Somali author says secrets destroying his country
Web posted on: Thursday, November 12, 1998 3:14:16 PM EST
TORONTO (Reuters) -- Somali writer Nuruddin Farah is accustomed to ruffling feathers, but in his new book, "Secrets," he throws down the gauntlet to the people he believes destroyed his country -- Somalis themselves.
"When you sit with Somalis and you tell them what has happened they don't seem to be shocked by their own activities," Farah told Reuters while in Toronto for the International Festival of Authors.
"You must have the courage to admit that you are criminals, accomplices in the ruin of Somalia," the 53-year-old writer, who currently lives in Nigeria, said of the average Somali who stands idly by as civil war continues to rage in his country.
Set in Mogadishu in the week before Somalia's long-running civil war erupted, "Secrets" revolves around one family's herculean efforts to maintain a family secret as their country disintegrates around them.
The novel, third in a trilogy, is rife with pagan imagery, magic and sexuality including sex with animals, between children, incest and rape -- aspects considered taboo in Somali culture. Farah said he chose to use sex as the leitmotif because it is a universal preoccupation and has shock value.
Novel flags 'perversity' of Somali behavior
"It's a way of psychologically alerting people of the immoral acts, of the perversity of the Somali behavior," he said, likening sexual deviance to murdering one's countrymen.
Narrated primarily by Kalaman, the loyal son who must confront an explosive hidden truth, "Secrets" wends its way toward the final revelation with agonizing, occasionally infuriating, slowness.
"I thought I might as well enjoy myself," Farah remarked with a slight smile.
But the revelation pales in comparison to secrets unearthed along the way. "The point is to create a situation where it becomes something important to the people about whom the novel is being narrated but not to the people who hear it," he said, explaining that the secret is shocking only to his characters.
In a society known for oral tradition, Farah is an anomaly not least because he writes in English. In February, he was named 1998 Neustadt laureate, the first African to garner the prestigious award some of whose previous winners such as Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
But Farah, a seemingly modest man, is unconcerned with the buzz surrounding his award. Arguably Somalia's most famous novelist, he has set himself the task of "keeping his country alive by writing about it."
The writer, exiled in the early 1970s by the late dictator Siad Barre, traces the history of Somalia from independence in 1960 to the present chaos in his narrative.
Author Salman Rushdie called him "one of the finest contemporary African novelists" -- an accolade many writers would welcome but one that further damages Farah in the eyes of Somalia's predominantly Muslim population. Rushdie is the subject of a death order from Iranian Islamic clerics for allegedly insulting Mohammed in his novel "Satanic Verses."
'Sex is the secret two people hide'
Farah's new book also is guaranteed to further tarnish his image with his countrymen by embracing numerous taboos. But he is comfortable with that, insisting the sometimes shockingly explicit references are nothing more than a challenge to people who are guilty of worse crimes than his own.
"A society exists only in the things it hides. Sex is the 'secret' that two people hide between them or the voyeur keeps concealed, and the things that you hide are the things that define you," he said.
He compares the warlords in Somalia's eight-year civil war to the Italian Mafia -- everyone knows what they do but few are privy to its inner workings.
"The reason why the strife has not ended is because it has no clan base. There are open and closed secrets even in Somali society. There is the open secret that the civil war in Somalia is about a conflict between various groups. (But) there is a hidden agenda ... power," he said.
"Clan doesn't matter to them, who dies doesn't matter to them. It would be a dishonesty on my part to omit this particular phase of what happened in Somalia."
In 1996, Farah returned to his homeland after more than two decades in exile. The initial welcome was less than warm. He was held hostage by gunmen for three days in what he calls "an inconvenient misunderstanding."
That experience, he said ironically, inspired him to release "Secrets," which he had written in 1992. He calls the trilogy, which also includes "Maps" and "Gifts," his "body novels" because of the prominent role the human body plays throughout.
Although the latest book focuses on the onset of Somalia's civil war, references to the carnage are few. Farah might be saving that for his next trilogy, the first volume of which, to be published next year, deals with the consequences of the war.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.