An hour with Nuruddin Farah

ron woodroof an auditorium at the university of kansas k pr presents an hour with new routine foreign i'm kate mcintyre other new routine far was born in somalia and is considered by many to be one of the most important african novelist has frank writing about authoritarianism in somalia led to his exile in nineteen seventy six and his lifelong pursuit to keep somalia alive by writing about it he now lives in cape town south africa lesser afford in the port of the road is featured as part of the inflection is sponsored by paul fan of the mannequins his remarks were reported on september twelve thousand says and now here is nothing else it's a pleasure to be here and to be speaking to a fork in the fourth quarter i approach the topic at hand from the

perspective of the somali born in somalia and into the odor of tradition to do so i would take a little bit to see this some of those conservative so continent of mine who lie when they show called having is that also contains so my favorite hasn't that while he was on a soul searching german chicken patty that comes further to do with so tragic trees uncertain as to what to do next he has immense difficulty choosing which of the many available for talks in the faults of that road to follow the senate seat is folded into the fabric is lights upon the most

original idea he decides to roll up the forks of the road he comes to forming through a very giant one and where's it as dory to have that i'm a wordsmith and a magician us at a wet sari a wordsmith and a magician was in the wrong in some ways does a conjurer might wear i snake around his neck event is false spotify creative commons that the peace with his commitment to enforce beyond the world known to his is you get to get to meet the people residing in the lands that had until then been and known to him he thinks of himself as a fabulous exploring their next role and getting to know the unknowable an affidavit

he walks and walks committed to get into the end of that road that's now and forever has threatened for him when i finally reached the end of one of the faux of the road he and forth the next giant fork of the road into the general and where's it again like a belt and today she's imaginatively the most have also see it in a way only separatists can do spread in fact by the huge need to come to terms with the many scientists of every viewpoint check to have a good and so they had started in the land of the imagination it's axiomatic understand that the journey starts before the trouble has become aware of it in the mind if i find a stable fascinated me and its

potential it because i believe that wright says that's happened is what excellence in good not only imaginable the golan six by which you find it with the first verse of a larger than usual body length do how to use a certain elegance of a universal way in this perspective i'd like you to think of the ancient silk road which linked the orient to be oxygen and a note which goods and ideas without without a back and forth between two great civilizations let me add this that interested in the origination office say go above it can of possibilities of interpretation in a chokehold which janis may enjoy your community to pursue any number of alternative routes with every single one of the faux and the forks in the road is

likely to lead one to a different destination and therefore to a new world it seems to me that the sabre also touches on the notion of writing which is a form of my writing in a six cents a man as it's possible to arrive just as it makes the idea of writing to that of the journey and eventually set them once way through to ones final talks called off cool perhaps it would be unable to read prose that's right designed dating migrating daily between a reality of a country which they share with everyone else on the one who won their imagination which is exclusively there is annie with a design for as long as the news may demand it is in six cents off the writing is often done because several hours of the day expended on living in the real

world with others and a couple of hours or so it was like in pursuit of his vacation at the studio of the writing you've done half the day in which he or she is isolated away from the others involved a life lived in an imagined than mark dobbs with a continuous filaments within the cocoon the favor of so crudely beckons yet again and one dennis paulson is having to choose between which of the two forks in the road to texas restoring his body falls mainly because one does not know where we won we end all what one we find a question how my choice there's an african hands when it comes to what to do about his or her life whether to migrate elsewhere and if

so to wear or what profession to court full and to see if as things stand today an african has fewer choices in virtually every field in this very competitive presumably global environment given that the continent that they handle the other continents then it follows that than african can hardly choose to become a writer or to sense when a language and i compliment people buying millions of the electorate in the western sense of the term with cafes small publishing industry is worth of the name a moment's lot of methane is igniting in an author's imagination makes all and makes the right and one that they also clearly against

the african writer in the political leadership is altering its because many a screen is in trouble with the authorities back home and is in virtual exile i have resigned been elsewhere or going and they live in teaching at universities in europe or north america i am one of the time an exception in a manner of speaking and that i live in the continent and i'm also a full time right as a colonial i was born in this century and into a specific situation in which oddly into the no choice in what i could do or achieve little more choice where i go to as many ago had closed before my birth leaving me no possibility of my fourth everyday purchase

