13 Nuruddin Farah: Maps

Dr. G. Geetha

Exiled author Nuruddin Farah

For decades, exiled author Nuruddin Farah has dreamt, written and carried Somalia, ‘the country of his imagination,’ throughout his nomadic existence. His eleven novels, one non- fictional study of the Somali diaspora, articles, essays, broadcasts and interviews bear testimony to this fact and are literary manifestations of the tragic turn of events in postcolonial Somalia. The military leader Mohammed Siyad Barre had issued a death sentence against Farah for his satirical and critical remarks against the regime in his second novel, A Naked Needle (1976). Since then he has lived in the various countries of Africa, Europe and the United States, keeping abreast of the political turmoil in his country and making frequent visits for peace-brokering and reconciliation.

The pain he underwent while having to sever contacts with his own country is best described in his own words: “The country died inside me, and I carried it, for a long time,  like a woman with a dead baby… It became the neurosis from which I write” (Jaggi, Maya. “A Life in Writing”). Today, he has earned a rightful and distinguished place among Anglophone-African and among the international writing community. Winner of the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Literature in 1998, the equivalent of the Nobel, and various other prizes, Farah has also been nominated several times for the Nobel award.

Born in 1945, in Baidoa, in Italian Somaliland, Farah went to school in the Ogaden region, the territory ceded by the British to Ethiopia, and in Mogadishu. His father was an interpreter for the British governor, and his mother an oral poet. He used English textbooks, took Qur’anic lessons, and spoke Amharic, Arabic and Italian too. He began writing in English as he had only an American typewriter, also his efforts to write in Somali, once it had an official script in 1972, was curtailed by censorship. All his novels were later banned, and read only in smuggled copies. Farah obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Philosophy from the Punjab University. He completed his Master’s degree in Theatre at Essex University. His first novel, From A Crooked Rib (1970), as the title itself suggests, is about uneven gender equations and patriarchal structures within the Somali family unit and tells the story of Ebla who runs away from her village as she is about to be forcefully married to an old man. His second novel, A Naked Needle, is a very silly work and the least Somali, according to Farah himself when compared with the novels he wrote later, as these fictional works explicitly engage with Somali culture, politics and society.

The historical context of Farah’s works 

In 1960, British and Italian Somalilands were merged to form the democratic Republic of Somalia. However, democratic rule did not last long and after President Mohammed  Egal was assassinated in 1969, army general Mohammed Siyad Barre, staged a coup and seized power. The despotic and autocratic regime of Barre which lasted for 21 years, 1969-92, was a devastating phase as Barre resorted to the divide and rule policy pitting one clan against the other. The clans and their militias ousted Barre from power during 1991, as his regime became increasingly authoritarian resulting in civil war and genocide. and later the civil war. The US led UN forces intervened during the ’91 crises but failed to resolve the issue and the forces gradually withdrew. Somalia was abandoned by the international community and has not had a central governing authority, a problem that has been unresolved till date. The US- backed Transitional Federal governments have not had any success either. The Islamic  Courts Union and lately the Al Shabaab, regained control from these bodies. However, in 2006, the TFG collaborating with Ethiopian forces managed to quell al-Shabaab.

The trilogies of Farah – Variations on the theme of an African Dictatorship (1978-83) 

Farah has written three sets of trilogies till date. The trilogy mode has helped him have a prolonged engagement with crucial themes relating to Somali dictatorial politics, nationalistic rhetorics, developmental debates, border issues, media discourses, external intervention etc. The first trilogy with the overall title, Variations on the theme of an African Dictatorship (1978-83), and subtitled Truth versus Untruth, comprising Sweet and Sour Milk (1978), Sardines (1981) and Close Sesame (1983), deal with the resistance put up by a group of ten intellectuals against Siyad Barre referred to as ‘the General/Generallisimo” in the novels and his repressive policies. The Barre regime characterized by its rigid censorship suppressed a lot of information from the unsuspecting masses and Farah was determined to write the true history of his nation for posterity, countering the falseties propagated by the regime.

