With the rising of the sun, the Somalis decided to call it a night. But it was not a regular day that was dawning. The town had closed its exits. Tanks, armoured vehicles and Jeeps with high-calibre machine guns had sealed off the south end of the town while soldiers in war gear flushed the enemy out of their hiding places, killing them mercilessly. By noon, the enemy within the city limits had been exterminated, but the soldiers were still furious. They rounded up the few remaining residents of the Muslim half of the city, lined them up against a wall and shot them dead.
Still thirsty for blood, the soldiers turned to the Christian part of town, looking for Somalis who had long since forgotten what they were. They found them. The soldiers took each one from his home, herding them all towards the police station. The Somalis were irritated that the soldiers should handle them so roughly, but were confident that, once taken to court, they would be exonerated of any charges that might be brought against them. They hadn’t seen or heard about what had happened in the other part of town.
With each step they took, each inscrutable crowd they passed, each mournful face that peered towards them from the street, the prisoners became more and more certain that this was not just a case of mistaken identity. They never knew what awaited them. As they turned the last corner to the police station, they found a clue to their fate lying on the street, wrapped in red-tattered rags. The prisoners panicked, trembled. They turned to every civilian they saw, pleading that someone vouch for their innocence. “Ato Abraha, you know who I am—please tell these people that I am not a rebel. Aster, I attended your wedding; please vouch for me! Save my life,” they cried. But few dared to intervene. The soldiers had already defied their commanding officers, the gods and their consciences, and no one could stop them now. The last Somalis in the city were lined up against the wall and savagely murdered.
A MOVING TALE
THE FOOD had run out. The city of Jijiga slid to the brink of famine. The government decided to help. It announced, over national radio, that we should eat twice a day. People wondered where they could get the second meal.
Earlier, Mam had consulted the Adbar. She had seen the future written in the aromatic plumes of smoke rising from the ood and incense: the enemy would come riding a six-legged horse, chasing us from our homes and killing many of us. “Go out and purchase any canned food you can find,” she told me. “Don’t worry how much it costs.” I purchased as many tins of sardines, beans, corn and pineapples and boxes of biscuits as I could find. Mam emptied the wardrobe, put the packaged food in it, padlocked the door and hid the key in her bosom, tied to the end of her handkerchief.
The school was still open, and so was every government office. Life went on, undeterred by the chaotic drama unfolding around us. I was writing the university entrance exam when the turmoil reached its climax. Huge cargo planes flew in and out of town every few minutes bringing in militiamen and armaments, then airlifting out the wounded and sick. Fighter planes flew in squadrons, one after another, brushing over the roof. Bombers followed their lead. The building shook with the noise of their engines; the Earth let out a tortured cry when the bombers unloaded the curse of napalm on her; but victory was elusive. The war had already been lost on the ground.
Orders to evacuate never came, but the necessity of leaving came to Mam, who shot out of bed in the small hours, one morning in early September 1977, rushing us all to get up and dress. I stumbled out of bed with bleary eyes, looking for things to take. The house that I had called home all my life, the only place I could walk through blindfolded, had, overnight, become strange. The architecture of the rooms struck me as odd; the bedstead, chest of drawers, dining-room table and chairs looked peculiar. I wondered how I had come to live in this place without ever really seeing it.
There were so many odd items in our house. A small table with one missing leg, which nobody used, stood beside the main door, confronting anyone coming in or out. It was one of Mam’s many relics of the past. Once, I decided to lock it up in the storage room. It did not take long for Mam to notice that it was missing. “Where is the table?” she demanded, worried that someone might have thrown it out. I explained to her that I had put it away. She shook her head in sadness before admonishing me. “You kids of this troubled generation have no regard for things you can’t make use of. Someday you might even throw me away,” she remarked bitterly. “Did it occur to you that the table might have held some sweet memories of bringing you up? Go and bring it back.”
There was also the incense burner with a chipped edge, the broken piece carelessly shoved inside the ash. My sister Meselu broke it when she was about five or six years of age. She broke it on the same day she discovered that her hand was not rigidly attached to her forearm.
My sister had run into the room, crying, holding her arm high, telling Mam that her arm was broken. In her excitement, she knocked the incense burner, breaking it.
“My arm is broken,” she repeated, sobbing.
Mam shot out of her seat, startled, believing that Meselu had indeed broken her arm. “How did you break it?” Mam asked, examining my sister’s arm.
“I didn’t,” my sister replied.
“Then how did you know that it was broken?”
“See,” Meselu demonstrated, flexing her hand up and down. “It is broken.”
Mam burst out laughing. The neighbours who were having coffee joined her. For a long time to come, they would point at the chipped incense burner and talk about my sister’s broken arm. Mam received many beautiful incense burners over the years as gifts, but she refused to give up the broken one.
I was spending a great deal of time selecting one item over another, studying each object in our home, when Mam woke me from my reveries. “Here, put your stuff in this,” she said, handing me a corn sack.
While choosing what to take with me, and what to leave behind, I suddenly remembered the disoriented young woman with two kids that I had met in the tea room downtown only a few weeks before. I wondered how she would ever survive the dreadful decision she had been forced to make.