past these bills because the colts was that the things my country the extent that he had to work much harder then our contemporary these big in europe and north america because these had a head start over us which made it more difficult for us to achieve anything or make something of ourselves now when we choose what we were stabbed considering that in many cases there were no schools to speak off and when their where their community run poorly equipped and the lockerbie on the eighth great difficulty you could say that someone else and arabs who brought islam to do this face and to whom we deserve because they speak the language of the koran europeans were ten days into chapels and slave and how people through their grown in politics he's

had this idea the prime minister the possibility of making choices that are of loan fourteen we were no different from a pro video contacts with dr as hard as they can to make a discomfort set best work today gets it to their advantage and at worst live with i since the end of that i would carry for much of my life early on in my job when my parents sent me to school and paid for my education which they could be a lawful and it takes them to the crew currency commonly known commonly used by colonial offspring to repay their parents' debts i took as much pride in my separateness from

them having nothing fluency in arabic and english the two languages i could read and write and weekend electric appearance that is they could not sadly i had not realized that the summit of tradition as they do and lit it would not be continued to me that they might have hoped maybe my going away from my people had stopped you before i had become aware of it i would've been in my late teens when i felt that i was in that the parts along felt my land so to speak read it his venture forth until were very different from the one i had been born and it was multicultural the word like very and there's so much bigger even if necessary enough better than the one i would have shared with my

parents and then all things into school and taught to speak english he died in an attic as kosovo i became conscious of my haven't immediately see to earn elsewhere state of being physically go had that we should the palestinian boy had written them then and then i read or notice them i might have spoken these lines after him but i lost to move on it's worth asking what choices than it did i have been living in the international departure lounge of my country good at it because i had received my instruction in english because my mother so much to do with some might have written had not been given the standardized

script until nineteen seventy two we know that the office conspired to have somebody written about it when he could not be because of a big stone of nature and that somebody's second that it fought for years to have written some id in the same audience that this money or when it's over flick won by somali nationalist or in german script i've become proficient in five hundred times had published several short stories and in the remaining vision and embark on this immense thing is right in the end and all of the time some of you became i suppose you could say that i should have realized from having written my first published novel when i was twenty two twenty three that i was on my way up to and elsewhere country and was bound to quit somalia eventually

assume that that's the safe but that the thought of making a choice between going away and stained is the question he had her never crossed my mind to my degree because i had no desire to do some that i took in the international had brought along to language english and it had to do and it was my decision not to return to somalia if anything it is because i have them all in the newly adopted some ideas that and ran headlong and a confrontation with the censorship board which has continued its publication i may have left somalia the setback of nineteen seventy for another ten to the country of my birth until after twenty two years we bought it my belief that i continued to

live as true to the same commitment is before as though i had not quit the country a pool that is to say that the nba intervening is doing that i quit the country physically and what i've attempted in nineteen seventy six for the first time nothing to grow portland's two years i lived in the limbo the departure lounge writing continuously about somalia as if i have never gone away from it and making a determined effort not to put down its elsewhere in all this time i have lived in the country of my imagination there are different reasons why it has happened i can think of a number of writers who have returned to the place that left

behind forty other motive and two weeks they may never have a turn even if given the chance into the fog up on weekday imagination cheeks writing about the country from a distance this one bit that we just didn't experience and reducing it to purify state here i'm reminded of an anecdote one full of gloating what last are many european whom he met when he's your the other sunni and when he gets even thought of himself as an african two weeks that are seeing in this one knew that he came to think of himself as an african and he was when he first went to europe i would say that i began to think of myself as a somali when isis went out of my continent and lived in

india at the age of twenty because in the sense helps want to separate the shop from the as it happens i benefited from the distillation there right from the advantage of distance that enabled me to write i first published a novel from a crooked it was to this day some people assume is my guest and what a disaster this was the case i haven't lived in the departure lounge and may continue to live to be living in one such place defy relocate to some money in the future to god forbid it for me to compare my status done to joyce's that but i wonder how mike joyce they have been doing but they

did write in with their own it is he composes one in italian but then lay a time as opposed to that in that then official language the joys and beckett to the language is their vote in the one in english as colonial time they are the first in the language of the growing in losses and later in french there is one thing he's also set apart from taking the choice is destiny had dealt with him and then in today it's this their writings and about ways of celebrating the idea of the potter and it's living elsewhere never mind how

uncomfortable it is there it was also about the process use of alienation and immense benefit benefits accrue to the one experiment and of returning home in mind it's not doing the after living elsewhere haven't become a little creature in terms of experience if i continued to live in the departure lounge and decide not to exchange it for and elsewhere country it's probably because i do not have the entry permits that the imagination of thought that the immigration authorities in these elsewhere place is quiet again note that the liberty encroaching upon by the great report it in full and to have it as if it was written with jenny is that is to say write is around this

