Somali Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Somali. Here they are! All 100 of them:

You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories)
I strongly believe that love is the answer and that it can mend even the deepest unseen wounds. Love can heal, love can console, love can strengthen, and yes, love can make change.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
Sometimes you can learn, even from a bad experience. By coping you become stronger. The pain does not go away, but it becomes manageable.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
What you have learned from experience is worth much more than gold. If you have a house it may burn down. Any kind of possession can be lost, but your experience is yours forever. Keep it and find a way to use it.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at the first attempt, but beware of an honest man. (said by the author to be a Somali saying)
Louis L'Amour (The Walking Drum)
I don't feel like I can change the world. I don't even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
A seed is like a little girl: it can look small and worthless, but if you treat it well then it will grow beautiful.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
You could see her face, because she was Somali. Saudi women had no faces.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
The young (Somali) women were very inquisitive as to European customs, and listened attentively to descriptions of the manners, education, and clothes of white ladies, as if out to complete their strategic education with the knowledge of how the males of an alien race were conquered and subdued.
Karen Blixen (Out of Africa)
Of all the races in Africa there cannot be one better to live among than the most difficult, the proudest, the bravest, the vainest, the most merciless, the friendliest, the somalis" Gerald Hanley Irish Writter and soldier in Brittish Army.
Gerald Hanley (Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis)
But I also realized that around the world, in places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. They were dangerous, these young men, often deliberately and casually cruel. Still, in the aggregate, at least, I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
I didn't like the endless gossiping or the constant complaints that they were victims of external factors. Somalis never said "Sorry" or "I made a mistake" or "I don't know": they invented excuses. All these group strategies to avoid confronting reality depressed me. Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
Those who number themselves among the followers of Jesus—but don’t witness for Him—are actually siding with the Taliban, the brutal regime that rules North Korea, the secret police in communist China, and the Somalis and Saudi Arabias of the world. Believers who do not share their faith aid and abet Satan’s ultimate goal of denying others access to Jesus. Our silence makes us accomplices.
Nik Ripken (The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected)
Dominic tooled up five minutes later in a ten-year-old Nissan pickup truck that had been painted a non-standard khaki, dipped in dried mud up to the wheel arches and then randomly smacked with a sledgehammer to give it that Somali Technical look. I found myself checking to see if there was a mount for a fifty-caliber machine gun in the back.
Ben Aaronovitch (Foxglove Summer (Rivers of London, #5))
Clarity of thought is a must for brevity in speech.
Somali K. Chakrabarti (Lei: A wreath for your soul)
In Somali culture hyper-masculinity is the most desired attribute in men. Femininity signifies softness, a lightness of touch: qualities that are aggressively pressed onto young girls and women. When a woman does not possess feminine traits, it is considered an act of mild social resistance. This applies equally to men who are not overtly masculine but the stakes are considerably amplified. If a Somali man is considered feminine he is deemed weak, helpless, pitiful: The underlying message being that femininity is inherently inferior to masculinity.
Diriye Osman
As a young gay African, I have been conditioned from an early age to consider my sexuality a dangerous deviation from my true heritage as a Somali by close kin and friends. As a young gay African coming of age in London, there was another whiplash of cultural confusion that one had to recover from again and again: that accepting your sexual identity doesn’t necessarily mean that the wider LGBT community, with its own preconceived notions of what constitutes a "valid" queer identity, will embrace you any more welcomingly than your own prejudiced kinsfolk do.
Diriye Osman
There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones.
Brooke Burgess (The Cat's Maw (The Shadowland Saga, #1))
think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)
She was eight years old, with the body of a child, but her spirit was weighed down by an adult suffering.
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
The Tears of Dark Water is not really “about” Somali piracy. It is about the multi-dimensional fallout of Somalia’s disintegration over the past two decades. Piracy offered me a narrative framework to explore not only how a hijacking and hostage crisis could end in tragedy but also how the breakdown of social order on land could inspire young Somalis to take to the ocean.
Corban Addison (The Tears of Dark Water: Epic tale of conflict, redemption and common humanity)
Many more villagers, who have seen an elephant for the first time in their lives, give absurd exaggerations regarding his size, weight, and height. One of them describes him as ‘a fundament!’. Another, elaborating, alludes to the term ‘firmament,’ because of the elephant’s hugeness. He felt as though the sky was obliterated from his vision. The last to be interviewed by the local TV station swears that he sensed the world lean forward as the elephant came closer and tilt backwards as the beast walked away. This large mammal ambles purposefully. He pays no heed to the crowded silence following him in stealthy consciousness. One of the villagers, a woman often suspected of dabbling in witchcraft, talks of her inspired theory: that this was no elephant, more like a human on a holy mission of avenging justice. Two other witnesses, neither having had any contact with the woman, speak in substantiation of the woman’s claims, giving as evidence the observation that the elephant turned around when someone said something in Somali. Several villagers will not comment, afraid of a fitting retribution should they do so.
Nuruddin Farah
No one assume the strength of self-criticise till he stop criticising the others
Daud Gilingil (Educational and integrational challenges facing Somali students in secondary schools)
A speck of ire can blaze a fire; the fate of war can be sealed with a dart, a butterfly flapping its wings may turn the tide miles apart!
Somali K. Chakrabarti
Somali proverb that says a brave man is always frightened three times by a lion; when he first sees his track, when he first hears him roar and when he first confronts him.
Ernest Hemingway (The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway)
Everyone seems to agree that it is Minnesotans’ responsibility to assimilate to Somali culture, not the other way around.11 The Catholic University of St. Thomas has installed Islamic prayer rooms and footbaths in order to demonstrate, according to Dean of Students Karen Lange, that the school is “diverse.” Minneapolis’s mayor, Betsy Hodges, has shown up wearing a full hijab to meetings with Somalis. (In fairness, it was “Forbid Your Daughter to Work Outside the Home” Day.)
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
A few months ago I finished speaking, and looked down at a class of schoolchildren. A Somali girl with dark eyes hesitantly put her hand up and asked, 'Do you think it will happen again?' I can't answer that, but maybe you can. Will it? I hope not.
