By Mohamud Togane

Most of the time I have no problem picking out Somalis

Even out of a colony of crows like them

All I have to do is

Yell out

Waryaa!

If I luck out I get a response

Woven and warmed by an unmistakable Somali Pepsodent bright smile

Then the real probe begins

Then the real tug of war of wits waxes wicked

How do I proceed

How do I begin

Do I dare take the low inevitable clannish causeway

That will lead to the overwhelming clannish question…

What do we talk about

Do I dare

Do I dare

Do I dare disturb the clannish Somali universe

Do I dare eat a papaya and forget

The whole bloody clannish rigmarole

The whole bloody clannish disconcerting peek-a-boo

So how should I presume

Why should I go walking the clannish whorish Afmishar Afwayne streets

That follow endlessly like a tedious captious Somali argument

Of insidious intent

Intensified

Fueled

By bloody clannish casuistry of cussed coonishness

I know

There will be time

There will time

And indeed there will be time

To wonder

To wander

To prepare a face to meet Somali munafaq funny faces

Time for you and time for me

There will be time for murder and mayhem

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on my plate

Time for you and time for me

And time yet for a hundred indecisions

And for a hundred visions and revisions

After chewing

The cud of clannish bitterness

After chewing

The fat at all the Hargayssa and Mog Jaat sessions

And I have known the eyes already, known them all

The Ill-Jeh Malocchio eyes that fix you in a formulated clannish phrase

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin

When I am pinned and wriggling on the rigmarole wall

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my Darod donkey days and ways

And how should I presume

As I wait and watch

All over the world

Silly Somalis come and go

Talking not of Michelangelo

Talking not of Maya Angelo

But talking of Dir Darod Dayuus

Would it have been worth while

To have bitten off this clannish question with a smile

To have squeezed this smelly Somali crazy clannish universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming clannish question

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

For I have known them all already, known them all

Have known the evenings mornings afternoons

I have measured out my life with bootless countless coonish corny NO-peace conferences

Brokered by The Lords of Poverty

For the overlords of Bililiqsie and Belayo

Is it the attar from the armpits of ‘Athar’s dress

That makes me so digress

I remember

So often my older brother

Mohamed Siyaad Togane

Who knows Somalis very well

Who is well-acquainted with their mighty mazy crazy lazy clannish peculiarities

Admonishing me more than I care to remember

Not to walk with or talk to a Somali

Unless I have him encased in the concrete kaka of his cursed clan

Otherwise

I would get

Into a farcical fatude

Into a mighty mess of

Mahatirie!

That is not what I meant at all

That is not it at all!

Do I dare to put my big hairy hoof into my big mouth

So I try to play it save rather than be sorry

That is why we Somalis so often dance the clannish pas de deux

Gingerly

Tentatively

Around each other till we determine

What Klan the suckers we accost across the globe belong to

That is why we Somalis are now going around the globe

Like that dog Alexander Pope gave to his Royal Highness

Wondering

Wandering

All over the world

With a sign around our clannish Jewish stiff necks

That proclaims

To all and sundry:

I am his Haughty Highness’ Hutu Hawiye hog of a dog

Pray tell me, sir, whose hog of a dog are you?

Are you a dirty dumb dreadful Darod hog of a dog?

That is why I decided to be a straight shooter

From the get-go

So when I met Ahmed Isse Awad

I did not go about beating around the bushes of Canada

I did not go tiptoeing through the tulips of Amsterdam

Sniffing the air

Wandering

Wondering

Is he of this clan?

Or

Is he of that clan?

No!

He is too handsome to be

From that herd of Hawiye hogs

From that den of dirty Darods

From that fugly family-Klan

He is so aggressive so the bugger must be from Mugdi Mudug!

He must be either Jalaf or Khalaf!

He is so Misskiin and so full of mohog so he must be from the mindless Mudulood!

No!

I grabbed the clannish bull by the horn

And blurted out

Ahmed, pray do tell me what Klan do you actually belong to?

You look like such a hip cool cat

You must be of the Macavity Majerten

I am Mudulood

If you don’t mind

—O, you are right

I am Majerten

I hope that mollifies your Mudulood soul

I know curiosity killed the black Somali clannish cat

But he died very satisfied

Indeed with a smile on his face

From then on

As soon as we got the Krazy Klans out of the way

Our donkeys farted and

Fell in line

Fell in love

In the 60s folks used to say

Let’s get the fucking out of the way

So we can really get to know each other

Now with us Somalis it is

Let us get the fucking Ku Klux Klan out of the way

So we can really get to know each other

Ahmed did not disappoint

Yes

It was worth it after all

Ahmed’s friendship and fellowship

Proved to be the medicine of my life

Ahmed proved to be that biblical friend

The kind of a friend that sticks closer than a brother

Ahmed and I proved to be

Isku toll:

From the same clan

Cut and sewn from the same cloth

Of our own choice

Of our own conscience

Ahmed proved to be

One of those friends Shakespeare

Barded about

Bruited about

When he proclaimed

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel”

That is why I invited Ahmed to a party given by my buddy and publisher Endre Farkas

There were about a baker’s dozen of us

Ahmed and I were

The only Moslems

The only Somalis

The rest were what we Somali savages

Refer to

So casually

So cruelly

So categorically

So crudely

So carelessly

Simply as Gaalo:

Honky alien enemy Kaffir infidels

Kikes and Crusaders

As soon as I disappeared from the scene to go to the John

Endre asked Ahmed

—Are you and Togane from the same Klan?

Endre could not help but be mesmerized

Like the rest of the civilized world

By how much stock we Somali savages pretend to own in our Klandom

By how much stock we Somali savages invest into our Klandom

By how the warring clans of Somalia

“Hawiye against Darod above all were literally shooting each other to pieces

How they had fought often before

But in this century

How nothing like the present slaughter has ever occurred

How any sanity of political behavior seemed so far

To seek among these vengeful or frightened rivals

Now wrecking their own country with suicidal ruthlessness”

Endre read

How we do yell

Tolla’ay!

How we do yelp like a pack of dogs

Tolla’ay!

How we do grunt like a herd of hogs

Tolla’ay!

How we do call

Tolla’ay!

NOT upon our Allah but upon our KKK

To save us from immediate and present danger

Endre read

How we proudly proclaim

Our kinsmen, right or wrong!

Endre read

How we proudly declaim

Tol iyo fardo, toll baan doortay:

Between my Klan and wealth

I chose my Ku Klux Klan

Endre read

How we proudly affirm and confirm

Fiqi tolkee kama janna tago:

A learned divine won’t go to paradise without his KKK

Endre read Lewis and

How Mogadishu our beautiful city was ruined now

How it is now “effectively divided into two principal military zones—

One controlled by the Abgaal and the other by the Habar Gidir invaders”

How we made the once cosmopolitan Mogadishu

Darod-frei:

Free of Darod!

Darod-rein:

Cleansed of Darod!

Just like our Hajji Hitler once made Berlin

Judenrein
Juden-frei

So Endre wanted to be reassured that Ahmed and I won’t ruin and wreck his party

Just like we had ruined and wrecked our country

In the twinkling of an eye

Ahmed without hesitation—

Remember now

He who hesitates is lost—

Ahmed parried

Ahmed buried Endre’s seemingly overwhelming question by …