Since Siyad had banned all reference to clans, this even included this circumlocutory usage of 'ex'. On visits to Mogadishu in this period, I thus could not resist wickedly asking my apparatchik Somali friends if one could now safely enquire about a person's 'ex-ex'. They were not amused.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 5