Letter to Somalia

[xiinfaniin]

Dear Somalia,

 

It’s now full nineteen years, since your premature death by civil war wounds. Although I was a young boy, I vividly remember your sudden collapse, and the subsequent torment that engulfed your orphaned people. Knowing fully well that I would never be able again to enjoy the benefits only you were able to offer me, and to millions of my fellow countrymen, I decided to write you this letter.

 

Let me first begin by narrating to you how the world changed by your death. Your death, Somalia, has changed the world in ways that few could’ve ever predicted. Initially your suffering, the weeping of your women, the humiliation of your men, the ransacking of your great cities, and the trampling of your tall statues offered great news for millions of viewers around the world. Your pain and open wounds created employment for hundreds of analyst and pseudo experts. Artists and screenwriters composed action movies depicting the undignified fight your children engaged over the properties you left behind. Although many, and mainly your family, missed you, and still miss you, many others viewed your departure and the subsequent tussle between your children as a great entertainment. Some of your friends saw your death as a lucrative trade; your enemies found your demise an opportunity to thrive. Both are in cahoots to support ad hoc agencies to take your place.

 

But nothing would sadden you more than the varying reaction your children showed toward your premature death. I cannot say for sure if it’s a failing of yours or a fate-exacted blight, but your children, Somalia, did not express grief in an equal fashion. It would dismay you that some of you children did not even show a sign of grief at all. While some predictably wept, and continue to cry for you, others, including your second son, sought to derive personal advantage from your death. Instead of working toward the unity of the family you left behind, he insisted on dividing it. Instead of showing solidarity with his brothers and sisters in their hour of need, he declared that he has no shared aims with them, and swore on going his own separate way. I remember how much you invested in him, giving him facilities that would prepare him to take the helm one day. It must had been the tough love you often showed all of us that alienated him from the rest of the family. Your other children although still insisting they love you and miss you, engaged in sheer self-destruction, destroying your fifty-year efforts to improve and renovate your properties. Because of them, your great palaces are reduced to rubbles; your signature projects such as airports and harbors are ruined to an unrecognizable state. They rendered your civilization and your legacy to sheer savagery. The world mock you and what you left behind because of what your children did.

 

Perhaps it would give you mixed feelings to know that some of your children had become fraternity of pirates, harming marital trade and your reputation. But in your absence, these organized children of yours serve the purpose your once strong navy served, protecting the wealth of your oceans. They robbed the innocent with a one hand, while repelling invaders with the other. Perhaps it would surprise you that your difficult, rebellious children in the north and east are the meekest and peace-loving today, whilst those about whom you always said are mannered are the most unruly, mutinous.

 

I am also sure you would find a bit amusing that some of your children came up with peculiar mixture of religious dedication and commitment to serve Allah( cwj) with pure, savage brutalities that is only conceivable in the minds of criminals such as thugs, cutpurses and burglars. They changed your flag in the name of religion, shrunk your borders in the name of expanding them, and shelled and killed their own brothers and sisters in the name of defending your dignity and faith.

 

Although some of your weeping widows and suffering children are herded in vast refugee camps, and new generation of global agencies is created to sustain them, others crossed vast oceans and started new life. They’ve become the symbols of new addition in the society they settled in, bringing your heritage and language in places you would never imagine it would reach. Your birthday is celebrated in the centers of powers today, and has become familiar event that draws prominent local and national politicians. Your vagabond scholars are wandering the globe, sharing and spreading your history. They still recite your poems, and songs. They still share the famous battles you fought, the heroes you raised, and the great legends you produced. Your true men of religion still congregate in the houses of Allah, praying for the cessation of violence, counseling for dialogue and reconciliation amongst warring brothers. Your own children have destroyed your capital, but your other children have built a dozen more mini Mogadishus and settled in many places, and across continents. Many mocked your name, and equated it to death and destruction, but some of your children raised your name and flag atop of centers of world power and prestige. You are indeed dead, but some of your children refused your death to eclipse what you stood for.

 

Somalia, I have grown old, and have children of my own today, and it would please you that those whom you never saw also miss you.

 

xiinfaniin, one of your sons, who grew old

[Sherban Shabeel]

I bow my head.

[SayidSomal]

Soomaaliya Ingiriis kuma hadasho, mana akhrido;- marka - haddaad rabto in ay Soomaaliya fahanto warqaddaada - lacag isii anaa kuu turjumayee.

 

qiimuhu waa hal milyan oo soomaali shillin ah - halkii eri'ba.

 

ma haggaagba?

[xiinfaniin]

Originally posted by Sayid*Somal:

halkii eri'ba.

 

And you want to interpret my piece, and make money on it.

 

Please delete what you wrote.

 

Edit: Sayidow dadka inaan ku jeclahay waad ogtahay'e ee PMka xun fur.

