K’naan - Returning to somalia after 20 years A Son Returns to the Agony of Somalia lyrics

K'Naan is a musician and poet

MOGADISHU, Somalia

ONE has to be careful about
Stories especially true ones
When a story is told the first time, it
Can find a place in the listener’s heart if
The same story is told over and over
It becomes less like a presence in that chest
And more like an X ray of it

The beating heart of my story is
This: I was born in Mogadishu
Somalia i had a brief but
Beautiful childhood filled with poetry
From renowned relatives then came a
Bloody end to it, a lesson
In life as a Somali: death
Approaching from the distance
Walking into our lives in
An experienced stroll

At 12 years old
I lost three of the boys I grew up
With in one burst of machine-gun fire one
Pull from the misinformed finger of a boy
Probably not much older than we were

But I was also unusually lucky the
Bullets hit everyone but me
Luck follows me through this story so does my
Luckless homeland a few
Harrowing months later, i found myself on
The last commercial flight to leave
Somalia before war closed
In on the airport and over the years
Fortune turned me into
Somalia’s loudest musical
Voice in the Western Hemisphere

Meanwhile, my country festered
Declining more and more when I
Went on a tour of 86 countries last year
I could not perform in the
One that mattered most to
Me and when my song "Wavin’
Flag" became the theme
Song for the World Cup that year
The kids back home were not allowed
To listen to it on the
Airwaves whatever melodious beauty I found
Living in the spotlight
My country produced an opposing
Harmony in shadows
And the world hardly noticed but
I could still hear it

And now this terrible year: The worst
Famine in decades pillages the
Flesh of the already wounded in
Somalia and the world’s
Collective humanitarian response has been a
Defeated shrug if ever there
Was a best and worst time to return home
It was now

So, 20 summers after I left as a child
I found myself on my way
Back to Somalia with some
Concerned friends and colleagues i
Hoped that my presence
Would let me shine a light into this
Darkness maybe spare even one life, a
Life equal to mine
From indifferently wasting
Away but I am no statesman
Nor a soldier just a man made fortunate by
The power of the spotlight and to
Save someone’s life I am willing to spend
Some of that capricious
Currency called celebrity

We had been told that
Mogadishu was still among
The most dangerous cities on the planet so
It was quiet on the 15-seat plane from
Nairobi we told nervous jokes at first
Then looked to defuse the
Tension the one book
I had brought was Hemingway’s "A Moveable
Feast" I reached a chapter titled "Hunger
Was Good Discipline" and stopped that
Idea needed some contemplation the very
Thing driving so many from
Their homes in Somalia was drawing me
Back there i read on
Hemingway felt that paintings were more
Beautiful when he was "belly-empty
Hollow hungry" But he was not
Speaking of the brutal
And criminally organized hunger of
East Africa his hunger
Was beautiful it made something of
You the one I
Was heading into only made ashes of you

By now, the ride was bumpy we were flying
Low, so I could see Baraawe and Merca
Beauties of coastal towns that
I had always dreamed of visiting
The pilot joked that he would try to fly low
Enough for my sightseeing
But high enough to avoid
The rocket-propelled grenades

FOR miles along that coast, all you see are
Paint-like blue water, beautiful
Sand dunes eroding, and an abandoned
Effort to cap them with
Concrete everything about Somalia
Feels like abandonment the buildings
The peace initiatives
The hopes and dreams of
Greatness for a nation

With the ocean to our backs, our
Wheels touch down in Mogadishu
At the airport I left 20 years before
To the surround-sound of heavy artillery
Pounding the devil’s rhythm
Now there is an eerie
Calm we clear immigration
Passing citizens with AK-47’s slung
Over their shoulders

It’s not a small task to be safe
In Mogadishu so we keep our
Arrival a secret until after we ride
From the airport to the city
A ride on which they say life expectancy
Is about 17 minutes if you
Don’t have the kind of security that
Has been arranged for me

Over breakfast at a "safe house
" I update my sense of
Taste with kidney and anjera (a bread)
And a perfectly cooled grapefruit drink then
We journey onto the city
Streets it’s the most
Aesthetically contradictory
Place on earth a paradise
Of paradox the old Italian and
Locally inspired architecture is colored
By American and Russian artillery paint
Everything stands proudly lopsided

And then come the makeshift camps set up
For the many hungering displaced Somalis
They are the reason I am here
If my voice was an instrument
Then I needed it to be an
Amplifier this time if my light
Was true, then I needed it
To show it's face here
Where it counts nothing I have ever sung will
Matter much if I can’t be the mouth of the
Silenced but will the world
Have ears for them, too?

I find the homeless Somalis’ arms open
Waiting for the outside world and hoping
For a second chance into
It's fenced heart i meet a
Young woman watching over her dying mother
Who has been struck by the bullet
Of famine the daughter tells
Me about the journey to Mogadishu a
200-mile trek across arid, parched land
With adults huddling around children to
Protect them first this mother
Refused to eat her own food in order to
Feed abandoned children they had picked
Up along the way
And now she was dying because of that
The final and most devastating stop
For me was Banadir Hospital, where
I was born the doctors are
Like hostages of hopelessness
Surrounded and outnumbered mothers hum
Lullabies holding the
Skeletal heads of their children it seems
Eyes are the only ornament left
Of their beautiful faces
Eyes like lanterns holding out a glimmer of
Faint hope volunteers are doing
Jobs they aren’t qualified
For the wards are over-crowded
Mixing gun wound
Malnutrition and cholera patients

Death is in every corner of this place
It’s lying on the mattresses holding
The tiny wrists of
Half-sleeping children it’s
Near the exposed breasts of
Girls turned mothers too soon it
Folds in the cots, all-knowing and silent
It's mournful wind swells the black sheets
Here, each life ends sadly
Too suddenly and casually to be memorialized

In this somber and
Embittered forgotten place
At least they were happy to see I had come