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Farah, one of Africa's best known and most prolific writers,
has been living in exile for the last 18 years. But "Hiding in
Plain Sight", like many of his 11 previous novels, is populated
by Somali characters and hacks away at stereotypes.
"I have been fighting against the idea of giving in to despair,"
Farah, 70, told Reuters in an interview. "I thought, these
people's lives had to be told ... every person who is killed has
someone who loves him or her, someone who is relying on them."
The novel opens with Aar, who escaped civil war as a child but
returns to Mogadishu as an adult, being killed in a suicide
bombing attack on the United Nations compound by the Islamist
militant group al Shabaab - an all-too real threat in modern-day
Mogadishu.
The novel then follows his family - his sister Bella, his two
young children, and his estranged wife Valerie - as they rebuild
their lives without him in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, long a
refuge of Somalis fleeing chaos.
Farah, who came of age in Mogadishu before the 1991 overthrow of
dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, and fled as the country began its
descent into civil war, says his writing is informed by the
Mogadishu of his youth - a vibrant Indian Ocean trading post
celebrated for its rich and open culture.
He said Bella, a fashion photographer based in Rome who returns
to Nairobi to mother Aar's two children, was based on the
self-possessed, modern women Farah remembers from his youth.
Farah's decision to put a lesbian couple at the heart of the
novel - Aar's estranged widow, Valerie, left him for a woman
named Padmini - and to have other characters embrace the couple,
is a critique of how conservatism has seized hold of Somalia.
"This novel represents the secular past of Mogadishu - when
Mogadishu was one of the greatest cosmopolitan cities in
Africa," said Farah.
"In the cosmopolitan Mogadishu in which I grew up as a young
man, there was space for homosexuals," he said. "That is the
kind of life that we lived - tolerant of one another, accepting
differences."
The novel, released in East Africa last weekend at the Kwani?
Litfest following publication in Europe and North America, is
the first in a trilogy. The next installment, "North of Dawn,"
is set in Oslo and examines a clash between right-wing Europeans
and radical Islamists.
The third, set in South Africa, will look at "whether or not
your body is your own, or whether you have to agree to the
dictates of other people", Farah said.
Asked if he would return to Mogadishu to live, Farah, who now
lives in South Africa, was doubtful.
"I suppose if there were bookshops, if there were cinemas one
could go..." he said, his voice trailing off, wistfully. "I
could imagine living in (Mogadishu) if that kind of life were to
return."
"I don't know how long it would take to get that back."
(Editing by Drazen Jorgic, Michael Roddy and Richard Balmforth)
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