Eva Schloss (After Auschwitz)
When I lived in Holland, I would try to make myself physically shrink when Somali or other African men sat next to me on the train. They behaved in a proprietary manner, as though I were theirs to be subjected to lewd comments. Now I see that it is not just Somali girls editing themselves out of city streets. European women, too, are facing increased rates of sexual violence and harassment on public transit and are adopting coping mechanisms similar to those used by women in Africa and the Middle East.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights)
Perhaps as the Patois and Somali languages were poured into the Black-British pot our cultures would grow in love for one another, but there was an equal chance they would mix like oil and water and refuse to be branded by the disingenuous stamp of race.
Moses McKenzie (An Olive Grove in Ends)
In April 2009 we all watched entranced on CNN as a Navy SEAL sniper team fired three simultaneous shots, instantly executing the three pirates who had kidnapped a U.S. shipping captain off the Somali coast. From the moment they were mobilized, it took that sniper team less than ten hours to deploy, get halfway around the world, parachute with full kit at 12,000 feet into darkness and plunge into the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, rendezvous with waiting U.S. Naval forces, and complete their mission, start to finish.
Brandon Webb (The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen)
Given that individual identity and the daily operation of society are derived from clans and the subgroups within clans, Somalis have no experience with a centralized liberal democratic form of government. Stated differently, no meta-game around a central Somali state has ever evolved endogenously.
Christopher J. Coyne (After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy)
Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls.
Sam Harris
He carries home in the way he walks: an elegant, loose strut. He wears home on his skin in the form of attar, a delicious perfume that makes me dream of Somali coastlines, places where children play football amidst colonial ruins, and young men like Korfa flee in darkness on boats to Yemen and Kenya, determined never to look back.
Diriye Osman (Fairytales for Lost Children)
so spoil me baby, give me everything i want bc i am lost w/out your leniency i don’t wanna be a queen i don’t wanna rule i only wanna be a princess &wear the jewels
Malab, The Komorébi (The Breast Mountains Of All Time (Are In Hargeisa))
Erayga Dumar Quraanka wuxuu ku soo arooray 24 jeer, halka erayga Ragna uu soo arooray 24 jeer
Qalbi Somali
Since the water turns into Ice Different physical shapes the eye See but indeed their building blocks still remain same easy, (H2O) Farah Said.
farah Said
كل ماتقوله اليوم قد يستعمل ضدك يوما ماء،اذاً من الافضل الاحتفاظ بأسرارك لنفسك وحتى بكل ماتفكر فيه من اشياء
Somaly Mam
Does not heed to the dark With its shimmering light, Moon quietly bathes the ocean
Somali K. Chakrabarti
In the Somali culture many things go unsaid: how we love, who we love and why we love that way. I don't know why Suldana loves the way she does. I don't know why she loves who she does. But I do know that by respecting her privacy I am letting her dream in a way that my generation was not capable of. I'm letting her reach for something neither one of us can articulate.
Diriye Osman (Fairytales for Lost Children)
Waxaannu ka tusin Aayaadkayaga jihooyinka iyo naftooda ilaa ay uga caddaato inuu Quraanku xaq yahay, miyaanu ku fillayn Eebbe inuu wax kasta ogyahay”. Suuradda Ash-Shuuraa Aayadda 53aad.
Qalbi Somali
Before settling in to work, we noticed a large travel case on the mantelpiece. I unsnapped the latches and lifted the top. On one side there was a large desert scene on a marble base featuring miniature gold figurines, as well as a glass clock powered by changes in temperature. On the other side, set in a velvet case, was a necklace half the length of a bicycle chain, encrusted with what appeared to be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of rubies and diamonds—along with a matching ring and earrings. I looked up at Ben and Denis. “A little something for the missus,” Denis said. He explained that others in the delegation had found cases with expensive watches waiting for them in their rooms. “Apparently, nobody told the Saudis about our prohibition on gifts.” Lifting the heavy jewels, I wondered how many times gifts like this had been discreetly left for other leaders during official visits to the kingdom—leaders whose countries didn’t have rules against taking gifts, or at least not ones that were enforced. I thought again about the Somali pirates I had ordered killed, Muslims all, and the many young men like them across the nearby borders of Yemen and Iraq, and in Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, whose earnings in a lifetime would probably never touch the cost of that necklace in my hands. Radicalize just 1 percent of those young men and you had yourself an army of half a million, ready to die for eternal glory—or maybe just a taste of something better. I set the necklace down and closed the case. “All right,” I said. “Let’s work.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
In just a few decades, Minnesota has gone from being approximately 99 percent German, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, and Polish to 20 percent African immigrant,7 including at least one hundred thousand Somalis.8 And that’s not counting the Somalis who have recently left the country to fight with al Qaeda and ISIS. One hundred thousand is just an estimate. We don’t know precisely how many Somalis the federal government has brought in as “refugees” because the government won’t tell us. The public can’t be trusted with the truth. Since becoming more multicultural, Minnesota has turned into a hotbed of credit card skimming, human trafficking, and smash-and-grab robberies.9 Mosques have popped up all over the state—as have child prostitutes and machete attacks. Welfare consumption in Minnesota has more than doubled on account of the newcomers—only half of whom have jobs. Those Somalis who do have jobs earn an average of $21,000 a year, compared with $46,000 for the average Minnesotan. (Consider yourself lucky, Minnesota: In Sweden, only 20 percent of Somalis have jobs.) Eighty percent of Somalis in Minnesota live at or below the poverty line. Nearly 70 percent have not graduated from high school, compared with only 8.4 percent of non-Somali Minnesotans.10
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
But the news reporters had no wish, perhaps no ability, to understand that the fishermen’s coastline had been spoiled with toxic waste, that they could not fish as they once had—Americans really did not understand desperation. It was easier, and certainly more pleasing, to view the Gulf of Aden as a lawless place where Somali pirates reigned. A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.
Elizabeth Strout (The Burgess Boys)
ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from burning buildings into the arms of loving families. When we flee from floods and earthquakes to sleep on blue mats in community centres. We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from abusive relationships, and shooters in cinemas and shopping centres. Sometimes it takes only a day for our countries to persecute us because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation. Sometimes it takes only a minute for the missiles to rain down and leave our towns in ruin and destitution. We are, each of us, refugees longing for that amniotic tranquillity dreaming of freedom and safety when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens. Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian, like our brothers and sisters, we are, each of us, refugees. The bombs fell in their cafés and squares where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed. Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral. We are, each of us, refugees. Don’t let stamped paper tell you differently. We’ve been fleeing for centuries because to stay means getting bullets in our heads because to stay means being hanged by our necks because to stay means being jailed, raped and left for dead. But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge so we don't board dinghies when we can’t swim so we don’t climb walls with snipers aimed at our chest so we don’t choose to remain and die instead. When home turns into hell, you, too, will run with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me! and then you’ll know for certain: you've always been a refugee.
