Interview  with  NURUDDIN  FARAH
By Dapo Adeniyi

Nuruddin  Farah said, in response to a question,  that  he

was originally  heading back to Mogadishu,  in  anticipa-

tion of a restoration  of civil society in Somalia.  'But I

have waited  long enough',  he told  Dapo Adeniyi  in  his

first  interview with  a Nigerian journal since settling  in

Kaduna, Nigeria, six years back. He was shortly to relo-

cate to South Africa  with  his family -  wife, Amina  Mama

recently appointed  director of the African  Gender  insti-

tute at the University of Cape Town, and  two kid chil-

dren. With Abyan the younger  child  of four  bounding  all

over the house  in high spirits, the work  of a  nursing

father  was more than  a full-time  preoccupation,  but

Farah  proved  that  he was equal  to it.

Interview recorded December 18, 1998 in the reservation area of Kaduna.

GR

I  We'll begin on a general note. We are actually meeting for the first time and it is a wonderful
I setting in which to meet. It is very easy to forget that a writer  is flesh and blood, who eats and
drinks and lives a normal  life and as another writer once told  me, who also creates a means for
eating and drinking.

I've  known some ardent enthusiasts of African literature who insisted that a writer  must by all
means not be reduced to a human being.

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Fara: How do you mean by that?

GR: It takes a certain kind of context to see the other side
of a writer  as a nonpublic figure.

Farah: Well, there is generally the idea, and it is a very
common idea, that writers don't  live a normal life and
there are writers who do not live the normal life: looking
after their children, helping people, looking after them-
selves and so on and so forth and you find many of them
who look quite helpless in running their own thing and I
can think of one or two who thought of themselves as
some kind of artist.... And artist in this sense means
usually someone who is...

GR: Bohemian...?

Farah: Yes...

GR: Weird?

Farah:  ... who is looked after, and who has many women
followers. I am of a different view. I am of the view that a
writer  is just like another  human being and he has a job,
the hours may be different  but he or she has the same
needs as anyone else and also in addition to that, they
take upon themselves more things, more pains; I think
also because they have more time to think. If you were a
clerk in a little office in Apapa and you lived with your
cousin in Ikeja and had to go all the way and at the end
of the month you received a meagre salary, the worries
are too much for you to think about other things.
Whereas writers specialise, they give special time to think
not on their lives but on their place in society and the
responsibilities that are laid on their heads.

GR: Of course we would  be referring to certain catego-
ries of writers. Perhaps you are referring to the estab-
lished category of writers.

Farah: Whether established or not. Even if nothing has
ever been published. There are some people who feel
responsible, not only for their lives but for the lives of
other people. I would say in the context of Nigeria for
example, journalists qualify for this self-sacrifice and this
is because lots and lots of journalists have ended up in
detention, far  more journalists have ended up in deten-
tion than writers.

GR: I know some people who exist within the bracket that
you initially described, who have to work maybe as
clerks, or in some bank.  In addition to the tedium of daily
existence they also have the burden of being writers. They
are denied the kind of freedom, in terms of time, which is
available to other writers in different contexts.

Farah: Well I usually say too that you cannot be a serious
thinking and working writer until you have the experience

of living like an ordinary person, in the sense that you
can't be plucking all your ideas from the skies of your
imagination. You have to be grounded in some expet.
ence, whether that experience is directly political,
economic, social or cultural. They have to be directly
affecting you and your life. And when you lose touch
with the realities in which you must be grounded, your
books would become you' know, uninteresting. What
makes a bookstory interesting or a poem interesting is
the groundedness in a very concretised idea. You can't
be putting nouns together all the time, you can't put
twenty beautiful phrases together, that doesn't make
poetry. Poetry is part of that lived experience of waking
up and not having water to bath, that would give it more
meaning than if you just said... 'I woke up from  my bed
and didn't find a bird that come to my window to sing',
because one, it is a lived experience, and also because
writing is basically a communication  between the reader
and the person who wrote it. That experience of waking
up in the morning and not finding water to bath is more
easily understandable and appreciated, than to say, 'I
woke up from my bed and I could not find  my daffodil'.

GR: I would like to ask, are you writing full-time?

