The article “Somaliland’s Lovesick Baker and the Girl He Never Had” tells the story of Elmi Bodheri, a Somaliland poet who lived in the 1930s and 1940s. He is known for his love poems, which were dedicated to a girl named Hodan. Bodheri was a poor baker who worked in a small bakery in the port city of Berbera, where he first saw Hodan when she came to buy rolls. Although he never saw her again, he was deeply in love with her and wrote many poems about her.
Bodheri’s love for Hodan was considered shameful in Somaliland culture at the time, where men were expected to be strong and not show their emotions. His family and clan disapproved of his behavior, and he was seen as unmanly for expressing his love so openly. Despite this, Bodheri continued to write about Hodan, using explicit language that was uncommon for the time.
Hodan, on the other hand, was from a wealthy family and was only 9 years old when Bodheri first saw her. She eventually married a clerk at the port of Berbera when she was 15, and Bodheri married as well, but his wife left him because he would often call her “Hodan.”.
Bodheri’s story is a tragic one, as he died at a young age, possibly due to tuberculosis. However, his legacy lives on, and his poems are still celebrated in Somaliland today. In fact, his story has become a cautionary tale about the importance of considering the feelings of individuals in arranged marriages and the power of expressing one’s emotions.
The article also highlights the cultural context of Somaliland at the time, where poetry was an important part of the oral tradition and was used to tell stories and news. It also notes that the Somali language was not officially written until the 1970s, which makes Bodheri’s poems even more remarkable.
Today, Bodheri’s story is still widely known and celebrated in Somaliland, and his poems continue to inspire young lovers. In fact, the director of tourism in Somaliland, Abdisalam Mohamed Shabeelleh, is Hodan’s son and has written about his mother’s story. He is often referred to as the “Sheikh of Love” and gives blessings to young couples before they get married.
Overall, the story of Elmi Bodheri and Hodan is a powerful reminder of the importance of love, poetry, and self-expression, even in the face of cultural and societal norms.
The complete piece is as follows:
Somaliland’s Lovesick Baker and the Girl He Never Had
By Gwen Thompkins
Lovesick. That word best describes one of Somaliland’s most celebrated modern poets. Elmi Bodheri was a poor baker who is said to be the first Somali man to die from love.
His poems, written in the 1930s and early 1940s, are the stuff of legend in Somaliland, and Bodheri and his beloved are household names. It’s an age-old story: a poet meets a girl. The poet loses the girl. The poet becomes immortalized via the object of his desire.
It happened in a tiny bakery in the port city of Berbera. There, Bodheri worked as a laborer for his uncle, making bread and selling it in what was then British Somaliland. Under the bakery’s low ceiling, within ochre-colored walls, over a high counter worn smooth by a million touches, an ardor was born like no other. Nour Haban runs the bakery now, and says it happened in an instant: Bodheri saw a girl named Hodan—and began speaking in verse.
“Even his father was not a poet,” Haban says. “But from that very beginning he saw Hodan, automatically, he started reciting poems.”
Of all the bread joints in all the world, she had to walk into his. Hodan came one day to buy rolls. She reportedly said nothing more than, “Good morning.” And by nearly all accounts, Bodheri never saw her again. But he rhapsodized that brief encounter to heights previously unexplored. He said things like “a careless flicker of her slanted eyes/Begets a light as clear as the white spring moon.”
The Shameful Poet
Other Somali poets had spoken of love, but this was different. Bodheri only spoke of Hodan. Back then, in the late 1930s, Bodheri was considered unmanly, says Somaliland poet Ahmed Aw Gedi.
“It was very, very shameful in Somaliland culture for a man to say ‘I love a woman,’ ” Gedi says, much less gush about her:
If eyes could capture the splendor that could soothe the heart
Or human beings could be satisfied by beauty alone
I have seen already that of Hodan
His family disapproved. His clan disapproved. And Aw Gedi says Bodheri didn’t endear himself to her people, either: “For both sides, it was an insult.”
