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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.”
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