legendary.
Wob:
(American slang) A derogatory word for an Italian.
Mahamud Siad Togane
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