“Black Mamba Boy” by Nadifa Mohammed
It’s important to give tribute to upcoming Somali artists. I hope you all go out and buy this book.
This is a review from the Independent:
In this debut novel, Nadifa Mohamed takes as her source material her father’s childhood journey across Africa, which begins in the Yemeni port city of Aden where ten-year-old Jama loses his mother, his only emotional mooring in the world, and embarks on a great Odyssean voyage northwards, to find his absent father.
Mohamed, who is herself a child of Africa’s fractured history – she lived in Hargeisa, Somalia, until war drove her family to London – says that she felt compelled to record her father’s survival spirit in fictive form, and partly composed the book from taped interviews with him.
Ironically for a daughter’s homage to her father, Black Mamba Boy is really a story about fathers and sons, and the bonds of love and duty between them. After his mother dies, Jama, bereft, hungry and alone in the great, troubled African continent of the 1930s, seething with its twin terrors of poverty and war, sets out to find his father – an inveterate dreamer – who abandoned him in early childhood. The journey, which sees Jama buffeted by the terrifying demographics of famine, internecine conflict, and Mussolini’s army – a cruel, occupying master – drives him into the heart of Eritrea where his father is rumoured to be.
This country becomes the locus of all the love he has lost and may find, and only a child’s boundless hope keeps him from losing heart. The endeavour appears unending, Herculean, at times, yet Jama persists. “How far is it from here to this Kano?” he asks a fellow traveller in the midst of the trek. “Three years walk” is the sobering reply.
The journey ends in disappointment, yet Jama is undefeated. His rite-of-passage is the lesson he learns in how to be a father in a way his own failed to be. On a grander scale, his lone walk through African comes to represent what Mohamed calls the “hunger for a homeland”.
His incredible story – along with brief snapshots of the homeless young strays he befriends along the way – bears resonances of a far more universal immigration narrative for those who, as the displaced and dispossessed, venture out and seek a new home to replace the wreckage of the old.
The infamous “Exodus 1947″ ship crosses Jama’s path, somewhat emblematically, at the end of the story, as do the Haganah Jews of post-Holocaust Europe who are intent on returning to their “spiritual homeland” in Palestine. Just as their endeavour is stymied, and they are left to float in their watery no-man’s land of the ocean, denied entry to Palestine, Jama wanders too, looking for, quite literally, his own elusive “fatherland”.
Neither parties reach their promised land and both are forced to reconfigure what it means to call a country a “home”. As a kindly old woman tells Jama, a home is not always the place in which you were born. Mohamed, and Jama, appear to conclude that a home is, in the end, rooted in psychology, rather than geography.
In writing her father’s life, Mohamed sought to document a moment in history, in these troubled corners of Africa. “I am my father’s griot,” writes Mohamed. “This is a hymn to him. I am telling you this story so that I can turn my father’s blood and bones, and whatever magic his mother sewed under his skin, into history…”
Just as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun drew out the little documented dramas of the Biafran war, Mohamed describes an East Africa under Mussolini’s rule, in which the continent’s underclass who bore no political allegiance to Italy’s fascist forces became willing conscripts purely to get clothes and a square meal.
The story does, once or twice, fall victim to too much documentation without enough emotion, but this is a minor imperfection in the face of such an accomplished first novel.
In its best, most moving moments, Mohamed portrays, from a child’s eye view, both the loneliness and camaraderie of street children like Jama, whose friendships become almost as sustaining as food and water in this scorched and famished land.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/black-mamba-boy-by-nadifa-mohamed-1867909.html
NADIFA MOHAMED – Born in Hargeisa, Somalia in 1981 as the country fell into dictatorship, Nadifa Mohamed moved to London with her family in 1986, just before the beginnings of civil war as Siad Barre lost his grip on power. She was educated in London and went to Oxford to study History and Politics. Her début novel, Black Mamba Boy, based on the true story of her father’s life in 1930s, was acquired by HarperCollins UK in 2008. Nadifa is currently working on her second novel.
26
Comments
This is the first I’ve heard of her, but it does sound like a book that’s worth buying.
Thanks for the review.
So many things I can pick and point about this writer and her book. Doesn’t do it for me, Sorry for sounding all stroppy, but just an opinion.
It sounds as if she’s selling us her pity. I really don’t care about what happened to her father, she could have researched more and wrote a more touching and real story of Somalia, and I’m sure she could of found some, seeing the country being war torn for nearly 2 decades.
And for the love of almightily Allah I’m sick of seeing these “educated” Somali women and men stripping off their hijabs or marrying a non Muslim woman. K.M.T
Hahahahaha….Habar you are sooo funny.
Great review. I will certainly buy this book. Thanks for sharing it with us!
Sounds like an interesting story, but I’d have to agree with Habar though… I look at this Oxford educated Somali woman, who’s not a hijabi and has lived in qurbaha since infancy. What qualifies her to write such a novel other than the coincidence of her birth? Mr. Patel from the cornershop in Woolwich may have a better insight than she has. Such a disappointment, I’m not a hijab snob, but how am I meant to take someone who has quite obviously abandoned our daqan seriously on this matter… I mean really…
I think you you should read the book first instead of being in such a hurry at judging the book or the person behind it. The way she dresses or the fact she has spend her whole life in Europe are not really relevant to whether the content of the book is good or bad.
