It's the only place we have. We fought hard for this land, man and woman. From a hillside neighborhood, you can look down on Hargeysa. There's the ruins of the national theater. Its roof collapsed upon rows of twisted metal seat bracing.
People say the place was packed when it was bombed.
There are the makeshift graveyards in parks and schoolyards. So many people were dying so fast that there was no time to dig proper graves. Today, the mounds are marked with whatever scraps are available, a piece of turquoise plastic, a lead pipe, cinder blocks, even an old bathroom sink. But the real legacy of the regime of Mohammed Siad Barre cannot be so easily seen. It lies below the surface.