Cross-posted at Poets and Policymakers…

Maps: A novel by Nurrudin Farah begins with a quote by Charles Dickens: “No children for me. Give me grown-ups.” Farah indeed depicts his main character, Askar, as a precocious child beyond his years and the novel tracks his struggles in identity from birth to near adulthood. Misra accompanies Askar, an ethnic Somali born in the Ogaden (eastern Ethiopia) on most of this developmental journey. She is his Ethiopian adopted mother and soul mate – an identity that engenders conflict given that the novel takes place in the late 1970s.

In the summer of 1977, the power of nationalism propelled Somalia and Ethiopia into the Ogaden War. By this point, Ethiopia had lost control of the Ogaden to an insurgency and there was clear evidence that the Somalis were supporting the rebel movements. This assistance, once the war began, climbed to upwards of 75,000 Somali troops supported by tanks. Somalis overwhelmingly supported this invasion of eastern Ethiopia.

Calculating the worth of their two alliances, the Soviet Union broke off relations with Somalia in the fall of 1977 and upped their arms sales to the Ethiopians. Ultimately the Ethiopians pushed the Somali forces to withdraw completely from the Ogaden. In the end, over 25,000 Somalis died in the war, as well as thousands of Ethiopians. The failed campaign fought in the name of Somali nationalism also brought humiliation to the Siad Barre regime as roughly 700,000 refugees from the Ogaden flooded across the border into Somalia – creating a humanitarian crisis.

In the novel, Askar is sent to Mogadishu from a small village in the Ogaden at the height of the war to stay with a well-educated uncle and aunt. Misra stays behind, only to be accused within a year of betraying the village to the Ethiopian army, elements of which carry out a brutal massacre of many of her fellow villagers. She ultimately flees and finds her way to Mogadishu a decade later. Before her sudden arrival, Askar and his new family are informed of the alleged betrayal. And, thus, Askar is forced to manage his loyalties and love to Somalia with his intense connection to the woman that raised him.

Askar’s fascination with maps provides a way for him and the author to explore the character’s identity through the ravages of Ogaden War, as well as the colonial past that set the boundaries and the ever-present national aspirations of the Somali people. The basic question asked repeatedly by Misra and Askar is: who are my people? And what are my responsibilities to them, especially in the face of multiple loyalties? The novel reveals that the answers for people with complex relationships are never as clear as the boundaries fought over by the belligerents.

These painful questions likely endure for the people of the Ogaden as a low-level insurgency continues against the Ethiopian government, which now blames the Eritrean government of providing support to the rebels. In addition, immediate irredentist claims on the Ogaden by some members of the Islamic Courts Union that took power in Mogadishu in 2006 helped provoke Ethiopia to invade Somalia later that year. The Ethiopians quickly removed the Islamists from power – but in the process ushered in three chaotic years of displacement and bloodshed in Somalia.

Like Dickens, Farah undoubtedly would also prefer grown-ups rather than children to demonstrate the horrors of his age. Yet in choosing children, he faces the cruel realities directly. In Somalia today, in fact, the United Nations reports about half of Somalia’s population of seven million is in a state of humanitarian emergency. And, half of those are children. An official stated last month:“There is no child in central south Somalia who knows what it is to live in peace. And to now try to recover from that as communities and society, of course, will take at least a generation.”

Farah also in the midst of the darkness though offers hope through the story of Askar as well as many of his other characters. For those who may hear Somalia and just shake their heads to forget or to despair of the situation, here is a great excerpt from an interview in 2007 in which he explains his motivations and intentions of his fiction:

NURUDDIN FARAH: …I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it, and the reason is because nothing good comes out of a country until the artists of that country turn to writing about it in a truthful way.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean, this is the role of an artist, the role of a writer.

NURUDDIN FARAH: This is the role of the artist, the role of the artist who also is, well, shall we say, probably courageous, probably mad, probably terribly ambitious writer, who wants to say, “This is what Somalia is like, and this is what I’m going to write.”

It is possible that the way I see Somalia is not the way that some other Somalis or some other foreigners who do not know Somalia may see it that way. But I have continually seen Somalia as a country full of hope, and yet that are being held back from, you know, accomplishing that hope, that dream.

To end, such words remind me of those arguing for constructive disengagement from Somalia by the international community. The idea is to free Somalis as much as possible from the distortions and obstacles inherent in foreign interference. It would only be then, they argue, that Somalis could face other challenges like that of clan politics and local and national governance openly and honestly. Unfortunately, for many reasons (some good and some bad), the international community remains stuck in the failed status quo of Somalia which supposedly keeps the country from falling further into the abyss, but also prevents Somalis from fully seizing control of their futures.

Variations of this predicament exist in Afghanistan and Sudan. Looking forward to another post, Niloufer and I hope to write more on the topic soon.