(He nods in affirmation)

and for how long, and how did it come about?

Farah: I have been living as a full-time writer from about
1976. And it came as a result of my not having been
able to return to Somalia. After doing  my graduate study
in Theatre in England I was returning home when I
published a novel called AMIKIMIDO and then unbe-
knownst to me it had been decided that  the novel was
inimical to the government of Siad Barre. So when I went
to Rome on my way to Mogadishu and I rang my brother
in Mogadishu and I said could, he send a car and pick
me up from there, he advised me to wait, but first  of all
he advised me to forget about Somalia  and the reason
was I seemed to have done something of which I was
foolishly unaware; I challenged the state or at least the
representatives of the state and this was Siad Barre. So
between one day and the next I became an exile, a
writer in exile.

GR: The question that comes to my mind is -  who does
the reading for these people? Most African leaders that
one knows don't appear to be very literate or very
literary people...

Farah: Well they usually have their  minions, who report
on them. There was once this story I was told -  and I am
not justifying Siad Barre in this way or any other way  -
but there was an Ambassador who used to be a friend
of mine and in fact at one time the president of the
university of Somalia, who then was an Ambassador to

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Italy, once he was in a meeting with many other Ambassa-
dors, because he considered himself to be an intellectual,
and he was the one who used to inform Siad Barre about
the terrible things that someone like me had written. He
said to Siad Barre in the presence of fourteen other
Ambassadors that 'Nurudeen Farah is the enemy of
Somalia, because Nurudeen Farah was always writing
the most terrible things about Somalians, about  dictator-
ship, and how authoritarian our society is. Nurudeen
Farah therefore  hates Somalians, he lives abroad and so
on'. Siad Barre then said, 'the truth of the matter  is that  -
Nurudeen Farah hates me! And he says it very, very
openly'.

GR: Did he know you at that point  personally?

Farah: No. He said 'I have been hearing about
Nurudeen for  many many years, I haven't even met the
man but from what I have been told the man hates me
and he says that he hates me and he writes about his
hatred of me, but it is those of you who praise me, who
brush my shoes, who lick my boots that as soon as my
back is turned are going be my greatest enemies.'

talking about don't read, and if they are worried about
public  perception, how much of the African  populations
actually read the writings?

Farah: I don't think  it is the reading as such that matters
as the opinions and the positions they combine. I don't
think everyone who has a high respect for Achebe or
Soyinka would have read anything they have written, or
follow the logic  behind what they have written. What
follows  is that when you have read a book of about two
hundred pages, five years later when someone asks you
what that was about, you can say what that book is about
in one sentence. And that summary is what you remem-
ber of that book. The summary of a story is the kernel of
it, that summary is what the ordinary people who do not
read books would also have heard about the writers.
They know Soyinka was in trouble, they know that he was
being harassed, they know that he fled the country and
therefore these are the things that matter. If you do not
remember everything a writer  has written, you remember
the idea their writing has generated. It is the idea that is
generated that becomes mythologised. It is through the
myth of that writer, the creator of the myth of justice, the

The summary of a story is the kernel of it,
that summary is what the ordinary  people
who do not read books would also have

heard about the writers.

I

So, you see, even dictators know who their friends are.
Someone like,... what's the name of the one who died?

GR: Abacha

Farah: Yaah, someone  like Abacha also knew...

GR: ... that these are actually fair weather friends.

Farah: Well there you see!

GR: Now I want us to look at the predicaments, and it is
related to what you were saying -  the predicaments of
the African writer  in the hands of those who weld state
power. I was going to suggest that the fiction and poetry
ordinarily should be incapable of doing those who
misrule their  nations any real damage. And also, the
notion that the short story or poetry can be quite devas-
tating against those who misrule is a bit over-stated. And
the reason is that a small percentage of African popula-
tions are literate for example, and a smaller  percentage
read the languages in which African writers write. It is
related to what you were saying that these people we are

myth of a dreamland that appeals to the people. Now for
example, I went to Somalia in  1996, my books had been
banned, my name could not be mentioned in public,
could not be quoted in any of the newspapers for close to
twenty years and the people  had not read the things that
I had written, not because they didn't read English and
that the books were not available, even if they were
available they wouldn't  have read them. And yet when I
went to Mogadishu literally everyone knew, not only the
name but the ideas for which I stood. And this was
because this was passed on in oral form, people heard
the radio  interviews that I gave, accepting the positions
that I took.

