You Are a Target

By Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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Time and again we hear the frightening sound of a wheezing mortar bomb in Mogadishu as a sparkling fire-ball glows in the smoky air. Then a deafening explosion follows which reverberates across a wide section of this ill-fated city.

Shortly after its landing FM radios report immediately that the rocket had destroyed civilian populations whose only crime was to be a Somali who happened to be poor and unable to get out of the war early enough despite tremendous warnings.

Civilian casualty in Mogadishu is alarmingly increasing these days as two opposing sides: The Transitional Federal Government and insurgents are exchanging heavy artillery without showing any concern to the innocent and vulnerable populations residing in the city.

They exchange these mortar rockets without a grain of humanity in their moral fabric and remorselessly behave as if they are playing the final match of a table tennis.

The latest victims of these inhumane attacks were members of a family consisting of seven heads who were sharing bread during breakfast time but well before savoring it, received a bomb explosion inside their house, hurting them all: from the eldest to the youngest. A one-year old boy was the most seriously wounded among the family members after shrapnel had deeply penetrated into his back.

Sadly enough, hospitals are receiving more than they can treat which surely means that the chances of this child getting access to adequate medical services are quite slim. Sad.

Please share this poem with me:
It was an unexpected visitor
Who came not through the door
But insolently crashed the roof
Destroying a peaceful morning
Bringing grisly scenes of horror
Turning the lovely moments of joy
Into a bloody tragedy beyond belief
It was an unwelcome visitor of death
Fired by evil to destroy evil stronghold
But ended up landing on innocent souls
Who a short while a go shared a bread
But ended up sharing an unbearable pain

And before closing this article I have to say this about Mogadishu.

Mogadishu
Once a regarded as champion of peace
Mogadishu is now possessed by horror
Once known to be a source of stability
Mogadishu is now shaken by instability

Being next to Bagdad security wise
It buries scores of its people daily
It is now a ghost in its former soul
It is a converging point of all devils

In her eyes tears of pain are drying
Civil war has reduced it to a rubble
Its schools have been dismantled
Its hospitals turned to militia camps

Its children die every hour in agony
Women are depleted and run down
They are living in the depths of death
They rate high in maternal mortality

Despair is the only hope looming over
But in the heart of darkness I see light
Hope begins when despair is at peak
Patience can fill the depths of sorrow

Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Writer and Filmmaker
Mogadishu, Somalia
[email protected]

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