A Young Man's Quest for Love and Independence

By Abdullahi Arale

Hassan symbolizing the silent majority of the clan youth strives to change his community's stringent marriage rules not through passive resistance and dialogue but through an actual confrontation. Hassan's community is divided into conservative hardliners and moderates
whose intention is the initiation of social change through gradual step-by-step
deconstruction of the current tribal autocratic beliefs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781773707075

Abdullahi Arale

It is a great feeling to belong to several social identities, particularly, when they encompass diverse cultures, values and educational and political systems. I was born during a time, when my native country, Italian Somaliland was under occupation. In my late teen age years to my early 20th, I lived in the USSR for military career training. In my mid 20th up till late 20th, I lived in Somalia, where I worked as a full citizen of the state. From early 30th to date, I have lived in Ontario, Canada, raised four children, acquired higher education and enjoying a peaceful life. Having lived in such diverse geographical locations with diverse cultures, and having been exposed to diverse educational and political systems, I believe I have developed many socio-cultural identities overtime. For instance, I am a Somali by birth, but experientially, identify with my former Italian, Russian and Ukrainian educators for being part of my individual development. I also closely identify with my fellow Canadian citizens who gave me the opportunity to turning myself into a mature, enlightened resident. From these multifaceted socio-cultural identities, I learned to be considerate and respectful to other peoples' cultural values and traditions.The writer's education:1. BA; BSSC; and Bed; From the University of Ottawa2. Med from the University of Toronto

Book preview

Foreword

One might think that complex love stories and fierce competition amongst amorous young men could only occur in modern North American urban centres. One might also think that bitter ideological confrontation between conservatives and liberals could only happen exclusively in liberal democratic Western countries. However, your perspective will change as you learn about a captivating and thrilling love story that took place in a remote nomadic community in Mogokory locality, Somalia, in the mid-1930s. The story centres around two close-knit families whose love and admiration for each other is disturbed by a crisis. The attempt by one family’s son to venture out of the clan traditions for his personal autonomy is met with fierce resistance by the community elders, invoking charges of the violation of their arranged marriage standards. This community’s strict nomadic customs have alienated its own youth so much that they have decided to take matters in their hands. A seventeen-year-old boy by the name Hassan—a maverick in his own right with regards to the clan’s stringent rules—has decided to practice no self-restraint in his behaviour, nor pay respect and loyalty to either his family or the community at large. He finds himself in an irreconcilable conflict with his father and the family of the girl whom he is in love with. He believes that the community’s marriage rules are obsolete, and that one should not have to seek permission from anyone to marry the woman they love.

Equally fascinating is the uncompromising determination of two clan elders from this community who happen to be veterans of the Italian-Abyssinian war of the 1930s, whose inclination towards modernity and progressive worldviews have motivated them to challenge their community’s old ways head-on. They find themselves at odds with the clan’s spiritual leader, who is opposed to any changes to the clan customs. Both the young man’s struggle for love and independence and the two forward-thinking elders’ desire to make changes in the community are met with rigorous resistance from the clan’s spiritual leader, Aw Arraleh, who believes in social ranks of power, where every resolution must be strictly deliberated against the clan’s vertical social strata already in place.

Will a resolution come out of this trilateral divergence of ideas? Or is tragedy the inevitable outcome of this riveting tale?

Introduction

In the 1930s, waves of European colonizers swarmed into this region and throughout the Somali territories, militarily occupying the country, triggering cosmic social changes in society. However, due to centuries-old religion-based ideology between European Christians and Muslims, old conflicts have revitalized themselves and reawakened old hatred and mistrust between the Italian colonizers and the indigenous Muslim Somalis. Some of the old stereotypes that resurfaced with the arrival of the Italians in Somali territories were historical. First, the famous European Crusade against Muslims, the alleged intention of which was to eradicate Muslims from the face of the Earth, was an issue that never went away from Somali Muslims’ minds. Second, Dante Alighieri’s religious-fictional book, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, has always been and still is a source of conflict that generated and encouraged hatred towards Christians by Muslims. In Inferno, Dante claimed that, while touring the ninth chasm of hell, he saw the prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, and his cousin, Ali, along with other followers, burning in the bottom floor of hell. This has become an outrageous tale, a rallying cry for Muslims to despise Christians forever.

On the other hand, because of their preconceived notions of Muslim prejudice against them, upon their entry to the Somali territories the Italians were furious about the religion-based intolerance and insults against them perpetuated by the Somalis. The stereotypes and the intolerance allegedly branded against Italians were as follows:

Italians and all Europeans are godless atheists who do not believe in the Creator.

