Mr. Ambassador, Meet Nuruddin Farah

“No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.”− W.H. Auden.
                                                 ***

In the spring of 1980, I arrived in New York City seeking an education. I was fresh from Cairo, Egypt, where I had spent one and a half years. In my four months in the city, I was fortunate to stay in Astoria, Queens, with two diplomats at Somalia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations: Abdi Artan, First Secretary, and Adan Farah Shirdon, Consular. Shirdon is the older brother of Somalia’s current prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon. Both Shirdon and Artan later became ambassadors to Djibouti and Canada, respectively.

After that summer, I headed to Ohio, where I knew no one, to commence my university studies.

The Somali ambassador at the time was Ahmed Mohamed Adan “Qaybe.” Ambassador Qaybe was a career foreign service officer who had served as an envoy to Washington and Moscow. He was tall, strong, intimidating, and brusque. He seemed blunt where others prevaricated. He had worked in senior posts in both the civilian and military governments and, not long ago, was the speaker of the House of Elders in Somaliland.

Qaybe, who hails from the Sol and Sanaag region, has become a fervent defender of the self-declared state of Somaliland. He has attacked some of his fellow countrymen for forming the Khatumo State. For example, Dr. Ali Khalif Galeyr, Somalia’s former prime minister− a hero to some and a polarizing figure to others− has become Qaybe’s favorite piñata. Several months ago, Qaybe lashed out at Galeyr for the latter’s unbridled ambition and shameless pursuit of political position.

Moreover, Qaybe, who holds no doctorate, questioned Galeyr’s PhD and characterized it as an achievement from a third-rate American university. However, Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from which Galeyr graduated is ranked by U.S News and World Report as one of the top graduate schools in public affairs. Syracuse University, after all, is the institution from which Joe Biden, the U.S vice-president, graduated.

A young Somali diplomat in our apartment complex told me about an incident in the Somali mission to the UN. The story was confirmed by two other diplomats.

One day, the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah came to the mission. By 1980, Farah had achieved middling success and had three novels, all in English, under his belt. I have no idea why Farah appeared in the diplomatic compound. Was he renewing his passport? Was he in Manhattan, in the neighborhood, and decided to stop at the mission? I do not know. At any rate, the said young Somali diplomat was gracious enough to have welcomed Farah. He was talking to the writer when Ambassador Qaybe walked into the office. The young man introduced Farah with the kind of reverence typically reserved for dignitaries.

“This is the Somali writer Mr. Nuruddin Farah, Mr. Ambassador,” announced the young diplomat.

Qaybe, the career bureaucrat, was caught off guard. He knew who Nuruddin Farah was. No one though had expected Nuruddin Farah, who had imposed on himself self-exile in the mid-1970s, to appear in a Somali government office.

After a few seconds of embarrassing silence, Qaybe exploded, “Are you the one who writes about cockroaches and lizards?”

The statement was like being smacked with a tsunami.

Nuruddin Farah was stunned and dumb-founded by the ambassador’s undignified and vituperative language. The remarks indeed rendered him speechless. Farah believed, albeit erroneously, that he would be bathed in celestial glow. But here was this uncouth and abrasive envoy treating him like a giant fly that kept orbiting in the diplomatic compound.

The young diplomat, who like Qaybe hailed from Sol and Sanaag, was utterly embarrassed. In fact, the ambassador’s words sent shudders up the spine of those present. There was a genuine feeling that Ambassador Qaybe had trampled on a national treasure: Somalia’s renowned writer. Yes, Farah was an avowed critic of the Siad Barre regime, but he nonetheless deserved respect and common courtesy.

The incident offered a telling tableau of two different personalities: one, a government official upholding its policies that stifled dissent and the other, a novelist who had built a reputation of challenging the legitimacy of such government. It was obvious that Qaybe did not want to be perceived as a high-ranking official cavorting with a dissident.

One thing became clear in that brief confrontation: There is no uglier scene than one involving a bruised ego.

True to his reputation, Farah came across as intelligent, detached, pretentious, and a bit haughty. He was the same man who was once interviewed by the BBC Somali Service and treated the audience dismissively. When asked which writers had influenced him, Farah told the interviewer to skip that question as the answer would not make sense to the audience. The audience, in Farah’s eyes, represented a monolithic group that knew nothing about literature. The novelist did not want to waste his time discussing an issue that he unilaterally deemed too sophisticated for his audience to comprehend. Why bother!

After Qaybe’s unfortunate remarks, the novelist tried valiantly to preserve a modicum of civility. He wanted to stay above the fray but there was no denying that he had a vacuous expression on his face. Of course, he was hurt. Farah must have felt unappreciated at best, and slighted, at the least.

Farah left the office without receiving a groveling apology.

One of these coming years, Nuruddin Farah might win the Nobel Prize for literature. He has been nominated for the award numerous times. He has published 11 novels, some with critical acclaim. Some of his recent novels though have been depicted as “less poetic and polished than his earlier novels,” (The Economist) because they rely heavily on “research and recent political events.” In his latest novel, Crossbones, Pico Iyer detected what other critics have been saying about Farah’s penchant for “textbook commentary.” In the November 8, 2012, issue of the New York Review of Books, Iyer pointed out that Nuruddin Farah’s “characters sound as heavy-handed as people declaiming from an Associated Press report.”

If Farah wins the Nobel Prize, I wonder what Qaybe would say about the Swedish Foundation. An astute Canadian writer named Margaret Atwood once said, “If you are not annoying somebody, you are not alive.”



Shangole and I

I knew Fuad Mohamed Khalaf “Shangole” when he was a lad.