GR: Did many of them know what you look like?

Farah: No, because I hadn't been home for  more than
twenty years. What I am saying is, people hold on to that
idea.

Now if you go to Ireland where there is a reading
population of let's say, eighty-five or  ninety-five percent
and you Tnention the name of James Joyce, how many

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would have read James Joyce? Question one. Question
two, how many of them would appreciate James Joyce
the way he wrote those books and how great he is in the
literary world. They do not read him but they know
James Joyce because it is through oral  mythology that
the name has been transferred. The same is true of every
tribe; even the English people and Shakespeare. There-
fore forget about statistics. And forget about this para-
noia, this Western European and half-baked educated
Africans who continue to say, 'but you write in another
language, and people do not...', no, what matter is,
people know whether you stand for justice or whether
you stand against it.

Now take this to be the political scene. This dialogue
about the current situation. If APP (All People's  Party) is
associated with Abacha, and they rejected it, that's good
enough. The newspapers, if you open every newspaper
in Lagos  or Kaduna, Kano or anywhere they will tell you
that these are the things. People do not pick them up
from the newspapers, there is a certain knowledge that is
in the air, and they know when there is injustice and they
say, 'is this person for justice?' And the same is true of
writers wherever in the world you go. Not everyone reads
them, even when they are put on the schools syllabus
system. People read and forget and if I ask you today to
tell me the story of Things  Fall Apart which you may have
read in school, you won't  be able to remember much,
but you'll remember the kernel of it and that is what
matters.

GR: I'd  ask you, for how long have  you been living in -
the emphasis is on the word, living -  in Nigeria?

Farah: Now for six years. I came here,  my wife and I, in
1 992 and there were some restrictions. It was my
understanding that I was not allowed to talk to the press,
the Nigerian  press, or say anything about  Nigeria, and
having at that time accepted that restrictive...

GR: It was communicated to you officially?

Farah: It was communicated to me by the deputy
immigration  officer who said to me, 'you will be given
the right to live in this country, as a spouse' , something
that wasn't done quite often. Perhaps I was the first to be
given as a spouse, as a male spouse because in Nigeria
if a Nigerian should bring in a female spouse, a for-
eigner, then there is no problem at all, she could live in
the country without any problem. But when a Nigerian
female does that, then there is a problem.

So, I accepted it, my view being, well, there was very little
that I, Nurudeen Farah can say about Nigeria that other
Nigerian writers cannot say, or Nigerian journalists.
Therefore  I calculated this and I said I could live in
Nigeria as a witness, bearing testimony to the situation

and sooner or later I would have to leave Nigeria,...

GR: Do you have an idea what  underlay that demand
on your residency status?

Farah: The man who did this was actually doing me a
favour at the time and the reason is I was not allowed to
live in this country on the basis that  I had to have a job;
they insisted that nobody was allowed to live in this
country unless he or she had a job. And the  immigration
officer insisted that I did not even look  African, that I
was Pakistani or you'know,...  insisting  that I had to start
a business, a restaurant anything. I showed him evi-
dence that I had enough money to live in this country.  I
said to him -  this was the immigration  chief  in Kaduna
State -  but he said he would not grant  me the right of
abode. I had to travel out of this country every three,
four months to have my visa renewed and  it took a very,
very long time. So I went to see the deputy-general of
immigration of Nigeria  in Abuja and by the time he
suggested, 'we will grant you the right of residence only
if you accept that condition' I said, fine. And I knew I
would break it if I wanted to, but I saw no reason. So I
have lived here as a witness.

GR: Would you tell me what your  impressions

of the country are? The people, the geography...

Farah: I should tell you that this is not my first visit. I was
first here in 1977 for Festac. I was again here teaching,
as a professor at the University of Jos from  1981 to
1983 and then I am here and I came inbetween several
times. You can give impression about countries which
you do not know very well. In other words, if you  said to
me, 'what are your impressions about Finland?', which
country I have been  to only about once or twice, I can
give you my impressions but if you say to me what are
your impressions about Somalia or about  Nigeria, I
cannot and the reason is because these are countries I
know a great deal about. You take it the way it is. I am
not like a native because I am not. But I know enough to
set a novel in it if I wished to.