fabulous like me in mind oh boy as is set for e think i hope is a long one full of adventure full of discovery with the onions so we decided to do not to be afraid of you would never find things like that when you're away as long as you keep your faults raised high as long as a rare excitement says your spirits in your body mr tony owens psycho it's why the site than you would not encounter them unless you bring them along in

cyprus so unless you're so set them up in front of you know your group is a long one and many many of song lonely and swim with that was walk that her what joy and the fall is yazzie in for the first time may use it all at finishing trading stations to buying five to tobias find things ma the coral combat activity so so tough few of every time as many sense of perfumes as you can and maybe you visit many egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from this goddess get ethical always in your mind of writing that is what you distance for the don't have revealed at a toll that's a trip

last four years so you are poor by the time you reach the island wealthy with the warriors' game two on the way not to expect in ithaca to make you rich i think i gave you the modernist journey without her you wouldn't set out she had nothing left to give you now if you find helpful if it wouldn't have food you why it is that you have become so full of experience you have a dispute by day with these thick as being flynn thank you fb two lives

it is when the wind in one of the villages the euro club in the song and you focus over time american teens and mores of middle class people what is about those people that you wanted to investigate where i met commission i'm more interested in people festival and people who can understand beyond the situation beyond the stage of being whoever they are and then explain where they come from people who are sufficiently out to commit to make us understand an area not familiar to us and

people who've also questioned themselves before him the time or that i didn't know about this indian princess diana when he is asked when did you become a wealthy in africa or european he says when i went to europe and the reason is because it's only when you go out of their own background of people who know the same things as yourself that questioned separately people asking questions so that you can answer them there are many many things i didn't know but i'm on the four i guess i'm so what middle class people have had is a bit of education and biddle you know self awareness a bit of self comparison because there was competitive so says this place that plays as somali middle class person an educated we know a lot

more about the other places that and say as some of you know man who obviously has another language other than that so i'm interested in a well i'd say closer to the one to which i belong not exactly going to which i belong to which i came back again and again in any case and the reason is because it is it's easier to question someone who made you even a fortified and so forth and then toss them into question says no and if we can't have i don't know and says in and although that's two hundred pages long because then you have nothing to write the world of fiction museum lines to allow him to live well morsi

you are so thank you know it's weird to look at particularly appreciate the metaphor of going on a journey as a writer above the knee migrants as a writer but he also as i need to be doing you any migrants in very many countries says the state now many africans are migrating i would like to one and he opposed it isn't nice you're often married to question them you take notes that hat first that it was that he's on on these daily job for africans migrating everywhere in you know and that dangerous very dangerous circumstances that stumble on a number two i would like you're going

to see here you will and exclusions i give visitors a sense i'm amy grant in different countries how do these come pay and sell tickets to the various countries that you have been and i'm also took him an asset in the immigrant myself thank you now i'm interested migration i added right here that i have written a great deal about it not that i have become an expert in that let me explain certain things that people whether they're in american cinema americans europeans and others do not know that if you can in terms of migration the number of germans who left their country but

imagine making twenty now to nineteen fifty would come true about twenty five to sixty five million germans left germany if you count the island though britain would now almost almost five hundred million the population if all the england is english the idea for schools who have left and going to other countries where to stay in england the island would have sunk hundred years ago now when you compare what that particular situation to the situation of africans trying to

migrate to spain to italy to some of these places when you compare that to what it's really used to do in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties nineteen ten nineteen cities the italian government had one way ticket policies given to retirement mainly from its adorable sinatra releases the south in mississippi and seventeen year there would be given one way tickets to go anywhere in the world that they wanted one way tickets but don't come back this through the policy because of a comeback and would be allowed in and begin a new job so they wear the direct government policies to help these people for which you need to use elsewhere now compare that particular situation and you know what the value you know how the

italians is set in europe there is some beautiful movies that is the obama took a lot no joke a movie about the violin work is in switzerland and we talk in the nineteen fifties when he got into a more integrated into sources i do and the lowest of the low c not that into iraq so what i'm trying to say is that they're doing this government policy my generation is going and this is because they didn't have enough sweden didn't have enough farmers in sweden came to minnesota and work that goes into that manage to do this so what i am speaking about his four hundred years