They are dirty pigs, and since they consume pig meat and grow them as family animals, shaking hands with them was asacrilegious act.

The Italians have sex with animals, and also sleep with women and have children out of wedlock.

These were all biting stereotypes attached to the Italians unfairly. Against the backdrop of these negative attitudes, Italians came with aggressive behaviour, almost as if they had put the extraordinary motivation to terrorize and punish the Somali population with their military power at the top of their occupation agenda.

Despite the resistance mounted against them for taking over the land, Italy got serious about investing and developing the infrastructure of what will later become Italian Somaliland between the early and late 1930s. One of the motivations for Italy’s new interest in building the colony’s infrastructure was the convergence of common purposes between Italy’s king and Somali nationalists. On one side, Somalis of all tribes and territories who maintained a generations-long animosity toward Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) for its past imperial behaviours and desire to take back their misappropriated lands, will stand shoulder to shoulder with Italians who want to avenge their humiliating defeat by Ethiopia in the 1800s. In sum, the enemy of my enemy is the reason for the new alliance between Somali nationals and the kingdom of Italy, although Somalia was under Italian occupation. To that end, local colonial Italian governments started to enroll thousands of Somalis in the Italian colonial army, soldiers who later became the elite forces in the defeat of imperial Ethiopia. Between 1930 and 1940, as a gesture of gratitude and a reward for their loyalty to Italy, the Italians started to develop the colony by building roads, hospitals, schools, bridges, etc. in the Hiran region of which Mogokory locality is a part of. Hundreds of recruits were taken out to join the Italian forces. The movement of people from nomadic enclaves to big towns and soldiers returning from the war had activated the formation of new villages on the outskirts of district towns and permanent settlements. This resulted in a challenge to the exclusive clan rules in remote areas like Mogokory, eventually allowing modern infrastructure such as police stations, schools and health services to trickle in. However, despite these phenomenal changes taking place around it, the people of the Mogokory locality held their own and resisted the installation of governments, and as a consequence they were left out of receiving government services until 1960. Since then, the locality has developed over the decades, evolving from nomadic communal clans to permanent settlements with trading posts that gradually rose up into full rural townships.

In the 1930s, Mogokory was a land occupied by a nomadic, powerful clan. The geographical character of this locality is unforgiving and harsh, for lack of a better phrase. The terrain is semi-arid—a savanna, if you will—a tropical grassland containing scattered shrubs and small and large trees which provide all animals, big and small, with meager nourishment, but only in the short rainy seasons. Moreover, the colour of the soil on the surface is magnificent, a pleasing burgundy tone that provides the inhabitant nomad’s eyes relief from the violent sun rays. Furthermore, while this terrain may have some beneficial qualities for the people living on it, it has been known for its harsh ecological conditions exacerbated by the erosion of the soil, through many centuries of exploitation by the natives without contingent preservation plans. More to the point, the quantity of rain falling on it is said to be approximately sixty to ninety centimetres per year, which forces the inhabitants to be constantly on the move in search of new pastures for their livestock.

However, despite its meager resources caused by lack of moisture, over the centuries the inhabitants of this locality have persistently put up with their environment, exploiting it to the limits of their knowledge. This means that, based on Darwin’s survival theory, they made the appropriate adjustments to their harsh environment, accepting it as their providence and developing techniques to exploit it to the best of their abilities.

About one hundred kilometres west of Mogokory locality, behind the red stone mountain ranges, passes the River Shebelle from the north to the south of the region, one of the two major rivers in Somalia. This lowland area was occupied by clans and sub-clans that belonged to the same dominant tribe as the Mogokory dwellers. The Riverbank valley lays between the Shebelle River from the west and the red stone mountain range, rising up from the river bank to the foothills of the range. Plains and rich grassland covered the valley, from which its dwellers enjoyed a mixed residency that was either semi-nomadic or permanent in nature, where the permanent dwellers grew farm animals as well as various crops. From the banks of the river looking towards the east, you could see clusters of houses, farm houses and huts spread out in every direction of the valley, around which family farms and livestock of all kinds were straggled around, with the exception of camel herds.

