Nuruddhin Farah–LINKS
Posted in 9c-2009 Reviews, Historical, Literary, Somalia on Jan 15th, 2011
Returning to Somalia twenty years after he was imprisoned and then sent into exile, Jeebleh arrives at a remote Mogadiscio airport now under the control of a major warlord. He has come from his adopted home in America to help Bile, his oldest friend from childhood, find and rescue his kidnapped daughter and a friend. Bile is affiliated with a warlord in the south of the city, but Jeebleh may be in a particularly good position to help him if the child has been taken by a rival, since he belongs to the same clan as the warlord controlling the north. The political situation is so tangled, however, that at times no one really knows who is allied with whom. As he travels around the ruins of Mogadiscio, once a beautiful city filled with educated people, Jeebleh comments to an acquaintance: “This city is a disaster. I haven’t met anyone who openly disapproves of what’s happening, and the fighting goes on and the clan elders continue soliciting funds for repairing deadly weapons.”