Yes, the notorious Fuad Shangole, one of the top leaders of Al Shabab and a man on whose head the U.S government has placed a $5 million bounty.

Simply put, we crossed paths as children.

Shangole always hummed with energy, and he used to dawdle in the streets of Mogadishu acting tough and thuggish. Fortunately, that was in the 1970s and Al Qaeda and Al Shabab did not yet exist.

The truth is I had a personal grudge against Shangole, the lad. In a way, he was something I was not: tough and street-smart.  We both grew up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood, but, at the risk of immodesty, I was the mild-mannered youngster who steered clear of street fights or hanging with rough kids.   

Shangole was acquainted with me but he never knew my name. The age difference, perhaps, was the reason why we never associated; he was five years my junior. I used to see him come and go at his grandfather’s compound where my uncle, Abdi Gurey, had his car rental business, “Auto Noleggio Wajir.” From time to time, I assisted my uncle with his paperwork. His place was the hub of the northeasterners living in Mogadishu because many used his postal box “702” for their mail. All kinds of people would come to his agency checking their mail, and there were always people there sipping tea or cappuccino, talking, and playing dominos.

I loved hanging with these adults as they conversed and joked around. But the biggest reasons I used to help my uncle were the sense of feeling responsible in the running of the business and, frankly, the occasional cash windfall.

In my small juvenile world, young Shangole was a minor nuisance. He minded his own business and never talked to the adults in the agency as he trudged past them on his way to his grandfather’s home upstairs.

My puerile grudge against him, though, was purely accidental.

One day, Shangole was passing by when one of my uncles made a perfunctory remark about him. “I love this boy because he is brave and exceptional,” my distant uncle said. He used the word “fariid” which in Arabic and Somali means unique and exceptional. Being the only youngster in the agency, my uncle’s statement was like a punch in the stomach. But I managed to maintain a veneer of politeness. I knew things about Shongole, the naughty boy, that my poor uncle did not.

My uncle never spent time with Shangole, nor did he know the lad well enough to issue such a proclamation. In a way, his little exuberance about Shangole was understandable. He was indeed sending a message to me: Go and spend time with children your age instead of hanging with adults. Furthermore, my uncle knew my aversion to fighting and hustling.

I concurred with my uncle that Shangole was aggressive, pugnacious, and street smart. The lad was the type who would exhibit traits of juvenile delinquency, although I had no proof that he was ever sent to a juvenile hall in Mogadishu.

I have not seen Shangole since the mid- 1970s. His life has had no shortage of drama. I heard that he settled in Sweden, as a refugee, sometime in 1992 and later became a citizen of that country. While in Sweden, Shangole, perhaps, went through a personal transformation. He became religious and even served as an imam before finally moving to Mogadishu in 2004. His years in Sweden, as an imam, supposedly revealed little trace of dogma.

Shangole’s meteoric rise in the Al Shabab movement was breathtakingly swift. During the brief reign of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Shangole was the head of the department of education. After the expulsion of UIC from Mogadishu in 2007, Shangole became one of the top leaders of Al Shabab and the man in charge of issuing fatwas, religious edicts. According to the Associated Press, on December 7, 2010, Shangole threatened to attack the United States. “We tell the American President Barack Obama to embrace Islam before we come to his country,” he bellowed. Reports have claimed that he was involved in sadistic brutality like personally killing Al Shabab enemies and even cutting off the hands of people who violated the group’s decrees. He has developed a binary view of the world: You are either with Al Shabab or you are against it. Four years ago, there was an attempt on his life when a bomb exploded in a mosque in Mogadishu where he offered religious lessons.

What intrigued me was that Shangole, the adolescent street thug, became a full-blown terrorist in his adult life.

For me, I haven’t changed that much in terms of disposition. When I became a father, however, my oldest son, Mohamed, somewhat reminded me of my limitations as an action hero. He, like any 6-year- old, was enamored with action films. One day, I stumbled on a note he had scribbled about the men he admired the most. There were the names of Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Uncle Zaki. The latter was a friend of the family with a commanding physical presence. Zaki was a burly man, 6’4 tall, adventurous, and very adept at life in the outdoors. He was born in Washington, D.C to an Egyptian diplomat. I shared with him height—6’3—but not other notable attributes. This man,interestingly, used to go to a Chinese all-you-can eat cafe and consume large quantities of food. One day, the owner called his friend and invited the friend to come anytime to eat for free as long as he did not bring Zaki. The latter would laugh every time he told that story in an effort to demonstrate his prowess and a penchant for ravenous eating. To his credit, Zaki had no fat, only muscle. He passed away in 1995.

Mohamed’s list of the admired was telling. My name was nowhere to be seen. Yes, I was never into hiking, karate, or hunting, nor did I display any knowledge of military matters. My son, I suppose, merely saw me as a man who would ramble on about books.  When it came to physical activities, I was, for all practical purposes, boring to him. On one hand, I was disappointed that I did not make it to that ‘prestigious’ list. Any father would like to see his son list him among people he admires.  However, I could not contain my glee when I saw my son at least list the name of a family friend, a real man, among the action film stars. 

A decade later, of course, my son would rehabilitate me and upgrade my status as his hero, by parsing real life from fiction.

These days, Shangole’s career is at a crossroads. He is on the run and in hiding. He has made an impressive array of enemies−the Somali government, Puntland, the U.S, and bounty hunters, not to mention ordinary Somalis who do not want the terrorist in their backyard.

I wonder what my uncle, who has since passed away, would have thought about today’s Fuad Shangole, a fugitive from justice, and the fact that I have been writing about Shangole’s militant group. It is a situation rich with irony: Two former youngsters, one carrying an AK-47 and the other a pen.

Such is the misfortune of our current circumstances.