海角大神

The Malian writer Amadou Hamp芒t茅 B芒 famously wrote that 鈥渋n Africa, when an old man dies, a library burns down.鈥� Shugri Said Salh found herself haunted by those words. She had grown up in a nomadic community in Somalia, but she was raising her three children in California on an all-American diet of soccer practices, piano lessons, and playdates. She loved the life she had given them, but she also didn鈥檛 want them to lose track of where they had come from.听

鈥淪omalia is a nation of poets, and of people with deep resilience,鈥� she says. Her grandmother, her ayeeyo, had raised her on fireside stories, and she wanted to be part of that tradition too.听

The result is a memoir called 鈥淭he Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert.鈥� The book鈥檚 story sprawls across three decades and two continents, from the Somali desert where Ms. Salh herded camels with her ayeeyo to her life as a refugee in Kenya and finally her resettlement in Canada. But though Ms. Salh came to North America fleeing violence, she says she resisted writing a book that centered around running away.听

鈥淲hy would I want to just tell you all the sad things?鈥� she says. 鈥淵es, I was a refugee. But I also had a whole other life. I am not only that. I am more than that. I am a big story.鈥澨�

Ms. Salh spoke with the Monitor about her childhood, and about the need for stories that complicate the way we see countries like hers.听

Why do you think it鈥檚 important for people in the West to understand the way you grew up?听

I am an infusion nurse. I worked endless hours during COVID, and spent a lot of time talking to my patients. And it made me realize, we are more connected than we think. I have seen that by sharing my story, by hearing my story, people have more compassion for my background, and don鈥檛 just write me off as a terrorist or a pirate. I liked to say to my patients, I didn鈥檛 read Jeffrey Dahmer鈥檚 story and said wow that鈥檚 what Americans are. Like everybody, we have the good and the bad. And I think the book helps to show that.听

Also, I love to read, and I love when books transform me, when they take me out of my own life and teach me something. So perhaps if you are like me, if you are a curious person always in pursuit of something beautiful and enchanting and different from what you know, perhaps we can sit and gather by the fire and talk.

Somalia has a deep history of storytelling. It鈥檚 often called a country of poets. Can you talk a little bit about the role that stories played in your life growing up?听

I came from a woman who instilled in me a deep reverence for my culture. She was this regal woman. Six feet tall. My ayeeyo was a poet, a warrior, and an activist. And despite being constantly in pursuit of green land and water, despite working every day just to survive, she and my other elders sat us down each night to tell us stories.听

I remember this beauty of it. Sitting by the fire in a black night. The fire is crackling. The sky is black and covered in stars. You hear hyenas in the distance, but you aren鈥檛 afraid because you are with people who know how to live on the land and with the land. And so I could sit without fear and just listen and take in all these beautiful stories.听

In your book, women live very complicated lives. They鈥檙e often both subjugated and strong, navigating expectations and stereotypes while finding ways to make space for themselves. What kind of portrait were you trying to give of Somali women in this book?听

I often tell people Somali women are a unique kind of woman. We are Muslim women. We are nomads. We are city women. We are many things. And above all, we don鈥檛 put up with [anything].听

I think often of my nomadic grandmother and how in her own ways, she was an activist. She took on roles that were not usually done by women, like herding and taming camels. And she was a poet who wasn鈥檛 afraid to speak her mind about the men in her community in the poems she wrote. And my sister Abshiro 鈥� she is the one who got me out of Somalia at great personal risk. I am really who I am because of these women I was raised by, and their strength.听

Your book speaks very movingly of your experience of female genital mutilation. What made you want to tell that very personal story?听

A lot of people, when they write about hard things that have happened to them, are entrenched in their own victimhood, in what was done to them. I wanted to tell my story a little differently. I wanted say, 鈥淚鈥檓 here to give you insight into this world, and I want to give you compassion for it too, because you cannot change people unless you understand them.鈥� That鈥檚 the way I will unshackle my daughters, all our daughters.听

You see, in my culture to be circumcised was an act of love. In our clan system, marriage connects families in a deep way, and ensuring a woman鈥檚 virginity is important to that tradition. So my grandmother knew that if we weren鈥檛 circumcised, people would pity us. They would say, did no one love you enough to look after you? I know it鈥檚 hard to understand that part of the听story 鈥� but at the time I would have been [devastated] if it hadn鈥檛 been done to me. So I want to say to readers, don鈥檛 paint us with a single brush because we went through something like this. We are not only victims. Our culture is not only barbaric, and not only noble. I went through that, but I鈥檓 also a soccer mom, a Californian who鈥檚 a bit of a hippie. There is no single story about my life.听

This is a story about your life as a refugee, but being a refugee occupies only a small place in the narrative, towards the end. Why was it important for you to tell a story that didn鈥檛 center around fleeing?听

I have seen that when African American stories are being told in this country, it鈥檚 often about slavery. It鈥檚 about pain. That鈥檚 important, but I didn鈥檛 want people to feel there is nothing to me but tears. There鈥檚 a deep resilience that lives in me. I am OK. There was violence. But I also had a whole other life. And that鈥檚 why my book takes you through the times when Somalia was safe. I want you to see that I had crushes on boys. That I fell in love. That there was this one male camel in our herd who wouldn鈥檛 leave me alone. My life has so many stories, and not all of them are about the bad things that happened to me.听

Throughout the book, you see me protesting in a small whisper against the bad in my society. I want to make you think, I want to make you question. No one in my story is crying, no one is begging for mercy from people outside. We are just asking you to think critically about why the world is the way it is.听