The Blood in the Sun trilogy (1986-98) 

Labeled as ‘body novels,’ Farah’s Blood in the Sun trilogy deals with specific historic events that caused a rupture in the body-politic of Somalia. This trilogy comprises Maps (1986), Gifts (1993) and Secrets (1998). Maps deals with the border war between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1978, the tussle for Ogaden by both nations. Secrets is largely the response of Farah when he visited Somalia and shocked by the Somali lineage obsessions. Gifts (1993), examines how developmental assistance in the form of foreign aid has actually thwarted the economy of the country leading to an erosion of cultural values. The pity is that in Somalia, this development aid or development assistance had been part of the problem and not part of the solution as asserted by most developmental experts and analysts.

Past Imperfect trilogy (2004-11)

Diaspora-returnees, Jeebleh of Links (2004), Cambara of Knots (2007), and Malik of Crossbones (2011), (re)visit Mogadishu for various reasons and are privy to the various competing factions in post-collapse Somalia. The warlords have taken control of Mogadishu in Links, the first book, while the Islamic Courts Union became the power-centres in Knots, inventing and imposing new traditions especially for the women. In Crossbones, Farah tries to unearth piracy rackets to bring out the real stories as to who the real pirates were. All three books of the trilogy, historicize Somalia’s post-collapse era starting from the abrupt withdrawal of the U.S. troops in 1993, and the UN forces in 1995, in Mogadishu, to the infighting that followed much later between the Transitional Federal Government and the hard-line Islamist factions.

Non-fiction – Yesterday, Tomorrow – Voices from the Somali diaspora (2000)

The numerous interviews conducted by Farah with the Somali diasporic communities settled in Italy, Canada and other European countries throw light on the status of Somali refugees//immigrants and the issues/challenges they need to face in their host countries. Besides, Farah has written and contributed several articles, opinion pieces, and talked on television, radio and at important forums, making it a point to talk only about the worrying situation in Somalia.

In his articles, “Of Tamarind Markets and Cosmopolitanism,” and “The City in my Mind,” Farah expresses his shock and dismay at the ruin and destruction of Mogadishu, formerly knowns as the ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean,’ He laments the death of the spirit of cosmopolitanism that characterized Mogadishu due to intolerance on the part of the Somalis.

The setting of Gifts

Gifts is set in the 1980s, known as ‘the lost decade,’ when most of the African states were suffering from widespread economic recession. During that period, Somalia was fully dependent on outside aid, and a mere satellite of the West. Duniya, the central protagonist of Gifts, is a middle-aged nurse who works at the Chinese-donated Maternity Benaadir  Hospital, with hardly any amenities. The nurses there lament about how a major power shortage that lasted for several days had occurred when they were right in the middle of a delivery. “We were just two nurses both recently graduated, and no doctor on call. A miracle that the mother and baby survived because my colleague and I pulled at the wrong limb”.

Duniya’s colleagues also observe that among all the foreign donors, only the Chinese- donors could be trusted when they extended offers of lifts to women. It was safer to travel along with them because they did not travel by cars, but by vans. “The modesty of the Chinese as a donor government was truly exemplary. No pomp, no garlands of see-how- great-we-are”.

Her colleagues also discuss how scarcity of essential commodities can make life increasingly complicated especially for women as they are prone to all kinds of risks. “Petrol shortages, power failures or the unavailability of public transport can only be defined as a double curse for women” (Gifts 20). Duniya hesitates before she goes out in her work-clothes because the chances of falling an easy prey to men were high in a nurse’s uniform. “Duniya needed no one to remind her that African men often viewed nurses as easy-going flirts, who were considered fun and were invited to orgiastic parties” (Gifts 21). There is an acute scarcity for water, baked bread, newspapers and even sugar but they are all freely available in the black market.

Gifts is set against such a background with a tough and resilient protagonist Duniya, who resists gifts and teaches her three children the same. Through Duniya’s story, we see Farah reprimanding Somalis for their reliance on external assistance for their sustenance and is critical of the Western nations who undermine African institutions and local industries by dumping their goods and services, under the pretext of charity. The old adage, ‘Do not look a gift horse in the mouth,’ is irrelevant in a modern, global context, where ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ between the so-called First world and Third world countries does indeed have political, economic, and cultural repercussions, as reflected in the novel Gifts.