Mam shouted orders from the living room, hurrying us along. She was the only one who seemed prepared for the occasion. She had packed three large sacks, mostly with foodstuffs, but also with family photographs, pictures of the saints and some documents. Mam made me carry two of the bags, one on my head and the other on my back. Before closing the door of our home for the last time, she took one final look, her eyes moist with tears.
Outside, the crowd was frantic. Cars were blowing their horns and pedestrians stumbled over each other and swore. Each one of us was headed in the same direction—towards the unknown.
THE EXODUS
THE ONLY road that exited Jijiga was located in a narrow alley between Mt. Karamara and Mt. Chinaksen. Karamara is the tallest of three mountain peaks surrounding the city. As a kid, I had spent many memorable moments with friends looking down on Jijiga from its towering height.
We passed through the dangerous alley without being molested by the Somali Army. Once behind the mountain curtain, the refugees were ordered, by the Ethiopian Army, to set up camp in the valley. The army hoped to reclaim the town before long.
There were no forests in this region, only a sparse population of acacia trees, promising little in the way of shade from the unforgiving sun. The valley was a natural passage for wandering packs of monkeys, hyenas and black lions. The monkeys of these regions are unlike any others in the country. They are immense in size, combative and stubborn. They are known to ram heavy boulders on passing cars, but their obstinacy and aggressiveness is best mythologized in a tale that Dad once told me about a remarkable battle between these beasts and a couple of black lions.
* * *
IT SO HAPPENED that the monkeys were driven from their den by a herd of lions and moved to an area close to the town of Kocher. This region was rich in wild fruit and leafy plants, and was close to a body of water. The monkeys had just finished refurnishing their new residence and were organi
zing a housewarming party when their old enemies came knocking on the door. The party turned into an emergency meeting to establish what needed to be done with the intruders—a couple of black lions. Votes were cast. The majority were ready to fight. So the monkeys opened their trunk, dusted off their war gear and decided to meet the enemy at the front porch.
The lions couldn’t believe that a mob of monkeys would actually fight them. Thinking it was a bluff, they resolved to teach these inferior creatures a lesson. But, though individually the monkeys were not strong, they were strong in numbers—there were upwards of four hundred of them. They nominated one of their rank as Admiral, and the Admiral drafted an immediate strategy. He announced that the plan of attack was very, very simple. “Surround the enemy and kill him!” he said.
Like so many other warriors who have lived and died in this pleasing but perilous land, the monkeys declared war. They surrounded the two lions, three rows deep. All at once, the first line of fighters leaped upon the backs of the black lions, scratching and biting them. The lions responded by breaking the back of each monkey they caught, but many escaped and rejoined the ranks, reinforcing the tightening circle. The monkeys co-ordinated their attack, sometimes leaping upon the lions from the front, sometimes from the back.
The war continued for three days, at the end of which dozens of monkeys, whose lives had been sacrificed in defence of their territory, lay scattered about the blood-soaked bodies of the two black lions. On the fourth day of war, the lioness died. The male lion lingered on, his back badly skinned, his mane rooted out. The monkeys offered the lion an armistice: he could go back home and they would forget what had happened provided that he submitted to the shaving of his head. He refused. The war continued.
By the end of the week, before either of the belligerents had accepted defeat, the local peasants raised the white flag. The stench of the dead animals and the flies they had attracted were quickly becoming unbearable, and the peasants dispatched a courier to the governor of Kocher, alerting him to the disaster unfolding in his jurisdiction, informing him that the effects of the war were being felt by the surrounding community. The governor gave the word and the police were ordered to finish off the lion and help restore order. Against all odds and in vivid contradiction of legend, the monkeys had won; the king of all beasts had been defeated.
* * *
LIKE THE MONKEYS, the refugees, uprooted from one home, were in search of another. West of the arid, lifeless valley in which they camped, there were hills that were farmed during the rainy season to yield a good harvest of sorghum and corn. But the exodus left Jijiga during the dry spell, and this area had been claimed by hostile weeds. Farther west of these hills lay the temperate climate of the eastern highlands—an area renowned for agricultural produce, for bananas, mangoes, papayas, oranges, cabbages, lettuce, red beets, sweet potatoes, chat, and many other types of fruits and vegetables. It was in this direction that we would ultimately head, towards Harar.
The city of Harar was only 120 kilometres from Jijiga, but it took us almost two weeks to get there. Those two weeks left an indelible mark in the lives of many. It would be remembered in history as a time when it rained upwards, for many would shed tears that they scooped up by the tips of their fingers and flung at the faces of the treacherous gods.
The exodus, however, was a triumph for teenaged boys who aspired to play cops and robbers. They were issued real guns with live bullets, and could shoot without asking their mothers’ permission. I was given an M-1 rifle, which, I discovered, was more dangerous to me than the enemy. It was too cumbersome, recoiled too much when fired, and was almost as tall as I was. I dumped it in a nearby bush before walking over to a militiaman who had two Kalashnikovs. I borrowed one of them, with two clips of bullets. He reminded me to give it back to him before we arrived in Harar.