GR: I was going to ask if you would not be tempted to...

Farah: No I have not. I am  not being tempted and the
reason is one has to know a lot more about a place and
her people before one writes creatively about it. And this
is sometimes the mistake that European writers who set
their books in other countries make. I am not referring
specifically to writers who write about foreigners,
foreigners who write about foreigners  living somewhere
else like Graham Green writes about an English man in
Sierra Leone or Naipaul writing about  East African
Indians living in Congo or something like that. I am
talking about writing which is grounded in the lived

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Maggie Steber art director: Mark Michaelson director of photography © American  Photography

experience of people in those places.  No, it takes a very
long time.

GR: Your previous reflections tend to suggest that
national problems, that is problems with national  politics
in any given African state,.is ultimately a clone of what
obtains in most other national contexts in Africa. Have
you been able to get to the bottom of why this is often the
case?

Farah: I don't quite understand the question

GR: Maybe the problem with despots, to take that
example, they easily replicate themselves.

Farah: Well because there is, as in my dictatorship trilogy
as I call them, - and these are three novels about African
dictatorships  in general, but more specifically  about
Somalian dictatorship  in the time of Siad Barre. The  idea
of the dictatorship  is that, African societies -  speaking
about Africa south of the Saharah and also north  -
African societies are authoritarian societies...

GR: By nature?

Farah: By nature. And because African societies are
authoritarian, it follows that our leaders would also
become authoritarian. Let me give a specific example.

My view has always been that  the head of the family in
Africa, the generality of fathers in Africa  are authoritar-
ian- My view has been that, very little time,  fruitful time,

is spent between parents and children together, talking
about things. The law is laid down by the father all the
time, and the child must always follow.  If he or she does
not, then that child is considered to be rebel and there-
fore unredeemable. There is very little communication  in
the family, between not only parents and children but
also between mother and father. In other words there is
hardly any sitting down and talking to each other about
problems, sorting them out, allowing  the children to
disagree with his or her parents, allowing the wife to
disagree with her  husband, in public.

This is not the position that I take. Because of this the
authoritarianism  is replicated on the political  level. Now
when there is a hierarchy of violence that's metting out
constantly to the weaker person every time there is a
weak person, then naturally the weaker  person will have
to find someone who is weaker than them and so you
have a hierarchy of violence, of aggression. So that
children when they are beaten at home by their parents
they go out and hold their  brothers and sisters and beat
them, and this continues and makes them stone dogs or
stone puppies  or stone and become unkind to anyone
who is weaker than them. So there is this hierarchy and it
continues reproducing  this hierarchy.

How many people do you know, when there is a prob-
lem, who sit down between a father and a son and say
let's talk?

GR: Obviously this is why the democratic  principle

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appears jinxed.

tomatic of that relationship.

Farah: Yes, well you see when people talk of Nigerian
democracy coming after, what's his name, Abubakar,
goes away, I usually say to them oh God, bless them.
And the reason is because until there is a change in the
psyche of the Nigerian, until there is a change in every
Nigerian man, until everyone is reconstructed, you see
restructured, the mind of the person, the persona, the
way they look at themselves, the  way they look at their
partners, the way they look at their work, until this
happens, I doubt it very much if there would be democ-
racy.

GR: How do you propose that the country can actually
begin, at least begin the process?

Farah: There can be what you call political democracy,
political  in the sense of elections for which you would be
praised, everybody will  praise you and you will say
'democratic', every four years some corrupt person would
come from one area of the country or the other and then
rob the country blind and then you would say, 'now is our
turn!'. The people in the South-West are now saying,
'now is our turn!'  It is a problem to which I have given a

Have you ever spent any time with your own father?

GR: I have. But he was not very typical in certain re-
spects... and he would even be criticised for it. I was
going to say something about you having  not been living
in Somalia for so long, I would  have thought that living in
Somalia would provide you with a stronger  impetus to
write.

