INTRODUCTION
Centuries of oral tradition sediment in the consciousness of a people, forming its history. If it is true, as the ancients said, that historia magistra vitae, true History shows that its lessons are of no use if they do become alive in daily life through real experiences that bring its lessons to our consciousness.
As though to say. History teaches nothing to man in our times because it is not story. It is not by chance that the Italian word is polysemic and indicates two different modes of the same reality. Either History tells of stories and stories motivate our behaviour, or history remains in books and is no longer history, thus it does not teach and is not a guide for our lives.
On the contrary, the history of an oral people lives in the voice, and it is not by chance that we talk of the voice of conscience, since conscience is a voice, neither more nor less than a vow, which in many languages, and especially in African languages, are the same word. A vow: also an omen or an intention. It is clear that the semantic chain would take us far, and would justify the concatenation of concepts and ideas which enrich our lives, when we allow ourselves to abandon the binary logic of true and false.
The stories of a Somali shepherd are, therefore, not tacit teachings but explicit ones. And the archaic epic of a people is its encyclopaedia held in the memory, while the concrete exempla of its profoundly internalized narratives are visible guides to pathways in the memory and on the pathways of the world.
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It is not easy to get one’s bearing in the age-old events of the Somali people. Coming from far-away lands north of those they inhabit now, distant relatives of the Bedouins of Arabia and of the people of the Queen of Sheba, they originated in lands that were the first cradle of humankind.
Inhospitable deserts, inhabited today by other peoples. In their southwards wanderings through lands and centuries, they reached two great rivers, the Shabeelle and the Jubba. Many of them forgot the old ways of life tied to nomadic herding and became sedentary farmers.
Legend tells that it was the descendants of two brothers who divided those choices, as it were. The line of Samal continued its nomadic life further north. But afterwards, in the search for pastures and sources of water for the herds, also in the south, in what is today Kenya, and in the west towards the lands of the Ogadeen, which belong to Ethiopia. The sons of Saab, instead, settled in the lands between the two rivers, where other populations also dwelled.
The Somali shepherds in the north then divided into three lineages (reer), according to a tradition passed down by word of mouth from father to son. As for the descendants of Saab, they divided into Digil and Mirifle. The former are in turn subdivided into seven different clans, and the latter into 22. The Digil clans are as follows: Geledi, Dabarre, Tunni, Jiidda, Garre, Bagedi and Shanta Caleemood (“Those of the five leaves”). The Geledi are the people of Abla, founders in the 19th century of a sultanate whose capital was Afgooye and which reached as far as Mogadishu.
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Abla made use of oral sources, story-tellers who recorded whole cassettes, which have been duly transcribed and translated. The work was demanding but it was well worth the trouble. For this we wish to thank Dr. Osman Gadale, who unfortunately since then has left us, Dr. Husein, and others as well.
Many of the tales were initially collected “privately”. Some of them we’d already heard before and we are grateful for them to Haji Ali, who also has left us, and to Sharif Shami, who disappeared during the war. The great contribution of grandmother Aamina was, however, fundamental, as it should be for a grandmother.
To say thank you to grandmother Aamina would only mean repaying a debt that cannot be composed in words. Samia will do that with her affection and by remembering that her land must once again be populated by talking lions and arrogant but harmless wadaad, by sultans and shepherds, by grazing camels and fishermen... As it was before greed and cruelty tore it apart. So that it can go back to living far from a false civilization made up of selfishness and greed for power and riches.
Giulio Soravia
N.B. not all of the tales collected by Abla Osman Omar are related here
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The foxy woman
Once in the bush a man lived with his wife, who was much younger than he. They were far from everything and everyone, but the man was always afraid his wife would betray him. Finding no peace, one day he went to a wadaad and asked him how he could make sure his wife was faithful.
The wadaad made him tell him if he had reasons to be suspicious; he asked him if there was a man whom he thought his wife was in love with. But the man always answered that though he felt it, hadn’t seen anything. Only certain looks, certain ways she had of behaving betrayed the undeniable fact – he claimed – that in reality she was thinking of someone else.
