Nuruddin Farah: Keeping Somalia Alive

[Lamagoodle]

Nuruddin Farah has recently published a new novel; The state of the affairs.

I think he is the only intellectual we have. You can read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuruddin_Farah


The below piece was written by Abdinasir Amin on Sahan Journal two year ago. It discusses alot of the unfounded criticism againt Nuruddin..

One late afternoon in April 2012, I was having it rough and could feel the early symptoms of a migraine coming on. After spending some time rubbing my temples and popping some pain relievers, I decided to do the decent thing. I left work early, went home, closed the curtains and tried to take a nap in the hope of doing something useful later on.

Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, my cell phone beeped. I checked the number and said hello groggily. The message was brief.

“Hi, your hero is here,” the caller said in a flat, nonchalant way. “Would you like to join us for the interview or will you join us later for dinner?”

My friend, who is a journalist, knew I had read all of Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah’s books and essays, and, although her description of him as my “hero” was overblown, it was not far from the truth, albeit in a different way.

Sleep leapt through the window, as did the migraine. I puttered around the house wondering what the encounter would be like.

After what seemed like an eternity, I called up my journalist friend and asked if she had finished interviewing Farah. I jumped into a taxi and headed for the Nairobi Serena where the interview had been conducted and the two were having tea.

After brief introductions and the obligatory photo, we headed for dinner at Haandi Restaurant at the Mall, Westlands. I found Farah engaging, humble, witty and fiercely independent in his views.

The reason why my friend’s use of the term “hero” struck a chord with me is simple. I have been reading Farah’s works for a very long time now against my older brother’s admonition – he describes the writer as “that man who doesn’t keep our [Somali] secrets!”

Every time I come back to Farah’s books, I am struck by how fresh and relevant his work is to the modern reader.

When I meet people who want to understand Somali society, my first reaction is to ask, “Have you read Nuruddin Farah’s books?”

For instance, a little over a year ago, a new friend who works for a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) kept pestering me to explain everything Somali to him. Against my better judgment, I was turned, overnight, into an ambassador for all Somalis.

One evening I got a late call from him. He wanted me to explain a complicated clan tree because he had met a Somali man, and thanks to many lazy, garden-variety anthropology texts which cast Somali society as fixed and unchanging, he thought he could figure out this mutual acquaintance’s political views if he knew the Somali man’s clan.

The reason for the call was that the Somali man described the late Mohamed Siyad Barre as “the best thing that ever happened to Somalis” and was unapologetic of Barre’s time at the helm of Somali politics. Naturally, the non-Somali new friend with the NGO was flummoxed since he had read unappealing things about Barre so he wanted to sound me out.

To be more precise, my new friend’s amateurish studies of the main clans and “the historical antagonism between the Daarood and the Hawiye” were top on his mind. When I confirmed that our mutual acquaintance Somali was indeed from Barre’s clan, his quick riposte was “that explains everything; no wonder he was very glowing of the old man.”

I was incensed by this remark and many others because of my aversion to stereotypes of Somalis. It brought to mind the worst caricature of Somalis I had come across, one exemplified by a character in Farah’s book, Crossbones.

When Jeebleh, the main character in the book, tells his wife Judith that he plans to go to Mogadishu, she wonders why her husband wants to visit Somalia “that unfortunate country, cursed with those dreadful clanspeople, forever killing one another and everyone around them”.

My non-Somali new friend’s thirst for things Somali was unquenchable. Had he bothered to read Farah’s books, he would have discovered that Somali society is as human as any other. Period. There is no magic to it, no exotic orientalist claptrap with harems and gorgeous dancing maidens, no aha moment of discovery. There is the good, the bad and the ugly.

What Farah does is to “humanize the Somali.” He does not embellish, he does not whitewash, but presents the picture as the artist sees it; warts and all and without mawkishness. He describes in his own words that his life’s mission and the impetus for his writing is to “keep my country alive by writing about it.”

Farah’s body of work straddles tens of years of history, from his early work on traditional Somali society tackling subjects as diverse as early marriage and its attendant complications (From a Crooked Rib), through life under different conditions – the war with Ethiopia in the mid 70s and a young man’s longing for his father (Maps), the Siyad Barre dictatorship (Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, Open Sesame), the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006-2008 and life under al-Shabaab and rampant piracy (Crossbones) among other themes.

