By Hassen Hussein
Revised December 24, 2015
In SOLIDARITY WITH #oROMOpROTESTS
AND
Loving memory of our martyrs, new and old.
Yesterday
Unlike
Its self-righteous
Neighbors
Whose
Tied hands
were
Out stretched forever
to the sky for divine intervention
And for relief and remission
from Kings, Queens, and Sultans
Who
Reigned supreme and divine
And held in hand
Their life on earth and soul in the thereafter
The Oromo
Owed to none
But the head’s wit
and hand’s might
His freedom
Free to cherish and relish
Himself and neighbor on the choicest land
Dealt to it by his Waaq’s generous right hand
The Oromo
Man or woman
Fearsome
Race of warring warriors
Had no use for heaven
Fiercely independent, egalitarian and individualist
Free subjects of laws
Made by themselves, courtesy of the many and manly orating wise heads
Huddled in quorum and decorum under canopies of grand old sycamore trees
With uninterrupted line of firstborn males, mystic Qallus, keeping calendars and guarding the peace
With no arms or charms
Just good old moral force
The Oromo
Had no one to please, pleased as it was
With its up-high-raised place on earth.
Should injustice rear its head, out rushed ahead, the womenfolk, Siinqe at hand
A tyrant’s head to demand, and get, at day’s end
Yesterday was 1612, AD or around
When O’s power extended to horizon’s end
Alas, oblivious to what promiscuous fate promised and portended
Undisturbed by a storm that was gathering and unheeding Qaallu’s foreboding
As the sky was lit aglow with the bullets’ death-tipped head, O awaited unprepared, banking on daamaa, his horse’s galloping speed and the arrows’ precise hit
Today
Looking at it before November with eternal despair, one saw Qallu’s unbuttoned garb with contempt if not hate
Long gone were the soothing comfort of founding myth, shaken from without and within undone
Siinqe—no longer fit or fitted to smother wrong in the bud
Unable to rise to the occasion and stand in erection
Its beauty for good gone like that of a deflowered virgin
Trashed
Trampled upon as the proverbial serpent
By the learned, and the ignorant
And an iron-booted tyrant, left to right, a loot’s loot unfolded
My little world of O, as if reconciled to its cruel fate, busied itself to treating and entreating
The many indifferent deities that replaced and effaced belief in one Waaq and itself
The Qaallu having fallen far below Qaallicha, Siinqee stood aslant bereft unhappily collecting dust as if unresentful of the neglect
With the fruits of injustice all around to reap, whose width and breadth few grasped and many grappled with
Its dystopian diaspora, reaping no crop and wisdom from cramming page after page of sacked and sacred books of utopian paradise
Yet with faith in itself skin deep
Mighty intolerance to make up the difference with
As O wailed at home in silence and solitude
Sapped of earthly energy and heavenly hope to unshackle the chains, break the walls, that divided and conquered its mangled spirit
And undermined its moral universe that was.
Can O survive in perfect tatters? Many wondered agonized.
As we bickered
Over trivia and “isms”
Now impressed and now disdaining the quick succession of one false prophet after another
As Nihilism engulfed and untruth triumphed uncontested over truth, the differences no longer mattered
As problem after problem multiplied, glib answers mushroomed, O, now a serf bled from without as from self-inflicted wound
What a difference 400 years, made!
Tomorrow
The strife that would never halt, suddenly stopped
When eschewing confusion, O relearned to feed, sate, and settle on worldview of its own
Once O was shed of off nostalgia for that which never returned
Eyes steadied on the prize, it begun to walk still and tall arresting the freefall
Timeless wisdoms, ageless seeds of old, found a fertile ground to bud
Odaa, the tree of wisdom flowered to grandeurs old and exploded onto the vain world
For the day that was never to come, finally arrived impromptu and unexpected.
When Siinqee-Qaallu joined hands at the rim, the river of wisdom filled to the brim
Shorn of dogma and mysteries—from end to end, O rose in tandem
To celebrate the colorful bridal bliss in all O’s diversities
Ready to grasp hold and clasp freedom with its thorny horns
In an instant outburst a clarion call for a new dawn, grounded in a dignity that was all too human
The hollowed and hollow bells of justice rung far and wide
Echoing universal truth, reverberating across the width of land and high seas
Shredding falsehood to bits and pieces, overcoming brute force with mere moral impulse
O prevailed and triumphed over itself and today drifted away to make room for tomorrow
Which was germinating to bloom and burst forth from the depth of yesterday’s marrow
With self-confidence in abundance, free at last, O will dance and sing in coherence
In a matter of time its voices will rise to starry heavens & the deaf world now in suspense listens!
Hassen Hussein, a writer, teaches Management and Leadership at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.