The real inspiration to write Gifts came after he read a newspaper report about a ship loaded with charity rice which docked at the Banjul harbour. The local population preferred the high quality rice of the donors to their own locally grown food products, thus reducing the demand for their own products in the market. Further, The conceptual framework for Gifts is based on sociologist Marcel Mauss’s English verison of The Gift, which explicated social theories on reciprocity and gift exchanges, which Farah acknowledges. Newspaper-clips at the end of almost every chapter, situate the text within the North/South dichotomy, are full of information about all kinds of aid pouring into Africa/Somalia from the European and Western donors showing them mired deep into the dependency groove.

Analogies between Africa/Somalia’s interdependence with the developed economies and women’s interdependence on men in such societies are brought to light through Duniya’s story. Duniya, like other women from underdeveloped economies has no option other than rely on a man in an economically stagnant society in order to feel rooted and anchored as she recalls her interdependence on various men in her own life.

The landmarks of her journey through life from infancy to adulthood were marked by various “stations,” all of them owned by men, run and dominated by men. Did she not move from her father’s home directly into Zubair’s? Did she not flee Zubair’s right into Shiriye’s? … Abshir being another station, another man. Now there was Bosaaso….. Duniya was homeless, like a great many women the world over. And as a woman she was property-less. 

It also strikes Duniya that in patriarchal societies, the sacred and powerful spaces are assigned only to men. Men are the sole custodians and inhabitants of the intellectual spaces while “the spaces allotted to women belong to the grey areas of beds, food and the rearing of children” (Gifts 221). Duniya is also aware of a certain amount of hierarchy within a man- woman relationship. A woman cooks and cleans for a man in exchange for “upward mobility, security and cash” that only a man could offer (Gifts 156). Duniya endowed with an enlarged sense of self-worth, finally ‘gives’ herself to Bosasso in order to establish a certain amount of reciprocality in their relationship, aspiring to be more of a giver than a receiver..

But in spite of the limiting spaces provided to women hailing from backgrounds such as Duniya’s, where dictators and cowboy politicians have no qualms of conscience in begging for more and more aid, Duniya firmly believes in self-reliance and charitable acts, without any expectation.

The construction of plot in Gifts

Duniya, meaning ‘world’ in Hindi, and ‘cosmos’ in Arabic, suggests that she was “the axis around which the whole universe rotated” (Gifts 188). The plot revolves around Duniya who wakes up one morning and sees the outlines of a story emerge. She leaves for work and on the way sees a red and white striped taxi which resembles a butterfly that came in her dream earlier. She boards the taxi in a dream-like state and at the wheel is Bosaaso, an American- returned Somali, back to work in his own country. The plot appears simple and like a conventional love story traces the development of Duniya-Bosaaso’s courtship and their eventual marriage in the presence of their loved ones with which the novel concludes.

Duniya’s three children, Nasiiba, Mataan, Yarey, her two former husbands, Zubair and Taariq, her sweetheart Bosaaso, brother Abshir, and their acquaintances have their own stories but are woven into Duniya’s story. Duniya firmly believes that no giving is innocent,’ and longs to have words such as these on her epitaph: “Here lies Duniya who distrusted givers” (Gifts 242). She restricts her children from accepting food-gifts from strangers  though they live during difficult times. She labels those as ‘corpse-food,’ to be consumed only after her death.

However, she accepts the most expensive gifts from her brother Abshir, confident there are no ulterior motives behind his gift-giving. When Duniya was less than an hour old, her mother was too sick to breast feed her. Duniya refused to accept even a drop of milk from her father or from other women in the neighbourhood. However, she agreed to be fed by Abshir, her first gift, whatsoever. Abshir has other tangible reasons for extending generous financial support to Duniya and her children. In Abshir’s perception, a great injustice had been done to Duniya, as she was given away in marriage to the blind Zubair, as a kind of family  obligation; a man old enough to be her grandfather, and deprived of an university education even though she was brilliant and ambitious. Duniya is mad at Shiriye for having accepted rich bride-gifts from her first husband, Zubair, which she gets to know only much later.

Duniya’s two previous marriages were more or less like commodity exchanges but does find true love in Bosaaso. She confesses to her brother Abshir that she prolonged the affluent American-returned Bosasso’s proposal of marriage in the fear that people would think that she married him for his money. “The reason I didn’t say yes when I could have was that I don’t want to give satanic tongues the opportunity to wag like a dog’s tail and say that I am marrying him for his money and American Green Card,…” (Gifts 240). In the presence of Bosaaso, Abshir assures Mataan, Duniya’s son that he will take care of his higher education. He does this to make sure that Bosaaso does not consider Duniya’s children a financial burden on him.