The guns we were issued were meant to protect our families from the various unsavoury elements in the jungle. The army did not expect the civilians to fight the war for them. The old rifles were useless as far as the invading Somalis were concerned—even the tanks were of no avail. The enemy fired long-range cannons at us. Their location remained a complete mystery. The only time the firing let up was when jets bombed the area in which their cannons were suspected of being hidden, but even this did not slow them for long.
Running into wild beasts was never a concern during the exodus; they had long since made a wide berth around us. On the day of the massacre in Jijiga, the hyenas severed their diplomatic relations with us, withdrawing their missions from all towns and villages. The lions made a proverb out of our carpet-bombing of the countryside, teaching their young that killing neighbours indiscriminately was the truest form of wild behaviour and that it was to be avoided. The elephants had come to regard the exodus as a threat to their lifestyle, an irresponsible squandering of natural resources, and vowed never to set eyes on us again.
The two-legged beast, on the other hand, was a constant threat. Truck drivers who cut through the treacherous Ogaden steppe in search of market outlets tell of “tire dealers” who stopped them in the middle of the desert and offered to sell them tires—their own tires. To rob someone, or to admit that one is being robbed, was considered rude by the nomads, so the whole business was conducted as a transaction in which one man sold something that the other man simply couldn’t do without. Upon being offered the tires, an experienced trucker would immediately get down to business and pay the price. If the tires were too costly, one could always bargain. After all, the sellers were not unreasonable. They were often willing to knock off a few shillings or even take something else as payment, say, a few bottles of Pepsi-Cola and a bundle of chat. Once the transaction was settled, the customer would receive a guarantee that he would not be required to buy his tires again on the same trip.
Occasionally an inexperienced driver would refuse to buy his tires, despite the added persuasion of a loaded rifle that the dealer swung towards his face. Such folly would result in a nomadic tantrum for the dealer, who might demonstrate his determination not to let anyone walk away without paying for his merchandise by destroying all the tires on the truck, stranding the driver in the middle of the desert. Often the next truck would be a week or more in coming, and even then there was little one could expect from a passerby. The surrounding nomads were unlikely to lend a hand, as they knew that you had refused to partake in the traditional barter.
Tire dealers were the least of our worries during the exodus; among us, the ones driving trucks were the army, and the dealers were not known for selling military merchandise. Fear of bumping into Adal tribesmen, however, ran high.
* * *
YOUNG ADAL MEN have a special way of proving their manhood to their future wives. As their fathers before them and their children after them, these young men have to maintain the continuity of thousands of years of culture. A dowry is not enough.
The glaring eyes of countless stars in heavens are upon the Adal elders as they gather around a campfire to determine a young man’s ability to support his future wife as determined by the head count of his cattle, his skill as a warrior and his ability to defend her and the community she lives in from an invading enemy. If the young man has already proved himself a man and has the trophy to substantiate his claim, the elders will pass judgment before the campfire is out. But if he has yet to pass the last hurdle, he will be sent away in quest of the indispensable credentials. The young man will not be accepted by the community unless he comes back with the trophy dangling from the tip of his stick, held high above his head for everyone to see. His homecoming will be announced by a bull-horn trumpet; children will receive him at the skirt of the settlement, singing and cheering, leading him to every doorstep so everyone can bear witness to the trophy, and agree to its legitimacy—the trophy being a penis of an enemy the young Adal has overpowered in an open engagement.
Unfortunately for the young Adal, the golden days are gone for good. Tribal wars are not so easy to come by, so the young man
is forced to travel far from his immediate neighbourhood in search of his trophy. He rides the bus, hikes or steals a ride on a passing train, criss-crossing the country, coming dangerously close to towns and Christian settlements. Many young men spend weeks away from home, surviving on plant roots and wild animals, before they can claim success.
Not every penis is the right candidate. The victim has to be an adult from a different tribe, and the penis has to be of a convincing size. In cases where the penis could be mistaken for that of a boy, the bridegroom must skin the part of the pelvis attached to the penis, as well as the chin, so that the victim’s beard can be offered as irrefutable proof of the trophy’s legitimacy.
Young men of the Adal tribe often hide themselves in the brush by the highway waiting for accidents to happen, so that they can lay claim to the members of the victims. Truck drivers who stop in the middle of the desert to change their tires often end up losing more than time. Public transit buses on long journeys have to stop en route, and passengers who get off to stretch their legs and relieve themselves are sometimes relieved of their trophies by Adals who have hidden in the bush in anticipation of just such an interlude.
The state farms in the west (mainly in the province of Arussi) are often transformed into gruesome theatres during the marriage seasons of these infamous tribes. A good number of the daily labourers are ensnared either on the farm or on the way home from a night out, losing their lives or a part of them. No amount of education or admonition seemed to have any effect on these fiendish people until the late seventies, when the military junta let it be known that anyone caught carrying what was obviously not his own piece would face the firing squad, effectively throwing a monkey wrench into this antediluvian practice.
Notes from the Hyena's Belly Page 18
