The review of an amazing book "FROM A CROOKED RIB" By Nouradin Farah.

The story of this book was about a young woman searching independent, but uneducated who leaves her tribe and forced to marry a man she does not care for. The novel closely follows the perspective of an orphaned woman and her coming of age. Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are sold like cattle

During Ebla’s journey, she desired more than anything, to fly away like a cock, which has unknotted itself from the string tying its leg to the wall. But Ebla had no answer to the questions how to escape, where should she escape to, whom should she go to and when should she escape? The only desire was to escape to be free and these were inter-related.

Every situation has its serious side, but escaping an old man’s marriage doesn’t matter, but what is wrong in getting married to a man – old or young whom you don’t want to marry. Age doesn’t determine the genuineness of marriage; sometimes there are old men who are much more likeably husbands than young ones.

Ebla put her faith and her fate along with it into the hands of Allah and repeated that God will understand her situation and of course he won’t let her down. She flees to a life in town - first a rural center Belet-Wene and then to the city of Mogadishu. It is near the time of Somalia's independence from Italy, and her unsophisticated and limited grasp of what independence means for her may well represent the author's vision of Somalia, about to steer its own course in the modern world.

At the outskirts of the town, she could hear the hideous noise so common in Belet-Wene, Ebla stopped for a while to look closely at the townspeople. Inwardly she was annoyed perhaps because she could not see anybody whom she knew (But she had not known more than a hundred persons in her life, perhaps she never wanted to know more). She is alone, and the townspeople never liked guests, Ebla left unspeakable agony when she realized that she would have to do anything for herself. For the first time in her life, she faced the problem of getting something done with no assistance. 

Ebla, the central character, takes shelter first with a cousin, whose wife gives birth to a child in the first days of her arrival. In spite of her independence, Ebla often permits herself to be guided by decisions others make for her, which is much of the time. As a result, she marries a man she has met only once, and while her first husband is away for several months, she marries another man, who is himself already married, but to a battle-ax of a woman who thoroughly intimidates him.

Ebla’s escape, at eighteen, from an enforced marriage, takes her first to a small town and then to Somalia’s metropolis, Mogadishu. Along the way, she is sold into a bartered wedlock and then abandoned. On her wedding night, her “husband” beats her up and treats her in a manner more akin to rape than seduction. Already violated in her preteens through the barbarous, un-Islamic practice of female infibulations, the experience of pain and the humiliation he metes out to her on their first night leaves her traumatized for life. She becomes cynical, distrustful, bitter, and this disillusionment sends her on a warpath.

We deeply understand the book and the authors few of point that, In traditional Somali society, women are the property of men—whether of fathers, husbands, or male relatives—and are expendable commodities. Ebla flees an arranged marriage only to find herself a victim of yet another bartered marriage. To forestall it, she rushes into accepting Awill’s marriage proposal. And that was forced after no other possible actions she could. Moreover, in many other passages in the novel, Ebla seems obsessed by the situation.

Conclusion:

Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are sold like cattle. I can’t summarize the story of the book in two or three pages, but I tried to highlight the main pillars of the story and if you want more about this book follow this link: http://www.mostlyfiction.com/world/farah.htm

ABOUT NURUDDIN FARAH

Nurudin Farah is the author of nine novels, including From a Crooked Rib, Links and his Blood in the Suntrilogy: Maps, Gifts, and Secrets. His novels have been translated into seventeen languages and have won numerous awards. Farah was named the 1998 laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, “widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel” (The New York Times). Born in Baidoa, Somalia, he now lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with his wife and their children.

Published in 1970, the novel is a bildungsroman and was the 80th novel in the Heineman African Writers Series. The novel was originally composed while Farah was a student in India during 1968. The British publisher who first edited the novel was surprised the novelist was a man, because the novel closely follows the perspective of an orphaned woman and her coming of age.