The wadaad , who was a wise man, seeing that the man was quite old and in bad shape, told him that as long as he only had suspicions it would be better for him to forget them: “In the end, you’ll only hurt yourself”, he said. “When twisted ideas get into the head of Adam’s children they wind up evoking demons…”
But the man couldn’t get that fixed idea out of his mind. Once again the wadaad advised him to be reasonable: if they lived far from everyone and everything, how could the woman find the time and the way to betray him, with all the work she had to do every day?
“Women are very cunning”, replied the old man. “True, we are far from people, but I often have to go away to take the camels to pasture, and who knows what happens in that time?” And he added, without a shred of logic, that they had no children.
“About children, you have to pray God the Most High to grant you this blessing. Everything comes from Him, and your wife’s faithfulness has nothing to do with it. To be sure of the faithfulness of your home, there is a way, but are you certain you want to know?”
The wadaad was a wise man, and he knew that at times truth is more painful than uncertainty. Besides, he was afraid that the man’s fears really had put some ideas into the woman’s head. However, his job was only to give people advice and if people didn’t want to follow his advice, then they would have to take the consequences.
“There is a miraculous fountain near a rock” - he explained where it was and how to get there. “He who bathes there and takes an oath will be swallowed up by the waters if he tells a lie. Take your wife to that place as soon as you can and make her swear she is faithful”.
The man went away happily, and the next day, before leading the camels to pasture, he told his wife what the wadaad had said, certain that she would be happy to undergo that test.
The woman thought about what was going to happen and decided to take some precautions. She went to her lover, a young man who came to her whenever her husband went away, and she told him to be in a certain place the next day at the break of day.
So that is what they did. The next morning, when the husband told her to get ready, the woman asked, “Is this place very far?”
“Half a day’s walk”.
“You know I’m not used to such long journeys and I fear my legs will not hold me. I’d like to ride on a donkey to go to that place with you”.
The husband agreed and got an ass ready for his wife to mount, and then they started on their journey. When they reached the place, the woman saw her lover waiting in the distance as she had told him to do, pretending to pasture some goats.
When they drew close to him, the woman pricked the donkey with a thorn. Braying loudly, it jerked to a halt and then started running around crazily. The woman pretended to be taken by surprise and fell onto the ground. She managed to make her guntiino get caught in the pack-saddle while she was falling. So when she was on the ground, she found herself naked.
The husband quickly stopped the crazed donkey and gave him a sound beating: “Stupid beast, what’s wrong with you? You really are an ass”, he said. Then he picked up the guntiino and gave it back to the woman, telling her to get dressed because there was a stranger looking at her.
That was the end of the episode. The husband made sure that the woman wasn’t hurt and they went on towards the miraculous fountain. And there the woman took her oath: “My husband, I solemnly swear that no man has ever seen me naked except for you and that man I fell down in front of on my way here”.
The husband was finally cured of his obsession. He went home a satisfied man, and from then on never doubted that his wife was faithful to him.
The Gratitude of Man
One day a man arrived at a well with his camels and threw down the pail to draw water. It was very heavy, so he wondered if by chance he had drawn up something strange. Indeed, he saw that in the pail there was a serpent.
“Thank you for saving me”, the serpent said to him. “I fell down the well by mistake and I didn’t know what to do. But at the bottom there are still a jackal, a lion and a man. I beg you to save them. But do not pull up the man – you will regret it”.
The man was puzzled by these words, but then he threw the pail down again and drew up the lion, who spoke in the same way: “Save the jackal but leave the man, because he will not be grateful to you”.
The man pulled up the jackal, who repeated the same words, but he thought: “I’ve saved the animals, as was right. But shall I leave a son of Adam down there, and do nothing for him?”
