SOMALI NOVELIST NURUDDIN FARAH AT UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

[Sophist]

With great expectation we wait your writings-- perhaps you can write a taster here? Turst me I won't be harsh when reviewing

[Double_Dose_of_Delicious]

y datz a great idea sophist...cawralo..won't u bless us with a little taste of "truth"...lol..don't worry in ma review i'll use da sandwich model on ya book..lol

 

 

p.s. Gediid ur absolutely rite..wat our friend fails to understand is the meaning of FICTION..it aint REAL..fake..made-up..lol..in otha wordz itz purely for enjoyment..or in ur case...the path to ur 15-sec of fame in SOL forum..lol jk (u know i got nuttin' but luv 4 ya.. )

 

Salaamz

[Cawralo]

Sophist, you have no idea what you've just volunteered to do I'll post all 5000 pages, even Adams would have re-considered, but just for toi.

 

3D, fictionalising is something you're an expert in ehh Still, you didn't really answer my Q.

 

Make that 16 sec by the way

[Sophist]

Salaams,

 

Cawralo, deareast, it would be with great bliss to read your looming Magnum Opus. With exultation I shall review every single sentence worth deciphering (trust by the time I am thorough your work; it leave you with a clement prospect). Come on entertain us all.

 

Meeshan ayaantaan Roob kama uusan da’in marka noo raaxee abaayadiis.

[Macalin]

Cawaralo:

Do you actually belive that nobel prize is anything else than a populist politic award?

.....Thats Kinda Hyperbolized statement !..too extreme,polarised!,Could you, parhaps,leave room for some compliments to the ACADEMICS,if not the instituion itself?

 

Sophist: Bro, dont U like to be crtiqued,by such a fine lady as Cawralo?

[Sophist]

Lakkad, not at all.

[Cawralo]

The Nomad, offcourse, there's many good nobel prize receivers. My favourite, Harry Martinson, who also was in in the committee, being one of them. My point is that The Nobel Prize has a very questionable credibility, the most worthy doesn't necessarly get it..but many, many qibla halal writers/scientists in there, offcourse.

 

haha, Sophist anytime

[Tahliil]

Nuradin reminds me that old Somali story of a mother and her little baby boy. The boy was a mute who could not speak a single word even at the age of 14. So one day years later, at his 17th birth day his mom kneeled down before god one morning and prayed to the almighty "Oh almighty, please allow my child to speak, please open his mouth and let me hear him speak for once before I die." .. And then god granted her child the power to speak. ‘He opened his mouth’ but the first sentence that came out of his mouth, what he uttered after his muteness was lifted took his mother's life. The child went to his mother and said, "Mom can I have sex with you." Shocked by what she heard, the mother passed away instantly.

 

That Somali anecdote comes to my mind again and again when I hear or see Nuradin and what his twisted mind ‘fabricates’ very often these days. I think he is a good writer, has a good command in the language as do a lot of the nomads I weekly interact here but he is not as exceptional as some of the writers I dig. (And I bet I would have been the first to buy if some of u guys had taken up writing as a career cause I can see that creativity in some of your postings) …I also think what motivates Farah most as a writer is largely greed (how he is gonna make money rather than how to produce an enjoyable work of art ). Simply put his work has no integrity in my eyes...And as a Somali who enjoys good writing I don't c a reason why I should celebrate or in that matter praise his work... To me he is like that boy who said to his mother, after years of his mother hoping and wishing for her son to say something for her, “mom can I do u”...Reading some of his works, Secrets for example, a novel about Somalis and their sexual obsessions with cows and their off-springs disgusts me....

 

I've read a lot of writers in exile, Mohammed mamdani, Edward Said, Wole Soyinke, Arundhoti Roy, Ali Mazrui , among others, and all speak of hope and expectations and ask thought provoking question and bring to the table lively discussions but Nuradin has yet to climb up the ladder and gain my respect and admiration as a reader of his novels.. I haven't yet seen his latest book LINKS which he is now promoting, of all places, in Minnesota but I could only hope that this one is not a sequel of his father-having-sex-with-his-son, or brother-doing-his-sister, or father-sneaking-for-a cow-in-the-middle-of-the-night thriller he wrote several years ago..(As for me I won’t buy this book but will wait till it is playing at the nearest public library)...

[Sophist]

One wonder in aghast state as one reads some of the postings of ostensibly coherent writers heaving what seems to be nothing short of imprudence about the art of writing and composing fiction. Granted the Secrets (the only Novel which contains bestiality and incest), one is challenged his intellectual detachment from Somali emotionalism—I for one thought as piece of Lit, Secrets occupies in the same shelf as Ulysses is resting;however, I hold those things (bestiality etc) are at bare minimum repulsive; but this does not mean I find his work paltry, on the contarary I think he is the best Novelist living (of course I am being bias).

 

Anyhow, let us just wait Cawralo’s writings; we are all looking forward to it.