Kamand Kojouri
Ilhan Omar’s 100,000-strong Somali community in Minneapolis is the terrorist recruitment capital of the United States. It is a fertile base for both direct and online recruitment. FBI data show that more men from this community have joined, or sought to join, a foreign terrorist organization over the last dozen years there than in any other jurisdiction in the nation. From this community alone, 45 members left to join either the Somalia-based insurgency al-Shabab or the Iraqi and Syrian wing of ISIS.
Dinesh D'Souza (United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.)
But a fully decentralized swarm system like the one these Somali fighters employed has no brain, no central command node that can be killed. The swarm’s command system is distributed, rule-based, emergent, and thus embedded in the system itself, not tied to any one person, vehicle, or physical location. This suggests the uncomfortable possibility that even if TF Ranger had succeeded in killing General Aidid, the loss of its commander would have had a negligible effect on his organization’s ability to function.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
passionate reader of books in German, her favorites to date include Stiller by Max Frisch, Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer, Die Große Liebe by Hans-Josef Ortheil, Selina by Walter Kappacher, Der verschlossene Garten by Undine Gruenter, as well as the poetry of Heinrich Heine, Georg Trakl, Ingeborg Bachmann, and, of course, Rainer Maria Rilke. Gunilla currently divides her time between the Baltic Sea and the Italian Alps, where she enjoys spending time with her family, her boyfriend and her red Somali cat, Polzerino.
Rainer Maria Rilke (Stories of God: Geschichten vom lieben Gott)
Dadaab is a vivid reminder that refugee problems don't end simply because journalistic interest moves elsewhere. The inhabitants themselves are irremediably stuck. They can't go back to Somalia because it isn't safe and they can't go elsewhere in Kenya because Kenya has problems enough of its own without having 134,000 Somalis pitching up in Nairobi or Mombasa, looking for food and work. And so way out in the desert there exists this strange city-that-isn't-a-city filled with people who have nowhere to go and nothing much to do.
Bill Bryson (Bill Bryson's African Diary)
A good-for-America immigration policy would not accept people with no job skills. It would not accept immigrants’ elderly relatives, arriving in wheelchairs. It would not accept people accused of terrorism by their own countries. It would not accept pregnant women whose premature babies will cost taxpayers $50,000 a pop,1 before even embarking on a lifetime of government support. It would not accept Somalis who spent their adult lives in a Kenyan refugee camp and then showed up with five children in a Minnesota homeless shelter.
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
I have always been a loner. Even as a child, when my family and friends were off attending parties I would be sequestered in my room, sketchpad in hand, stereo by my side, listening to seductive R&B. Solitude was something I took for granted. Coming from a large family I needed solitude in order to think straight and paint my way out of confusion. My parents were accepting of the fact that I kept to myself and they respected my decision even though it went against my Somali upbringing, a culture rooted in boisterousness and joie de vivre.
Diriye Osman
THE VAST MAJORITY OF ALL LEGAL IMMIGRANTS—TWO-THIRDS—GET IN ON “family reunification” policies each year. In other words, America has no say about the single largest category of immigrants and we end up with gems like Octomom, the Boston Marathon bombers, and one hundred thousand Somalis in Minnesota. Entire villages from Pakistan are dumped on the country, based not on their expertise in nuclear engineering, but because everyone in the village is related to the first guy who got in. If they’re not, in the strict sense, related, they’ll lie. In
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
This connectivity lets urban Somalis tap into global networks for the exchange of money and information, allows them to engage in trade, and lets them pursue legitimate business (such as mobile phone companies).37 Of course, people who live in rural areas without cellphone coverage can’t access these connectivity-enabled overseas sources of support. Thus, greater access to global systems of exchange—something that’s available only from well-connected urban locations—has become a major reason for people to migrate to cities, increasing the pace of urbanization.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
Ethiopia was, famously, never colonized but, having built its own empire, it has similar problems within its borders. Ethiopia has nine major ethnic groups among its population. There are nine administrative areas and two self-governing cities, all based on ethnicity. More than eighty languages are spoken, which spring from four major groupings, and all enjoy official state recognition. The Oromo are the biggest group with about 35 per cent of the population, followed by the Amhara with 27 per cent, and then the Somali and Tigray, each with approximately 6 per cent.
Tim Marshall (The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World – the sequel to Prisoners of Geography)
I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest.
Diriye Osman
Ruth and I often share the stories that we have heard and the things that we have learned to help the western church and many of its congregations grasp a new, and perhaps more biblical, perspective on suffering and persecution in our faith. We share often about how suffering and persecution relate to our faith. We desperately want our western brothers and sisters in Christ to realize that the greatest enemy of our faith today is not communism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, or even Islam. Our greatest enemy is lostness. Lostness is the terrible enemy that Jesus commissioned His followers to vanquish with the battle strategy that He spelled out for them in Matthew 28:18-20. He was addressing this same enemy when He plainly clarified His purpose in coming: 'I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.' Our hope is that believers around the world will get close enough to the heart of God that the first images that come to mind when we heard the word 'Muslim' are not Somali pirates or suicide bombers or violent jihadists or even terrorists. When we hear the word 'Muslim,' we need to see and think of each and every individual Muslim as a lost person who is loved by God. We need to see each Muslim as a person in need of God's grace and forgiveness. We need to see each Muslim as someone for whom Christ died.
