Those Hands

She’s been over so many things,
Not one you could be under.
So next time you think you know a thing about her
Or even begin to wonder,
Know that this is the true Amazonian woman!

How can I make you believe
That these women move mountains on a daily basis?
Creating fountains of life so potent
No warlord will ever be able to take or break it!
This is the woman of the Pharaohs
Whose tapestry is so rich with so many stories untold
She whispers her secrets only to herself.
The Somali woman.

What do you know of Ogandenia?
Of all my FEMALE warriors?
Do you know of women who build homes with their hands?
Weaving the fabric of a country
With just their own two hands?
What can you know of infibulation,
When you spend your time contemplating,
Why it is that she wears that?
For that is your major most trepidation
And she?
Well She has to worry how to rear a child of no apprehension
And no hesitation
In a world full of cancellations.

You know of child birth and labor,
She knows of being sewn, torn, and sewn again
Ripped open for his pleasure
And for equal measure
She’s taken fists in the face and knees in the stomach
Yet she gets up the next day and fills his stomach.
For duty is the first rule of being this woman.


Have you heard of a woman whose tears are silent and dry
For she will never cry,
On the outside.
But on the inside,
She’s died a thousand times?
You’ve seen refugees on the TV
Swollen bellies and flies.
She’s seen sorrow as she flies
Thousands of miles
Leaving her babies behind
Just so she can go, search and….
find
That better life!
Alone she stands as an alien in a foreign land
Away from the home she built with her very own hands
Away from the babies she nearly died to deliver
Away from dalka hoyoo who she hopes can forgive her
Away from the wallal she would die to protect
And all the other brothers she’d give her own soul to resurrect.
But it’s been twenty years, six months and three weeks to date.


Before you weep for her pain and voicelessness
Learn first of buranbur
Where she creates the land of the poets
Where words free your spirit
Taking flight, in and out of any struggle, any fight!
Learn of that complicated rhythm that is the history of her time
The history of her daad and her dhal.
Her voice shouts and screams here.
She isn’t quiet.
Her tears flow free here
And all her deaths are spoken out loud.
For those words contain and hold her.
And keep her alive.
Through them she is able to get up
Fight the fight that she has had to fight
For all the millenniums of fighting

She walks with an AK, those are her words,
See it’s with her life that she protects her world!
So please don’t wonder about her
Don’t think you know her
And for all that is good,
Please keep not your pity for her.
She walks with her head up
Her face drawn,
her mouth tight,
those eyes dry
She may have died a thousand deaths inside
But outside she is still very much alive!
The Somali Woman.

Nimo Hussein
Copyright © 2010