02/28/2026
Subxaanyo = Small, hamless snake
Halq = Huge dangerous snake
Halaq mareen = path of a huge, dangerous snake
The Story of our uncle Cigaal and the US!
Cigaal Shiidaad is the kind of man people still talk about, not because he fought a lion or crossed a desert, but because of something small that happened to him under a tree and because of many other similar incidents.
One day he lay down outside in the shade and fell into a deep sleep. While he slept, a tiny snake, what Somali people call a subxaanyo, slid over his face and passed through the narrow space between his nose and his upper lip. It didn’t bite. It wasn’t poison. It was just that cold, quick feeling of something alive moving where nothing should move.
Cigaal shot up like he’d been struck, shouting and shaking, his eyes wide, his hands wiping his face again and again, as if he could erase the path the snake had taken.
His cousin, heard him and rushed over. “What is wrong with you?” he said. “Why are you crying and screaming?”
Cigaal pointed at his face, at the exact place he where the Subxaanyo passed. “Something crossed right here,” he said. “Between my nose and my lip.”
His cousin asked what it was. Cigaal answered, “A subxaanyo.”
The cousin almost laughed, trying to bring him back to earth. “That one doesn’t kill people,” he said. “It doesn’t harm anyone.”
Cigaal nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know it doesn’t kill.”
Then he said the line that makes people repeat the story, half as a joke and half as a warning. “I’m not crying because it’s deadly,” he said. “I’m crying because that space may become a halaq-mareen,(dangerous snake’s a road).
“If the harmless one found a way across my face, what will stop the halaq, the truly deadly snake, from using that same road next time?”
People tell it to tease someone who overthinks. But the reason the story keeps surviving is that it’s not only about fear. It’s about precedent. It’s about the way a small crossing, a small violation, once it happens, becomes a route, becoms bormalized. The body learns it. The world learns it. And next time, what once felt impossible suddenly feels normal.
That’s why the story lands so hard when people talk about political overreach, especially around enforcement power, ICE, and deportation.
In the beginning, the public is often told, “This is small. This is targeted. This is just about the bad ones. This is just the law being applied.” It’s the subxaanyo: presented as limited, presented as harmless, presented as something you shouldn’t overreact to.
But enforcement isn’t just an action. It’s a pathway. Once the machinery is expanded, once the habits are formed, once broader stops and broader arrests and broader detention become routine, the system doesn’t stay “small” because someone promised it would.
It becomes easier to use again, and easier to use harder. The route is there. The same corridor that was justified for one category of people quietly becomes available for wider categories.
What began as “rare” becomes common. What began as “exceptions” becomes policy. What began as “temporary measures” becomes the new normal. And then, when something truly dangerous comes, carelessness, quotas, politics, bad judgment, the hunger to show toughness, there is already a road for it to travel.
Cigaal’s cousin only saw one small snake and judged it by its bite. Cigaal saw the deeper problem: the opening itself, the permission, the discovery of a route. That is the relevance. It’s not always the first act that ruins people; it’s the doorway that first act leaves behind.
In immigration enforcement, that doorway can mean families living with constant fear, communities learning to stay silent, people avoiding schools and hospitals, and even lawful residents or citizens getting caught in a system that has grown faster than its safeguards.
Once the public accepts the road, the argument shifts from “Should this exist?” to “How far should it go?, and by the time you’re arguing about distance, the road is already built.
So the story isn’t just comedy. It’s a warning told with a smile: don’t wait to be afraid until the halaq arrives. Pay attention when the subxaanyo finds a route, because systems, like snakes, remember the paths and love to travel familiar paths.
