Country Cousins

Nuruddin Farah writes about the travails of Mogadishu

For centuries, Somalis of pastoralist stock have described Mogadishu as justice-blind, whether they are alluding to the Mogadishu of old, ten centuries back, to the Mogadishu of Siyad Barre, or to the Mogadishu of the civil war. If Mogadishu occupies an ambiguous space in our minds and hearts, it is because ours is a land with an overwhelming majority of pastoralists, who are possessed of a deep urbophobia. Maybe this is why most Somalis do not seem unduly perturbed by the fate of the capital: a city broken into segments, each of them ruthlessly controlled by an alliance of militias.

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Vol. 20 No. 17 · 3 September 1998 » Nuruddin Farah » Country Cousins (print version)
Pages 19-20 | 3105 words