Nik Ripken (The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected)
The night before, Michael Chertoff, President Bush’s secretary of homeland security, had called to inform us of credible intelligence indicating that four Somali nationals were thought to be planning a terrorist attack at the inauguration ceremony. As a result, the already massive security force around the National Mall would be beefed up. The suspects—young men who were believed to be coming over the border from Canada—were still at large. There was no question that we’d go ahead with the next day’s events, but to be safe, we ran through various contingencies with Chertoff and his team, then assigned Axe to draft evacuation instructions that I’d give the crowd if an attack took place while I was onstage.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Then I hear a hollering. I’ve been seen. The sailors all cheer. They’re waving and clapping and calling out to me. My glotti picks up only some of it, then gets overloaded and confused: FRENCH: Look it’s a walker it’s a walker it’s one of the walkers SOMALI: A man or a woman? Walker FRENCH: Is she alone ARABIC: She is the hero SOMALI: Woman walker ARABIC: She is in the story SOMALI: Who are you with? ARABIC: She is telling a story FRENCH: Have a good trip madame good trip hello mademoiselle ARABIC: Where are your people? SOMALI: Walk to Africa ARABIC: Where is your mother? SOMALI: It’s not too far ARABIC: Is she birthing or dying? SOMALI: You will be all right FRENCH: Mademoiselle you are a one-of-a-kind Adventurer SOMALI: You are mother to a new race FRENCH: Hail Yemaya!
Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road)
Lostness is the terrible enemy that Jesus commissioned His followers to vanquish with the battle strategy that He spelled out for them in Matthew 28:18–20. He was addressing this same enemy when He plainly clarified His purpose in coming: “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.” Our hope is that believers around the world will get close enough to the heart of God that the first images that come to mind when we hear the word “Muslim” are not Somali pirates or suicide bombers or violent jihadists or even terrorists. When we hear the word “Muslim,” we need to see and think of each and every individual Muslim as a lost person who is loved by God. We need to see each Muslim as a person in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. We need to see each Muslim as someone for whom Christ died.
Nik Ripken (The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected)
Si un danseur a la possibilité d'entrer dans le jeu politique, il refusera ostensiblement toutes les négociations secrètes (qui sont depuis toujours le terrain de jeu de la vraie politique) en les dénonçant comme mensongères, malhonnêtes, hypocrites, sales ; il avancera ses propositions publiquement, sur une estrade, en chantant, en dansant, et appellera nommément les autres à le suivre dans son action ; j'insiste : non pas discrètement (pour donner à l'autre le temps de réfléchir, de discuter des contrepropositions) mais publiquement, et si possible par surprise : "Êtes-vous prêt tout de suite (comme moi) à renoncer à votre salaire du mois de mars au profit des enfants de Somalie ?" Surpris, les gens n'auront que deux possibilités : ou bien refuser et ainsi se discréditer en tant qu'ennemis des enfants, ou bien dire "oui" dans un terrible embarras que la caméra devra malicieusement montrer (chapitre 6)
Milan Kundera (Slowness)
Survival is woven into the fabric of who I am. I never asked, 'Why did this happen to me?' bur rather, 'How can I overcome this situation?' It is easy to let past trauma or injustice rule your life forever, but I want to be free, so I needed to understand and forgive others ... above all, I keep in mind that my happiness is up to me now ... I am very proud of my ancestors, my home country, and my past. I have just learned to leave out the parts that don't serve me as a woman, a mother, a human.
Shugri Said Salh (The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert)
Who do I write for? I thought about this again and again over the next few days until the answer crystalized in my consciousness. I write for all readers. But my primary interest is in representing the complex but universal experience of Somalis. I do this because the media representation of the global Somali community is one that is carved out of derivative clichés crammed with pirates, warlords, terrorists, passive women and girls whose entire existence seems to be nothing more than a footnote on the primitive dangers of female genital mutilation. I write because I want to give a long-overdue voice to a community that has experienced a tremendous array of challenges but who constantly face these challenges with the most wicked sense of humour, humility and dignity. My father always used to tell me that in our culture, the done thing when you’re facing hardship and your belly is empty is to moisturize your face, comb your hair, press your clothes and step out into the sun with your sense of humanity intact. It’s a lesson I’ve carried with me to this day.
Diriye Osman
Before independence, huge numbers of Somalis, who could best be described as semi-pastoralists, moved to Mogadishu; many of them joined the civil service, the army and the police. It was as if they were out to do away with the ancient cosmopolitan minority known as “Xamari,” Xamar being the local name for the city. Within a short time, a second influx of people, this time more unequivocally pastoralist, arrived from far-flung corners to swell the ranks of the semi-pastoralists, by now city-dwellers. In this way, the demography of the city changed. Neither of these groups was welcomed by a third—those pastoralists who had always got their livelihood from the land on which Mogadishu was sited (natives, as it were, of the city). They were an influential sector of the population in the run-up to independence, throwing in their lot with the colonialists in the hope not only of recovering lost ground but of inheriting total political power. Once a much broader coalition of nationalists had taken control of the country, these “nativists” resorted to threats, suggesting that the recent migrants quit Mogadishu. “Flag independence” dawned in 1960 with widespread jubilation drowning the sound of these ominous threats. It was another thirty years before they were carried out.74
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
Ryan was complex—he was big-hearted and caring but also resolute and direct. He once e-mailed me an audio clip of a television news interview he gave after a group of Navy SEALs rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama tanker ship. Pirates had taken the ship and the captain hostage off the coast of Somalia, Africa. The story was later made into the film Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. A team of Navy SEAL snipers shot and killed all but one of the hostage takers, who had placed themselves and their hostage in a desperate situation. Ryan told the TV reporter, “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.”1 I understood exactly what Ryan meant—there was no diplomatic or political solution to the crisis, and allowing pirates to take American vessels and crews hostage would set a bad precedent in other parts of the globe. Weeks before, in fact, the pirates had killed other hostages. Ryan’s statement was in no way meant to be bravado; he was merely conveying the fact that many times violence brings about a successful conclusion to a hostage crisis. The SEALs spoke the only language that the Somali pirates understood: violence. Apparently, the SEALs’ response acted as a deterrent, since the Somali pirates have consequently stayed clear of US flagged vessels. Chris Kyle later turned Ryan’s statement into a patch he wore on his hat.