 

Sophist

 

Nabad

[Tahliil]

I’m wondering if, with all these exposures, I’m going insane or if it's just the world around me who lost its head and purpose? When did my dear friends mounting a cow and having sex with the beast become the style of the day, a master piece with no equal, a grandeur form of art of literature? Guys give the credit where it’s due... Are we no longer see the fundamental difference between simple, plain decency and pure filthy? What happened to our critical minds, to our better judgment? A mind I think it’s a terrible waste if it only imitates. And in my humble observation imitation is what’s taking place in the minds of so many of our fellow countrymen including, very so often, me I guess... I believe we r no longer holding, can no longer hold our positions against the unethical, the overwhelming pieces of propaganda written and broadcast daily in order to loosen our grips from what we hold so dear and near to ourselves? Our brain of course… Funny how this one sounds in my mind but I’ve to wonder once more what would Sayid Mohamed or Timacade or Isma’el Mire, or other famous Somali poets would say if they would have read and seen Farah’s fiendish production about Somalis and their intimate relationship with cows…..These r really tough times…Lord have mercy on us all…

[Sophist]

Perhaps! and indeed May Allah have mercy on us all.

[Sophist]

uruddin Farah, the only world renowned Somali, who writes in English, and a serious candidate for the Noble Prize in literature, has delivered yet another riveting novel, “Links.” The book is set in Mogadishu, where Jeebleh, a professor in New York, is back in his motherland to find his mother’s grave, settle residue of grievances from the seeds of the civil war with his childhood friend Bile (after twenty some years) and find Bile’s niece who has been kidnapped. Jeebleh is literally taken aback by the ruins that have become his beloved childhood city, which was/is the capital city of a nation melted into blood muddied gullies. “He needed a quite moment, to contemplate all this madness,” laments the narrator.

The callousness of the warlords in competition, the wanton waves of violence ‘they’ waged befuddled him and the word “sense,” along with “conscience” that had been lost long before the civil war only becomes apparent after, he realizes. “I don’t want any more deaths, not on my account,” Jeebleh said. “I forbid you to let your mad dogs loose on the family of the dead boy. There have been enough mindless killings already. I forbid you to kill on my account, my conscience won’t allow it,” he droned on.

Jeebleh, straddling between his Somali culture and newly adopted American culture, is increasingly irrigating enemy soil for himself as he tries to walk on a shadowed moral line; Shadowed by the tar of tribalism that coughs crimes of rape, theft, robbery, murder and lays minefields before anyone thinking to take a tentative courage step of sanity.

The raging fire of anger between Jeebleh and his half-brother Caloosha--who has not a shred of scruples in his bones—-is fueled by the nets of Caloosha’s immorality weaved web. As his name alludes to it, Caloosha lets anything go down his gullet, bulging his stomach with vile and venom. Caloosha whose loot includes his way too young for a “wife,” wife, of whom he had procured her by killing her entire family, are all obtained revoltingly. This character’s brutal personality rejects all rationale known to mankind and dwarfs great proportion of historically recorded, pestilent past. It’s very temping to tear him off the page, to beat some sense into him!

By creating such a repulsive character, Nuruddin is telling Somalis to examine themselves. Anyone affiliated with a Caloosha type, cousin, son-in-law, brother-in-law, brother and uncle is him/herself fueling the flames of collective, Somali moral failure.

Nuruddin, the only Somali who survived three assassination attempts, yet loves his motherland and people just the same, Nururddin, the man that refuses indefatigably to let go of his Soomaalinimo, who pleads for the blue flag, is also the only Somali that the rest of the world would love to have as a naturalized citizen. Yet he has been humiliated for simply being Somali, by many countries which have invited him to collect their most prestigious literary awards, apparently after he had won them. Nevertheless, Nuruddin who could have sloughed off his nettlesome Somali skin, refuses to let go of his Soomaalinimo. The question is, Why has Nuruddin been sacrificing himself for Soomaalinimo when everyone else has been running away from it by taking up other nationalities, including myself? Because Nuruddin is most confident in his Somali skin, persona and is most comfortable with his identity which he proudly wears in his heart and mind. Thus he loathes destruction of his motherland, he abhors the horror the warlord causes and exposes the wanton waves of immorality.

In the seventies, Nuruddin was exiled from his motherland at the age of twenty-something by a brute political regime because of his pertinently politicized writing style. Thirty some years later Nuruddin, now self-exiled, has not yet let up. That is why the theme of all his novels is an indictment of soft, advocacy of sort. And this one “Links” is as well an audacious incrimination of warlords’ politics and the collective failure of the will of Somali people.

 

We have heard the term “Daljiraha Dahsoon (Unknown Soldier)” endearingly used around the world, including Somalis! Today we have to learn yet another endearment, though new but most appropriate for Nuruddin: Daljiraha Maqan (The Exiled Sentinel Soldier).

 

The Book, “Links” is a poetic, artfully descriptive and purposely provocative piece of first class writing.

 

Ahmed Ismail Yusuf

yusuf006@umn.edu

[ayaanick]

We judge, and judge, and judge. I just wonder how far this judging will take us. I am not all for his potraying of the Somali culuture, and for that matter who he is trying to make appealing for. For our culture is what it is, and will remain what it is for as long as we have a culuture. Truly it is sad to see our people go at it, for they know better, or chose not to know any. In the mean time, why don't we all go back being critics, of the world, and its inhibants! I see that no place is safe with you all occupying. Making everyone walk on egg-shells around!!

 

Tatatatata

[Sophist]

Ayaannick, Hear Hear.

[ayaanick]

Sophist!!!

 

Thank..you...thank you!!!