european swing able to leave europe when europe was very cool and come to this country and went as what what they were you know criminals to australia and other places because they had the possibility to go and because the gates have been clues usually the gates had been close now africans have woken up too late to migrate to some of these places they should've done about ten fifteen years ago when gates we're hoping now that the gates or faultless you look back rooms and now that america is the beating went on not being born an american or wrongly guarantees you american nationality and citizenship rights and so on so forth and maybe in another to three years this would be possible in america so what i try to do is to say well you know

the world has been on set foot in a different reasons economic committee migration is good for europe and north america good wife because we have young people we have younger out where people are angry and ready to work you have all those oxygen aliens and whose pensions you have to pay for the coming twenty thirty forty years and therefore you need younger younger younger people to call you took me so about fifteen million people who come into europe in the coming ten years if we do not come in it all out all the octogenarian miserably then we're going to style where we are because you've close the gates and you're going to talk to yourself in it to tokyo way to death

the best finish in my opinion my mind combine island meet with you and to combine how a new review and i'm going to move to move forward so this is what i think this is what i think about that the second one is the my experiences indian man immigrant i actually to be honest with you never thought of myself as an immigrant in the sense that i've festival i didn't follow many of my years in antarctica and where the bureaucrats my think of me as a foreigner you know when i lived in nigeria the only need a visa coming and then people would take me explain what you doing in my country and i'm simply say well i i i i've lived here to explain

but the moment you less to the immigration and went into the country itself and the people we always say you come from a common chinese company has come through this people are friendlier to meet him the many many african countries in which i lived on my experience is more likely to use is actually quite unique because people have begun to mean that if there's a smile a lot but to beat the migrants is a terrible thing especially these days you know they confiscate your water when you come into play it's very difficult to trial a common that a very difficult ethical thing about conditions in this area and in your talk you set up a dichotomy between the

country of the imagination and which is private and then the public says real space and save lives uninterrupted lee in the country of your imagination for all these many years but obviously the people who are here and in particular introduces see your work is having great impact on public and shared reality insiders wonder what we see is the relationship between these two places that you put it has been very well when somebody usually ask me a question questioned similar to that i usually divide my name due to ice a new reading is the one that you're talking to now and fire is the one who writes the books so you have to put your questions to the portion of the maine which you wished on seo

question three years i think they use these laws limit fees that's every decision you know you know this vote leave office and i haven't ever official <unk> well it's similar yeah this site are you talking put in your question to me reading how you put your question to fire will give the city that all i'm a jew someone who's two cases in that case you have them last and these

questions of existence but i make in his youth for a moment to borrow the hat of the other one where the country the imagination the reason i resign longer in the country because my understanding that life to be because your reason i think somebody saw it when i was about twenty eight that committee at a reasonable fence in writing a very silly novel called the making and was sentenced to death and i had a choice and the only choice is easy because the scene were talking about two issues

that joyce was to go back to somalia and face not necessarily death but the possibility of writing another book or to stay away from somalia and it lives in the country of my imagination and continued right so now in the country of my imagination i don't need a possible i don't need a visa i am totally the mosque built that i can go in and go out as i please in the country of my imagination that is a wealth that's not available to the thousands in the news outside now these different realities that one negotiates was continuously now and i am in the studio right

i can't impact to affect know i come off remember what i wrote when if today if for example brian was putting something that i sent them through it could do something that i may have with him i do not remember it and the reason is because at that time when i wrote it i was in a state in the land of imagination now when you live in america land of imagination you live in a world that's totally excluded from the outset that it is and what i do then i cannot remember when i am no longer live in it i have that accent if it doesn't it's like oh yes you mentioned that

you wrote your first novel when you were living in india there has been a great deal of cross pollination between south the southern nations going into africa learning conducting business coming to the us going back to india and also of africans coming to india to pakistan and doing some cultural gaining some cultural understanding do you feel that your time that you spent in india has influenced your writing this and if so how well i think i think he did it because the cia lived in indiana and i'm not early twenties and did not have the opportunity to go back to india for something close to thirty years that i was the only recently after so many so many years and i need to leave before i die they go any further that when i was nineteen twenty

i was given a scholarship to come to the us and to go to the university of wisconsin madison and just then a journalism in literature i was nineteen at the time coming to wisconsin my family thought that by choosing to do and i remember the american american the american who chose me as one of the best young folks who right is because i just published two short stories and you thought they were good and that i deserved a break and he took me aside and he said to me you're a young man an intelligent one you think that you know if you should go to wisconsin madison because you become a much better writer than you would