Robert Vera (A Warrior's Faith: Navy SEAL Ryan Job, a Life-Changing Firefight, and the Belief That Transformed His Life)
By this time (in mid-2012) the country had been without a functioning government for more than twenty years, and the city was a byword for chaos, lawlessness, corruption, and violence. But this wasn’t the Mogadishu we saw. Far from it: on the surface, the city was a picture of prosperity. Many shops and houses were freshly painted, and signs on many street corners advertised auto parts, courses in business and English, banks, money changers and remittance services, cellphones, processed food, powdered milk, cigarettes, drinks, clothes, and shoes. The Bakara market in the center of town had a monetary exchange, where the Somali shilling—a currency that has survived without a state or a central bank for more than twenty years—floated freely on market rates that were set and updated twice daily. There were restaurants, hotels, and a gelato shop, and many intersections had busy produce markets. The coffee shops were crowded with men watching soccer on satellite television and good-naturedly arguing about scores and penalties. Traffic flowed freely, with occasional blue-uniformed, unarmed Somali National Police officers (male and female) controlling intersections. Besides motorcycles, scooters, and cars, there were horse-drawn carts sharing the roads with trucks loaded above the gunwales with bananas, charcoal, or firewood. Offshore, fishing boats and coastal freighters moved about the harbor, and near the docks several flocks of goats and sheep were awaiting export to cities around the Red Sea and farther afield. Power lines festooned telegraph poles along the roads, many with complex nests of telephone wires connecting them to surrounding buildings. Most Somalis on the street seemed to prefer cellphones, though, and many traders kept up a constant chatter on their mobiles. Mogadishu was a fully functioning city.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
L'affaiblissement de la part relative de l'Occident dans l'économie mondiale, tel qu'il s'est amorcé au crépuscule de la Guerre froide, est porteur de conséquences graves qui ne sont pas toutes mesurables dès à présent. L'une des plus inquiétantes, c'est que la tentation paraît désormais grande pour les puissances occidentales, et surtout pour Washington, de préserver par la supériorité militaire ce qu'il n'est plus possible de préserver par la supériorité économique ni par l'autorité morale. Là se situe peut-être la conséquence la plus paradoxale et la plus perverse de la fin de la Guerre froide; un évènement qui était censé apporter paix et réconciliation, mais qui fut suivi d'un chapelet de conflits successifs, l'Amérique passant sans transition 'une guerre à la suivante, comme si c'était devenu la "méthode de gouvernement" de l'autorité globale plutôt qu'un ultime recours. Les attentas meurtriers du 11 septembre 2001 ne suffisent pas à expliquer cette dérive; ils l'ont renforcée, et partiellement légitimée, mais elle était déjà largement amorcée. En décembre 1989, six semaines après la chute du mur de Berlin, les Etats-Unis sont intervenus militairement au Panama contre le général Noriega, et cette expédition aux allures de descente de police avait valeur de proclamation: il fallait que chacun sache désormais qui commandait sur cette planète et qui devait simplement obéir. Puis ce fut, en 1991, la première guerre d'Irak; en 1992-1993, l'équipée malheureuse en Somalie; en 1994, l'intervention en Haïti pour installer au pouvoir le président Jean-Bertrand Aristide; en 1995, la guerre de Bosnie; en décembre 1998, la campagne de bombardements massifs contre l'Irak baptisée "Opération Désert Fox"; en 1999, la guerre du Kosovo; à partir de 2001, la guerre d'Afghanistan; à partir de 2003, la seconde guerre d'Irak; en 2004, une nouvelle expédition en Haïti, cette fois pour déloger le président Aristide...
Amin Maalouf
My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfathers’ farmhouse outside of Hom. We woke in the mornings to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, to the bleating of your grandmother's goat, the clanking of her cooking pots, the air cool and the sun a pale rim of persimmon to the east. We took you there when you were a toddler. I have a sharply etched memory of your mother from that trip. I wish you hadn’t been so young. You wouldn't have forgotten the farmhouse, the soot of its stone walls, the creek where your uncles and I built a thousand boyhood dams. I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan. In its bustling Old City, a mosque for us Muslims, a church for our Christian neighbours, and a grand souk for us all to haggle over gold pendants and fresh produce and bridal dresses. I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square. But that life, that time, seems like a dream now, even to me, like some long-dissolved rumour. First came the protests. Then the siege. The skies spitting bombs. Starvation. Burials. These are the things you know You know a bomb crater can be made into a swimming hole. You have learned dark blood is better news than bright. You have learned that mothers and sisters and classmates can be found in narrow gaps between concrete, bricks and exposed beams, little patches of sunlit skin shining in the dark. Your mother is here tonight, Marwan, with us, on this cold and moonlit beach, among the crying babies and the women worrying in tongues we don’t speak. Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and Eritreans and Syrians. All of us impatient for sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home. I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide, and she whispers in my ear, ‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.' In the glow of this three-quarter moon, my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy, closed in guileless sleep. I said to you, ‘Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen.' These are only words. A father's tricks. It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how powerless I am to protect you from it. Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this. Inshallah. How I pray the sea knows this.
Khaled Hosseini (Sea Prayer)
Ilhan Omar’s 100,000-strong Somali community in Minneapolis is the terrorist recruitment capital of the United States. It is a fertile base for both direct and online recruitment.
Dinesh D'Souza (United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.)
Omar herself seems quite protective of these terrorists. In August 2019, Omar called for the protection of a Somali telecom company called Hormuud, invoking its “vital services” and “enormous contribution to the economy.” She neglected to mention that the founder, Ahmed Nur Ali Jimale, is known to be one of the chief financiers of al-Shabab.
Dinesh D'Souza (United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.)
