IN MEMORIAM - Yusuf Ahmed Saleh

Mr.Yusuf Ahmed Saleh was summoned by the Almighty earlier this year after suffering a long, painful and debilitating illness to which he finally succumbed in the small hours of 29 of April this year. His body was laid to rest in Minneapolis, MN on that same day in accordance with Moslem tradition. Yusuf had been for the previous four years an outstanding member of the Somali Community in Minneapolis, MN. He is survived by his companion in life for forty two years and the mother of his children, a son and two daughters, as well as sisters and brothers all of whom dearly miss him.


Yusuf was born in 1932 in Erigabo and taken across the Gulf to Aden (then a British colony) by his parents at a very early age. There and then he received his pre-school Qur’anic teachings which gave him a firm grounding in religious studies before he had to go to a school run by Roman Catholics. The school was better known by its abbreviation, “RCM”, (which stood for “Roman Catholic Mission”) and was then the premiere institution for education in the whole of South Arabia providing, as it did, elementary – which in Aden was called ‘primary’ – intermediate, and secondary education. Aden, though a vibrant cosmopolitan city and the most advanced in the entire Arabian Peninsula, had no institutions of tertiary education.

But the school’s curriculum was very strong and its graduates formed the backbone of the colonial bureaucracy as well as the flourishing and ever-expanding commercial enterprises. The urge to opt for employment in lieu of further education elsewhere was too great to resist given the abundant opportunities, the lucrative salaries, and the social standing that came with them.

The employment history of Yusuf began in 1952 as an accountant with the Aden Port Trust where he held various other positions, rising to senior levels. From there he moved on to the service of the British Army (Aden was then hosting the headquarters of the British forces in the Arabian Peninsula) as the most senior civilian officer, heading the department of procurement and supplies. At the time the base was being relocated to the Gulf area Yusuf was included in the relocation, but declined in favour of moving to Mogadishu in order to join the civil service of his motherland. Whilst in that service he worked as a senior auditor in the Auditor-General’s Office and was later transferred on promotion to a post in the Somali Ports Authority becoming finally its General Manager. But he left the service shortly after so as to answer the call of the business sector which was then showing encouraging signs, and he remained a businessman until the collapse of the State in 1991.

Yusuf, though an Adenite in upbringing and education, remained a true Somali to the bone. For while in the service of the Aden Port Trust he worked very hard in his spare time as the Chairman of the SYL branch in Aden to awaken nationalist feelings among his fellow Somalis and it was in that capacity that he promoted Somali nationalism in order to push forward the movement for independence. It was also during his time that the physical facilities of the Somali Community Centre in Aden was built, largely through individual contributions; and the Centre is in tact and still being used by the Community to this day. It was by dint of fate (when Yusuf found himself once again in Aden after the implosion) that he became the unpaid President of the Somali Community in the Yemen and had to work in that same facility he had helped to build many decades before. While he did a lot to better the conditions of the Community his most salient and memorable accomplishment must remain a hard-won agreement from the Yemeni Government to grant five-year residence visas to Somalis – a privilege denied them so many times before. With deteriorating health and a daughter in the United States Yusuf had to decide finally to move to Minneapolis, MN in 2003.

As all those who knew him will attest Yusuf was a gentleman of the first water; he was kind-hearted, a man of pleasant temperament always wearing an infectious smile and always forgiving. I have known him since my childhood for more than a half a century being an Adenite myself and have never ever seen him angry. While the situation at home has dashed the hopes of so many of us Yusuf was incorrigibly optimistic about the resilience of his country and confident that some day in the near future its situation would dramatically turn around. He has been dearly missed, not only by his family - for he was a loving husband and father - but also by other relatives, friends and everyone else whose life he had touched.

May Allah bless his soul and settle him in the best abode in the Jannah.