1987. Somalia. Revolution is imminent.
Through the eyes of three women, we see Somalia fall.
Filsan is proud to be a soldier and eager to prove her worth to the men around her. But it’s not easy.
Kawsar is widowed, childless, and infirm. After being injured by soldiers, she can’t flee the city along with her friends. So she remains and waits for death.
All young refugee Deqo wants is a family. But will she get it? And how?
The individual stories come together at several points in the novel as the characters encounter one another in different contexts. Predictably, their lives come together at the end. But the ending isn’t predictable.
The characters are well-developed.
As the story unfolds, each one changes and grows. I particularly liked 9-year-old Deqo. She’s a survivor and a fighter but a dreamer, too. She searches for a safe place to hide: a brothel, a barrel in a ditch, an abandoned (or is it?) house. It’s hard not to smile (or tear up) when this old-before-her-time girl behaves like a child: playing “dress up” with abandoned clothes and preening before the mirror, or talking to the people on T.V., or asking for an old woman to braid her unkempt hair.
The book should be heartbreaking. It is.
There are depictions of war, sexual violence, hatred, bigotry, you name it, and any nasty aspect of humanity is on display. That’s how war is.
But the book is also luminous, filled with small acts of kindness and compassion.
Even when it broke my heart, I also was filled with hope. This isn’t a book just about war and its effect on the innocent. It’s a book about relationships and strength. The ending is one of the most moving and hope-filled that I have read.
Like Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country and Earnest J. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, Mohamed’s book stayed with me long after I closed the cover. 12 months and 60+ books later, I still remember it. That doesn’t happen often.
This is literary fiction but it’s not the navel-gazing, plotless type of literary fiction. It’s both beautifully written and highly readable.
Highly recommended.
If you enjoyed this book, you may enjoy The Blind Man’s Garden, by Nadeem Aslam or A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini