Confessions of a Reformed Mooryaan*

“Mankind, even at its most depraved, retains a dogged, enduring nobility.” Leo Tolstoy.
***

Guled (not his real name) ** hangs at a Somali restaurant in a major advanced city in the West. He is in his early forties, short and thin. He has a walrus mustache and a clean-cut soft black hair. When he talks to others, his eyes move around as if he is afraid of an ambush. He talks slowly but confidently. At times, his hands flail like a teacher instructing his pupils, but he seems to be polite and courteous. At the restaurant, the customers come and go, and he greets some of them like he is their buddy, and at times, teases some of them for eating ravenously.

“Slow down, uncle, there is no famine here”, Guled jokes.


“I am harboring an awful secret,” he says matter-of-factly. “Can you believe that none of these men know that I was once a hard-core criminal, a Mooryaan”?

“Hey you pass the hot sauce,” he shouts at a man next to his table.

Guled, indeed, had once a life replete with debauchery and decadence.

He was born in the rural areas of Central Somalia in 1970. He was the only child, and was raised by his single mother. His mother, a homemaker, owned a herd of goats.

“I was a herdsman,” says Guled, “and as a child, I had never been to school”.

Guled herded goats from sunrise to sunset; keeping an eye on them and taking them to the well. By the time he came home in the evenings, he was exhausted. His family lived in huts, with no electricity and no running water.

“I miss the simple life I led as a young man,” he laments.

When Guled was 21 years old, his life took a dramatic turn. He became a gunslinger. He said that he was getting tired of the peripatetic life of a herdsman.

“I was looking ways to get out of the provinces,” Guled added, “and venture into Mogadishu”. To him, Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, was a place full of excitements; cars, tall buildings, good food, wealth, etc.

In the early 1990s, and at the peak of Somalia’s civil war, representatives of Warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid were roving in Central Somalia- near Dhusa Mareb- recruiting young people to join his United Somali Congress (USC) militia. Guled, who had a smattering knowledge of the use of AK-47, was thrilled, and immediately joined the militia. General Aidid was the warlord who became the object of an American hunt during the infamous incident of Black Hawk.

“The movie Black Hawk Down failed to capture how gallantly the Somalis fought, and repelled the American Rangers,” boasts Guled. “I felt proud to be Somali during those historic skirmishes”.

Contrary to popular belief, the Mooryaan do not get salaries from their warlords. They have to fetch for their own food and secure their housing. The gunslingers are, however, expected to avail themselves for battles, or manning the many illegal check points that had proliferated in Mogadishu in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Guled’s typical day, as a bandit, was spending hours chewing Kat, a stimulant drug commonly used in East Africa and Yemen, robbing innocent pedestrians and drivers that came through the various checkpoints he was stationed while in Mogadishu. At times, he joined combat warfare when his group attacked other militia groups to gain territorial edge. In essence, in the streets of Mogadishu, every day was a fight for survival.

Guled said that he had once overheard two Somalis in a restaurant in the West reminiscing about the good old day of Mogadishu. One of the men said that he had missed attending concerts in the Chinese-built Somali National Theatre. “I kept quiet and laughed because I was present when that historic theater was being stripped to the core by Mooryaan while I chewed Kat in one of the corners of the theater,” he said.

Guled’s life in Mogadishu in the 1990s was pregnant with danger. He stated that he was operating in a complicated and callous world. There were at least several times, he claims, that he had come close to losing his life when rival militia groups ambushed his gang.
“If you live by the gun,” Guled says, “you have to be ready to die by the gun.”

One day, something strange happened. Guled, surrounded by a galaxy of bandits, saw a group of Mooryaan trying to rape a Madhiban woman and her young daughter who were trying to cross a check-point. The Madhiban people are a minority clan in Somalia that has been historically discriminated against by other Somalis. The Mooryaan had already robbed the Madhiban family, and on top of that, they wanted to humiliate these poor women by physically assaulting them. Guled recounted, in a painful detail, how he had to intervene, in the nick of time, to save the women by firing shots at the bandits until they dispersed. He rescued the victims, gave them some money, and took them to safety. Guled’s own colleagues hurled curses at him for spoiling the party. Guled, apparently, had committed an egregious act for firing at a bunch of Mooryaan and, hence, endangering the lives of his compatriots, just to save some unrelated women. His Mooryaan companions were flummoxed, and had difficulty understanding Guled’s intrinsic motivation for saving the women. Guled says now that he himself did not know, at the time, what led to his “heroic act” in that memorable day.

In 1996, the murder of General Mohamed Farah Aidid seemed to presage the inevitable demise of Guled’s career as a Mooryaan. Guled admits that Mogadishu became awash with many gunslingers that were competing in a shrinking market. It became like a small pond, he admits, with lots of crocodiles. But his biggest reason of disenchantment with the Mooryaan was when a captain of his gang left one of his wounded colleagues behind. Guled felt powerless and, hence, became bitter. He became convinced that the same fate awaited him if he ever got injured. He never saw his colleague again.

