Vacant ramblings....

[J.Lee]

No? Just Say no, the sign above the stranger’s head read. My reaction as usual was laughter. I laughed not because I was amused but I was thinking about how easy life would be if it were only that simple. How easier it would be to deal with people if the mere uttering of a single syllable was to extract an expected result. Unfortunately, it’s not. And no one know this better than rape victims. No one knows this better than my friend and unless you have been in her situation you’ll never know. It’s an unimaginable knowledge, which can’t be acquired by any other means but experience.

 

It’s like an induction of sorts; a club which its members must all go through the same process, a process of defilement. Of pleas being ignored, unheard like an echo in the monsoon winds; limbs being paralyzed. To this very moment, I still can’t picture myself being defiled in such a fashion. I haven’t even mustered the courage to try to conjure the necessary image. As an imaginable it’s for me, for her it was once a reality.

 

I felt helpless even as I watched her struggle to breath. Struggle to gather the strength to continue her story about her rape.

 

“Ifrah,†she began. “Abaayo, I just wanted to die. I prayed to die.â€

 

And truthfully so did I at that moment. I knew that nothing I did would erase such ugliness from her: and nothing hurt as much as realizing I was incapable of helping her.

 

There it was again, that feeling of inadequacy, my irrational fear.

 

It all started when I was four, on a night much like any other contradictory Mogadishu nigh, humid and intolerably cool. As my mother was giving my brothers and I our nightly bath, our house was bombarded with bullets from all sides. Even as I write this, I remember that night clearly as if was just a day ago, my mother’s frantic voice telling us to get down and crawl to a hiding place, while she held my month old brother against her breast, murmuring under her breath incoherent prayers for our safety. I even remember as she berated herself for refusing my father’s offer to take a leave from his job in a nearby city, so that he could be with us, under such a time when distrust and hate filled the air of the capital city with its foul stench. A stench that is still present in Somalia to this day.

 

A stench I haven’t smelled since that night. The night I couldn’t save my best friend from being killed, as she screamed No. Screamed for the help I couldn’t provide. Inadequate. What an ugly word. Rapist. What an ugly noun.

 

I sat in the dentist office, looking around anywhere else but at the sign, wishing to just escape from the bleakness of my mind. Wishing to forget the memories of times past. I was drawn to it again and I found myself getting mad as I read it. She said No. I wanted to scream, but like an lie, it lost its meaning. They both said No. They were both taken against their will as they screamed the word. Raped and murdered, their pleas falling on deaf ears. So no, Sir. Apparently, just saying No is not enough; it’s inadequate like me.

[J.Lee]

Her warning:

 

I was once was young too

 

Like you two my grandsons

 

Naïve and folly were my favorite companions

 

As were arrogance and pride

 

We never truly parted ways

 

With each turn of age’s clock

 

They have just learned to be silent

 

And I have grown to be louder than they

 

So I now sit in front of you

 

An Old lady.

 

I have no wealth

 

No camels to tend to

 

I have birthed all I can

 

And you two,

 

Of my fruits you were born

 

I’m weak as a newborn

 

I can’t lie, I’m weak

 

I have no strenght

 

No will, I'm frail

 

And this I shall be

 

Until I last draw breathe.

[Faarax-Brawn]

J.Lee,thats some deep sh.it for real

[Som@li]

Horrible,