(MPR) Growing up in Somalia, Ilhan Omar’s bedtime stories were about Araweelo, a tiny queen who ruled over a kingdom where all women were leaders and all men were peasants. Araweelo’s folklore spread throughout Africa, and even long after she died, women left flowers at her grave while men threw stones.
“My grandfather would tell me this story every single day,” Omar said to a crowd gathered at St. Joan of Arc, a progressive Catholic church in Minneapolis, her small frame pacing across the stage.
“Araweelo was also a very small, tiny person,” Omar said. “She wasn’t feared because she was a big person. She wasn’t feared because she was a tyrant. She was feared because she was wise and she was just.”
The story about a woman who was both revered and despised seems prescient now, given Omar’s political future.
