Poetry
Siinley
Not translated into English
Synopsis
The Siinley, “the one in S”, is a chain of poems born from a song by Cabdi Qays that asked where the afterlife lies. Hadraawi read in it a quest for freedom and justice under the military regime and replied in verse; the poems went back and forth between Qays, in Djibouti, and himself, in Mogadishu, and then about twenty poets joined in. Laden with allegories and symbols, they revolved around the burning questions of the day, such as the union of all Somalis.
Context
The chain began in 1973 with a poem by Hadraawi answering a song that Qays had composed in 1970; Gaarriye and Said Salah were among those who continued it. Its verses were so coded that few listeners knew whether they were about love or politics, and the poets themselves, gathered in Djibouti twenty years later, questioned their meaning. The regime nonetheless banned the cassettes, which people hid under beds before passing them around. Yuusuf Cismaan Cabdile gathered the chain into a volume in Hargeisa in 2016.
Who it is for
For anyone interested in Somali chain poetry, in which poets answer one another in veiled terms under the dictatorship.
Prizes and reception
Many Somalis see it as the first door opened to criticism of the military government.
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