Farah: Well I don't know, you'see, what kinds of books I
would have written if  I had returned...

GR: You would have taken to writing all the same...

Farah: I would continue writing  but you'see  I don't know
what kind of writing I would have done. You see I once
wrote an article in which I argued that  because I have
been away from my parents, and from the
authoritarianism of our society, I was able to develop the
democratic ideals. If I were in Somalia  I doubt it very
much if my parents would have been very happy my
writing the way that I did. And the reason is because they
would have used all kinds of social blackmail to make
me shut up. We are all family something in Somalia and

1 The  idea of the dictatorship is that, African

societies -  speaking about Africa south of the
Saharah and also north - African societies are

authoritarian societies...

1

lot  of time and if you read the trilogy of dictatorship and
these are Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines is the second one
and then Close Secome, it takes different families and
experiences from what happens within the families, the
authoritarian nature of each of these families. I am not
only saying this about Nigeria, I could say or give you a
personal example: I saw my father when I was... how old
was I? 1 991, which was about seven years ago.  I was in
my forties when I saw my father...

GR: Last?

Farah: Yes,... well, he's now dead. I saw him in an
hospital. We hadn't known each other, seen each other
for many many years. And my father was not  prepared
to hear me start and finish and the reason is, he knew
what he wanted me to do. Now I said to him, 'father you
know, I'm  now in my middle forties and I am your fourth
son' — we are ten in the family, five boys, five girls —
'...what  I want you to do is to hear me but, let me finish'
and then  he said, 'why should I?' It is symptomatic. I
mean they may not use the same words but it is symp-

so you are in Nigeria. And therefore people will say to you,
'why do you want to ruin our house? Why do you want to
ruin  the chances of your brother getting a government job,
or promotion? Why? What makes you do what you are
doing? You're a foolish young boy. You shut up!'

This authoritarianism would have come downward and
therefore, not only would I have earned my parent's wrath
but I would have earned the wrath of the dictatorship, and
therefore would have been locked up.

GR: With little or no sympathy from...

Farah: With little or no sympathy from  my own direct
family.

GR: But you would have gained a kind of wider sympathy
from the society at large perhaps.

Farah: Perhaps. Perhaps. What I am saying is maybe they
would have understood it later, but the point that I am
making is that I would have made less,... would have
written less and reason is because I would have been

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poetic rendering of the truth. So I would accept in that
sense veiled, in that sense not obviously glaring, straight
in your face.

GR: She (Gordimer) was just saying that fiction offers a lot
of freedom which writing facts doesn't give and that there
are experiences with which she is able to flow better in the
fictive format.

Farah: Is that negative or positive for you?

GR: Not necessarily negative but I am just thinking that if
a message is directed  at an idea... to take Soyinka's
example. There have been times he had to take his
theatre to the streets and I have seen some of the ideas
at a later date, because  I have read some of the scripts,
being congealed into some longer, more formal  kinds of
plays...

Farah: The thing is, you see, I will  repeat myself by
saying the very big ideas are reducible to small ideas
and therefore if you can communicate the simple idea to
people so that they get the message that is very well. If
Soyinka takes a play to the street and the people can
understand what  is happening  and follow the story then
that is a beautiful  idea. Even a film can have a preview
so this is the preview for the play that would become
more sophisticated.

GR: I don't know of any African writer who has lived  -
and not just visited now -  but who has lived in as many
countries of the world as you have. Doesn't it happen
that after a while, as you get more intimate with other
environments, you lose touch with Somalia?

Farah: No I in fact become more Somali in the places
that  I have been. Every place that I have lived in have
served as a background for  my understanding of
Somalia. I mean, everywhere that I have been to, even
the people who do not mean to do so. People in Nigeria
have constantly reminded  me that I come from Somalia.
When I come through the immigration they remind me
of it, going on the street they remind me of it. And these
constant  reminders keep Somalia  alive in me. And not
only in me but in other people. There are a number of
people who live in Kaduna, who live in Uganda -  I used
to live in Uganda, Ethiopia, Italy, other  places -  who
when they turn on their radio and hear anything about
Uganda, my name comes to them.

