Ogaden, also known as the ‘horn of Africa’ shares its borders with Somalia and Ethiopia and has always been a land of dispute between the two nations. It is in this embattled Ogaden that Farah tells a story of parental love, which finally culminates in Somalia with betrayal.
Farah, like his protagonist Askar, was born in the Somali-speaking region of “Ogaden that was put under Ethiopian control by the Western powers that drew the modern map of Africa.” He grew up in the town of Kallafo, where he spent his formative years as a student. However, in 1963, the Somalian war with Ethiopia forced Farah and his family to leave for the Somalian capital of Mogadiscio. His torment of having to leave his homeland, and deal with the question of “Am I a Somalian or Ethiopian?” was further complicated by the other cultural currents that wind through the region.
In a way, Farah has given a voice to his own torment and conflict through Askar, the protagonist and his surrogate
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She emblematizes or rather embodies the land of Ogaden; ploughed, tilled, and assaulted by various men, including her son. She becomes a symbol of the victimized nation.
Askar throughout the novel is on a quest for a mother figure, developing his identity with the persons in his life. He becomes a revolutionary in a quest for embracing his nation and fighting back as Cusmaan directs him to fight and avenge all the betrayers of his motherland. Thus we see Askar metamorphing from an orphaned Somali infant in the Ogaden into a militant revolutionary at the end of the novel. Askar changes as a child from the Ogaden who has lost both his biological parents and who throughout is on a quest to seek a mother – figure.
The painful tender question of “Who am I”? is one that Askar obsessively asks himself throughout the novel and is yet left wondering with the same till the end as he testifies in