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by Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
It was a day of mixed feelings and thoughts. Some loved it others hated it but everyone welcomed the news. That day, on his death-bed, an old man was gasping for a last breath with nobody around to shed tears or pay last respect to wish his soul rest in peace. The old man has had rough time with people over the entire span of his life time. He has never been at ease with anybody even with himself. His self--defeating behaviors coupled with stunted social performance had only earned him a low position with the ranks of his community. From afar people noticed a glaring cruelty in his actions and felt that the man had a stone under his chest, not a heart actually, but a pulsating rock devoid of mercy and compassion. .
At birth he did not cry when he took the first breath of fresh air. The midwife counted him dead as otherwise he would have made a squall. But he was far from harm, let alone death. How he had sucked oxygen into his lungs without a wail, still remains an enigma. Well before his first birthday, shortly after he got his first milk-tooth, he tampered with the only lifeline he has had, forcing his mother to cut short the lactation period. She could not afford to breastfeed a child who continuously gave her pain rather than comfort. Solid foods became her milk´s substitute.
At childhood he started showing negative behaviors including disobedience and bad character. He ran away from his family and took the streets with unleery eyes that never blinked from danger. At young age he shifted shapes in a pattern of fleeting colors and in his adulthood years he became a stage player of fallacious political dramas composed by others who lurked behind the scene. He was burning with bitter emotions of revenge as though he had swallowed live embers of vengeance. He seldom ate himself inside himself.
At old age he had lost his sight and nobody came around to offer him a favor. He was so rough and unbearably rigid in his relationships. Everybody gave him a distance. Even his stick disowned him. It refused to show him where his step would fall.
When he died a quick funeral ceremony was arranged but upon lowering him to his grave, a loud female voice came out from the middle of nowhere. People at the scene felt shocked. Everything came to a stand still. “Don´t bury him” came the voice into which a grain of anger had been injected. “I am his mother” the voice kept coming. “I am Somalia, I am the motherland, I am the nation. I am sheltering in the ruins of this man´s destruction and I hold him responsible for all the misery that had visited. He cut me into pieces of tribal lands. He is a warlord. Don´t bury him.
He attacked me in the shadows of despondency and raped me in the presence of my children. He had dismantled the very fabric of my soul, selling my name cheap in the world. He had made filthy arrangements with international mafia to poison my seas, illegal fishing and piracy are still rampant at a shocking scale. He had swapped the very core of my dignity to unknown and rather invisible creatures in exchange of few coins and power. He denied me the right to claim ownership of myself, my very being as a sovereign nation.
His evil actions have led me drown in the depths of my own blood. He made me a nation without a nation, a nation without a face, a nation in shock in and despair. He had blocked all avenues of hope. He had put the sun behind a cloud and brought darkness in a broad daylight. He had imported arms and drugs, looted and shipped off my resources mostly in the form of scraps.
He made me a breeding ground of evil including unscrupulous businessmen and merchants of death who imported expired drugs or otherwise conquered the forest to burn coal. He had ripped my heart apart with his never ending gluttony. He made me soft for my enemy, notably Ethiopia and finally he died working for the enemy.
How can I allow him to be buried in me” concluded mother Somalia. Then a gentle breeze blew over as she looked at where her son´s body had been laid temporarily. She felt the unconditional love of a mother to her son even if the son had been a bad boy, and said “ Whatever he had done to me he is my son. I can not let him rot out there in the heat. Let him come in. He shall be implanted in my womb one more time but never shall he get one more chance to be born again in this world. I shall not deliver him in a clinic or inside a house as before. I shall give birth in the Judgment Day when all graves burst open-- And Allah shall that day be a witness. Bring him in. Mother Somalia gave the men a green light to finally put the old man´s body to rest. A thick blanket of silence with more profound impact descended upon the hearts and minds of the people at the scene as a heap of red sand swallowed the old man´s remains.
Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Writer and Film maker
Gävle, Sweden
[email protected]