Nageeye’s Vendetta, a novel by Somali writer Ibrahim Hawd, who is recognised as a pioneer of Somali short stories, carries the weight of a world sculpted through his sharp, poetic lens. Published years ago as part of a trilogy titled Cir San Ka Yeedh, which hints at a mythical bird of promise—of peace and plenty—this story embarks on a journey through a tough, crumbling landscape, where survival itself is a war.
Set on the outskirts of Mogadishu, in a pastoral village called Damal Wayn, the novel opens with the merciless panorama of nomadic life. Life here is a constant struggle, with the human spirit locked in an unending battle against both visible and invisible forces of nature. The winds, the rains, the sand, and the predators together form an oppressive, gloomy, and almost suffocating canvas of existence. It is a world where only the strongest survive, where the earth itself is at odds with the fragile pulse of humanity. “Such a land,” Tayeb Salih writes, in his book Season of Migration to the North, “brings forth nothing but prophets”.
The story begins amidst this harshness. The protagonists, Nageeye and his friend Diiriye, are born into a time when the shadows of independence loom over the land, but where personal vendettas and grudges pulse through the veins of the people. Nageeye’s tragic fate is written in blood: his father is murdered before his very eyes. As the only son, his duty—drenched in the blood of vengeance—is to avenge this death. The narrative of his life is bound by this delayed reckoning, an obsession that takes root in childhood, igniting within him a restless, almost childishly fierce need to exact revenge. His small hands, once innocent, are soon wrung by the weight of vengeance, setting his course for the future.
To six-year-old Nageeye, the world is confined to Damal Wayn. He learns the Qur’an, but his teacher’s cruel, unprovoked beatings spark a fire within him. When, in a fit of rage, he smashes the Qur’an tablet over the teacher’s head, he is cast out, labelled the cursed one, the little devil. His rebellion pushes him further from the safety of tradition and kin, and his mother’s new marriage deepens his sense of isolation. He roams behind the camels, alone, consumed by the harsh, unforgiving landscape that mirrors his inner desolation. His life, marked by thirst, hunger, fear, and beasts—both human and animal—becomes akin to that of the outcast poets and vagabonds of old, who shed tribal ties and descended into a feral existence.
As he grows, so does the weight of his father’s death. He takes revenge, but the cycle of violence forces him to flee to Xamar, the common name for Mogadishu. Here, the city—the complex and often suffocating modernity of it—entangles him in new, perhaps even crueller, struggles. Xamar—the city of chaos, of stifled aspirations.
At first, Nageeye finds refuge in the house of his uncle, Rooble, a western-educated man whose Europeanised ways are met with disdain. To those around him, Rooble is a foreigner of sorts. His refusal to marry off his daughter and his rejection of female circumcision mark him as an outsider. The neighbours attribute this strange behaviour to their belief that he was corrupted by the infidels during his time in Britain. There are rumours that he ate pork with his wife, and that they became devoid of jealousy. The whispers of the community paint him as a traitor, a man disconnected from the values of his people. The city is a melting pot of new tensions, and Rooble’s household stands apart from the norms of its time. Despite his education, Rooble is still bound by the strictures of societal judgment, rejected by his people for his very decency.
Rooble’s family is cultured and happy, and the author skilfully describes the suspicion and apprehension between this family and their neighbours from the community. Their gazes are filled with accusations and mistrust, creating a pervasive sense of unease. In the neighbours’ perspective, the father, Rooble, is not a tyrant, as one might expect, but rather a meek, almost colourless figure with no jealousy—a trait regarded as a significant flaw. Furthermore, he refuses to participate in paying blood money when one of the clan members kills someone. “His selfish view alienates everyone.”
