Abdalla Ali, a lecturer at a university in Mogadishu, recently checked on Mohamed Osman, a relative who had lately come down with illness.
The visit became some kind of trip to a museum. Osman was a civil servant in Somalia’s good years in the 1970s and ‘80s. He rose through the civil service ranks before Somalia went to the dogs. But their dialogue revealed something: Endurance and hope that Somalia’s decades-old problems are just passing clouds.
