The first time I heard the word
Nigger
It just didn’t mean a thing to me
It just didn’t make any sense
As a matter of fact
I laughed
I thought that the ignorant fool who uttered the word didn’t know
How to pronounce
Negro
Because
Fortunately
I was born
I was brought up
In Somalia
In a black country
Where there were no honkies to brand me
Nigger
On the contrary
It was the whitey
It was the honkey
It was the Peckerwood
it was the cracker
Who was
The odd man out
Who was
As rare as hen’s teeth
When an old Somali bushman saw his first white man
He stood stock-still
He gazed dazed
He stared at him
And breathed out this heart-felt prayer
Oh God!
May I never lose my skin!
As we all know
All prejudice
All racism
Is
Unthinking
Without thinking
I grew up
Yelling at white people
Gaal!
Which means in English
Honky enemy alien infidel!
I still refer to white people
as Gaal
When I forget to put on my thinking hat
The first time I saw the word
Nigger
Spelled out
It was in San francisco
In 1965
It was in a blurb of a book
Called
Nigger: An Autobiography By Dick Gregory
The blurb said:
Dear Momma — Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word “nigger” again, remember they are advertising my book
Even though I had lived and studied in the USA for five years
Even though l crossed the Mason Dixon line and even lived Below the Mason Dixon Line
Even though I lived and taught in the Philadelphia of Frank Rizzo
Whose Philadelphia was
the Philadelphia of Brotherly Hate
The Philadelphia of
LAW & ORDER
Meaning
SHOOT TO KILL
THE NIGGERS!
I really had no clue of what the word
Nigger
Really Meant
I really never even surmised
The Depth of Hatred & Animosity
In which that word was enveloped
Irony of all Ironies
What it meant came crystal clear to me
When I returned
Home
To Somalia
Then the word
Nigger
Hit me with a force that knocked the stuffing out of me
On that fateful day
All my vaunted Somali pride
All my dignity
All my amour-propre
Died within me
It was in 1972
My wife Jane
An American from Mississippi
Whom I had met in Harrisonburg Virginia
At Eastern Mennonite College
And I were driving home to Lafole College
Where we both taught and lived
Lafole College is near Afgoye
A village outside of the Capital city of Mogadishu
Where I was born
Where I was brought up
As we were leaving the city
We had to stop
At a Check-point manned by armed rag-tag soldiers
General Afwayne and his army of thugs & thieves
Seized control of the country in 1969
And they knew their power grew out of the barrel of a gun
So they had to make sure that no other Somali had a gun
Unless that Somali was either their stooge
Or
From the Marehan-Ogaden-Dhulbante Klans
So
I stopped the car to be searched for concealed weapons
As they were searching our car and persons
A jeep full of drunken Soviets whizzed by
Not bothering even to stop perfunctorily
With the driver giving us all the finger
And yelling out
Soviets!
I just could not believe my eyes &EARS!
I asked the Stupid Somali Soldiers
Who were sleepwalking at noon
Where are we
Are we in the Soviet Union
Or
In out Homeland
Somalia
The Solders who were just raw recruits
From the interior
From the bush looked back at me
BLACK & BLANK
Let me talk to the officer in charge
Since you don’t know the answer
He is taking his siesta
Wake him up
Now!
As the captain neared our car rubbing sleep out of his rheumy eyes
My wife pleaded with me
Please let me do the talking
Jaale: Comrade said the captain, What is the matter?
My name is Jane
I am an American from Mississippi
And what my husband and I witnessed and experienced and were subjected to
Just a few minutes ago
Defies
Logic
Reason
What happened I wish
NEVER HAPPENED
For the sake of my heart-broken husband
And for the sake of your poor benighted Somalia
What I was forced to see
Is
Beyond belief!
Why do you stop and search and molest Somalis
So ceaselessly
While Soviets give you the finger and whizz by unmolested?
How am I going to explain
THIS
What I just saw in Black Somalia
In Mississippi
How am I going to explain that my Somali husband Experienced more blatant bullying discrimination
In his native Homeland Somalia
Than he had fever done Stateside!
The Captain stared back at my wife
And almost in tears pleaded with my wife
Please take your husband back to Mississippi
Where there is
Neither
Nigger Dictator
Nor Soviets!
You and your husband should have never come
To this poor benighted country
To Somalia
A fortnight later
While
I was waiting in Mogadishu for my wife
Who was teaching Mississippi English
To Somalis
At the British Council
I was waiting for her
In the United States Information Service Library
I waited
Engrossed in a play called
No Place To Be Somebody
Written in 1969 by one called
Charles Gordone
I could not believe
What I was reading
Gordone made me understand
Deeply
What I was
Who I was
A NIGGER
WHAT ALL SOMALIS WERE
NIGGERS!
A NIGGER is somebody
Like Togane
Like all Somalis
Who have
No place to be somebody
Who are now being kicked around
All over the world
Like Kurds
Like Turds
On our way to Lafole College
I told my wife
We are going home
Home to Mississippi
As soon as we can get
Out of Somalia
Out of Afwaneland
In triumph
I kept shouting
At Jane
i know who I am now
I am
NIGGER JIM!
I am proud to be
NIGGER JIM!
Wait till I tell Huck
How fucked up Somalia is
How fucked up Mother Africa is
And
What is Africa to Me now
And
i can’t wait to get back to Mississippi
I hear now the singing of the Mississippi
Just like Bro Langston Hugh heard when Abe Lincoln
Went down to New Orleans
And I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset
Home
I am going home to Mississippi
Where I belong
As the Brothers used to tell Mad Malcolm X
I am telling you just right now
Now I sure do know
I ain’t left nothing in Africa!
I ain’t left nothing in silly sicko Somalia!
I would rather be
Nigger Jim
In Mississippi
Than a Somali
In silly-billy SAD Somalia
PROF —Mohamud Siad Togane