He has been a hot favourite with the bookies for the Nobel Prize in Literature the last couple of years and is the recipient of the Swedish Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998 for his book, From a Crooked Rib, a book with a cult-like following and which has earned him the sobriquet “the Somali feminist”.

In Farah’s body of work, ordinary Somalis laugh, play, marry, die and are buried, make love and have babies.

Nuruddin Farah has certainly kept Somalia alive in our imaginations.

Abdinasir Amin is an editor with Sahan Journal.

[Basra-]

Now I know the real name of foremerly Sir Loggoyo and Jaale.



Abdinasir Amin . It suits u very well.

[Lamagoodle]

Basra, LOL. Dr. Abdinasir Amin and I share alot in common.





He also wrote this regarding our plight in the NFD...

Ethnic stereotypes are not necessarily a bad thing — it is one thing to be stereotyped as liking the good life, dressing well, wearing the latest Armani suit and scent, driving the latest BMW, having a penchant for speaking the Queen’s English, or indulging in kuku porno.

This is the stuff of bar-room banter, oiling the wheels of social discourse. I have no quarrel with that. I can see the coy smile on my friend Oti’s lips.

I doubt Shtan would take offence at the ingokho joke as well (I will stop it, I swear). The message is usually “come on, don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up”.

But it is different to be stereotyped as being guilty of all manner of ills, from spitting on the side walk, being “Osama’s buddy”, speaking in a harsh incomprehensible language (a silly hand-me-down from that colonialist Richard Burton), sitting around all day eating miraa with a kikoi tied around your torso, and having huge amounts of “unexplained” money.

I would rather be guilty of eating too much ingokho any time. The gurgling noises Marete makes as he imitates my Somali speech, then asking me “what did I say in Somali? and my witty rejoinder “my aunt is a cow” — that also I can take. It is good fun, we all laugh and that is it.

However, there is nothing to lighten up about being “Osama’s buddy”. At the height of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a lecturer in an oral examination had the cheek to ask me if I knew the Al-Qaeda leader.

For those who have been through the University of Nairobi’s medical school, oral examinations are traumatic.

There are usually three categories of students; those whose performance is outstanding and the examiners are trying to make up their minds whether to give them a distinction or not; those who are in the middle and the oral examination is just a confirmation that you are indeed C material — a middling; the third, and most-dreaded category and every med-schooler’s nightmare is those who are borderline and are a whisker away from failure.

For this hapless lot, the oral examination is either a kiss of death or life — one mark helps you proceed to the next class and the lack of that one mark can consign you to another year with your juniors or a supplementary examination (a “sup”) — something to be avoided at all costs by any self-respecting, “trans-nighting” (means zero sleep) med-schooler.

The elephant in the room

I recently wrote an article for the Daily Nation’s sister publication The EastAfrican on being a Kenyan Somali at a time of war.

The article was in a very jocular tone and touched on issues of identity and negative ethnic profiling of Kenyan Somalis at such a difficult time in our country’s history.

I have since talked to a number of people and have been in a number of situations to gauge different points of view and experiences.

For many Kenyan Somalis, the elephant in the room is that of questioned loyalty.

This is not something new among minority communities whose kin or co-religionists are seen as aggressors against the mainstream society they reside in.

When the US was at war with Japan following the attacks on Pearl Harbour, the loyalty of Japanese Americans was questioned and many of them had a very rough time to the point that some were incarcerated in concentration camps.

Similarly, the loyalty of Kenyan Somalis is questioned by many. It does not help that such terms as the “enemy within”, the “fifth column”, and, worse still, analogies of odious reptiles are used with abandon.

Reptilian analogies — with long anaconda-like tails buried hundreds of miles away in Somalia and heads in “little Mogadishu” (Eastleigh) — are particularly unnerving.

As Edward Said observed in his seminal work Orientalism and Covering Islam, the leap from dehumanising a people to committing all manner of crimes against them is a very short one. Once you have dehumanised someone, anything goes.

Just think of the term “cockroach” and how it was effectively used to dehumanise the Tutsis in Rwanda. We all know what happened next.

Idi Amin’s Uganda

Many Kenyan Somalis draw parallels between the fate of Asians in Idi Amin’s Uganda — where the Asian community was blamed for all manner of ills and eventually ended up being booted out of their homes and their businesses — and the increasingly strident tone against Somalis in Kenya, whether Kenyan Somali, Somali Somalis, or Somalis from the Diaspora who have come to invest in Kenya.