[Allamagan]

Well written Xiin but I am still getting my head around who is this 2nd son? I understood this son as that one who wanted her amputation.. you should have also asked her whether she'd got over the sudden loss of her long partner died few months before her

 

I too missed her and unfortunately am one of these millions out there who never had great time with her or enjoyed under her care rajay.com

[STOIC]

Dear Somalia,

 

After reading our brother Xiin story you are probably turning in your grave with your belly turned upward oozing some pus of pain.Somalia Sons and daughters have stripped themselves moral values and human relationships.They today stand in anguish at the edge of abyss.Today your once beloved children are at crude and raw stage of their lives.They bask in an illusion of self-glorification with nothing, but destruction to show off! They lack the work of genius and stupendous imaginative to carry them out of this mess.They do NOT reflect on their reality as it is, but to blame others.Instead of being glued to my brothers and sisters and left behind by the rest of the world I choose to travel on the road less traveled, thus I become the betrayer of our former dignified union. In love, I still posses the brotherhood/sisterhood.Today I have become a self-sustaining region.I refused to suffer for being for others who refused to stop the sound of the gun.One day rationalization and history will set me free from accusation of abandoning my sisters and brothers.The flux of sensible world is praising me today and I promise you my love for my brothers and sisters in what was greater Somalia will burnish their suffering.

 

Your's Riyale President of Somaliland soon-to-be-wearing dentures

[Kamaavi]

Who said it was made out of thin air, pay attention.

[B]

Originally posted by xiinfaniin:

While some predictably wept, and continue to cry for you, others, including your second son, sought to derive personal advantage from your death. Instead of working toward the unity of the family you left behind, he insisted on dividing it. Instead of showing solidarity with his brothers and sisters, he declared that he has no shared aims with them, and swore on going his own separate way. I remember how much you invested in him, giving him facilities that would prepare him to take the helm one day. It must had been your tough love you once showed all of us that alienated him from the rest of the family. Your other children although still insisting they loved you and missed you, engaged in sheer self-destruction, destroying your fifty-year efforts to improve and renovate your properties. Because of them, your great palaces are reduced to rubbles; your signature projects such as airports and harbors are ruined to an unrecognizable state. They rendered your civilization and your legacy to sheer savagery. The world mock you and what you left behind because of what your children did.

My friend, I hate to crash your sentimental moment of soul-searching, but Somalia did not beget Somaliland. Somaliland was an equal partner in the relationship, before his dim brother (Somalia) led him astray by polluting him with delusion and ruined everything. Its a question of which came first the chicken or the egg

 

This is actually very amateurish on your part and a distortion of history, who is your audience for this lovely piece?

[Chimera]

Dear Somalia

 

I would love to converse with you in your ancient poetic language, but i'm afraid i'm not on that linguistic level yet. You see, the darkest episode in your long rich history is happening in my generation. I and many like me only remember tidbits of the past. I was to young to appreciate the beauty of your capital city, Mogadishu - once the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. Through nostalgic tales courtesy of my parents, your old wonderful spirit has solidified a place in my soul and heart permanently. There is no amount of negativity that could ever replace this feeling of pride, and self-contentment.

 

You are not dead to me, not by a long shot. I perfectly understand that civil wars happen to the most unified and divided, the most rich and the poor, the most neutral and the most aggressive. This is something your sister-countries from around the world have burdened their children with in the past and present, as a test of resilience, faith and usually a pre-requisite for eventual long-term stability.

 

The road towards a stronger 'you' is being built as we speak. The media might have given up on you with all of their sensationalist hype, but your children who became doctors, nurses, teachers, entrepreneurs and succesful diasporans haven't. No they have kept you alive for all of this time and are strengthening the foundations underneath you. Evendo you are only operating at 10% of your potential capacity, you are still according to many economists, technologists and various entities a leader in East Africa in multiple sections, a dead country you are not!

 

The different dresses that some of your more afluent sister-countries adviced you to wear on the international stage never fitted you anyways, we all know the only dress that makes you shine is a Somali one; Xeer, any entity that attempts to impose something alien or corrupt never stands the test of time, and time is on your side.

 

I'm not bitter that this dark episode is happening today, for i know for certain by the time Xiinfaniin's children have reached my age god willing you will be in a better situation.

 

This is your son, the one that crawled as a toddler through the cool grass of your soil in the summer of 1987 and then went on to pee on his aunt's lap, providing you with much needed comic relief.

[xiinfaniin]

lol@Alamagan's 'sudden loss of her long partner'

 

allah yarxamhu awoowe

 

good one Stoic and Prince.

[NGONGE]

Originally posted by Sayid*Somal:

Soomaaliya Ingiriis kuma hadasho, mana akhrido;- marka - haddaad rabto in ay Soomaaliya fahanto warqaddaada - lacag isii anaa kuu turjumayee.

 

qiimuhu waa hal milyan oo soomaali shillin ah - halkii eri'ba.

 

ma haggaagba?

Hada ninkan markay fikrado noocan maskaxdiisa ku dhici jireen gabay ayuu sii deen jiray. Hada English bu ku calaacala! Shakigo wa danbi, mala green kardka o so dhacay.

 

(Sentimental but nicely written).

[Jacaylbaro]

Dear Somalia,

 

F**** you ,,,

[Oz]

^^ I would expect that from a teenager but not a DAD. See kaa naqotey sxb.

[Oz]

D/P

[N.O.R.F]

Tough love? Is that what you call it?

 

Sounds more like a cry for a return to the 70s and 80s than a fully inclusive Somalia for EVERYONE.

 

Stuff and maalayacni