His surname Cawl (Somali pronunciation: [ʕawl]) means "gazelle", was the nickname of his great-grandfather who was the Sultan of the Warsangali clan.

In his youth, he obtained a scholarship to study aeronautical and automobile engineering in London in the United Kingdom (1959–62).

Upon graduation, he moved to Somalia and worked with the police force and the National Transport Agency in Mogadishu.

The vivid descriptions of Somalia's scenery and fauna in Awl's literary corpus, as well as the inclusion of traditional Somali poetry, make it stand out in particular.

Reportedly because of his membership in the Darod clan family, Awl, along with three of his children, was killed in 1991, at the height of the civil unrest that gripped the town of Beledweyne in the Hiiraan region.