Who am I?

by Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Thursday, April 10, 2008

 

Who Am I is a question I always ask myself when it comes to the identity I belong to. When I share the argument with others, mainly non-Somalis, they say, “You are not like other Africans, you are a Somali, your skin is a bit soft, your hair is not kinky, you are an Arab.

 I’m sure they are lying. I have my roots buried in African soil and apart from the ancient commercial ties with Arabs, I have no ancestral link with them.  They say you are a twin brother of the Arabs, the same way Karl Blixen disgustingly mentioned us in her book: Out of Africa as being, “The illegitimate half brothers of Arabs”. Whoever I am I feel no Arab blood running in my veins. I am a Moslem but not an Arab. To be an Arab is not a necessary condition to be a Moslem.

They say you share the same culture with the Arabs but my traditional dances have African rhythm. They say your language is an Arabic derivative but my tongue is purely Cushitic. Few insertions can’t dilute my rich mother language. They want to change my past but at any angle I stand I see myself as an African, not an Arab.

These are the conflicts of identity that had raged in the depths of my thoughts ever since I started searching for my identity. In the previous government days we played double standard identity games by showing African colour when the African summit took place in Mogadishu and produced the Arab card when the Islamic conference or Arab League delegation were visiting the city.

But the size of our identity problem has grown million fold over the past decade. I have spoken with a number of people to find out if the concept of identity has its own contribution to the widening gap of political differences in Somalia. Indeed it is a major source of confusion. I remember one day, while still in Mogadishu, I had a chat with a friend of mine, now dead from gunshots, may his soul rest in peace. It was part of a routine intellectual exercise we usually held under a Geed Hindi tree in the outer ring of Bakaraha Market towards the Isgoyska Hawlwadaag (now that place is nothing less than a slaughterhouse).

It was not a planned topic to discuss about and my friend found it a bit challenging when I calmly asked him: “What is your identity”. And Mukhtar , a graduate in social science from Malaysia, immediately responded: “Islam” . That is correct” I said, continuing to say “Islam is a religion, it could be your moral and spiritual identity but not your national identity.  “It could be all” shouted my friend without a speck of hesitation.

Few days later I had put the same question to another fellow who was visiting Mogadishu following his return from the US. He had left the country in 1991 when tribal wars were sweeping all across  Somalia. He crossed the border and became a refugee in Kenya for several years until he was resettled in Australia. Years later he moved to the UK and later on ended in the US.

 

History classifies him as an African living in Australia, whereas Home Office records say he is a British whilst his travel documents show that he is an American. With all these multiple identities he declared his identity as a Somali, not mentioning those other countries he was registered as a citizen or unlike Mukhtar he did not mention about Islam as being his identity.

In my discussions and interviews with fellow Somalis both inside and outside Somalia, I found out that we are not clear of our identity and in fact I can say with all certainty that there is a hidden war going on inside ourselves as regards to the actual identity we belong to. One time the perceived image of Arab identity would pick a fight with our African identity and shortly after that war cools off, another one would take shape. The religious-based one, which believes that the identity of a Moslem is Islam.

It is beyond doubt that this internal confusion has already matured into a broader and much protracted national and regional conflict in which leaders have taken sides with Arabs, Africans and Moslem groups. Is this not a shameful split? Right from the beginning of the civil war we all knew that Somalia has plunged itself into a disastrous civil war but little did we know that it would become a boxing ring for other nations who would use warlords to pull the nation apart till the whole nation and its identity melted away into other nations and cultures. Now let me ask you: What is your identity?

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Abdi-Noor Mohamed

Writer and Film maker

Gävle, Sweden

[email protected]