By Yassin Ismail

“Blasted cold weather! I’m not meant to live in this type of climate! It’s not natural!” My grandfather grouchily mutters as he enters the car. He’s completely bundled up, with five layers of clothes, two jackets, 3 pairs of mittens, a winter toque, and his fur insulated boots. ” I don’t know what could have induced your parents to move out here to the Arctic!”

It was the weekend, and like every weekend I had headed home back to my small town to visit my family.
“Awoowo, it’s only 5C degrees out–we’re having lovely weather for this time of year!” I exclaim. He looks at the thin sweater I have on.

“You’ll catch pneumonia wearing that!” he remarks. ” And why are all the windows rolled down! Why are you letting in that fridge winter air? Do you want us to freeze to death!”

I quickly roll up the windows instantly, preventing any more of the lovely spring breeze from entering the car.
“Turn on the heat! It’s freezing in here!” my grandfather commands. That’s just his way, everything he said was an order to be followed immediately. 

My grandfather is a relict from another time. No one knew how old he is for certain, although my siblings and I estimate that he must be well over a hundred years old, based on his claims that he lived through the Mad Mullah war and even fought in it. He had been the son of a nomadic camel herder. He acquired all of his initial education on the open landscapes of Somalia. When he was about 10, he was sent to the city to live with wealthy relatives so that he could acquire a formal education.  He, however, dropped out by the age of 14 and began working. 

He was my link to my homeland. It was his stories of Somalia in its glory days that had taught me to be proud of who I was and where I was from. It was his insistence that I only speak Somali to him that forced me to learn my native tongue. In short, it was he who had kept Somalia alive in our household when it could have been easily forgotten.

 ”How was the coffee shop tonight Awoowo?” I ask him cheerfully. Ever since I can remember my grandfather has been going to the coffee shop near our home, to meet other Somali men and discuss the current politic situation in Somalia.

“Horrible! They’ll never stop fighting!” he says angrily. “Take me home quick! I don’t want to miss the BBC.”
BBC news service was a staple in every Somali household in the world. At first people listened in hopes of hearing an end to the war, but now  like an old habit whose origins where long forgotten and long ago been deemed dispensable, they continued to listen simply for the sake of listening.

My grandfather’s life centered around Somalia: from his breakfast conversation with my father, about what some politician had said or another did, to his daily discuss at the coffee shop and finally the Somali BBC service in the evening which would supply him with fresh news to discuss the next day, and thereby completing the cycle.

“I don’t know why you listen to it anyway–the news is always the same— more fighting and more deaths. All it does is raise your blood pressure. They won’t stop fighting! Not until every single person is dead,” I remark as I stop at a red light. “We have a new life here now, awoowo, you should start listening to the news from here. This is now our home.”

“A young man like yourself, my boy, who was raised here and educated here and understands these people’s way of life,  may make this place truly their home but an old man like me can not. I am too old, my boy–far to old to have to endure this change,” the expression on his face changing to more  melancholy expression, his eyes become fixed on some far off object in the distance.

“I want to go home” he says sounding exhausted and sad.

“We’re almost home awoowo,’ I reply, worried at his sudden change.

“No boy! I want to go to my real home! I don’t understand this country, these people—I want to see my real home—the village I was born in—one last time before I die!” He says emphatically. “Promise me this one thing?”

“Anything,” I reply becoming increasingly concerned.

“Promise you’ll make sure that when I die I will be buried alongside my father and grandfather in our village. That I wouldn’t be buried in this frozen ground, but in the warm rich soil of my homeland. Promise me this!”
I give him the desired promise, unsure how I would ever be able to fulfill it.

“You’re a good boy!” He says.

The rest of the drive is silent.

Yassin Ismail 

http://lostinnostalgia.wordpress.com/
yassin_writer@hotmail.com

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