Out in the desert is Rooble’s brother, Mi’i-Libah, whose name signifies that he avenged their father—not by killing a person, but by killing a lion. The story goes that when Mi’i-Libah was a child, he travelled with his father, and one night, while his father was busy cooking the game, a lion attacked. The boy scrambled up a tree and watched in horror as the lion devoured his father, leaving behind only white bone fragments and crimson patches of blood. However, during their struggle, the father wounded the lion’s paw, which would later be used to track it down. Mi’i-Libah avenged his father’s death when he grew up, becoming a figure of respect for doing so.
Rooble, who was educated in Europe, asks his desert-dwelling brother to send his young son, Raage, to keep him company. He believes that a person without education is not truly human. Raage arrives at his uncle’s home and shares a house with Nageeye, a killer fleeing the desert.
The novel follows two parallel storylines, tracing the fates of these two characters, each of whom takes a different path in life despite their similar nomadic beginnings. Raage faces the overwhelming contradictions of city life, living with a constant stream of troubling questions. He becomes accustomed to the cultured atmosphere of his family and spends most of his time reading and studying, mastering the language of the “Infidels” with the same precision as his mastery of the Qur’an, as he had dreamed in his childhood. He later travels to Britain on a government scholarship. However, he does not finish his education there, as he becomes involved in writing articles denouncing western policies that support African dictatorships. In one article, he compares an African dictator to a man who rapes his mother, which leads to the withdrawal of his scholarship. He returns home but refuses to give up. He completes his education and begins teaching at a public school.
Raage’s character is marked by optimism and a belief in the future. He engages in a nationalist struggle against foreign occupation while also embracing ideas critical of the dictatorship of the socialist regime.
During a national event, he is asked to write a play to be performed before the Father of the Nation, the effusively deferential title of the president. However, he dares to write a play that exposes the horrors of the lifestyle imposed by the socialist regime under the military.
This act is considered a bold crime, and he is arrested and tortured. Lacking strong ties with his clan, he endures prison alone.
As the socialist government becomes increasingly tyrannical and mafia-like, intellectuals like Rooble are forced to flee the country and seek refuge abroad. However, Raage remains steadfast, stubbornly refusing to accept the foreigner as a saviour.
Meanwhile, Nageeye’s childhood friend, Diiriye, who grew up with him in the barren fields, embarks on a different path. He joins the military, lured by the promise of power, riches, and the cruel allure of violence. Nageeye, now a general, embodies the twisted, corrupted nature of the new power that takes root in Somalia. The military becomes a breeding ground for wealth and excess, a world where cruelty and corruption reign supreme. With his rise, Nageeye wields power with brutality, crushing all who dare oppose him. His life becomes one of fear and bloodshed, of merciless force, a reflection of the same fate he once faced as a child.
The painful blows that Nageeye endured in his early life manifest in his personality as malice, cruelty, and ferocity. The military regime exploits his violent and rough nature, selecting him to operate in opposition-controlled areas. There, he engages in theft and murder in the towns of Galkayo and Baraawe without restraint or oversight.
During this period, spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s, following Somalia’s defeat in the Ethiopian-Somali War, the regime degenerates into a mafia-like entity. It survives through theft, looting, and executions. The military views the country as its personal possession, treating both the land and its people as commodities to be exploited—subject to torture, rape, and murder at will. Nageeye’s character epitomises the ruthless general who crushes all in his path without mercy.
In stark contrast to Nageeye’s unbridled cruelty stands Amran, his wife, who communes with supernatural forces. She summons spirits at will, using them to heal the women of the city. These spirits dwell in their home, with incense offerings made to appease them. The mystical atmosphere terrifies Nageeye, and it is only these invisible forces that seem to temper his tyranny. However, his inability to endure this environment eventually fractures his family, culminating in divorce.
Ultimately, the vendetta finds its way to Nageeye’s eldest son, Kaliil. In Somali culture, vengeance is neither forgotten nor neglected. Yet, in a cruel twist, the son who is killed turns out not to be his own but the offspring of another man. Betrayed by his wife and consumed by anger and humiliation, Nageeye resolves to exact sweeping revenge. As a steadfast and vengeful general, he now wields the power to do so.