Besides, Bosaaso had spent a quarter of his life raising other people’s offspring. He literally grew up on left-overs carrying them on his head given during parties where his mother cooked and did all kinds of odd jobs. When other children called his mother, ‘an itinerant kitchen’, he used to get into a rage as he was well aware of the fact that his mother was enduring a lot of hardship in raising him on her own and able to stand erect instead of begging or asking for charity. His wife Yussur, prone to depressive bouts as she could not breast feed her own child put an end to her own life. However, Yussur’s mother and her sister even after her death continued to taunt Bosaaso for money in order to lead luxurious lives and had no qualms about asking him for financial assistance.

It is only after her two marriages that Duniya is able to differentiate between love and the mere contractual and social obligation that is marriage. “Duniya thought that marriage was a place she had been to twice already, but love was a palace she hadn’t had the opportunity to set foot in before now. Her first marriage was a forced one and the second one with Taariq, had to be annulled due to his alcoholism. Yarey, their daughter lived with Taariq’s wealthy relatives, Muraayo and Uncle Qaasim. When they try to attract Yarey with expensive gifts, Duniya, is besides herself with rage and feels they are offending her sensibilities and her self esteem and trying to buy Yarey with riches. Her retorts at her half brother Shiriye when he mocks at her for deciding to raise the foundling reveals her strong sense of individuality and self pride. She says she is keeping the baby out of “pure kind-heartedness, motivated by goodwill, an act of mercy such as one might extend towards a blind man crossing a  dangerous street (Gifts 83).When she quarrels with Muraayo about Yarey,Taariq’s entry infuriates her because traditionally it was believed that a wise male mediator had to settle family rows and disputes even though the cause of the quarrels, most often, were the men themselves.

In Gifts, the ‘female idiom’ is articulated rather than the ‘male idiom’. All stories merge into Duniya’s story and the entire plot is told from mostly a female point of view. Duniya worries about society branding her children as hooyo-koris, children growing up in a household with a woman as head” (Gifts 33). She challenges Shiriye when he tells her people will not take her seriously unless there is a man by her side.

The novel concludes on these lines: “The world was an audience, ready to be given Duniya’s story from the beginning” (Gifts 246). Duniya’s story actually happens inside her head. She is narrating the story to herself imagining what would happen if her luck turned.

Themes in Gifts

Indigenous practice of credit system destroyed due to Western aid

The journalist Taariq, Duniya’s former husband and the mouth-piece of Farah, writes a column in the newspaper on “Giving and Receiving: The Notion of Donations,” which faces the brunt of the censors in the text, problematises the initiative of food-aid and its disastrous consequences for Somalia. Taariq writes how the traditional patterns of living where Africans helped each other during crisis has been destroyed. The extended family with its intricate networking operated like the trade unions. “Most Africans are paying members of extended families, these being institutions comparable to trade unions. Often, you find one individual’s fortunes supporting a network of the needs of this large unit”.

Aid causes cultural erosion and damages the morale of recipients

Aid can also damage the psyche of the recipients and cause a cultural erosion in the recipient societies, especially when it is over publicised through the media. Culturally, the Somalis believe in giving but only in privacy and in dire need. Care is taken not to “devalue the significance of the act by mentioning it in public” (Gifts 127). The Somali tradition called Qaaraan, passing the hat around for donations in order to help their kith and kin when in distress, is done so discreetly and respectfully that: “Donors don’t mention the sum they offer, and the recipient doesn’t know who has given what. …The recipient is not permitted to repeat this act…Now how many years have we been passing round the empty bowl.

A Somali would starve rather than beg. The charitable work of Bosasso, who had grown up on left-overs himself, and Dr.Mire who belongs to the Ministry of Economic Planning, remind us that charity begins at home. “It is at home that charity is bred like a stallion of Arabian nobility” (Gifts 147). “The Story of A Cow” is again a famine-story where the famine-stricken are averse to go to the feeding centres and consume the food “grown by someone else’s muscles and sweat” (Gifts 198). It is believed that the Prophet Khadr had come in disguise to test the people during adversity. It is yet another instance brought out by the text to highlight the fact that what Somalis need is not more aid, but respect (Gifts 198). The Juxaa story ridicules people who prefer to live like parasites. Such stories are  deliberately interwoven into Duniya’s narrative to depict the fundamental values of Somali society.

