Ink in His Veins and Somalia in His Heart

[xiinfaniin]

Nuruddin Farah, Never Writing Far From Home

 

By Neely Tucker

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 25, 2007

 

African novelists can become international celebrities, but it's often as much about the politics as the writing.

 

Nigeria's Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, might be best known for his fiery denunciations of his home country, which executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, the famed playwright. Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz, another Nobel laureate, stayed at home in Cairo -- and was stabbed by Islamic militants for his political liberalism. Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o fled for 22 years; when he and his wife returned for a brief visit, they were given a hero's welcome -- then brutally beaten in a home invasion.

 

Nuruddin (NEW-ru-deen) Farah, the acclaimed Somali novelist, whose latest book, "Knots," is now in bookstores, is trying to find a middle ground.

 

 

He lives thousands of miles from Mogadishu, in Cape Town, South Africa, but remains on the mother continent, writing story after story about Somali women trying to make their own way in a country gone to hell. He's 62 years old and has been doing this since the 1970s. After a flurry of awards, he's considered by some to be the best African candidate to win the Nobel for literature.

 

He was banned from his home country for more than 20 years for his criticisms of the regime but made a quiet trip back home last fall to try to mediate peace talks between the "Islamists" and federal forces.

 

Wow. Major breakthrough?

 

"Actually, they paid me no mind at all," he says, laughing, in Bangkok Joe's Restaurant in Georgetown, while on a recent stop on his North American book tour. "Absolutely none. It just didn't matter."

 

He's of medium height and build, soft-spoken. He's wearing a plaid Burberry scarf. His salt-and-pepper hair is cropped close. His manners are impeccable. No wonder the men with the guns paid him no mind! He's clearly more at ease with stories and characters than firearms and political brimstone. You try to picture him pounding the lectern like Soyinka discoursing on Nigeria, calling his home country "the open sore of a continent," and you get no image.

 

He's lived in Europe and America, always in pursuit of the meaning in fiction, and always just below the radar line of international fame. He speaks English, Italian, Amharic, Arabic and Somali. He tried a stint as a Hollywood screenwriter 30 years ago, an adventure that left him a collapsed film project and not enough money for a plane ticket back to Africa. "I haven't been back to L.A. since."

 

But mainly, he sits alone in a rented apartment he uses for a writing studio in Cape Town and maps out novels. He works from 8:30 a.m. till 4 p.m., on the theory that it's the hours and discipline that matter. Going for a word count encourages hasty work to fill a quota, he figures.

 

He writes about women. There was Ebla, fleeing an arranged marriage in his first novel, "From a Crooked Rib." It's still in print after 37 years. Most recently, there is Cambara, a Somali living in Canada who returns to Mogadishu, in "Knots." (Publishers Weekly, in giving it a starred review, dubbed it "mesmerizing.")

 

In between was "Maps," named one of the best 100 African books of the 20th century (a category encompassing fiction, nonfiction, plays, poems, children's books, the works), winning the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998 (and a $50,000 award, one of the richest in world lit) and becoming that rarest of things, a full-time creative writer.

 

"There may be four or five African novelists who survive just by their writing, and he's probably the only one who doesn't do academic stints," says Charles Larson, the American University professor who has chronicled the rise of African literature for 40 years. "I saw him in India last year at a conference, at this exotic, five-star, 14th-century palace, and at the end of every day, he went back to his room and wrote. He works at it every single day, no matter where he is."

 

He once said that he was "trying to keep my country alive by writing about it." Now he says that sounds like "something that I said when I was very young." He has a 13-year-old daughter, Abyan, who has already won a national literary prize in South Africa. His 11-year-old son Kaahiye wants to be a soccer star.

 

Would he consider moving his family to Somalia, to live amid the gunfire and devastation?

 

No, no, he says, wrapping his scarf back around his neck and trekking back uphill to his hotel, the posh Latham. He loves Somalia, but his children know it only as a place their dad goes on about. And yet, he misses the political give-and-take, the heyday when African writers were key players in the continent's post-colonial drama.