GR: You don't feel that the time might come when if you
do not go back to Somalia you might actually exhaust
your memory of Somalia?

Farah: Memories are like springs. The more water
comes out the more it continues. Obviously there are
defective memories, but the memory that has been
developed and artistically cloned, continually revisited,

locked up immediately.

GR: If you had to make a choice between writing  a good
story and presenting a stark or disturbing reality, which
side would you choose?

Farah: Well, I will  hope to have both of them.

I don't know what disturbing  means. The truth can be
disturbing, falsehood can also be disturbing. And of
course when one writes one writes one's best and
therefore one writes a good story as best as one can.  I
would hope to do both of them in one story if I can.

GR: Suppose in the process of writing what is disturbing it
weighs down on the aesthetic finish or something like
that?

Farah: If I knew that, then I wouldn't  publish a story.

GR: Also I want to suggest that fiction losses much of its
bite because as Nadine Gordimer was quoted as saying
recently, its message must of  necessity be veiled...

Farah: You're quoting something from Gordimer which
may have been longer  and therefore it's a very risky thing
to comment on her statement. I would take for example
my novel, Secrets which was published about six months
ago.  It's about the beginning  of the Somali civil war and
yet whenever you read every single page and every word,
there may not be any mention of the  many terrible things
that are happening  offstage so that you could tell a story
through metaphors and through images and through the

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that type of memory is very enriching. It allows you to live
in a world of imagination.

GR: Are you able to reread some of your own writings,
maybe years  afterwards?

Farah: No I do not. The only times when I read any of my
fiction is when I am on a reading tour but I don't normally
reread my wprk. Thank God there are many other books
that I haven't read myself and therefore I would rather
read someone else than read my own.

I don't  read reviews about my books, I don't read books
about my books. Well because these are commentaries,
these are opinions that people hold and therefore what is
the point of my knowing the opinion that someone has
about  my work?

GR: I would have thought, something like a feedback, to
see how someone else responds...

Farah: What would that do for me?

GR: Even as a teacher. Did you ever confront a situation
in which the syllabus had been designed and your  own

would say however that for a writer to be considered
among the great ones, among the important ones, they
would have to publish two or three or four, great, inverted
commas, works and the reason is because if you have
done only one book and the book becomes very very
successful, it's doubtful if one can be considered a great

GR: And suppose one actually towers above the others
both in terms of volume and substance?

Farah: It's comparable to having ten children, one of
them becoming a professor and all the others are
something else. It happens.

GR: Do you consider sales very important?

Farah: No, I don't. For example my novel Secrets  is now
doing far better than any of my previous  novels. But then
I don't know, maybe after several years one of the other
novels would pick up and then Secrets would drop.

GR: How are you preparing for the next century? And
what are your anticipations for African  peoples and for
African literatures?

Memories are like springs. The more water comes out the
more it continues. Obviously there are defective  memories,

but the memory that has been developed and artistically
cloned, continually revisited, that type of memory is very

enriching. It allows you to live in a world of imagination.I

work was actually enlisted...

Farah: I would drop them! I would drop my own books
and teach someone else. And this happened more than
once. I seldom comment on what I meant by doing this
work. Let the books take care of themselves.

GR: Would you at this point in your career say that you
have produced your  best, or your greatest work?

Farah: No I don't think so. You see, there is no work that
can be considered a writer's best work. Everything a
writer does forms part of the orb of the writing, and taken
together  after the writer has ceased writing anything, only
then would you be able to see the entirety of the work.
Each one is a piece complementing, supplementing,
making you understand the other pieces, the logic of the
other  pieces. It is possible that some pieces will be better
refined, it is possible that some areas of the work would
function better, it is better that some works may be more
appreciated  by more people now. It is also possible that
several years on other works would gain prominence. I

Farah: Well, I am not preparing myself for the next
millennium for the simple reason that my people are not
preparing for it. And if my people, the Africans, are not
preparing for it, what's the point in being alone in it? I
am not preparing for  it and the reason is because the
calculation of the millennium  is one in which I do not
figure. The year  1999 is not an African year.

GR: I don't get you?