be if you decide to go to india and so i said well you know i said i don't know without the writer whichever country either too but i'll tell you that there will be very many possibilities many possibilities would come my way and take me to america but the one chance both going and living in india for three four years would come only once i must take it and i took it as it happened it up in december is it when i published lets us know that that man came back to somalia as an expert protest of the government and we met and the city are you ready to come to america now and i said not yet because i'm not ready to confirm eric

because first i must give to know as i did india i'd like to trouble to the soviet union the soviet union too different places my idea was to come in the world before coming to america because once one comes to america were never goes back to the countries from where one k this is what i was afraid of my living in india influencing of course it's the one day in india is worth a lot to anyone who has been touring the world has ended that's wheaties the world the small world and that is the victim of a large number of africans live in india and the like the marines into live in africa in that because there's the

funny nation is is that i'm not that sad actually when the best connected histories should be india and africa and the reason is because you look as a mediator we talk to each other through europe and that's the sad part you know my question is about and the rule of the rights that in africa presently i'm thinking of in a chili's idea that direct deadly rule of the writer is one of the teacher force a full to teach african people's feinstein's out sudan to get away from the cultural prejudices that death experience because of it lynn efficient but i'm thinking then asked and i asked and

difficult conditions in africa continue to deepen as things are getting worse and worse and having problems dictatorships do you think that the role of the right or changes or hugging thing that you write fiction feature in still can and how do you tell me ann weeks of the yemeni flavor is shown of freedom for instance from suppressing governments and things like that well i don't actually think of myself as i mean with all due respect to begin much of a close friend of mine i don't think of myself as a teacher it was

an ordinary nineteenth wife kind of person who pushes attend one way and then force is it the other way and a very ordinary kind of life and i do not arabic to myself so far you're saying i can teach people things because i'm still learning what interests me is to and taken to add the bay through writing with many other people and to continue this dialogue and to learn from and so rather than being a teacher myself i am occasionally the polls and sometimes if somebody finds something in the books and i'm very very happy but i also say that that wright says bilko is really no

difference whether there's another sensitive doing going to get back and going to the book you can recreate then having some money if you know if i'm saying thanks on monday associate at least in my head books and it is also associated in my hit so that if you come with an empty hit to a book you leave with an empty hit and he attracts than the one you broke before and therefore expected to have your own ideas and then to invest you know it is in that the reading of the book so that's you i had reached by what to buy what to be now the tsa is totally opens it because it assumes

presumes expects that that it is the one who's teaching you what that i could that it might've been humbling is that it it makes you see your own wealthy or own experiences through the prism of someone else's experiences so it becomes imperative now sap a job obviously are saying this is right or wrong but i'm senator that has as visible very carefully you can read their work and then i just wanted to say that granted writing does have its uses is you can have

wonderful stories that have been passed down for generations remember just in case somebody dies before they can pass a bomb on play do you see that and do you think that folks in themselves isolated person after that once you check out a book from a library it's just between you and the author whereas when we're in an oral to oral tradition you like you said you have to go and ring somebody you have to have a personal connection to somebody else to remember and that would bring people together more i would think than simply books do on just a community level and a person to person level because granted you can share the books more easily by sometimes you have to go much further to find somebody that you've done has shared the same experience in the same book experience than when you have somebody that is listen to the scene i mean he

absolutely that their books isolate owen but i think what three outdo him and his malden eva his we becoming more and more socially isolated and that was set in a meadow be a six seven days ago and was staying with a cousin of mine and he didn't have you know you didn't have a landline telephone and when i say it to him you know whether you have an online he says everybody has a morbid which obviously self isolated and because everyone has a more wine and self isolated the one thing that we used all to share the moment the talisman you know in the same way as the bathrooms are used to queue for boss who released a cue for telephone calls you know we're used to say when he finishes all and my sister finishes book and i would go and you know used to write our names down and

say this is the order in which we we speak with this is no longer the case people have each person in this majority of people usually have they self isolated and attitude and therefore whether the oral tradition that's obviously more ancient than the written tradition was looking you know writing becomes lucka knew all the telephones become most incisive it and i'm like you're in another ten years that was something most intoxicating effects do you know i mean i remember the first time to face facts came to my literary agency in london and this was in nineteen eighty six and in nineteen eighty six

so you know the world has moved on with the un water supply smith gossip from each other an audacious self isolate myself and think you just an election report in september well nelson's say that with the auditorium at the university of kansas it was a presentation and he used all center for the humanities and payment entire keep your presence is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas yours is

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