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Do you ever think that someone is deliberately fast-forwarding your life-time span?!
by Yusufbile Abdi Mohamed
Friday, September 12, 2008
(This is the true feeling I experienced in Mogadishu and would like you feel it now by reading few lines of my diary)
As a student in his last class in Mogadishu University, I recall memories of horror that I choose to learn and get a degree in a city where roadside bombs explode in public transports and artillery fire land in a residential areas. Thanks to the almighty that spares our lives in between a nail and a hammer.
In Feb 20, 2007 at 2:15 after midnight, my diary reads:
“I am tense, feeling insecure, and terrified. Mortars and artillery fire are just landing in our neighborhoods. I can hear loud explosions in a very-very close range. I have tried to pray but in fact, I have mixed and made a lot of faults in my praying, reading TASHAHUD in the place of FATIHA, by the time mortars were falling.”
Again in July 7, 2007 at 18: 50 my diary records:
“I am in my dark room holding a torch in my armpit to lighten this page I am writing on it. No light tonight, as usual, in my area in Hawl-wadag district. I hear gun-battle around, and then BOMB… BOMB, shelling started. I feel terrified, insecure and worried about how to survive. …,”
I accustomed to write my diary, that is why I am still writing it in a dark room and under attack.
I have passed part of that night in shelling, and it is now 5 am in the morning. I feel asleep but cannot sleep. Do you know why? When under attack, shelling at dark from their military bases and checking nearby houses in the morning, shooting indiscriminately is the Ethiopians and TFG troops’ military strategy. On the other hand, attacking in dark and melting down in the light is the hit and run strategy of the opposition gun-men.
“Here they are!” my mother whispered. This code is a famous code which is recently used in our area to alert a fried when a foe is around. I grabbed my clothes and I ran quickly following an alley, the safest place, which the soldiers cannot follow. On my way to escape I have encountered a male body half-eaten by a night dog. People say he was killed in last night’s fire-exchange. All the people I see are on run and no one is giving an eye of mercy the body, including me. Indeed, here is where humanity lost its essence due to fear for some people and for others may be, for cruelty. I crossed to the other side of the city and passed that day there.
Remember, not all my diary contents in this particular period are horror but my brain analysis and relate everything with that situation. However, I am now in Nairobi-Kenya and my diary reminds me a VOA interview with Hibo Nura in 2007 when I was in Mogadishu. After she had sung heart-touching songs filled with country love and culture, Hibo narrated a story between her and a female American neighbor. She said “this female neighbor used to ask me my home-decorations since I have not home here in America and being a refugee!” After all I am refugee also.
Anyway let me farewell you a two short sentences from a chat between me and a friend in Mogadishu:
A friend: “Remember, Earth is not our final home; we are created for something much better and after all we are all prospect customers of death!”
Me: “I know, but business is unusual here: we are here sitting on a burning paper, youngsters are playing with bombs, and elders are using canons to kill mosquitoes!”
Now, I think I am not mistaken if I say “living in Howl-wadag is like being a prospect customer of death!
May the peace prevail in Mogadishu!
Yusufbile Abdi Mohamed
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