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Ibtisam

Hadraawi honoured for dedication to culture and development: Principal Award, Prince Claus Fund’s

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Imperial was favorite by relatives and run by an ex diaspora; the outward look simple yet stylish for a Somali building.

 

This area was our neck of the wood in 96/97 long summers as we rented just in front of the british ODA villa, ours being next to a Sool MP and the PM, hinself sharing walls with the madaxtooyada.

 

You could see Igal, aun, in his old dark land cruiser, his bodyguard chatting with our maid and the area felt secure and free, almost as like anyone could have tea with anyone.

 

Mind you we even accessed the ODA villa for our daily sega megadrive in 96, the batman returns game my elder bro got from his friend just the night before the flight to hargeysa and we finihed it quickly as good players (the session was at around 6-8pm save the day they chewed qat; an excited young diaspora exclaimed once "Sland ayaa video games lagu ciyaaraya" before the older guard corrected him "waa reer jabuuti", as if there was any difference); they had a generator and our orion tv set was in the guards room (the gameboy was on batteries).

 

Yet very ironic again in those innocent days, we could easily access the guns left there but when a british visitor came, I prefered to practise my "hello, how are you" all smiling and the middle-aged, steven spielberg look alike with glasses, replying smiling and very touched "I'm fine, thank you very much" that morning on our adjacent street somewhere around september 1996. :D

 

So many memories, funny or mad things like the one my visiting cousin reminded me 3 years ago or how we run back to the villa climbing over the wall pursued by the "madman" we provoked near the biriij, the stolen horse left by a man in our villa and for which I used to care for not long before our return back in 28 sept (was so fixated by dates, it was a 2 months and 14 days stay exactely), making him drink sometimes at the doox, near the mini wooden pedestrian elevated bridge "biriij liicliic".

Crazily, I enjoyed repeating shouting at bored nights "Foziyaay hayaay hajaay hayaay" or the gossip by our maid ("waar aamu yaan lagu xirin") about the MP habits or him seeing them through the "quraarad" or calling his wife etc when back in his red simple toyota (people even accused Igal, aun, of drinking).

How mad we went when the younger bro back in 2007 reminded me: "fooziyaay hayaay hajaay" (my favorite ever slogan) :D

 

Are all our old friends alive? I doubt it :D

 

 

 

PS: I remember Hadraawi used to be hosted by the RTD cultural program (tixmaal?) back in the early 90s as hooyo attended it once, but I think a Somali anthology book was published around back in 2004 with maybe his poems.

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