The author of this
book is a celebrated Somali novelist who apparently has been a frequent
contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I was unfamiliar with him until I came across a brief plot outline of
this book in The New Yorker and the
premise sounded interesting.
Mugdi, a former Somali diplomat, and his wife
Gacalo have lived in Oslo for two decades.
Their son Dhaqaneh, raised in a secular, upper-middle-class home in
Norway, was radicalized and joined Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group in
Mogadiscio. He died in a suicide
bombing. Though Mugdi disowned his son
because of his jihadist activities, Gacalo maintained contact and promised to look
after his wife Waliya and his two stepchildren.
Gacalo convinces her husband to sponsor the family and bring them to
Norway.
Events take place over a five-year period. Waliya makes no effort to integrate and keeps
company with members of a radical mosque.
The children, 12-year-old Naciim and 14-year-old Saafi, are torn between
their mother’s ultra-conservativism and the freedoms offered by Norwegian
society. Mugdi and Gacalo’s lives suffer upheaval as
they contend with their daughter-in-law’s hostility and try to do what they
think is best for their grandchildren.
This novel often reads more like non-fiction with
long passages extoling a point of view: “As
his eyes move from the face of a Caucasian woman to a man with Middle Eastern
features, and from a woman in a sari to an African man in an agbada, Mugdi is
sad that scenes such as this, where a variety of races congregate at a public
arena, are unavailable in Mogadiscio. As
he watches the expressions of the faces of some of the Norwegians, he can spot
some whose gentle features stiffen, turning ugly when they come face-to-face
with a Muslim woman in full Islamic gear.
Maybe a woman with a Muslim headscarf is seen as a threat, whereas a
sari-wearing woman is viewed as unusual and fascinating in this part of the
world. Mugdi remembers reading about a
judge in the state of Georgia in the US who barred a woman with a headscarf
from entering his court. Would the same
judge turn away a Jewish man with a yarmulke or a nun in her habit?” Conversations often become
mini-lectures: “’here in Norway, the
Somalis are very much unwelcome, being black Muslim refugees at a time when
migration is now viewed both as a political problem and as a threat to the
Norwegians’ continued existence as a “pure race.” Right-wing groups see the Somalis as real
pests, worse than bubonic plagues.’”
The reader learns a
lot about changes in religious attitudes in Somalia: women dressing “in the ‘Saudi’ way . . . has lately become fashionable among Somalis”
and “’Lately, many Muslims are
practicing a different Islam . . . Whereas in former times, Somalis were
relaxed about the genders mingling and spaces were not necessarily allotted to
specific genders, our people have recently
adopted the more conservative, stricter Wahhabi tradition which stipulates that
different entrances are assigned to the two genders’” and “’Besides, in much of
Somalia, old men your father’s age have
lately been marrying girls even younger than Saafi’” and “lately Somalis have developed the
bizarre habit of making little tykes don veils” and “traditional clothes the
religionists have lately described
as un-Islamic and therefore forbidden” and “Recently he has had the displeasure of extending his hand to shake
that of a woman whom he has known for years, only for her to say, ‘I’m sorry,
no handshakes’” and “the new social
convention prevailing among Islamists in Somalia nowadays discourages men from speaking directly to women except via
a Mahram.”
Dialogue is
particularly problematic. Everyone
speaks in a stiltedly formal way. Would
one teenager say to another, “’Nothing would give me more joy than to come with
you and to make their acquaintance’”?
Would a 17-year-old tell a parent, “’How can you expect me to be good
when a great number of our people kill, when the weak are massacred with
impunity? We Somalis pay lip service to
the faith while we live a life of lies.
This is why the dissonance in our hearts continues to flourish, why
there is no letup in the usual struggles within our minds, why the strife in our
land rages on unabated’”? Conversation
is awkward and artificial because often its primary purpose is to convey
information to the reader: “’Incense
burning is traditional in our culture and it lends an odiferous liveliness to
the burial process.’”
Extraneous details are
included. Do we need to have the
Norwegian flag described: “flags bearing
blue crosses outlined in white on a red background, the colors borrowed from
the French tricolor, seen as a symbol of liberty”? Do we need to be taught how to make an omelet: “Mugdi brings out a skillet and some butter,
cracks two eggs, which he beats together in a bowl, adds a drop of water, and
then seasons the mix with black pepper and salt. When the butter has melted, he pours the mix
into the frying pan and waits until it is fully cooked on all sides and ready
to serve”? Do we need to know what
people order to eat in a restaurant: “He
orders sautéed scaloppini, Timiro all’arrabbiata, and Eugenia sole in white
wine”?
The plotting is uneven. There are instances when there is a build-up
of suspense but then nothing happens.
This is definitely the case with Arla.
She is Waliya’s best friend but she isn’t mentioned until late in the
first half of the book. Later, she seems
to pose a threat but that peters out to virtually nothing. And the purpose of her first encounter with
Mugdi is never explained! And why is she
always described as wearing something “see-through”?! Other aspects of the book that should have
been developed aren’t. For example,
Saafi’s trauma because of what happened in the refugee camp is not sufficiently
explored. Saafi receives short shrift
throughout. One minute she loses a job
and the next, she “is setting up her seamstress business after obtaining her
qualifications.” The passage of time is
often unclear. We are told that a
widower still misses his wife “almost a year and a half after her passing” but
he tells a friend there have been several interruptions in his life and some “’more
recently, because of my wife’s passing’”?
The book often gives
the impression that it was translated rather than written in English. Mugdi and Gacalo rent an apartment for Waliya
and the children but a police officer identifies the former “’as the apartment
tenants’”? A mother and daughter,
distraught at being separated, would cry and weep and sob but calling their
emotional outpouring as “ceaseless sniveling” seems a poor choice of
words. Some of the diction is complex
and then there are clichés like “she has cased the joint” and “He moves like
greased lightning”! Clearly, editing was
cursory. Naciim buys several Norwegian
flags and he lets his mother see only “one of them” but somehow she cuts up
several flags, though he has successfully hidden the rest? A man accused of sexual assault must give “blood
and urine samples” when earlier he is told “to give samples of blood and semen”? We are told that “Dhaqaneh accorded [Naciim]
a greater preference, inducting him into the position of a Mahram, the male
head of the household” but later we are told “The initial mistake was Waliya’s,
when she singled Naciim out for his maleness in a household of females and
assigned him the role of Mahram”!
Mugdi is translating Ole
Edvart Rølvaag’s novel Giants in the
Earth into Somali, and comparisons are constantly made between the
Norwegian immigrants in the Dakotas and Somali immigrants in Norway: “Beret, in her fear of the prairie, covers
the windows of her sod house and bars the door at the slightest worry whenever
her husband is away. And the Somalis
conceal their bodies with all-enveloping tents when they are outside the house,
afraid of whom they may run into” and “Just like Beret, Waliya is forever
creating havoc, unable to come to terms with her new country’s climate,
culture, or faith, nor able to tear herself loose from all that defined her back
in the land where she was raised.” These
comparisons serve to remind the reader that immigrants regardless of country of
origin have struggled, but would a man in the midst of grief really think about
the death of a character in a novel?
The book touches on
important topics. It examines the impact
of religious radicalization. It explores
the struggles immigrants face in integrating into a different culture. It points out that Somali immigrants in
Norway are really “’caught between a small group of Nazi-inspired vigilantes
and a small group of radical jihadis claiming to belong to a purer strain of
Islam.’” The problem is that the book is
clunky with numerous issues that need to be addressed. The impact of its important message is greatly
lessened by the book’s lack of literary quality.
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