Knots

Nuruddin Farah's native country, Somalia, is shown in all its war-ravaged sadness in his harrowing novel, Knots. Cambara is a young Somalian-born woman who has spent most of her life in Toronto. Through the carelessness of her husband and his mistress, Cambara's son has drowned there and she is devastated by her grief. On a sudden impulse, she decides to go to Mogadiscio (Mogadishu) to properly grieve for her son and to try to wrest her family property from the warlords who seized it. Her journey is frightening and what she finds when she gets there is appalling, but she perseveres and accomplishes much of what she sets out to do.

Along the way she is helped by many people, without whom her goals could never have been reached. Despite squalor, poverty, sexual depravity, petty meanness, and the constant threat of violence, Cambara and a small cadre of good people continue to make progress against daunting odds. Much of the activity centers around ousting the thugs in Cambara's house, making it habitable again and mounting a play there that will showcase the solidarity and civilizing influence women have, even in the direst circumstances imaginable. Cambara is an inspiring woman, filled with zeal to make her world a better place. The other women, and several men, who help her, are Somalis grieving for their once beautiful city, now a landscape of tumbled buildings, potholed streets, gunfire everywhere, and very little hope. Cambara and her friends try to renew that hope in people very near despair by showing them that cooperating against evil may sometimes prevail.

Despite Cambara's inspirational behavior, Farah has drawn her as a character difficult to like. She seems by turns a friend and a manipulative user. In one instance, as she describes it, "she sees nothing wrong in relying on Dajaal's bravery to do the dirty work as long as she does not have to witness or have firsthand knowledge of the perpetration of the violence." There are also problems with Farah's style, by turns arch and stilted and then, in the same sentence, slangy and idiomatic. It is off-putting to the reader, but the harrowing story does come through. --Valerie Ryan