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Where is Ogaden Region in World
Literature? Part II
By Dr. Mohamed Abbas
Jan. 05, 2010

“The loss of the Ogaden was greater, of course.
It was as if my whole blood had been drained
 out of me – that was how weak I felt. To me,
that was how tremendous the loss had been.”  
From Nuruddin Farah’s novel, “Maps”.

When I first arrived in Malaysia in early nineties, I still recall having a tough argument with two of my university friends in which the question was raised whether or not the Ogaden Region has any place in Nuruddin Farah’s writings? My friends’ views were that the Somali novelist gave an unwavering focus only on Somalia in all his novels. To them, no mention was given to that region in his writings. “The man’s pen is not generous enough” was their concluding remarks!

Maps by Nurrudin Farah

Without giving their argument any serious thought, and knowing that my friends haven’t read his novels, I reminded them that if there is anyone who comprehensively introduced the Ogaden region to the outside world through his writings, it is none other than the renowned Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah. And if nothing can be compared with the satisfaction of having read a book and discovering for yourself the wealth of information it gives about that  region, it is also none other than his famous novel  “Maps”, a strikingly lyrical story and the first novel in Nuruddin Farah’s “Blood in the Sun” trilogy.

Moreover, the book was available in our university library and some of his works were also selected by the university. These works are taught to students majoring in English literature with a view to providing insights into the social, political, and religious experiences of contemporary Muslim societies, i.e. Somali people.   

Until today, Nuruddin Farah’s Novel: “Maps” remains the most outstanding piece of literature about the Ogaden region. It is beautifully written and worked in the dense and the narrative prose for which Nuruddin Farah is known. “Maps”is the story of Askar, the novel’s protagonist, an orphan who was born in the Ogaden region and whose mother died in childbirth and whose father died in prison for the cause of liberating that region from Ethiopia during the bloody Ogaden war in 1977 – 19978. Askar who is the central figure of this novel grows up in the town of Kallafo in the Ogaden region but then moves to the Somali capital to live with his aunt and uncle. Another important character in this novel is Misra, Askar’s foster-mother who is Ethiopian of Oromo descent. In this Novel, Askar must choose between following his father's footsteps by joining the liberation army (WSLF) in order to liberate his beloved region which is under siege or to join a university with the purpose of freeing his homeland through his pen. Askar’s message is either liberty for the Ogaden region or death. Like his father, he believes that an oppressed society will never gain their liberty without resistance.

Employing a lyrical and imaginative style, Nuruddin Farah narrates the following passages:

 
“If killed when defending his country, he would die a young man at peace with his soul – and therefore, a martyr. And if he joined the university? It worried him that, at a university, he was likely to indulge his thoughts in higher intellectual pursuits and that he might not think it worth his while for fight until death in order to liberate the semi-arid desert that was the Ogaden. Wouldn’t a university education equip him with better and more convincing reasons, wouldn’t it provide him with the economic, political and cultural rationalizations, wouldn’t he be in a better position to argue more sophisticatedly? He would, perhaps, write a book on the history of the Ogaden and document his findings with background materials got from the oral traditions of the inhabitants. So would he take the gun? Or would he resort to, and invest his power in, the pen?” 

Exposing how foreign powers were involved in the Ogaden war during the cold war, Nuruddin Farah takes our memories back to the battlefield through the following words:
 

 

“Our land was nothing but a playfield; our wars were turned into weekend affairs,   during which the Russians borrowed a West-German manufactured tank code-named Leopard and  sold it to Libya. The idea was to test if this sophisticated article of German warfare would stand the conditions and climate of the Ogaden.

“The Soviet, Cuban and Adenese generals masterminded the decisive blow which returned the destiny of the Ogaden and its people to Ethiopian hands. But we’ll return in maybe ten, maybe twenty years and put back the Ogaden where it belongs – in Somali hands.”

When you complete reading this novel, only then you will understand how the loss of the Ogaden region had made a devastating impact on Askar and put both his physical and emotional feelings in turmoil. In a poetic style, Nuruddin Farah takes us into that situation through the following text:

 

“.He (Askar) mourned for the souls of the betrayed dead. The loss was so great; the tremor in his soul so distressing, that Askar behaved like a man watching a part of him slip away. He had been well when he was given the sad news – well and alive to the detailed horrors which Karin offered. He remembered he had been ill and in bed when the Ogaden, in a coup de grace, was returned to Ethiopian hands by the Soviets. He remembered someone commenting then, that what the British imperialists had put together wouldn’t be pulled asunder by Somalis – the Soviets themselves imperialists, wouldn’t permit that to happen”.

“You were taken ill during the tragic weekend when the Ethiopians, helped by their Cuban, Adenese and Soviet allies, reoccupied the Ogaden. The slightest earth tremor shakes you, the slightest gives you the shock of an earthquake, your temperature runs high, your blood pressure goes up, your eyes becomes bloodshots – we don’t know what to do”.

“You see, Askar left when Somalis were over running the Ogaden and the Ethiopian army of occupation in the Ogaden was in total disarray. Inside a year, however, the Russians had entered the war and reversed the situation, turning the Ethiopians into a victorious army literally overnight. Now this was hard to take. I mean, when you’ve been triumphant for over a year, you don’t expect that a weekend’s job deprives you of all that you’ve gained. And as a result of this, there was a great bitterness among Somalis everywhere”.

Compelling, touching, and still eye-opening, this novel remains the most important novel about the various aspects of the lives of the people living in the Ogaden region. This novel is also taken as a course-work and taught at different universities around the world, especially in the area of postcolonial literature.

Nuruddin Farah, Somalia’s leading literary voice and one of the world’s great writers has done his part by taking the cause and the history of that region to every corner of the world through his writings. He is very meticulous and far-sighted writer who always steps ahead of every other intellectual.   

Now it is the time for the young generation to pick up their pens and introduce the cause and the history of their region to the world community. They should remember that sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword.

And to me personally, Nuruddin Farah remains my inspirational writer and the most influential novelist to my interest in literature.

Dr. Mohamed Abbas
Chairman of the Somali Community in Malaysia (2008 – 2010).
E-mail: kismaayo91@hotmail.com

Related Articles:

* Where is Ogaden Region in World Literature? Part I

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