Internationalisation and vulgarization of Africa’s poverty in the media

Taariq is critical of the media for internationalizing Africa’s poverty and famine through fund-raising programmes and live-aid concert. To add more sensationalism, visits by dignitaries are also arranged. On the contrary, famines and droughts are nothing new to Africa as famine is a phenomenon the African is familiar with, writes Taariq in his article whose publication is deliberately delayed.

Taariq points out how photographs of brass bowls and starving babies are taken from all possible angles in order to evoke compassion. Also, crisis-stories have to be accompanied with crowd-pulling pictures which can be compared with the ‘raw, red meat kind of writing’. In Farah’s opinion, the sensational photographs of hunger and starvation are obscene and he puts it across as “That obscenity of a photo opportunity” in a talk with Maya Jaggi <http:/www.netnomad.com/nfarah.html>).

Hierarchies within the donor-recipient dyad

The arrogant Danish aid worker Ingrid’s altercation with the bold Yussur, while selling her second-hand china is a textual reconstruction of the inherent hierarchies embedded the new economic order. Ingrid’s sarcastically remarks to “To my mind Apfricans haven’t got what it takes to appreciate the cultural and technological gifts that are given to them” (Gifts 48). As if this was not enough, Ingrid continues to humiliate Yussur. “’Aid is aid, good or bad, whether there are strings attached and whatever its terms of reference. You say one  thing but want another, you Apfricans. I am fed up listening to this nonsense. Why ask for help if you don’t like it? The headlines of your newspapers are full of your government’s appeals for more aid, more loans. Nonsense” (Gifts 48). The emboldened Yussur lashes back by saying that very little aid money is in reality diverted to developmental projects and the welfare of the Somalis. A big chunk is spent on the salaries of the Americans living in Somalia like lords and how very little is, diverted in reality to serve the interests of the Somalis. Farah enables Somalia to talk, to use Edward Said’s phrase, ‘equal dialogue’. as Somalia has been deprived of a dialogue to the world outside.

References

• Alden, Patricia, and Tremaine, Louis. Nuruddin Farah. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999.
• Farah, Nuruddin. “Of Tamarind Markets and Cosmopolitanism.” < http://africancitiesreader.org.za/reader/chapters/02_NF.pdfFarah, Nuruddin. “Of Tamarind Markets and Cosmopolitanism.>
• Farah, Nuruddin. and Matteo Pericoli. “The City in my Mind.” New York Times, July 2, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03Farah.html?_r=0
• Farah, Nuruddin . “Why I Write.” Third World Quarterly. 10(4): 1591‒1599. Farah, Nuruddin. Sweet and Sour Milk. USA: Graywolf Press, 1979.
• Farah, Nuruddin Sardines. USA: Graywolf Press, 1981.
• Farah, Nuruddin. Close Sesame. USA: Graywolf Press. Farah, Nuruddin. Maps. New York: Arcade, 1986.
• Farah, Nuruddin. Gifts. New York: Arcade, 1993. Farah, Nuruddin. Secrets. New York: Arcade, 1998. Farah, Nuruddin. Links. USA: Riverhead, 2004.
• Farah, Nuruddin. Knots. USA: Riverhead, 2007.
• Farah, Nuruddin. Crossbones. USA: Riverhead, 2011. Ganga, Geetha. “Salvaging Mogadishu from Ruin and Rubble.” Africa Review of Books. Dakar, Senegal: Codesria. p. ???? 
• Jaggi, Maya. (15 Aug. 2005) <http:/www.netnomad.com/nfarah.html>).
• Jaggi, Maya. Nuruddin Farah: a life in writing http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/sep/21/nuruddin-salah-life-in-writing
• Lewis, David, Rodgers, Dennis and Woolcock, Michael. The Fiction of Development: Knowledge, Authority and Representation. LSE Working Paper 05- 61, 2005.
• Ruta, Suzanne. “Encumbered With Help. “ http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/12/reviews/990912.12rutalt.html
• Woods, Tim. “Giving and Receiving: Nuruddin Farah’s Gifts, or, the Postcolonial Logic of Third World Aid.” The Journal of Commonwealth Studies, 38: 1 (2003). 91-112.
• Wright, Derek. Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2002.