One businessman wondered aloud: “Why aren’t our brothers and sisters allowed to invest in Kenya like other human beings?

Does money have colour, creed, or religion? Many people come to Kenya to invest — white, black, Indian — but when it comes to Somali investments, they and even us Kenyan Somalis are looked at with a lot of ill will and suspicion.

“Our brothers from the Diaspora work very hard in North America and Europe, toiling three different jobs, sleeping little, slaving for years and saving every dollar they can.

“Obviously, they cannot invest in a lawless country like Somalia. The closest to home for them is Nairobi, and when they invest in Kenya, they are not appreciated as advancing our economy. Instead, they are called pirates and whatnot. Why? Isn’t this intolerance?”

Calm before the storm

The common theme among many is that of anxiety — the calm before the storm. There are terms in the English language and in popular parlance which are reassuring, if not benign, to many Kenyans.

To most Kenyan Somalis, however, they have a completely different meaning. “Security” and “operation” are terrible words to the eyes and ears of a Kenyan Somali. They are akin to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded cinema hall.

There was a comical moment during last Friday’s sermon when the very wise and affable Hon Billow Kerrow — a man after my own heart — had to explain what he meant by “security” in many languages.

He had stood up to make a number of announcements at Jamia Mosque and one of the announcements was the need for all worshippers coming to the mosque to cooperate with guards who had been stationed at the main entrances to the mosque to ensure enhanced “security”.

He started in Kiswahili and English, then quickly, realising the negative connotations of the word “security” for most Somalis, switched to Somali and explained that it simply meant “…checking for anything suspicious so none of us is in trouble since we are living in tense times”.

The sigh of relief was palpable. The roots of such mistrust of the terms “security” and “operation” are buried deep in the annals of history — history that many Kenyans are unaware of, at least until recently through the auspices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Things have been made worse by the war on terrorism and recent events, such as the stone-throwing antiques between Muslim youth and other Kenyans in front of Jamia Mosque following the arrest of Jamaican Islamic preacher Sheikh Faisal.

For me, the words “security operation” conjure up many unpleasant images burnt into a child’s mind forever.

Four images from the Wagalla Massacre of 1984 suffice to make the point about the negative connotations of “security operation” for the Kenyan Somali.

Men stripped of dignity

At the height of that infamous security operation, I was in primary school in Tarbaj village, 48 kilometres North of Wajir town, Wajir County.

First, I see images of grown men in Tarbaj in broad daylight, stripped of all dignity, of all their clothing, in front of women and children, being whipped and herded like animals to the centre of the town.

The naked men beg for mercy as the nyahunyos cut into their flesh in the blistering sun. By dusk, the askaris would congregate at the nearby dam, the only source of water, to cook and clean, having successfully rounded up many men from the nearby towns and “dropped them off” in Wagalla — a euphemism for teaching them a lesson.

The askaris gave us ugali, fruit jam, and army-issue biscuits. After all, we were students, and the old man said education was the key to Kenya’s future.

The second image is my mother recounting how a much-loved uncle was whisked away from our “restaurant” and bundled into the back of an army truck, never to be seen again.

The third image is that of my old, hypertensive, and diabetic father contemplating dangerously lowering himself to the bottom of the family well to hide from the marauding askaris.

Luckily for him, he was very light skinned — he claimed that he was an Arab, a descendant of one of the Arab families in Wajir town. They bought that canard and left him alone.

The fourth is that of another uncle wheezing and unable to breathe. He was one of those who were imprisoned in Wagalla without food or water for days in the scorching sun.

He was beaten many times on the chest with rifle butts, was taken for dead, thrown into the back of a tip truck together with the dead, and thrown into some bush in Dhela, Wajir County.

He crawled out of the mass of bodies and was brought back to Wajir by good Samaritans.

There are similar stories from many Kenyan Somalis on so-called “security operations” — the Bulla Karatasi Massacre of 1980 in Garissa County, arbitrary arrests and beatings on baseless charges of being shifta sympathisers, communal punishment for a son or relative gone shifta by torching the family house or entire neighbourhoods, arresting all known relatives and being asked to “produce your bad apple plus his gun”.