Exactly Ayaanle. People are so judgemental. Why can’t we just celebrate a fellow Somalis success and say alhamdullilah. I can’t think of a better tribute to your parent than write his story.
With no disrespect to you as a blogger Ayan, i just want to add that 90% of the reason why this book review is up on Qarxis is because the writer is a fellow Somalian.
Tribute to her parents? Fair enough, but seriously, who gives a toss about some old Geezer’s life story? And to top it off he isn’t even some one famous. If he was someone known (i.e. Siyad Barre) I’d give her that.. But Nope!
Who cares what colors she wears or what her shoe size is? Really? This is all your contribution to the discussion? Qarxis needs to collect peoples’ sheep mentality at the door before they are allowed to join the site. It should be one of the minimum requirements.
I shall read it when I don’t have any school books to read, until then I guess it will be on my waiting list.
Majority of the books about Africa, Somalia etc are all written by people who have not been to Africa or Somalia, but they all write these books as experts.
She is at least born in Somalia and lived there as a child and probably went back to visit the place many times while staying in the UK like a lot of people do.
She is Somali, speaks the language and like all of us she probably has a big family. So she definitely knows a lot more about the country and the people then the so called experts, who do not understand the language, the culture, the people, the religion etc.
I am not much of a book reader but I might just buy this one insha allah.
I wouldnt buy this book for many reasons except for one reason, She is Somalian !!! Walahi alot of somali’s are hypocrites, hysterical and unbeleivable. I would buy any book by a somalian writer whether he/she is a non- muslim, a half- muslim or even a pious muslim. We need to grow up and support our own kind by purchasing the book and then read it, then, if it is not satisfying you then don’t blame his or her back ground. There are alot worse people than this girl in this Westernised society that we do not to say a word of. If this girl was one of your family member you would have been over the moon with her acheivments even if they did not wear a hijab or covered there head.
Ayub,
That was probably the dumbest/stupidest comment I have ever seen. You deserve a medal for that, wallahi
If you would elaborate on my stupidity then i would kindly accept the medal…..
Nothing stupid about wanting to support your own kid, after all I know a guy who supports the new banadir
Ayub,
You open your comment with:
“I wouldnt buy this book for many reasons except for one reason, She is Somalian !!! Walahi alot of somali’s are hypocrites, hysterical and unbeleivable. I wouldn’t buy any book by a somalian writer whether he/she is a non- muslim, a half- muslim or even a pious muslim.”
Then after few words, you say:
“We need to grow up and support our own kind by purchasing the book and then read it, then, if it is not satisfying you then don’t blame his or her back ground”
Tell me you aint that ain’t the most retarded comment of ALL TIME
I personally wouldn’t buy someone’s book just because they are Somali. Other than that I completely agree with what Ayub said.
Noor,
Xasid Foqol Xasid. You just want poor Ayub to never grow up and continue making such stupid retarded comments. Shame on you
Ayaanle,
Ayub didn’t say anything
RecoveringRomantics you are killing with your jokes.
“Ayub didn’t say anything” kulahaa, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
First of all, i would like to amend one typing error… Was meant to say i would buy . not I wouldn’t buy….
And for you RecoveringRomantics, Before you call a fellow brother retard or stupid. If i make a mistake, please tell me in a better way.
Ayub,
Bro, even if you fix the typo, you still won’t make much sense. You have made a lot of generalizations in your earlier comment to the point that it makes you seem like one of the cadaan country pumpkins we have in our region. War, ninyahow, iska daaf, don’t call people you never met “hypocrites” “hysterical” and the other ciyaal-suuq adjectives you created in your head.
You are my brother, this is why I am being harsh on you here, because it is tough out there. Tough Luv, brah!
Now thats what i mean, your criticism makes more sense now !!, now let me dumb it down for you and i dont wish to continue with this debate because i know better what the end product will be.
I have come across a lot of family or non- family members that i know, whom i always include in my generalizations. So, am i wrong to say what i have facts of?…. Secondly, i want to know how you have come to conclusion that i am one of the cadaan country pumpkins we have in any region. what’s one’s comment have to do with anything about his surroundings?
P.s Thanks but no thanks, i think i can handle the outside world without you holding my hand
I didnt shoot down the book, haven’t read it yet what I am getting at is that we shouldn’t be so quick to gush over how great an author she is and how we should support her just because she is Somali. For all I know it may be the best novel ever written by a Somali but what bothers me is the overwhelming surety that had author been someone who looked less westernised, the Guardian’s critical acclaim would not have been so forthcoming. I’m not judging her, to judge is to critisise her, to condemn her. That is not what I do, I’m merely expressing an opinion based on my first impression of the author and it just so happens to be not in line with most of the Qarxis lot that have commented on this post. Scepticism is in my nature and first impressions be they postive or negative are what they are: first impressions.
BTW RecoveringRomatics…. a sheep (I’m tallking in the human sense of the word) is someone who goes along with the crowd… In this case that would be you.
Correction: Not the Guardian but the Independent….My bad
Dahab,
I meant Sheep mentality in terms of the tendency of some people to trivialize things and follow their knee-jerk reactions without critically analyzing or examining their position or the issue at hand.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.