These by-the-river dwellers had a great advantage over their nomadic counterparts. Owing to their permanent settlements, facilitated by the abundance of fresh water and their agricultural/farm animal development, these families enjoyed a predictable, year-round production-oriented drive. With the big town of Bulal by their side, they had permanent customers in the city dwellers to be fed with their products, such as produce, dairy products, meat or live animals. The Riverbank valley dwellers had the benefit of a good life. On top of that, these rural dwellers also had comprehensive plans for their children. In other words, they understood that their children had to live their lives without them at some point, hence they knew that the earlier they trained them for life, the better. For example, children from the age of seven had to attend faith-based schools, and then continue their lessons in secular colonial primary schools (these were thought not to be widespread at that time, but were an available option, nonetheless). Owing also to the proximity of the district city, the rural population also had the advantage of gaining labor-oriented employment, and the option of enlisting into the Italian colonial army, which, in either scenario, generated an income for the individual and the quality of life was improved for all. Parallel to the noted possibilities for the community, a third scenario was an option for the young men in the community: he could leave the family (Mom and Dad’s house), get his own land, grow his own products and start a family of his own.

The contrasting lifestyles between the two communities, the Mogokory nomadic clan and the rural riverbank-dwelling clans, could not be more striking than this. From a nomad’s perspective, having multiple wives up to the four allowed under the law was a must-have option. Several wives reproduce a higher number of children than only one, and that was at the heart of the drive to marry many wives. The nomad needed a lot people around to look after the family animals, to graze them, water them and groom them when parasites infected the animals with maladies. Based on this proposition, the children and the wives were subconsciously considered a very much-needed labour force. So, there would be a sustained asymmetrical relationship between the head of household and his labourers—his wives and children. More to the point, unlike the rural riverbank dwellers—whose relationships were much more relaxed and somewhat autonomous from each other—the nomadic family was kept together by the harsh environment which required them to toil collectively every day, with no concrete benefits for the individual family members on the horizon. In this lifecycle, both sons and daughters were forced to stay under the authority of their father until death do they part, or they became husbands and wives to other nomads’ sons and daughters.

Mogokory’s name connotes brotherhood, a meeting place for the community. It also represented communal-nomadic living and prosperity for those who value close-knit clan ancestral derivation, toughness, autonomy, warfare and protection of the integrity of clan boundaries in a tribally divided land. The landscape was equally harsh, and still is, because of lack of adequate rain, even in the rainy seasons. For this reason, lifeless young men were oftentimes brought from the deep bushes on camelback. The youngsters suffered from dehydration and hunger while looking after their family’s camels. This physiological degradation was evidently sustained from long years of starvation, malnutrition, sleeplessness and fatigue which had slowly turned these youngster’s bodies into walking corpses. Back then, young men (family males) took family camel herds to far-away destinations in pursuit of green grazing lands and water, leaving behind helpless women and children at the mercy of vagrants and muggers who, given the chance, would rape the women and steal family possessions. Also, people being victimized by predatory animals (carnivores) such as hyenas and lions were common occurrences. Such atrocious incidents would occur when family members got stranded in distant places for weeks and months without water and food while in search of stray family animals, or when children looking after family animals let down their guards by falling asleep in isolated areas without immediate help in the vicinity.

Also in the 1930s, horrendous infant and mother deaths at birth were common occurrences. At daybreak, women routinely left with herds of family livestock, normally ranging from sixty to one hundred head of family goats, watching and steering them to green postures every day, all day long. During these long and torturous days, pregnant wives faced a difficult and laborious childbirth in solitude, except for the few lucky ones whose concerned husbands or relatives stayed with them on guard. Without such a contingency plan, the majority of these women faced dangerous childbirth experiences, which put both mothers and babies in great risk of violent deaths.

Life—social life, that is—in Mogokory’s nomadic community was monotonous, to say the least. Because of their strict adherence to Islamic faith, they naturally lived by the biblical commandments, namely those that play fundamental roles in Islam’s ethical and moral codes that say worship only God, honour your parents, do not commit adultery, do not take the life of another human unless it is self-defense, do not steal, etc. On the other hand, they practiced the famous retaliatory morality law an eye for an eye (Qisas in Arabic), which, paraphrased, signifies that any man injuring another man must be subjected to a similar degree of injury, or pay compensation for the inflicted damage. This is not to say that they had big mosques and madrasas populated by children and teenagers; they did not have the luxury of sitting around as they were a people constantly on the move—nomads. They adhered instead to the principals of their faith by practicing Sufism through their daily lives. In other words, they prayed and did Ramadan, and dealt with their mundane world through it, in bad time as well as good times.

They also adhered to man’s universally constructed social stratum, a strict vertical hierarchy where man, under the watchful eye of God, is given the authority to rule the natural world, including other humans like women and children, and all animal species in the world, exclusively. At the community level, a spiritual leader