Moreover, Guled’s longtime ambition of being a young man from the provinces determined to make his mark in Mogadishu did not come to fruition. Something started gnawing at him that his life of crime was becoming a dead-end. It was time for him to move on. He said that he was suffering from crisis of confidence, and that he was emotionally and psychologically spent due to the unending battles in the streets of Mogadishu. But he had no serviceable skills that did not entail the commission of crime. Furthermore, he was illiterate. But he became determined to change his life and rehabilitate himself. He left for Ethiopia, a neighboring country, to get away from his wretched environment and the bad company he had kept.

When Guled arrived in the Somali region of Ethiopia, he had no money and no place to stay. He had no choice but to ask strangers to give him food and shelter. A Somali man in the town of Jigjiga befriended him and, perhaps, gave him a lifetime advice. The man encouraged Guled to go to a literacy school and take every opportunity to get better. He took the advice to the heart and enrolled in an evening adult school in Jigjiga. That was the first time in his life, Guled grins with a smirk on his face, that he had started holding a pen, not a gun, and a book. Guled was excited with the beginning of a new chapter in his life.

After two years in Jigjiga, Guled became acclimated with his new life in Ethiopia. He was getting financial assistance from his relatives in Europe and North America, and was still enrolled in the adult literacy program.

One day in early 2000, while walking in a market in Jigjiga, he heard a muffled sound that was coming from a female walking behind him. Someone was calling his name. He looked behind his back and surprisingly saw the young Madhiban woman whom he had rescued in Mogadishu several years earlier. There was a sense of jubilation, Guled said, as the two greeted each other warmly. “Mariam” (not her real name) was shocked to find Guled in Jigjiga and asked him what he was doing there.

“I am in school”, Guled replied.

“What are you studying?”

Guled says that he felt a tinge of embarrassment, and told Mariam that he was actually studying the Somali language.

Mariam immediately realized that he was studying literacy because the two were already conversing in Somali, their native language, but instead, she offered gushing praise for Guled’s aptitude for learning. She was going back to where she came from in the West three days later and gave him money. The two exchanged contact information and went their separate ways.
Then, the phone calls between Guled and Mariam ensued. It became apparent that the two were gravitating to one another. After a few months, Guled says that the two fell in love.

Although Guled was called many things in his life, “romantic” was not one of them.
“I have never met a human being who is so caring and non-judgmental than Mariam”, Guled said. “She never said a word to me, or to anyone, that I was once a Mooryaan.”

Guled characterizes Mariam as a woman with sunny disposition who has been bent on promoting him, not demoting him.

But the couple’s courtship set a storm of protest from their respective families. Mariam’s family was concerned that their daughter, a naturalized citizen in a Western country, was being used by someone whom they wryly called “a loser” with no good future in sight. Guled was portrayed by Mariam’s family as a sycophant and an opportunist desperate to get out of Africa, by any means necessary, even if it meant latching himself onto a decent, hard-working single woman.

Guled’s family greeted his future plan of marrying a Madhiban woman with skepticism and hostility. He was urged to marry a woman from his own clan. Guled was not in the mood of listening to anybody whom he felt was intent on sabotaging his burgeoning relationship with Mariam.

“It took a lot of discipline to maintain calm,” states Guled.

Mariam, on her side, saw something in Guled that was promising. She believed that he was a changed man who was trying his best to ameliorate his condition. She sponsored him to join her in the West, and the couple got married. Upon arrival in the West, Mariam told Guled that she would work for their family for the first six months while he studied the local language. Guled did not waste time and started attending an adult school several hours a day. Then, he found a job which entailed to providing services to the public.

Guled and Mariam have been married for nine years and have six children.

“I am a blessed man,” beams Guled. “I am no longer clannish or thuggish”.

Guled’s children are still young and are, of course, oblivious to their father’s dangerous past. “Human beings do have capacity for change, if given an opportunity,” opines Guled. “I can’t stand those who give excuses or wallow in past grievances”.

Guled has given his wife credit for playing a crucial role in his dramatic transformation. He recounts a story he had heard about a young man running late for a job interview. On his way, he saw a woman standing in the street, during morning rush hour, and next to her idle car. The young man became ambivalent about proceeding for his job interview or stopping and helping the stranded woman. He did the latter knowing that he would be late for his appointment. The man changed the tire for the woman and she thanked him and left. The young man arrived for his appointment twenty minutes late, and was ushered in an office to see the personnel manager. He was shocked to see the very woman he had just helped ready to interview him. In short, the man got the job because the manager told him that he was a fine young man “who cared”.

“I feel that my wife gave me a second chance because she pumped vitality into my moribund life,” says Guled.” She has taught me humility, pride, and empathy.”

Notes

**Mooryaan is a Somali word which means an outlaw, a bandit in the service of a Somali warlord or for himself. The word can be singular or plural. The Mooryaan commit an assortment of crimes such as murder, rape, assault, burglary, road-blocking, and abusing drugs.

** This is a true story. The identity and the location of the Reformed Mooryaan are kept confidential.