Among the African writers of world recognition one name that is often mentioned has been that of Nuruddin Farah. His work deals with effectively and in detail the social life and the characteristics of the culture in Somalia. All his works leave a significant impression of the life and culture of Somalian people. Further, a reader can find the equations of social order, cultural implications, hierarchical system etc. in the background of his works. The novels of Farah have been instrumental in conveying to the outer world the meaning and environment that surrounds the social life of Somalian people with specific attention to the clan life and its demands. The great novels by Farah such as ‘Knots and Links’ relate to the meaning of clan life as understood by the characters that had been in exile. The symbol of clan has greater significance in the novels of Farah as it relates to the idea of Somalia’s network of Clan loyalties and its effects on society. Therefore, it is important that at the very outset the symbol of clan is understood in relation to the social life, as the novel expounds it. It is significant that the clan life and other social and cultural aspects of Somalia are most relevant to the modern life.
The contribution of Farah through novels such as Links in the comprehension of the true cultural and social aspects of Somalia is worth mention. “Somalia…is a good image to find a way to relate to the social life in the country. But we would not have learned anything from Farah’s fiction if we were to ascribe all this to anything narrowly Somali. Rather than attributing it to a mysterious property which belongs to “them,” and not to us one needs to see it in a broader perspective. The figure from the outside who comes to Somalia is a common figure in Farah’s novels, and it is easy to see these figures as versions of us, the reader from the outside who comes to Farah’s world knowing little about Somalia. However, the outside world harbors the complex prejudices. Farah’s call is always to move toward an affirmation of human solidarity across the differences which may separate us, and that includes the readers of as well as the characters in his novels.” (p 752). Thus, through the character of Jeebleh, who returns home in order to settle personal scores and finds the country divided between two chiefs, the author clearly demonstrates the social life of Somalia. In this attempt to represent the social aspects of the Somalia, Farah provides an account of Somalia’s network of Clan loyalties and its effects on society. Thus the symbol of clan becomes a major contributor to the overall understanding of the novel’s main themes.
Set in the city of Mogadishu in Somalia, Farah’s birth place, the novel Links tells the story of Jeebleh who returns home after an exile life in America for twenty years. The purpose of the return was to visit his mother’s grave and to meet his childhood buddies, Caloosha and Bile who are also his half-brothers. Caloosha, now a henchman of the warlord who rules the southern part of the city, was the chief of the security to the former dictator. He was a cruel bully in their childhood and was accountable for the imprisonment of both Jeebleh and his brother. On the other hand, Bile works as a doctor and had studied in the company of Jeebleh in Italy. One of the tasks that Jeebleh has set himself is to kill Caloosha. The return of Jeebleh has been on a specific land in a terrified and tangled situation.
Here children were kidnapped and murdered mercilessly. Thus, at the time of his return he witnesses, at the airport, the murder of a child and shortly before his arrival in Mogadishu Rajo, Bile’s niece, has been kidnapped. In spite of the tight security for the protection of Raasta, she is kidnapped and this alarmed the security of life there. Jeebleh resolves to liberate Raasta, but he needs to avoid his fellow clan members who try to kill him when he refuses to give them money for weapons. All through the novel, the account of Farah has been central in understanding the clan loyalties which bind the people together. Also, the effect of clan loyalty on the society has been clearly narrated by the author. However, one may find the author wanting in the presentation of idea in good language. “Nuruddin Farah brings the deadly chaos of Somalia to life in his novel of an exile’s return, Links… Farah’s account of Somalia’s tangled and dangerous network of clan loyalties and its effect on society is one of the book’s greatest strengths. So is the way that the detail of his descriptions brings to life the city’s desolate and violent landscape… Farah’s novel, with all its difficulties, restores and affirms the human dignity of these fragments of collateral damage.” (Phillips and Farah, 352).
The novel significantly narrates the story of a totally changed society where only the loyalty towards one’s clan and its background seem unchanged. Thus, one finds the remarks of Jeebleh to an acquaintance suggesting the specific situation in the land. This happens when they traverse through Mogadiscio which was once a beautiful city filled with educated people. The response of the acquaintance also supports the same. Jeebleh comments, “This city is a disaster. I haven’t met anyone who openly disapproves of what’s happening, and yet the fighting goes on and the clan elders continue soliciting funds for repairing deadly weapons.” The explanation of the acquaintance is even more revealing. “Here we don’t think of ‘friends’ anymore. We rely on our clansmen…sharing ancestral blood….Every clan family feels that it has to form its own armed militia, because the others have them. The elders, almost all of them illiterate and out of touch with your and my sense of modernity, spend their time trying to raise funds from within the members of the blood community. In truth, it’s all a pose, though, and everybody knows that the elders are doing this to make sure they seem important.” (Farah, Links). The clan loyalty is the only consistent element of human life in the social condition of Somalia. The effects of the clan loyalty is more than what one can imagine and the life of Jeebleh illustrates the best example of the hold and power of clan loyalty. In the whole novel, the symbol of clan runs through as a binding force of human lives and relations in Somalia.
