By Mulky Early

Today was a very conflicting day for me. I was torn between appreciating Somalilanders on their progress and celebration, and the demons that fuelled the said progress.

As I scrolled through my newsfeed, I was met with plenty of Somalilanders in cheerful mood, wishing their fellow landers a joyful celebration. A slight nudge to my solar plexus as I realized the undertones of separation-it was so concrete. And other statuses were of non-Somalilanders who penned their congratulatory messages with a very subtle hint of confusion. I picked up on it, as I do most of the times. I read people’s energies and vibes before I read their lips. Words may lie, but energy never does. And what was absent from the feeds was the radio silence of a faceless mass of Somalis who have been disgruntled bystanders to this forceful parade, and their tongues are missiles they’d rather disarm.

Then there’s me, burdened with a calling bigger than me. It’s like every inch of my skin is fitted with emotion receptors that picks up on the emotions and thoughts of everyone, everywhere. My boldness is just a front, an exoskeleton to protect my extremely sensitive inner self.

I’m confused. I feel I walked in on a movie that I missed the first half of, and I’m desperately trying to focus on the second half whilst piecing together what I had missed.

My parents left Somalia in late ’88. I was born in Sweden in 1989. My first word was Swedish. It was ‘titta’ which means ‘look’. Was it a foreboding of what my life has grown to be, of guiding, teaching, explaining, connecting? Telling my fellow humans; look, look to the lost beauty of our world?

I lived in three worlds growing up; the Swedish world, the Somali immigrant world, and my own world of intense curiosity and emotional sensitivity. I always felt like I had to carry heavy burdens.

By the time I was 5, my mum had taught me both the Swedish and Somali alphabet.

My parents watched helplessly as their country crumbled. Can you imagine going on a vacation and a forest fire sweeping through your city, and you can do nothing but sit back and watch a part of your life go up in smokes. Sensational headlines in the evening news, soon forgotten!

My parents always reminded me to transcend myself, to have high ambition, to strive. I felt imbued with a great, scary task. What, I did not know. But I felt how that sense of duty disconnected me from my peers. It was like I was observing them from a different realm. I remember mum watching Lion King with us, this was in 1994 or 1995, and there was a scene where Simba’s late father Mufasa appears to him through the clouds, imploring with Simba to ‘ Never forget who you are’. My mum turned to us and said,do you hear? Glöm inte vem ni är. Don’t forget who you are. It’d be a slogan she’d revisit often throughout our childhood.

I’ve tried, really tried to shut down that voice within me that keeps imploring me to not forget Somalia, to rebuild Somalia. But whenever I’d bury it, it would bury me, and I’d frantically come up to the surface for air, vowing to never bury that voice. It’s been my tormentor. It’s forced me to walk through fires, to speak up to tyrants, to face the deepest, darkest abysses in my soul. Oh, how I’ve hated and hated that voice.

But I can’t forget about Somalia. I know that 20 years from now, I’ll be working day and night for the Somali cause, just like I do today. It’s the only way I can live with myself. It’s the only way I can hand down hope and integrity to my kids. I don’t want my kids to feel the pain of helplessness, of loss, of being lost that’d register on my parents faces.

Before I reconcile the warring parties, I must reconcile the war within me. Before I heal others, I must heal. I must oust the demons of old that linger in the shadows of denial and silence. I must let go of the pain I’ve inherited by allowing it to burn me on its way out.

Today was confusing for me because it became evident to me how we are simply shadows of our parents. How we hold on to the pain narrative weaved inside our identity. How scared we are of discovering the futility and falsehood of our narratives. So we let it define us, for life. And we fight battles that aren’t our own.

For over a year now, I’ve been burdened with deep anger and hurt towards the isaaq. For years I had staunchly and naively supported Somaliland, opposing any stereotypes and tales of how ‘they’ hated ‘us’. I was always the contrarian. But a year ago, my worldview was shattered, horribly. I befriended natives of Awdal who spoke of the horror of oppression and censorship they suffered first hand from the Somaliland government. I was hurt and I felt stupid, wondering if the isaaq ever looked at my naive saccharine self with disdain and mockery. I was torn because the last sliver of hope dissolved in the light of reality.

But I didn’t give up. What followed was a studious year of intense soul-searching, researching, countless fb convos (conversations) and lengthy calls where I listened to both Somalilanders and the Northern Unionists. I had to reconcile those clashing accounts, without invalidating either. And that process was by far the most difficult. It’s one thing to collect data, but how you interpret it, how you synthesize opinions and conclusions from raw data is entirely dependent on who you are as a person.

So it transformed me. I had to hold many difficult discussions, write controversial posts and be incredibly vulnerable by opening myself up to be pelted with accusations of tribalism, and of disapproving frowns. I knew that if I wanted to get to the truth, I had to come out behind my armour of ‘they hate me’. I had to stand in the faces that swore they hated me, and give them every power to tear me down, but trusting them not to.

I still don’t have an answer or conclusion. But I’ve allowed myself to let my feelings and thoughts teach me-to let them through. It’s so important, this mid-point of the process. Where you’re too far in to turn back, but not advanced enough to see a light at the end of the tunnel-fumbling in the dark, armed with nothing but faith and hope in a good outcome, in discovering the truth.

By going to the dark places where fear and hatred and hopelessness lives, I was transformed by the gestalts of the chronic trauma and chaos we’ve endured for centuries, as a people.  I had to be drowned by the river, burnt by the fire, be thrown from mountains, for me to understand.

Healing does not take place in denial, in blinding ourselves to what happened, in abolishing tribalism from being uttered in public. For emotions can never disappear, only transformed. And even if you don’t talk about it, even if you try to ignore it, it’s still playing in the background, unbridled, free to unleash itself like misguided drones.

So my call to you is, step aside from your narrative; transcend what you think you know. What is in truth won’t get lost; you don’t have to worry about that. But be open to let anything that is not truth to fall off. Simply shed leaves and endure a winter for that’s the cycle of growth.

Mulky Early
Email: mulki89@hotmail.se