Books & arts
Hommage to Nuruddin Farah, the man who writes powerful women
Annie Quarcoopome
2007-02-14, Issue 291
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/39754
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Farah’s second trilogy, Blood in the Sun, is made up of three works (two of which I know to be excellent) Maps, Secrets and Gifts. Obviously, this is an author interested in concepts. Generally, his works are amazingly lyrical, incorporating such unconventional elements as the use of first, second and third person narrative voices for the same character in the same novel, and the vivid and yet vague recounting of dreams whose meanings are not easy to decipher. The supernatural plays a significant role, but instead of overwhelming us, it draws us deeper into the narrative. I can imagine that many a reader has been found absorbed in this book with furrowed brow, engaging with the musical quality of the language, at the same time trying to find meaning within the text.
Maps tells the story of a Somali orphan raised by an Ethiopian maid in the highly contested Ogaden region in the Horn of Africa. The question of the map is an intriguing one and important to us all, especially to those of us who have to deal with issues of representation in heterogenous places that need to be made homogenous because of the political structures it is assumed we must strive towards. For democracy sake, different groups of people enclosed within such arbitrarily drawn boundaries as our colonial masters left us with, must find enough commonality to regard themselves as a nation, or at least as a state. But what is most fascinating to me is the recurrent imagery of blood in this text. The macrolevel concept of national identity, especially relevant to the Ogaden whose national identity has alternated between Ethiopian and Somali, is played out in the familial arena. And so blood becomes important. Blood shed is crucial. Bloodlines even more so. And then there Misra, the protagonist’s foster mother, who reads his future in blood…and I am still deciding where to go with that.
Gifts is equally fascinating, if not more so for those who want to extrapolate Farah’s Somali context to cover Africa as a whole. Gifts presents even stronger characters (if this is possible), and I say this because they are characters who remain with me even after I have put the book down, even after I have read other works including Farah’s Links. This narrative is a love story that is completely not sappy. It is a love story in which the act of giving and consequently of receiving are very controversial. Duniya is leery of gifts offered by anyone because she recognizes the power dynamics at play. And yet in her love affair with Bosaaso, one must compromise, because the game of courtship cannot be divorced from the act of giving. It is highly ironic that the power dynamics of benevolence are played out in the arena of courtship, because this novel is really about the “courtship” of Africa by the West and the so-called Asian giants. And so weaving the story around Duniya’s dysfunctional family which includes her children from two previous marriages and an abandoned foundling which her daughter brings home, we see the shamed face of Africa lurking in the wings, arms outstretched, cupped beneath those of our benefactors, our “development aid” givers. They give and we receive, and our “love” affair begins. Issues of dependence, of misuse of “aid” to prop up corrupt, unpopular governments, arise in the setting of a war-ravaged Somalia, a raped continent.
I’m yet to read the final book in the trilogy, but be assured that I will track it down and I will add it to the millions of books and characters and authors, their creators, swimming around in my head. But let me say that one cannot write about Farah without acknowledging his unique take on women, especially as a male, African author. He has apparently received mail addressed to Ms. Farah, Mrs. Farah etc. for who would think that a man would have such a unique understanding of women, of their power, of the hypocritical social tenets that condemn trivialities and gloss over crucial questions of the woman’s place in Somalia, in Africa, in the world!
* Annie Quarcoopome is a student of Comparative Literature at Williams College in the US. She is also a contributor to Black Looks Blog.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
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