Farah, in his novel, narrates the story and events in relation to the social life in Somalia where the allegiance to the clan is central to the lives of people. The individual life does not have any means of expressing itself, but in relation to the loyalty towards one’s clan. Therefore, the novel abounds in high tension and special situations. Farah is successful in using clan as a symbol that remains constant in its valence. There is no other prevailing symbol that connects the lives of the people and it is only through the symbol of clan that the individuals in the society understand their social position. It is also very evident that the author is effective in using the symbol of clan to create a tension with another over-arching symbolic meaning system. Thus, only clan gives the ultimate meaning to the overall tension that remains in the background of the novel all through. The clan symbol and the background of violence are brought together most effectively by the author. “A cynic I know says that thanks to the vultures, the marabous, and the hawks, we have no fear of diseases spreading,” one acquaintance of Jeebleh says. “My cynical friend suggests that when the country is reconstituted as a functioning state, we should have a vulture as our national symbol.” (Farah, Links). In this background, the symbolic meaning of clan provides an indication for understanding a larger concern of the novel, i.e. the author’s intention to give a clear explanation of Somalia’s network of Clan loyalties and its effects on the society.
The impact created by the novel is the result of true narration of the clan loyalty in the background of high tension and violence that is the nature of the society. This in turn, acts as the tool to understand the deeper meanings of the equations of the clan and the loyalty towards it. The novel can be seen as replete with high tension as different characters, such as Jeebleh, are brought in different directions by conditions over which they do not have any power. The enigmatic dreams and nightmares of the author are similar to the reality of life in Mogadiscio, where the vultures are now domesticated as they are so well fed by the violence. Thus, the effect is created touchingly through the personal experience of the author with the clan realities and the violent social atmosphere of the land.
“Author Farah’s own background as an exiled Somali makes this novel particularly vivid, and the cultural conflicts and the pressures placed on Jeebleh’s family loyalties ring with truth. As he represses his American values and makes some major decisions as a Somali, Jeebleh becomes part of the story of Somalia, “I’ve taken sides and made choices that may put my life in danger.” Stressing that it is “only when there is harmony within the smaller unit,” i.e., the family, that “the larger community finds comfort in the idea of the nation,” Farah creates a taut novel in which the tensions within the family are a microcosm of the tensions within the country. Realistic in its descriptions and allegorical in its implications, Farah’s novel is a breathtaking and sophisticated study of violence and betrayal certain to receive international recognition.” (Whipple). Therefore, it is very evident in the novel’s analysis that the clan loyalty and its impact on the social life in Somalia, in the background of violence and tension, have been effectively narrated by Farah. Apparently, his personal background seems to have contributed to this narration.
In this analysis of the clan loyalty and its influence on the society, as explained by Farah in his novel Links, it is also pertinent that the historical background of the land as well as the writer is well understood. It is in this background that the author succeeds in creating the effect of the novel. The aged sage of Somali letters, Farah, has a wide and profound literary vision, i.e. the vision of an exile and a patriot. “Assuming a patriotic duty, he seeks goodness and bravery amid the evil, going willingly into the chamber of horrors that has become Somalia since the fall of Siad Barre’s dictatorship in 1991. In a challenge to the clan loyalties tearing Somalia apart, he has vowed to “keep my country alive by writing about it.” Civil conflict has hollowed out the humanity of many of his compatriots, making them unfit to become responsible citizens even if Somalia can be made to function again, but the same calamities have acted on Farah differently, even benignly.” (Bellaigue).
Farah uses his novels as a tool to keep the country alive and in novels such as Links he illustrates the social life of Somalia in its relation to clan loyalty. The novel is concerned with an exile’s return and the main character, just as the author, finds the clan loyalty and its influence on the society. The reader connects every event of the novel to the social background of Somalia and thus finds the meaning of clan loyalty and the hierarchical system of the clan. “Jeebleh, a middle-aged Somali man, arrives home from the United States on a mission to settle personal scores and finds the country divided between two chiefs, characters who correspond to Mohammed Farah Aidid and Mohammed Ali Mahdi, whose ruinous war lasted until the former was killed in 1996.” (Bellaigue)
In conclusion, the overall effect of the novel Links has been that which is preconceived by the author. Evidently in the novel Farah is providing a version of Somalia’s network of Clan loyalties and its effects on society. In this attempt, the author narrates vividly the city’s desolate and violent landscape as experienced by him in person. This has been central to the narration of the clan loyalty and its impact on society. One may perceive the symbol of clan as explaining every aspect of the social life in Somalia, as illustrated through the novel.
Works Cited
Farah, Nuruddin. A Tale of Two Trilogies, Reed Way Dasenbrock. World Literature Today, Vol. 72. Issue. 4. 1998.
Phillips, Mike, and Farah, Nuruddin. Blood in the Sand, Guardian.co.uk. 2005. Web.
Farah, Nuruddin. Links. Riverhead: New York, 2004.
Bellaigue, Christopher De. Return to Mogadishu. Sunday Book Review. The New York Times. 2007. Web.
Whipple, Mary. Nuruddin Farah: Links. Mostly Fiction Book Reviews. 2004. Web.