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Hadraawi is considered by many to be the greatest living Somali poet. Born in northern Somalia (the present self-declared Republic of Somaliland) in 1943, he was educated in Aden and went on to a career in teaching in the early 1970s. At this time he began to become well known for his poetry and plays. Aside from the love lyrics (one of which is the poem translated here), he was a powerful commentator on the political situation and critic of the then young military regime in Somalia. Imprisoned between 1973 and 1978, he was again in public life as director of the arts section of the Academy of Science, Arts and Literature from 1978 to 1982, when he joined the opposition Somali National Movement based in Ethiopia. He was a very powerful voice in the ensuing years of civil war and the repressive military regime, and continues to be a very important poet commenting on the predicament the Somalis face.

The poem translated here, which became very popular in the early 1970s, was composed in response to an incident which made an impression on the poet. Some time in the early 1970s a famous Somali woman singer called Magool visited Sudan to give some concerts. At one of these a Sudanese man fell in love with her and wrote a letter in Arabic which she received after returning to Somalia. Not knowing Arabic, she passed it to Hadraawi to translate. He was at first surprised to see the letter written in what seemed to be red ink, and as he read on an explanation made itself known. The man had extracted some of his own blood to write the letter and from this Hadraawi’s poem sprang.

The poem is of a type known as hees, a modern sung form with musical accompaniment (see general introduction), and is composed in a metre from another poetic genre known as jiifto, a metre commonly used for such hees. It was made particularly famous through performances sung by Magool herself. The poem speaks for itself in a way understandable to a non-Somali audience and is composed in a series of negative questions which have largely been retained in the translation.