I never met the good professor in
person, but we had exchanged several emails.
I was very familiar with his research and books. In fact, his book, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case
of Sayid Mahammad Abdille Hassan (Cambridge, 1982), is perhaps one of the
best books ever written on the role of poetry as a tool to gain and maintain
political power in the Somali society.
Samatar’s writing, sometimes hilarious, mostly insightful,
made the reader ponder and laugh heartily. He also had a whiff of disdain in
his interviews and writings for past and present Somali governments.
Two years ago, I wrote an article
about a conflict between former President Siad Barre and Samatar in the 1980s.
I wanted to get Samatar’s take on the story so I sent him a draft of my piece.
To my amazement, the professor had another idea. As an editor of the journal Horn of Africa, he asked me if I could
perhaps publish the article there. I was stunned. I’d written the article for a
general audience and wanted it that way. It was flattering, however, that the good professor liked the
article to the extent he wanted to publish it academically.
Aside from the political spat
between the president and Samatar, my article touched on something of a taboo:
the professor’s past conversion to Christianity. I was concerned that Samatar
would not discuss the matter, and on this I was actually right. He saw his
change of religion at an early age as a personal matter or, as he said in one
of his articles a year ago, pure pragmatism. It was, after all, the
missionaries who had helped him get an education, employment, and an
opportunity to come to the U.S. Most of all, he had also met his wife, Lydia,
through her missionary work in Somalia. In 2005, however, Samatar made it clear
in an interview that he was back to his religious heritage. He stated he had
gone “from one kitab (book) to
another. And now I am returning to the original kitab.”
Professor Samatar was one of a
kind. A year ago, he wrote that he wanted to change his clan affiliation from
Lelkase to Geri. (Incidentally, did Faisal Roble, a close friend of the
professor, have anything to do with this?).
Samatar had a knack for courting controversy, however, his supposed clan
change yielded blinks, squints and blank stares. He was so impressed with the
Geri that he wanted to be adopted by them. In essence, though, he didn’t make a
big splash when he switched from one Darod sub-clan to another. Once, I thought Samatar almost came close to
switching to the Dir clan in the way he extolled the virtues of a Biyamaal
intellectual who had eloquently spoken about the plight of his people in Lower
Juba. I thought that would have been big news: a Darod scholar switches to Dir.
But Samatar saw something in the Geri—and only in the Geri—that appealed to
him.
One thing we all know is that
every one of us is born into his clan and, hence, we have little choice. Once
upon a time, Saddam Hussein was asked about his equally bloodthirsty gangster
son, Uday. In response, the dictator rolled his eyes and said in a melancholy
voice, “What can I do about it? I can’t choose my relatives.” Being born to a
Somali clan is either a blessing or a curse, depending on whom you ask. However,
Samatar succeeded in sparking a healthy debate among Somali intellectuals: Can
anyone forsake his clan in favor of another?
I will certainly miss Samatar’s writings, his courageous
radio interviews, and his sharp insights into the everyday absurdities, quirks,
nomadic tendencies, and feisty spirit of the Somali people.
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