The
separation of public and private personas of majority of Somali men borders on psychotic!
Hold your guns and let me explain before you shoot.
On the
outside, most men act honorable, some dress in religious costumes and grow
beard others are seen as “respectable elders or intellectuals”. These men
command respect from not only their families and neighbours but sometimes also from
their clan and Somali society in general. They lead what would be considered decent
and responsible lives, most (these days you will struggle to find a boy over 15
who is not already married with kids) are married with children and some even
have multiple wives. I am
describing the average Somali man, also known as Faarah. He has an average of 2
wives and 8 kids. He is skinny and tall with a dashing smile - apart from green
teeth monsters who chew khat on a daily basis.
Most Faarahs
pay a lot of attention to Haliimo’s dress code, (for the non-Somali readers,
Haliimo is your average Somali woman). I would go as far as to say most Faarahs
have few full time jobs:
1)
Marrying, divorcing and wife-replacing
at least once a year.
2)
Selflessly repopulating
Somalia and making up for the couple of million lives lost to the war (never mind
that we have more than replaced that number just few years into the war and now
desperately need population control methods)
3)
Volunteer moral police for women’s dress code,
and this particular full time volunteer job is done with such zeal we often
have victims physically violated by someone “outraged” by “inappropriate” dress
code!
When in a
group, most men act all respectable and decent. They talk a lot about religion,
quoting what Allah and the Prophet have said, the role of women in Islam (latter is their favourite section of the Quran). Then something strange happens
when the same men get a minute with a woman alone. Suddenly it is like a
sexually starved deamon takes over their bodies and they turn totally creepy! I
have had so many lines of the most inappropriate sexual jokes from usually older Somali men to fill a book, seriously. But I will give you just one example to illustrate my point.
Late last year in Mogadishu an
older male friend, or I thought he was a friend, said something to me in front
of 2 other male friends that my heart skipped a beat in disbelieve. We were
sitting at a hotel lobby having dinner and joking after a tough day of Shabaab bombing in the city and when he got up to leave for his room, out of the blue said “I
hope you never starve and always have both your mouths fed”!!! My Somali isn’t as
polished so it took me a while to figure out what he meant and I did it mainly
as a result of the shocked look on the faces of my 2 male friends sitting next
to me. To my horror and surprise I figured out he meant “may you never run out
of food and dick”! How incredible is it that a so called respectable and well
known man in Somali politics circles would say such a rude and crude thing
while sober and in public? Don’t worry, I won’t scoop as low and add his
picture on this entry, even though I am really tempted.
He ran off
quickly to his room before I had a chance to confront him so I did it the following
day at lunch, when he walked over to my table as if nothing had happened and
greeted me with a big friendly smile. I would have thought I dreamt the whole
thing up had it not been for the witnesses! He seemed genuinely surprised that I
“took the joke so hard”, “it was just an innocent thing otherwise I wouldn’t
have said it so openly. I thought of all women, you would be strong and open
enough to understand such a joke”…Like wow, why don’t you just rape me for a
joke, that is the only thing left!
It is that
psychotic and ‘normal’ to abuse women and sexually harass them with such ease, result
of accepted culture of violence and impunity.