So he threw down the pail and drew up the man. He climbed out of the well, thanked him and went on his way. The man watered his bests and then set out on his journey once again. Time passed and there was a great drought. The man saw his beasts die one by one, while what was left of his herd wandered off to look for water.
The man went into the desert to recover his lost animals. It was hot and soon he was tormented by thirst and hunger. He was near death when a serpent came out of a rock and asked him: “Man, do you know me?” “No, who are you?”
“I am the serpent you saved from the well. Why are you here in the desert?”
“I am looking for my lost herd”.
“I’d like to help you”, replied the serpent. “Lay down the in shadow of this rock and I’ll find you some food”. Then he hid, and when a dikdik appeared he bit him and brought the meat to the man, who ate and regained the strength to take up his journey once again.
Not for long: soon he saw a lion coming towards him and was frightened to death. But the lion reassured him.
“Don’t you remember me? I am the lion you saved from the well, a long time ago. Why do you find yourself in this plight?”
The man rejoiced in his good luck and told his story to the lion. The lion replied: “I want to help you. If you follow me down the path I’ll take you to a pond that no one knows except for lions. Everyone stays away from it, but I shall let you drink”. The man did as the lion said and so he quenched his thirst. He thanked the lion and continued on his way.
Unluckily, he could not find his camels, and one day, when he was tired and disheartened, he met up with a jackal. It was the very one he had pulled out of the well, and out of gratitude the animal asked how he might help the man.
“I am hungry and don’t know what to do because I am not a hunter”.
No sooner said than done: the jackal ran off and went to a nearby encampment where they’d just butchered a kid. He hid until the people weren’t paying attention. Then he stole the kid and brought it to his friend, who ate his fill and then went on his way.
Shortly he came to the encampment where the jackal had stolen the kid. Since he still had the hide, one of the men accused him of theft.
“You were the one who stole my kid”, he said.
The man try to explain in vain - the other man went on shouting as loudly as he could. All at once the accused man remembered. He looked at his accuser and realized that it was the very man he’d saved from the well.
“But aren’t you So and So?” he asked. “The man I once pulled out of a well he’d fallen into?”
“Me?” answered the man. “You must be dreaming”. Then, ashamed of his ungratefulness, he went away to avoid embarrassing questions, saying: “This man must be crazed by the heat. Make him pay for the kid and let him go.”
The man left. Meanwhile, the animals had gone to look for his herd ad they’d found it. So they brought it back to him. The man told them what had happened and they commented: “Didn’t we tell you to leave that man down in the well? Don’t you know there is no animal as ungrateful as a man?”
The Ass and the She-Goat
Two neighbours had a she-goat and an ass. They were both pregnant, but on the night they were delivered the goat gave birth to a dead kid. Her owner buried the kid’s body in secret. When he learned that his neighbour’s ass had given birth to a baby donkey he waited for him to go to bed, then he crept into the ass’s paddock and stole the newborn donkey.
The following morning he was brazen enough to go around saying: “My goat delivered last night”.
When the neighbour couldn’t find the little kid with his mother, he wondered what had happened. He went to his neighbour’s and saw a sweet little ass sucking milk from the goat’s teats. “But that is my ass”, he said at once.
“How can you say that?” replied the other. “Can’t you see how it’s happy to take its mother’s milk?”
In short, they started to argue and the question wound up before a judge
.
The judge’s aide was a rather stupid and corrupt fellow. He accepted a bribe from the goat’s owner and, after pretending to hear both sides, issued a verdict in his favour. “God is great”, were his concluding words. “For Him all is possible, and the arguments of the goat’s owner seem to us incontestable”.
But the owner of the ass was not satisfied and requested the sentence of the judge himself. His substitute knew that the judge didn’t readily bother with small matters, but he sent for him all the same. The judge, who had heard the whole story, had word sent in he couldn’t come to court that day because he was menstruating.
The assistant burst out laughing. “Since when do men menstruate?”
At that point the judge came into the hall, saying: “Since she-goats give birth to asses, naturally”.
And he sent the assistant away.