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Born in 1943 as Maxamed to a nomadic family of eight boys and one girl in rural Burco, the adorable child-genius and griot was sent all by himself to Yemen for higher-education in 1949, at the age of six, on a ship called Qaxwaji sailing off the flickering coast of Berbera. In Aden, baby-poet Maxamed soon morphed into the epithet “Abu Hadra” courtesy of his school teacher who was fond of the poet Abu Maadi and characteristic epithets. Baby Maxamed picked up the Arabic language like some airborne disease and held the class hostage everyday with the splendours of his poems (inspired by the sixth century Arab poet Imrul Qays) and he told the class magical tales from the homeland like Shahrazad from Thousand and One Nights. His teacher furtively did not like this at all, first of all homeboy was supposed to be learning not talking and distracting the students, and then secondly the teacher felt his curriculum challenged by the child’s genius and envied our baby Maxamed his charisma and eloquence. Every day, the teacher would give baby Maxamed a time-out for talking during lessons, inwardly riveted with the boy like Shahriyar.

One day, the teacher edged closer and closer and closer to baby Maxamed’s seat engulfed with spellbound little boys and coquettish girls (it is unknown whether the girls came to school to learn or to stare at the handsome face of baby Maxamed), perked up his ears and thundered feigning rebuke: “So, Abu Hadra, what story are you telling my students today?” The children laughed long and loud at the archaic name—Abu Hadra—a name befitting of someone’s amusing grandfather, but it stuck right there and then, and a decade later in my hometown of Muqdisho, when he came back unexpectedly to Somalia rolling deep with a group of ravishing young expats called Xabaddii Keentay “Brought by The Bullet,” (Somalis are also fond of epithets) who fled Yemen during the Arab-Israeli war for the Suez Canal and Yemen’s independence from the British Empire. In Muqdisho, his name would be altered into Hadraawi—to keep up with the theme of Burcaawi derived from his native home of Burco and a soulful genre of music at the time called Raaxeeye Burcaawi.

Navy bal ya tahay

your not going to say huh