Crossbones

Following Links (2003) and Knots (2007), Somali author and playwright Nuruddin Farah’s novel Crossbones (2011) is the third and final installment of the Past Imperfect trilogy. While it shares some ancillary characters and settings with the previous installments, Crossbones can be read as a standalone work. Set in Somalia during the 2006 Ethiopian invasion, the book chronicles two Somali-American brothers who travel to the homeland of their forebears for very different reasons. According to The Independent, Crossbones is "a lament to the futility of Somalia's suffering.”

At the beginning of the novel, the perspective is that of Young Thing, a young military recruit to the Union of Islamic Courts. In the wake of an invasion from Ethiopia, Somalia has devolved into Civil War over control of the country. The two primary factions are the Somali Transitional Federal Government backed by Ethiopia and the Union of Islamic Courts, a group of Sharia courts led by Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys that currently controls the Somali capital of Mogadishu. (Throughout the novel, Farah spells it "Mogadiscio," one of the many remnants of Italian rule in Somalia). On a mission to locate a safe house, the inexperienced Young Thing enters the wrong building and ends up in a shootout with an elderly man that leaves both of them dead. The incident highlights the senselessness and speed with which people young and old are dying in Somalia.

The perspective then shifts to that of Malik, an American of Somalian ancestry living in New York City. He is a freelance journalist experienced in reporting from warzones, including Iraq, the Congo, and Afghanistan. While most of the international reporting on Somalia at this time concerns the country's many pirates, Malik travels to Somalia to report on the war, the political unrest, and the ill intents and doings of the fundamentalist Union of Islamic Courts. Highly arrogant, Malik believes his work to be superior to that of other international journalists who are brave but often lack the ancestral connection to the regions they cover.



Meanwhile, Malik's older brother, Ahl, lives in a comfortable middle-class home with his family in suburban Minneapolis. His suburban bliss is shattered when his teenage stepson, Taxliil, falls under the spell of a jihadist imam. Taxliil runs away from home reportedly to train as a suicide bomber in Somalia. The brothers both journey to Somalia though they will take different paths: Malik to file stories and escape before the war intensifies to an even greater degree; Ahl to recover Taxliil before he hurts himself and others.

Once in Somalia, they both realize quickly that they may be in over their heads. Nevertheless, pushing on undeterred, they are forced to confront a series of assumptions about their homeland. For example, Malik betrays his American superiority complex by treating his kind and extremely intelligent local fixer Qasiir very poorly. He seems to look down upon Somalis whose parents didn't "wise up" and join the diaspora as his did. Later, military thugs who behave more like a gang than an army confiscate most of Malik’s belongings and equipment. He soon realizes it is not just his belongings that he is in danger of losing but his life. This is made extraordinarily clear to Malik when he serves as a pallbearer at an improvised funeral service for a fellow journalist who is murdered.

Meanwhile, Ahl arrives in the self-governed region of Puntland, which, while technically independent, has devolved into crime and destitution. It is a haven for pirates with whom Ahl strikes friendships of convenience in order to learn more about Taxliil's fate. The depiction of pirates is more sympathetic than the ones found in other media on modern Somalia, in that they are portrayed as desperate men with no other means for survival in a country falling apart. Their depiction is that of coastal fishermen desperate to protect their livelihood from international poaching. Ahl also observes physical and psychological scars from dysfunctional leaders in the past, from the Italian colonization before World War II to the repressive dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre in the 1990s.



The book ends on an ambiguous note, with Ahl forced to confront the reality that in Somalia, the difference between a "terrorist" and an "insurgent" is not so different.