 

"When Soyinka, Ngugi, Achebe, were on the continent, there was lots of change and possibility, and they produced very intense, lively works. I feel a bit like the Lone Ranger, riding around on a depleted landscape. Cacti and not much else."

 

He stops into the three-story Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, where he walks about until he finds his books. There are four or five of his titles. No one recognizes him, so he is free to wander, alone, next door for tea and a glass of wine, the night unwinding, his children awaiting his return, and Somalia in the back of his mind: indifferent, nurturing, hostile, endearing, a million miles away, home.

 

Source: Washington Post, Mar 25, 2007

[Wisdom_Seeker]

He stops into the three-story Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, where he walks about until he finds his books. There are four or five of his titles. No one recognizes him, so he is free to wander, alone, next door for tea and a

glass of wine, :eek:

the night unwinding, his children awaiting his return, and Somalia in the back of his mind: indifferent, nurturing, hostile, endearing, a million miles away, home.

I hope that is a mistake on the author's part

[Che -Guevara]

^^^Why are you shocked?

[Taliban]

Originally posted by mystic:

I hope that is a mistake on the author's part

The famous writer is a moderate, in case if you didn't know.

[xiinfaniin]

^^What constitutes a Muslim moderate yaa Taliban?

Khat chewing

tobacco smoking

wine drinking

sbaaro-profeteering

war-lord supporting

hijab bashing

...

 

[-Lily-]

LOL, moderate is a swear word now? Long live the extremists then, shall we say?

[Taliban]

Originally posted by -Lily-:

moderate is a swear word now?

No; it's a designation word.

[xiinfaniin]

^But must it not entail something yaa Talibka?

[Caano Geel]

xiin:

Give it up you damned moderate

 

On the other hand the article was very interesting wrt African literature, the current generation has lost the idealism of the past - for good or bad, it reflects our lost optimism and cynicism of the status quo

[xiinfaniin]

CG,

 

There are weak Muslims. There are ghulats (extremists). But there are also moderates. A wine-drinking Muslim is a weak Muslim, and not a moderate.

 

Ideally, we should all strive to be in moderate category.

 

Taliban, seems to think weak Muslims are moderates.

[Alle-ubaahne]

^^I agree with brother Taliban, since moderates are defined by the Gaalos. but I glorify the fundamentalist muslims who adhere to the foundations of our Islaam.

[xiinfaniin]

^^Why let 'gaalo' define what moderates mean? It defeats the purpose, does it not?

[Kashafa]

Xiin,

 

I'm with T on this one. In todays universal terminology, being 'moderate' entails everything you mentioned

 

Khat chewing

tobacco smoking

wine drinking

sbaaro-profeteering

war-lord supporting

hijab bashing

 

and more: Traitordom and selling out are now bywords for being the consummate statesman

 

Whereas the label extremist or Islamist signifies someone who will not compromise an inch on his faith.

 

In todays world, men of principle = Islamists. "Extremist" has negative connotations, so I say we embrace the term, Islamist.

[xiinfaniin]

^^Subtext messages need not define your core understanding of these terms yaa Kashafa. If Quran is where you get your religious instructions, you should adhere to its teachings and resist to compromise your true understanding of these terms just to combat negative connotations that certain media outlets tend to propagate adeer.

 

Islamists is good term, regardless of what those who coined it intended it to mean. Jihadist is another term I like and take a special pride in subscribing to it. But to embrace ‘extremism’ and throw ‘moderateness’ out in the fear of being what those who use it imply is simply wrong. We are moderate, in the middle road, and just society. That’s what we ought to strive to be anyways.

[NGONGE]

^^^ Reason never sits well with angry young men, saaxib. With some it's best to let them flex their cyber muscles and go on about defining simple terms. When the fights comes, I daresay they would struggle to fight their way out of a room full of feathers.

 

The poet said it best:

 

الرائ قبل شجاعة الشجعان

هو اول وهي المحل الثاني

 

It's a darn shame that the bravery we keep seeing here is almost always devoid of any reason.