A Glimpse of Somalia

When Waubgeshig Rice was discussing Human Rights and Canada's First Nations peoples at Lisgar Library on Monday, he made reference to the fact that many Canadian First Nations communities have struggled with the transition to a sedentary existence from the traditional nomadic hunting and gathering way of life that is still a part of their recent history.  Coincidentally, my bus commute reading this week has been Nuruddin Farah's novel From a Crooked Rib (1970) in which he tells the story of an illiterate young woman from a pastoral encampment in the Somalian countryside who flees from an arranged marriage to an old man to a town and then to a city in search of some sort of freedom and choice.  The story is set at the time of Somalian independence from Italy and Britain and it portrays the parallel existences and the interchanges between the traditional and modern worlds. It puts a human face on the struggle for women's rights and reveals the strength and determination that is necessary to bridge the gap between the old and new worlds.  It is interesting to compare Farah's portrayal of Somalia as it moves towards independence with that provided by Margaret Laurence in The Prophet's Camel Bell (1963).

Last month I read one of Farah's more recent novels, Links (2003), which tells the story of a Somalian expat, a former political prisoner, who returns to Mogadishu under the control of warlords.  He paints a vivid picture of the struggle for survival in that "Twilight Zone" kind of world.

Farah is one of the  politicians, academics, journalists and aid workers to whom Hassan Ghedi Santur speaks in the CBC Ideas program Things We Lost in the War about what has happened in Somalia.