A Rare Evening at Bar Saqajaan

Back in my boarding school days at Banadir Secondary School in Mogadishu, three of my childhood friends and I often hung out together after study hours. The school compound housed many Soviet teachers—disciplined, reserved, and highly trained educators, sent on secondment from their institutions to practice their English.

Life at the boarding school had its share of hardships, and one of the worst was the food. The dining hall was notorious for serving bad, tasteless meals. Many students complained of heartburn from the nutritionless diet. Our rice dinners were so sticky and solid that we nicknamed them “cement”—if you overturned your plate, the contents wouldn’t fall off.

Given this dire situation, students needed extra pocket money for an occasional early-evening escape to town for tea with milk. But not all of us could afford it every day.

One evening, we scraped together enough pennies for four cups of tea and two Rothmans cigarettes. We made our way to a little teashop that our school principal, Saleman Gaal—now the Chairman of the Somaliland Senate (the Guurti)—mockingly called Bar Saqajaan. (“Saqajaan” is a derogatory Somali term for someone of bad behavior.)

Our tight-knit group of four was ready to savor every sip and puff. Anshur, the oldest among us, hailed from the village of Buhodle in Togdher, near the Ethiopian border (now part of Puntland’s Ayn region). As we shared a cigarette, he took noticeably longer drags than his co-owner. The other protested, “Hey, you’re taking more than your share!” Without missing a beat, Anshur replied, “Let me puff enough to reach all the way to Buhodle!” We erupted in laughter.

After our tea and meager dose of nicotine, everyone felt content—except for Sharif, who came from the coastal town of Brava. Back home, he loved eating bursalid, a rich, oily Somali baked dough. At Bar Saqajaan, he spotted some in the glass counter but couldn’t afford a piece. With mock longing, he began to sing:

> “Bursalid, nin aan meeso qabin balad haduu joogo,
kama baahi beelee ishu balac ku siihaaye.”

Roughly translated: A poor man in town can’t help but keep staring at bursalid.

The entire shop—customers and waiters alike—burst into laughter. The owner, perhaps fearing the “evil eye” of Sharif’s yearning, brought us four pieces of bursalid on the house.

With his craving satisfied, Sharif’s mind wandered again. Just then, a hen darted around the corner of the shop. He turned to Anshur and asked, “Anshur, how soon does a hen deliver her babies after conception?”

Without hesitation, Anshur quipped, “If you mate with it now, it’ll give you plenty of kittens right away!” Another wave of thunderous laughter shook the room.

That night, we all agreed—it had been a rare and wonderful evening, a perfect blend of friendship, humor, and small pleasures in the midst of boarding school hardship.

You may recall that recently Kenya had declined to participate in final proceedings of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on maritime delimitation dispute in the Indian Ocean between Somalia and Kenya. Since then intelligence and diplomatic sources indicated that Kenya has been engaged in diplomatic offensive in countries allied with and supporting Farmajo government like Qatar and Turkey. Qatar is said to be a major investment shareholder of ENI, the Italian oil firm known to have been conducting seismic and feasibility studies in the disputed portion of the Ocean on behest of Kenya. Turkey and Qatar are strategic allies in the Middle East, and Qatar has great diplomatic influence on President Erdogan of Turkey.

President Kenyatta has been lobbying the leaders of Tutkey and Qatar to persuade Farmajo abandon his hardline position on maritime dispute with Kenya, even if the ICJ were to rule the dispute in favour of Somalia, efforts that may paving the way to resources-sharing arrangements between the two countries. There are intelligence reporters as well pointing out that the director of NISA, Fahad Haji Yassin Haji Dahir is heavily involved in these negotiations between Farmajo and leaders of Turkey and Qatar. Observators believe that a neutral venue was needed to bring Farmajo and Kenya to a meeting face to face under the auspices of DRC president flex, and that is why the venue (Congo) was chosen. Further, Farmajo is bound to pay a long-delayed visit to Abyi Ahmed of Ethiopia to discuss on the Somalia’s constitutional crisis, following Farmajo’s illegal extension of his mandate for two more years. He will continue to attend the inauguration of Ismail Ghuelleh of Djibouti before he flies on to UN Security Council Session on Somalia’s crisis. Farmajo is now in a weaker political and diplomatic position because of his problem of constitutional legitimacy at home.

For both Farmajo and Kenyatta, the stakes are high. This is a developing story. Stay tuned.

Postscript: Since posting this article, Ismail Ghuelleh declined to invite Farmajo to the inauguration, and Farmajo, instead, sent his foreign minister to US as he wasn’t welcome there hinself for illegally extending his mandate for two more years.