Book Review: Hiding in Plain Sight by Nuradin Farah
After Aar had an argument with his wife
Valarie who decided to join to the lesbian community, Aar asked his friends in
Kenya to take care of the two kids Salif and Dahaba and he went to Mogadishu as
UN staff.
After terrorists attack in the UN compound of Mogadishu shortened the life of Aar, his sister- Bella, who is in Italy is mourning and soon travels to Kenya to take care of the kids whose mother has already left and now watching the death of their beloved father.
After terrorists attack in the UN compound of Mogadishu shortened the life of Aar, his sister- Bella, who is in Italy is mourning and soon travels to Kenya to take care of the kids whose mother has already left and now watching the death of their beloved father.
Besides,
Bella has no parenting skills, she still manages to raise her nephew and niece
successfully. Salif and Dahaba are endowed with intelligence and smartness that
they inherited from their father who singlehandedly raised them.
Among
the many other characters that light up in the book are Fatima who is a cancer
survivor and her husband Mahdi and Also Gunilla who is Aar’s colleague and
lover.
Bella’s
most challenging party of raising kids starts when Valarie starts to claim the
maternal rights of the kids, but later Bella won the case, the story depicts
forgiveness, love, loss, freedom, heartbreak and partial family reunion.
The story teaches us more about Somali’s mingling with foreign marriage only to
regret later. the author embodied many things in the novel, the hardiness, male
privilege and egotism of Somalis, Africa’s perception of bisexual/lesbian
marriages, Somali’s heydays, proverbs, and wisdom with a touch of creativity
and powerful writing skills all combined, makes the story moving.
Somali
born author Nuradin Farah has published this Novel in 2014, under the setting
of Roma, Nairobi, and Mogadishu. It is the 12th novel since he started his
writing career in 1970. The book has got a very good rating and I enjoyed
reading it so much, a highly recommended book. Here are some adages/quotes in
the
book.
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“But
now he is full of anxiety to know the content of the envelope. He gets out of
bed, totteringly eager to satisfy his troubled curiosity”
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“Back
in the living room, Keith’s wandering gaze falls on the photographs of Bella in
various poses and he stands there, staring at them. It is as if the man
suddenly has no memory of the business that has brought him here”
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“Death
in Somalia seldom bothers to announce its arrival”
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“The
pilot announces “ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent” and all of
sudden the sky, which has been clear turned leaden and gray, and clouds envelop
the plane like curtains being drawn. It begins to rain heavily, each drop which
are as big as one of Bella’s tears”
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“There
is glory in grief”
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“He
guessed that Valarie and Padmini needed time alone to talk things through. A furtive glance at this wristwatch supplied him with an excuse to depart.”
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“There is no look sadder than the look of
innocence in ruins”
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“Bella
reasons that Dahaba is a tabula rasa girl. Assuming that what she knows is
known to others, she always begins stories somewhere in the middle”
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"When
a country like ours goes to ruin, it takes our best too"
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“Only
when we are affected personally when a family member or close friend lose his
or her life, do we really notice the pain and cruelty in our guts, in the marrow of our bones. That is why in Somalia people pray that God spares those
ones we love while taking those one does not even know”
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“A
woman needs good looks between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, a good
personality from thirty-five to fifty-five, and plenty of cash thereafter”
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“There
is a silence, a silence that indicates that they have arrived at a sort of
T-junction in their conversation, no way forward, only to the sides”
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“I
wonder who Adam would blame if there were no Eve”
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“Somali
Talk about politics incessantly, cutthroat clan politics. They live and breathe
it and they never agree on anything”
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“They
drive back to Nairobi, the mood darkened by the silence, no one dares to break”
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“A
lioness is at her most dangerous when injured”
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“What
your parents don’t teach, you will be compelled to learn the hard way from an
unfeeling society” Somali proverb.
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