I also realized that around the world, in places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. They were dangerous, these young men, often deliberately and casually cruel. Still, in the aggregate, at least, I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Mutlu olmak hiç ilgimi çekmiyor. Aşk ve tutkuyla yaşamayı yeğlerim, ki bu tehlikelidir. Çünkü karşımıza nelerin çıkacağını hiç bilmeyiz.” “Her şeyin beni tamamen hazırlıksız yakalayacağı ani değişimine karşı duyduğum o üstü örtülü korku.” “Başkalarının başına gelen felaketler daima kendi ıstırabımızı yatıştırmaya yarar.” “Acı çeken ruhlar birbirini tanımak ve birbirlerine yanaşarak acılarını ikiye katlayarak artırmak gibi inanılmaz bir özelliğe sahiptirler.” “Hayat aynı sahnenin tekrarlanıp durduğu bir filme benziyor.” “Sorgulananlar beş aşamadan geçer. Savunma, kendini övme, kendine güvenme, itiraf ve olanları düzeltme denemesi.” “Belli bir yaştan sonra kendi kendimizi güvende ve yaptıklarımızın doğruluğundan emin gösteren bir maske takıyoruz. Zamanla bu maske yüzümüze yapışıyor ve bir daha çıkmıyor.” “Çocukken ağlarken ilgi, üzüntümüzü belli edersek de teselli göreceğimizi öğreniyoruz. İnsanları gülümsememizle ikna edemediğimizde gözyaşlarımızın mutlaka işe yarayacağını biliyoruz. Büyüyünce ise banyoda kimseler duymadan ağladıklarımızı saymazsak, çocuklarımızın yanı haricinde ne ağlıyoruz, ne de gülüyoruz. İnsanlar bizi savunmasız görüp bundan faydalanmak isteyebilir diye duygularımızı belli etmiyoruz. Uyku her derde deva.” “Her gün bir bilgi yağmuruna tutuluyoruz. Hayatı olduğundan farklı gösteren reklamlar filimler, müthiş sonuçlar vaat eden kitaplar, uzmanlar. Bütün bunlar yüzünden kendimizi yaşlı hissediyoruz, maceradan yoksun yaşamlar sürüyoruz, sırf olgunluk adını verdiğimiz şeye ters diye duygularımızı ve arzularımızı bastırmaya zorlanıyoruz. Maruz kaldığın bilgileri ayıkla. Gözlerinle kulaklarına bir süzgeç takıp sadece kendini kötü hissetmemeni sağlayacak şeylerin geçmesine izin ver. Çünkü günlük işler zaten kendimizi kötü hissetmemiz için yeterli.” “Buzul çağında çok sayıda hayvan soğuk yüzünden ölüp gitmiş. Kirpiler ise sürüler halinde toplanmaya karar vermişler, böylece hem ısınıyor hem de başkalarından korunuyorlarmış. Ama sırtlarındaki dikenler yanlarındaki dostlarına batıyormuş, tamda ısınmalarını sağlayan dostlarına. İşte bu yüzden birbirlerinden uzaklaşmaya karar vermişler. Ve yine donarak ölmeye başlamışlar. Hemen bir seçim yapmaları gerekiyormuş; ya yeryüzünden silinip gideceklermiş, ya da dostlarının dikenlerine katlanacaklarmış. Doğru kararı vererek yeniden bir araya gelmişler. Başkasının ısısından vazgeçemeyecekleri için yakınlaşmanın açabileceği küçük yaralarla birlikte yaşamayı öğrenmişler. Ve böyle yaşayıp gitmişler.” “Neden sevgi imandan önemlidir? Çünkü iman bizi aşkların en büyüğüne taşıyan bir yoldan ibarettir. Neden sevgi merhametten daha önemlidir? Çünkü merhamet, sevginin kendini belli etme biçimlerinden biridir. Bütün, daima parçalardan daha önemlidir. Dahası merhamet de sevginin insanların yakınlarıyla birleşmelerini sağlamak için kullandığı birçok yoldan biridir. Dünyada sevgiden yoksun merhamet çoktur. Hayır balosu adı altında bir merhamet balosu düzenlenir. Böyle yerlerden çıktığımızda Somali’deki fakirler, Yemen’deki mazlumlar, Etiyopya’daki açlar için toplanan paralar sayesinde dünyanın daha iyi bir yere dönüştüğüne inanırız. Gözümüzün önünde zalimce olup biten sefaletten dolayı suçluluk duymayı bırakırız ama bu paraların nereye gittiğini kendimize hiç sormayız.” “Bir gün insanlığın hayrına çalışmak isteyenlere yalvarırım: Asla bedenleriniz Tanrı adına yakılmış olsa dahi unutmayın ki içinizde sevgi yoksa başka şeylerin hiç önemi yoktur.” “Sevginin gökkuşağı , her gün kulağımıza çalınan ve istediğimiz anda uygulamaya koyabileceğimiz meziyetlerdir, bunlar; Sabır: Sevgi sabırlıdır, İyilik: İyidir, Cömertlik: Sevgi hasetle yanmaz, Tevazu: Kendini övmez, kibirlenmez, Zarafet: Sevgi uygunsuzluk etmez, Fedakarlık: Kendi çıkarını düşünmez, Hoşgörü: Öfkeye kapılmaz, Masumiyet: Kendine kötülük yapana kin beslemez, Samimiyet: Adaletsizlik karşısında sevinmez ama hakikatler karşısında havalara uçar.” “Körlerin en fenası görmek istemeyendir.
Paulo Coelho (Adultery)
but i think i’m daydreaming too detailed at the moment what’s better is for me to think in the present &give you 100 francs of halwa when my bus casually halts where you are polishing your motorbike i want you to remember me no matter how much you try to forget
Malab, The Komorébi (The Breast Mountains Of All Time (Are In Hargeisa))
you buy perfume from the yemenites for only 100 francs perfumes in golden lids, colours of satin red, persian blue the whole shuttle bus stinks of you, love even after you leave you complain when they run out too quickly but you are a somali girl
Malab, The Komorébi (The Breast Mountains Of All Time (Are In Hargeisa))
The Fights 1962: US vs Russia in General / China vs Formosa over possession / India vs China over border territory / India vs Pakistan over possession Kashmir – Religious / India vs Portugal over possession Goa / India vs Nagas over Independence / Egypt vs Israel over possession of territory and Religion / E. Germany vs W. Germany sovereignty / Cuba vs USA – Ideas / N. Korea vs So. Korea – Sovereignty / Indonesia vs Holland – Territory / France vs Algeria – Territory / Negroes vs whites – US / Katanga vs Leopoldville / Russian Stalinists vs Russian Kruschevists / Peru APRA vs Peru Military / Argentine Military versus Argentine Bourgeois / Navajo Peyotists vs Navajo Tribal Council – Tribal / W. Irian? / Kurds vs Iraq / Negro vs Whites – So. Africa – Race / US Senegal vs Red Mali – Territory / Ghana vs Togo – Territory / Ruanda Watusi vs Ruanda Bahutu – Tribe power / Kenya Kadu vs Kenya Kana – Tribe power / Somali vs Aethopia, Kenya, French Somali / Tibet Lamas vs Chinese Tibetan secularists / India vs E. Pak – Assam Bengal over Border & Tripura / Algeria vs Morocco over Sahara.
