Leaving the City I loved
By Mohamed Bakayr
May 2003

The morning of December 31, 1990 was the beginning of the end of my life in Mogadishu. I bid goodbye to Mogadishu and grieved as if I would never see it again. Truly, by abandoning our home and saying good-bye to Mogadishu, I felt striped of relatives, of friends, of a familiar neighbourhood, and of a loved city. Although I was not born in Mogadishu, I grew up in it, drank from its semi-salty water, and fed on its delicious Muffo (Somali pita bread). I completed my intermediate, secondary, and postsecondary studies at its educational centres. Mogadishu was once one of the most beautiful and peaceful cities of the Horn of Africa, thereby earning the name "the city of peace." The city had been famous for its mild climate, and it had taken pride in its tall, minareted and centuries-old mosques. Mogadishu has been the capital of Somalia since the independence of the country in 1960, although its status in the future is not clear, since some provinces have voted for secession.
As I had been writing this memoir, Mogadishu's beautiful scenery diverted my sight from what I had been trying to compose on the screen of my computer. A little later, a soft voice seemed to whisper into my ear and say to me, " this is not my present image; it is my old picture before I got mutilated." Again, I heard the whispering voice saying, " I am not the city that you knew and grew up on its soil; this is not me." " But you must know that you have not been part of the people who have teamed up in the process of decapitating my loved children, defaming my landscape, debilitating my beautiful nature, and destroying my resourceful land," said the voice again to me. After some minutes of hallucination, I got my sanity back and continued to write. However, I realized that I was not in Mogadishu, and no pictures of Mogadishu were on the walls of my room. But I vividly remembered the last day that I bid goodbye to Mogadishu, and I remembered the last day that I had left the city I loved.
In the morning of December 31, 1990, a fierce battle awakened the city, causing confusion and bewilderment among its residents. The ruling regime at the time and the rebellious fighters had turned their guns against each other, thereby transforming the once peaceful city into a battleground. The aim of the furious rebels was to topple the regime, whereas the goal of the despotic regime was to cling to its long held chair. Although this military regime had ruled Somalia for twenty-one years, it was still committed to protect its chair to the last drop of its blood. On the other side, the opposition was determined to root out the regime once and forever.

Consequently, the situation was a murky one, and the devastation of the war lay everywhere. Up in the sky, there had been a huge bellowing smoke, which resulted from the heavy arms exchanged by the warring sides; dark and tearful clouds chilled and lidded Mogadishu's sky. And, because of the chaos and civil war that enveloped the city, civilians ran in every direction; furthermore, families and relatives were parted one from the other, for everybody had been fleeing for his life, with no clear directions for escape. Many civilians, myself included, were prone to all kinds of dangers, for the relatives and neighbours who respected each other and lived side by side for centuries turned their weapons against each other, simply because they belonged to different tribes.
I, among other hordes of people, entered an abandoned shop, hoping to hide from the inevitable bullets. We exposed pale and drawn faces because we were in the middle of severe crises which seemed to have no end. In this half-demolished shop, we felt as though we were prisoners because we could not vacate the shop until the fighting cleared up. While in that shop, nobody spoke with anybody else, for everyone was afraid of the other. No one knew who belonged to which tribe, for there were no marks on our faces; thus, the shop was dominated by a prolonged silence.
From within the shop, we could see hordes of people running in different directions, some in a westerly direction, some in a southerly direction, some in a northerly direction, and others in an easterly direction. People were running in all directions, and it seemed as if the world had been blown up. Various bullets of different sounds roared up the sky, and the city's residents were seeing death speeding at them. Countless numbers of lories and cars fleeing the war zone were bumper-to-bumper along the ill-maintained roads of the city; besides, women carrying babies on their backs and over their pelvic were seen at everywhere.
Eventually, I fled to a safer place, but I could not predict the future that lay ahead of me. If one did not escape to somewhere outside of Somalia, one would either kill or be killed; therefore, I fled in the direction of a neighbouring country, to avoid spilling the blood of my fellow Somalis. I had never dreamt of leaving Mogadishu, save perhaps for short trips to neighbouring countries, but, alas, I left the city I loved for distant locations of the globe, and it has not been clear to me thus far whether I will ever see it again or not!

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