Similar extrajudicial killings have occurred in Malka Mari, Takaba, and other places in Mandera County, and they are well documented, thanks to Ahmed Issack Hassan and other unsung heroes and heroines, such as the indefatigable Annalena Tonneli, a Catholic nun.

In taking a straw poll — nothing scientific here — there are those who say they have not been affected in any way by the current state of war.

Abdi and his friend, both of whom work in peace building and conflict resolution, say “everything is normal; we have not seen anything unusual, nothing untoward has happened to us or our relatives”.

Others speak of a general anxiety and unease. They are waiting and watching, particularly on the soon-to-come security operations in Eastleigh and South C.

There are worries that, as has happened before, gold and other valuables for sale in Garissa Lodge and other malls in Eastleigh will be confiscated, never to be returned.

Some women have started wearing the niqab, the all-covering face-cloth. One such woman remarks: “I don’t want people staring at me like I am a criminal, at least now they can’t see me. I feel safer this way.”

Cambara, a Bachelor of Commerce graduate from India, is amazed at the vitriol on social media sites such as Facebook.

She cannot believe how former friends, some of whom she has personally helped in kind and financially as struggling students in India, have joined the fray and started calling her and all Somalis “skinny, smelly wariyahes”.

She says “this is simply unbelievable. Ordinary people, people I considered friends, have taken leave of their senses and are calling me names. This is crazy. I have done nothing but I feel besieged”.

I have personally witnessed two incidents of ethnic profiling. I went to the environs of Kenyatta Avenue last week to condole with a friend of mine who had lost his mother.

Smack in the middle of the CBD, a young Somali man was being led away by what appeared to be plainclothes policemen. His poor, mournful sister was trudging along.

A lethal lunchbox

Everyone was gawking at him and some watchmen by the ATM at Barclays Plaza (where I was) were snickering behind me “hawa watu, hii wariyahe hii”.

The poor chap stood no chance. The following day, as I crossed the road opposite my workplace, I swear three fellow Kenyans were staring at my lunch-box like it was the most lethal of weapons.

I nearly ditched the damned thing but thought (wisely in retrospect) that pandemonium would have ensued.

Clearly, these observations are indicative and not generalisable to all and sundry — what is clear is that there is a lot of anxiety and we need measures to reassure citizens who have done no wrong and who are going about their daily business that all will be well and that they will not be treated unfairly because of their ethnicity.

Let justice be our shield and defender.

[Lamagoodle]

Basra, this is Dr. Abdinasir Sharif Amin celebrating his mother.

http://sahanjournal.com/celebrating-my- ... VJqUYJBsBA


P.s. I would make an official request to you to contribute to Sahan Journal. PM if you are interested. Any story will do.

[TheGrumpyGeeljire]

JaalleMarx, are you originally from the NFD.

[Lamagoodle]

JaalleMarx, are you originally from the NFD.

Yes, I am. Are you?

[TheGrumpyGeeljire]

Nope. Just asking.

[Lamagoodle]

Nope. Just asking.

Read Abdinasir's articles above and give us your take.

[Basra-]

Basra, this is Dr. Abdinasir Sharif Amin celebrating his mother.

http://sahanjournal.com/celebrating-my- ... VJqUYJBsBA


P.s. I would make an official request to you to contribute to Sahan Journal. PM if you are interested. Any story will do.

No thank you Jaale. I love the idea of contributing for free but how can I assure my anonymity ?

[Lamagoodle]

Your Grace, anonymity guaranteed. You could also use a pseudonym.

Fore more info write to; contact@sahanjournal.com

[Basra-]

Your Grace, anonymity guaranteed. You could also use a pseudonym.

Fore more info write to; contact@sahanjournal.com

I don't think I have anything to write, but good to have that email.


pS: r u the geek pictured with Nurra?

[Lamagoodle]

Your Grace, anonymity guaranteed. You could also use a pseudonym.

Fore more info write to; contact@sahanjournal.com

I don't think I have anything to write, but good to have that email.


pS: r u the geek pictured with Nurra?

No, Basra. That is Dr. Abdinasir Amin, the editor of Sahan Journal, author and MD.




You could write about contemporary issues affecting the somali community in your part of the world; anything related to Somalis will do.

I hope sophisticate also contributes to Sahan.


P.s. do not forget to mention me in your cover letter.