On the Trails of a Nomad
Mohamed Kamara
Where does one start telling the story of Abdourahman Waberi? Do we begin in Djibouti where he was born on July 20 1965, twelve years before independence, and before that country’s subsequent name-change from “the colonial French Territory of the Affars and Issas” or “French Somaliland”? Or in France, where he first arrived in 1985 and has since lived the greater part of his adult life and written most of his works? Or do we start in Wellesley, USA, where he is currently a Donald and Susan Newhouse Humanities Fellow at Wellesley College?
The nomad that he is, I suspect Abdourahman would not mind at all where one begins his story, or finishes it, for that matter. Like many of the characters in his stories, Waberi is constantly on the move, sowing, as he glides along, the fruits and seeds of his wanderings to all the winds. It makes sense therefore, that for the writer, nomadism is not about roots : “le nomade est à l’inverse de l’arbre, il s’enracine par ses fruits, c’est-à-dire par ce qu’il fait de sa vie tourbillonnante….Souvent il se trouve naufragé dans le présent : un abri temporaire, un no man’s time où il se sent inexplicablement aux aguets (The nomad, unlike the tree, puts down his roots via his fruits, that is, by what he makes of his whirlwind life…)." Often, he finds himself adrift in the present: a temporary shelter, a no man’s time in which he feels inexplicably on the lookout.” Freedom, especially freedom of movement, is the identity of the nomad, something he cherishes beyond measure. Waberi refuses to be walled in. In his world, time and space exist, but only on condition that they are not enclosed in rigid boundaries. He is in transit, always, everywhere.
Novelist, poet, essayist, Waberi first catapulted himself onto the literary scene in 1994 with the publication of a collection of short stories, Le Pays sans ombres, or Land Without Shadows. As if the publication of the book was not enough to tell us what Waberi was capable of, that same year, the book received two prestigious literary awards: the Grand prix de la Nouvelle francophone de l’ Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Française de Belgique and the Prix Albert Bernard de l’ Académie des Sciences d’Outre-mer de Paris. Another collection of short stories, Cahier nomade, and Balbala, a novel (Waberi’s first) were published in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Cahier nomade received the Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire. A year after it was first published, Balbala won the Prix collectif du Festival du Premier roman de Chambéry, as well as the Prix biennal “ Mandat pour la liberté” du P.E.N Club Français. Together, Waberi’s first three major works, constituting a trilogy, are a rich and complex evocation of the political, social, cultural, and economic landscape, past and present, of Waberi’s native Djibouti in particular, and of the Horn of Africa in general.