Farah: The year is not an African one in the sense that all
this business is a foreign business. We have nothing to do
with it. Our millennium would come when we are
sufficiently self-dignifying, when we are sufficiently  able
to run our own business. We are guests in this century.
We were slaves in the previous one, and we are guests in
this. And there are areas of Africa still carrying, still
asking for food. So what do we prepare ourselves for?
It's no point having a party and then inviting only
yourself. The coming of the millennium you see is a party.
How many people are invited?  How many Africans are
truly a part of the twenty-first century? Very few.

<GLENDORA

Qumerlyon

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<GLENDORA REVIEWxAfr/can  Quarterly on the -4rrjxV0I3@Nol>

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GR: Does that overflow to the area of publishing?

Farah: Sure. I have known academics and journalists who
talk lamenting the publishing crises or the newspaper
crises, and in the university they complain, they complain
all the time -  there is no Nepa (power supply), and so on.
I would say you cannot expect the body to be healthy or a
person to be healthy if the fingers cannot pick up some-
thing, if the eyes cannot see. There is something terribly
wrong with all of us. So I would say that really we have a
lot of work to do and we cannot, at least I am not
prepared to welcome the century the way that other people
may and the reason is because we have nothing to show
for it. We have nothing to show for independence. Nigeria
became independent in 1960, politically independent in
1960, now what else does Nigeria have to show for it?

GR: It is interesting that this is coming from you, that this
is coming from a writer of your calibre. A lot of people
would consider  it racist if someone else had said these
about us.

Farah: But I am saying these about myself. I am saying to
you that my success as Nurudeen, as a Somali, as

Fdrah: There is right to hope now in Nigeria. This is the
beginning, there is plenty of work to do. There is the
foundation to build. There are the structures of democ-
racy to build. There has to be harmony between mem-
bers of the same immediate family and then of the larger
family. You remember that yesterday evening we were
talking about the South-West. If the people of the South-
West were left to themselves, they'd finish off each other.
If the people in the North were left to one another they'd
finish off one another. What needs to be done right now
is the balancing out, is for this balancing out to continue,
and this dialogue to continue. If there is in inverted
commas, democracy, there can't be any democracy
where there is so much corruption. There can be no
democracy where there is no accountability. There can't
be democracy until every member of the family feels that
they have a stake in the continued survival of the family.
So there's plenty of work to be done.

GR: Supposing it happens suddenly and  it catches us all
unawares as it did in the case of South Africa, what
happens to the authors, particularly those whose art
seems to depend on the themes of social change?

Farah: Well first of all I don't see writers separate from

I in fact  become  more Somali  in  the

places  that  I have  been.  Every place  that I
have  lived  in  have  served  as a  background

for  my  understanding  of  Somalia.

• somebody who has written a few novels and won prizes,
my success is alone in comparison to the other things and
therefore I do not celebrate the way I might have cel-
ebrated if the continent was with me too, if my people
were with me. My people are savaging themselves,
killing themselves, not listening to reason, eating up each
other and have I the right to celebrate anything?

GR: Do you nurse any personal hope of change in
Somalia?

Farah: I do, I do, in the sense when first of all it is a
pessimistic  hope. Pessimistic in the sense that you have
warlords  and heads of factions who first have to have
enough, I mean in terms of corruption. They have to be
the richest people in the country before they  are satisfied
and therefore it is after they are satisfied, when they have
drunk all our blood and they are satisfied, after that
there is hope. After that there is hope.

GR: How about the rest of the continent?

other people and writers are affected  the same way
other people are affected. You know what happened in
the Soviet Union, Somalia is another example, the crisis
in Somalia. Most people were not prepared for the
sudden eruption of violence, the sudden eruption of
enthusiasm in South Africa and so on and so forth.
Nigeria is on the verge of change but even that change
is the beginning of further changes and  if you do not
take the other  steps to complete the  process of
democratisation, then all these would  be for  nought. The
society in South Africa you see, the African -  and I call
the black person African -  the African  has been  given
the authority to dignity, but what else? There is the
authority, but with the authority of dignity there is poverty,
there  is illiteracy. We have to accept that there  is plenty of
work for us as writers,  as citizens, as neighbours of
people  who  have been unjustly treated,  as the catchers
of thieves; and we have to do it.

<GLENDORA

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