Ramachandra Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy)
He charged me about £50 and in fifteen minutes I had a genuine Somali diplomatic passport, bearing my own name and photograph. No checks, no birth certificate, of course. I still have the passport, and it remains one of my strangest travel souvenirs.
Simon Reeve (Step By Step)
There is truth in the cliché ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. But as the Somalis learned, there’s little value in knowing how to fish if all your fish stocks have been raided. And as many other marginal communities around the world have discovered, if the fish you catch are then seized by warlords, kleptocrats or other exploiters, then you’re still going hungry. Few Western countries really want to get seriously into the nation-building business, identifying it with the seemingly endless and fruitless US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mark Galeotti (The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War)
This is a UN bus?’ I ask. One of the Somali guys with the guns comes up behind me. As I stand there in the aisle, ready to punch the silent fat guy in the head, the Somali gunman, nodding and smiling, says to me, ‘Yeah, UN, UN.’ ‘Three kids armed with AK-47s, that’s some way to greet people,’ I tell the fat guy. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘welcome to Mogadishu.
Kenneth Cain (Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone)
Down in the courtyard our gunmen and drivers were chewing qat. The plant looks like watercress and tastes like a handful of something pulled at random from the flower garden. You have to chew a lot of it, a bundle the size of a whisk broom, and you have to chew it for a long time. It made my mouth numb and gave me a little bit of a stomachache, that’s all. Maybe qat is very subtle. I remember thinking cocaine was subtle, too, until I noticed I’d been awake for three weeks and didn’t know any of the naked people passed out around me. The Somalis seemed to get off. They start chewing before lunch but the high doesn’t kick in until about three in the afternoon. Suddenly our drivers would start to drive straight into potholes at full speed. Straight into pedestrians and livestock, too. We called it “the qat hour.” The gunmen would all begin talking at once, and the chatter would increase in speed, volume, and intensity until, by dusk, frantic arguments and violent gesticulations had broken out all over the compound.
P.J. O'Rourke (Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader)
She stood on that bed and thought about them as she captured another memory. She remembered how she had known most of them since middle school. She remembered how they knew her traits, her interests, her long paragraphs she would put in the group chat, her various laughs, and her love for food. She liked her friends. They were diverse, from different cultures and backgrounds: Nigerian, Somali, Vietnamese, Jamaican, Dominican, Sierra Leonean, Cameroonian, Guinean, and Filipino. She knew it would be hard to replace them when she went to college.
E. Ozie (The Beautiful Math of Coral)
Situations as small as a lumber shortage in Idaho could be traced to the degradation of the Amazon rain forest, and could again be traced to the pirates off the Somali coast. Roen was starting to realize what a complex web the world was, and how the pull of even a single thread could cause ripples on the other side of the planet.
Wesley Chu (The Lives of Tao (Tao, #1))
Alone on the earth!" Hamed cries out, and there is a note of terror in his voice, for that is the one thing a Somali cannot imagine: finding himself alone in the world.
Ryszard Kapuściński (The Shadow of the Sun)
Carlos liked the Somalis. “Men in skirts killing each other over matters of clan,” he said. “People call it barbaric savagery. Add bagpipes and a golf course, and they call it Scotland.” And, like good Scots Presbyterians, the Somalis can be religious fanatics when they feel like it. Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abdille Hassan, known as the “Mad Mullah,” fought the British Empire to a standstill in northern Somalia in the Dervish Wars of 1900 to 1920. The British were forced to withdraw to coastal garrisons, causing famine among the Somali clans who were not allied with the Mullah. An estimated one-third of the population of British Somaliland died during the Dervish Wars, a period that Somalis call “the Time of Eating Filth.” The
P.J. O'Rourke (Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader)
I asked him why there isn’t really a word or phrase in the Somali language to say thank you, at least one that is used in everyday life. Somali people, he said, believe in the inherit dignity of every human being. If someone asks you for a cup of cold water, you will give it to them, no questions asked. You don’t need to be told thank you, because when you give the cup of water you are acknowledging that this person is a human, deserving of this cup of cold water. Why would you need to be told thank you? If you were thirsty, the other person would do the same for you.
D.L. Mayfield (Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith)
She moved like a woman whose body not only provided her with pleasure, but peace and ease. She moved like a fully embodied universe of her own making.
Diriye Osman
Magic is happiness and happiness is vast quantities of quality hemp oil. It's good for the mind, the body, the skin, and the sex drive. Happiness is hemp oil and Reece's Pieces ice-cream drizzled with melted Nutella followed by so much masturbation that you pass out pronto.
Diriye Osman
Happiness is wildly indiscreet vibrators that make your whole clapped-out building quake and Jill Scott sex jams and Judd Apatow comedies set in L.A, preferably featuring Leslie Mann. Yes! Happiness is Leslie Mann because she's joyful and she always laughs like she's got an abundance of delightful secrets.
Diriye Osman
Happiness is two-hour long baths during an energy crisis because it's fantastically irresponsible and fabulous for your soul. Happiness is fresh Spanish perfume on your collarbone and sipping ice-cool Caipirinhas with fun people whilst Mariah Carey's 'Babydoll' plays in the background on a booming system. Happiness is never giving a fuck about becoming fat because you will always fuck, and instead enjoying delicious, deeply satisfying suya and switching your phone off for a whole weekend. Happiness is bad bitches who no longer front like insanity is not festering on every floor of the Western Promise and finally stop giving a fuck. That's happiness.
Diriye Osman
Happiness is day drinking in the middle of Oxford Street whilst dancing to Megan Thee Stallion on a busy weekend after having mixed up all your meds because surprises are fun, and sometimes it's important to be reminded of why you first moved to this weirdly wonderful, obscenely overpriced city. That is happiness and you don't need a therapist or a witchy, wasted transwoman to tell you that shit. Invest in a bombass vibrator, be nice to sweet old ladies on the tube because if you're really lucky, you too will one day grow old and you'll want someone to treat you with a modicum of kindness and care. And stop making yourself go grey with needless stress! Now get the fuck out of my house. You're starting to harsh my buzz.
