Nuruddin Farah: Keeping Somalia Alive
Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2014 1:15 am
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.
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.