In the ’30s and ’40s, the people who lived in this sand-covered land were mostly nomads who never took more than they could carry and didn’t leave much behind. Herdsmen married to have children and to take better care of the livestock. Most people were illiterate. And even if they could read, Somali was only a spoken language at that time. Poets were in demand to tell the day’s news in a way that everybody could remember. And romance? Well, romance was mostly found in stories about warriors and the battles they fought — not bread enthusiasts and the bakers who loved them. A baker himself, Haban says even Bodheri was ashamed of his behavior.
“Somaliland men, they are very proud of trying to be the real man,” Haban says. “Since he didn’t get the woman he wanted, he thought that the world would know his weakness.”
If other Somalis knew of Bodheri’s heartache, he had only himself to blame. Aw Gedi says the language Bodheri used was too explicit for the times. Back then, if a Muslim poet wanted to touch a woman’s bosom, for instance, he’d write about wanting to pluck an apple from a tree in her neighborhood.
“You could not describe or mention the lady as you like,” Aw Gedi says. “You would be killed. So you’d give her a different name.” But Bodheri barely disguised Hodan’s identity in his poems.
A Love Nobody Wanted
When Bodheri called his love “Hadra,” no one was fooled. Or amused. Until just recently, marriages were arranged matches between families, classes, and clans. The men would wait for young girls to come of age and then marry. But between Hodan and Bodheri, nothing quite matched. He was poor. She was not. His clan was weak. Hers was strong. Bodheri was somewhere around 30 years old. Hodan was reportedly 9. But Abdullah Mohamed Ali, the mayor of Berbera, says the age difference between Bodheri and Hodan wasn’t the problem. It was society.
“What we believe today is the old culture was the barrier between Hodan and Bodheri, and it was the role of the old people at this time to try to bring the two together,” Ali says.
Bodheri despaired. “I have been compelled to weep for love’s sake,” he said. “Oh God! How much has my mouth betrayed me? And how people have been so cruel to me!”
But Ali says that ultimately it was fate that got in the way. In Somali, the word is “alaf.” And alaf can be a real kick in the pants.
“Alaf is very hard to explain,” Ali says, giving an example: “If God wishes you to marry someone, even if you love someone else, you’re going to marry the person that God says you’re going to marry.”
Alaf apparently decided that Bodheri and Hodan weren’t meant to be.
Luul Abdi Hassan buys her bread from the old bakery in Berbera. Standing outside, she says all Somaliland girls hope for an attraction as strong as Bodheri’s was for Hodan.
“It was very, very strong love,” she says. “So whenever we hear about Elmi and Hodan, our hearts beat a lot.”
But was it a mutual attraction? Only Hodan knew for sure. Some say the culture of the time did not allow girls to speak of their heart’s desire. Regardless, Hassan says Hodan was lucky.
“Every girl likes to be like Hodan,” she says, “because everyone needs to be loved.”
A Terminal Case
At 15, Hodan married someone else, a clerk at the port of Berbera. Bodheri married, too, but people say his wife soon tired of him calling her “Hodan” and left. By the mid-1940s, Bodheri was dead. He had long since left the bakery and is believed to have wasted away. “It is degrading to yearn for what you cannot have,” he said.
More likely, says Abdisalam Mohamed Shabeelleh, the director of tourism in Somaliland, he died of tuberculosis. Shabeelleh is sort of an expert on the story—and on Hodan in particular. He is Hodan’s son.
According to Shabeelleh, Hodan settled down, became a seamstress, and raised nine children. He says she never spoke of Bodheri, but then, she didn’t have to. Poetry, an oral tradition, travels fast among Somalis, and everyone knew she was the Hodan. But by Shabeelleh’s account, his parents had a happy life together. Hodan died in 1967. Today, Shabeelleh calls himself the “Sheikh of Love.” He says young lovers come to him before they marry, and “sometimes I give them blessings.”
Somalilanders say their society learned a lot from Bodheri. First, that families should consider the feelings of their children before committing them to marry. Second, that saying “I love you” is not so bad, after all.
Bodheri and Hodan often figure in modern Somaliland love songs and poems. And Somali men say that, in matters of the heart, they are almost always unfavorably compared to Bodheri. Not everyone’s a poet.
But then, not everyone needs to be. A Somaliland politician recently recalled the words he used to propose to his wife. He said to her, “OK, I can’t love you like Bodheri