Diriye Osman
To be queer and Somali and neurodivergent is concentrated alchemy, and yet we constantly raid the cupboards of our souls like we are a people of lack. When you operate from a position of lack, you don’t realise you’re robbing yourself of everything worth preserving, and forgetting to toss away all the empty pursuits that lost their synthetic spell several generations ago. And suddenly, you’re wide awake in a new country, in a new decade, and you’re startled because you can’t remember how you got here or why you’re still feeling hunted by your own reflection. You can’t remember how or when or where or why you misplaced all your breezy dynamism—all that wildness of perception you used to project with such ferocity. Where did it all go? We have conveniently forgotten that we have always been fundamentally idiosyncratic and fantastic and fucking alive. Instead we feed ourselves and our children and our children’s children prosaic fuckery for what? Respectability politics? So that if we twist and try our damnedest to conform to standards that have never been coded into our collective DNA, that we’ll what? Somehow be less strange? Less weird and wonderful? That we’ll transcend the soul-snuffing snare that is the myth of the good immigrant? That if we mute all of our magic—everything that makes us some of the most innately interesting, individualistic and fun, funny beings in this boring, beige-as-fuck world—that we’ll win over whom? Folks who don’t season their food right or whose understanding of freedom is a shitty Friday night sloshfest at a shitty pub playing shitty music, chatting nonsense that no-one with a single iota of sense gives a fuck about? Is that who you are so deeply invested in trying to impress? If so, then go for it, but don’t fool yourself for a fucking second into thinking that trying desperately to shave off your elemental peculiarities through self-diminishment is salvation, because it simply isn’t, honey, and it never will be.
Diriye Osman
Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.
Diriye Osman
Happiness is not spending a single second reading endless—and I mean, endless—shitposts in 'The Guardian' masquerading as reportage about the kind of very, very boring morons you actively go out of your way to never meet. Happiness is The Wellcome Collection, but never the Hayward. Happiness is Kylie Minogue and Graham Norton because they're both dope, but not Dua Lipa or Calvin Harris because even though they both seem to be everywhere, all the time, I swear I cannot for the life of me name a single song of theirs.
Diriye Osman
According to the Council of Somalis, for example, 90 percent of Somalis in the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea are now unemployed.
David Harsanyi (Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent)
When Sweden opened its country up to Kurds, Bosnians, and Somalis in the 1990s, they placed the newcomers in abandoned public housing units, immediately insulating them from the rest of the community.
David Harsanyi (Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent)
love isn’t a question of dramatic demonstration or lyrical words. It’s a question of attention, presence, and time.
Michael Scott Moore (The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast)
One of East Africa's best-kept skincare secrets is Qasil powder. Qasil is a fine powder made from the leaves of the Gob tree, which is endemic to Somalia and is popular among Somali women. This fine powder is loaded with nutrients that help the skin and hair detox. It draws impurities from beneath the skin's surface, aids in the healing of obstinate breakouts, and dramatically reduces the appearance of pores and dark spots when used as a face mask for women. Where to Buy qasil powder? When preparing your own DIY facial mask, this is a must-have ingredient so it deeply cleanses, balances, and purifies the skin. It's also popular for gently exfoliating, hydrating, and leaving the skin soft and supple. Qasil powder skin benefits appearance while also providing a natural glow. INGREDIENTS THAT CAN BE USED TO Form A Disguise WITH QASIL Turmeric powder can aid in the healing of acne and the fading of dark spots ( for oily skin ) Sandalwood Powder is used to give the skin a healthy glow. Huda organics – to promote overall skin health, combat early indications of ageing, and work wonders on fine wrinkles. Rose water is used to tone the skin and aid in the deep washing process. Honey is used to rejuvenate the skin. The use of a face mask skin care is one of the most important processes that many women overlook or misunderstand. Some women are unable to choose the appropriate product for their skin type, while others are unaware of new products that can improve their skincare routine. So, if you're not sure what the best face masks for women in India are, or which skin types they suit, here's a list of items to help you make smarter grooming decisions in the future. Throughout the classical era, herbal medicine and its active constituents have been a trusted source of medicine. As in treatment of symptoms, herbal supplements including plant based remedies in raw state or their bioactive substances are gaining popularity [1]. Plants are abundant in medicinal chemicals, and practically every part of a plant can be used as medicine in some fashion. Flowers, fruits, seeds, roots, leaves, bark, and other parts seem to be the most widely used. Due to the rise in disease kinds, resilience to existing drugs, and need for drugs with fewer complications, there has been a push to use mainstream science / concepts to find the greatest source of medicine. So you should buy organic qasil powder from Huda Organics, which is located in the United Kingdom, ST Westend, London, WC2H 9JQ. You can reach us at 7566209608 or via email at info@hudaorganics.com.
Huda
The Afghans, the Iraqis, the Yemenis, the Pakistanis, and the Somalis know what American military forces do. They do not need to read WikiLeaks. It is we who remain ignorant. Our terror is delivered daily to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. But to us, it is left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones, and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression, and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel's occupied territories, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a cauldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And willfully uninformed, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.
Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt)
They're doing this because they haven't broken me. If I had lost my mind and sat weeping in my own shit, maybe then they'd be happy to send me to a madhouse like they did with Khaireh. But I stand and claim my innocence so they have to finish me to protect themselves. Their lies and evil end with me.' He had saved a cigarette to celebrate the reprieve, expecting. despite everything, that it would come through, but now he pulls it out from the foil and clasps it between his lips. He strikes a match against the wall. 'If only I could set fire to all your walls,' he says, inhaling deeply from the smouldering tobacco, 'I would burn this prison down and let everyone go free, whatever their crime, no one should steal their freedom. Somalis have got the right idea, you wrong someone and you're forced to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life unless you make amends. You deal with each other face to face. Only cowards live by prisons and cold hangings.
Nadifa Mohamed (The Fortune Men)
Here is the standard socialist move, to turn the tables and insist that whites, not Muslims, pose the greatest terrorist threat; that legals, not illegals, are the problem; that there’s nothing wrong with creating Somalia-in-America; that Americans, not Somalis, should make the adjustment to this; and that even terrorism represents nothing more than a cry of protest against America’s refusal to include and provide for its foreign newcomers.
Dinesh D'Souza (United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.)
few undercover journalists were deeply embedded within the Somali community of Minneapolis. Centered in the city’s Ward 6, this community was the site of the most egregious practices of illegal ballot
James O’Keefe (American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century)