The foreigner’s lens
The foreigner’s lens remains a source of suspicion and unease. The Somali characters often complain about the Hollywood-style propaganda that portrays Somalia in a negative light. But why is Somalia the target of such propaganda? Raage offers an explanation, saying: “The foreigner seeks this behaviour to prove superiority and nobility to himself.” Somalia in a way becomes a cautionary tale. Don’t be like them is the implied warning embedded in much of the coverage.
In another scene, there is a conversation between Raage and the foreign journalist, Oscar Peterson. Raage observes the journalist searching for the perfect image to capture and asks him: “Why don’t you go to Baraawe and Hargeisa and take photos there, where entire cities have been levelled?”
The journalist, feigning kindness, replies: “We shouldn’t show all the atrocities.” What that actually meant was that excessive truth-telling could become a burden too heavy on the consciences of his people.
According to Raage, the west supports the regime, providing it with weapons and aid—Somalia received the largest amount of foreign aid during those years from the United States and after Cairo and Addis Ababa hosted the third largest US embassy in Africa. Therefore, it is in the west’s interest to overlook the regime’s horrific abuses. Despite being part of a crumbling system, the regime was eager to maintain good relations with the west after its clash with the Eastern Bloc in the Horn of Africa War (1977–1978).
The dramatic collapse
Nietzsche is quoted as saying: “In wars, people are on the edge of the same well, but this deep well takes a long time to reveal what lies in its depths.”
This novel explores those depths in the Somali context, shedding light on a dark period in Somalia’s history, which is often mourned today.
Most accounts of Somalia’s ruin date its beginning to the 1991 and the flight of Siad Barre to Nigeria, but the reality is that by the early 1980s, the regime had already become a mafia state, targeting entire cities for destruction and displacement.
This novel vividly captures the details of the ruined cities and the historical humiliation, illuminating what transpired in the depths of the war. Questions arise through Raage’s anxious character, who wonders: “When did the dream of the Somali state fail, or was it never born in the first place? And if it was born, was it placed in the cradle or the deathbed?”
Alongside the corruption of the military establishment, tied to a wealthy elite above the law—treating people and their bodies as tools for violence and exploitation—is the political class, embodied by Diriye, Nageeye’s childhood friend. Diriye works in school administration but is utterly uneducated. The regime does not value the educated or intellectual; it favours the thief and the clansman. In a dramatic end, Diriye is killed by one of his students while attempting to flee the country, having taught nothing but ignorance and mischief. His friend, the general, meets the same fate, attacked by a group of thieves as he tries to escape abroad after turning the country into a living hell. This story skillfully teases out those contradictions.
The African novel’s space… from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Balcony
The state of Somalia is an unprecedented paradox, a complex reality that cannot be easily unravelled. Perhaps literature, especially the novel, is the only medium capable of explaining it. Through the characters of Raage and Nageeye, the author charts a precise historical trajectory of Somalia during the socialist years and earlier, attempting to unravel the complexities that arose from its subsequent collapse. This novel avoids the simplifications often made by western perspectives on Somalia. Nageeye’s Vendetta stands as a narrative testimony against the military regime’s horrific crimes against the people, exposing the maps of military terror and the ruin of minds.
On another level, this work highlights the value of a narrative perspective, as novels are said to embrace personal emotions alongside larger, weightier issues more than any other art form, delving into details that history books often overlook. However, the tradition of the novel is not widespread in African local languages, and in most cases, works about Africa are written in foreign languages.
This novel fulfils the prophecy of Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has long called for African literature to be written in African languages, urging writers to invest time and talent in this endeavour. It challenges the neocolonial linguistic policies imposed on Africa, arguing that African writers are best equipped to break this vicious cycle, armed with a linguistic arsenal that captures the nuances of oral storytelling. The novel successfully utilises all of this to carve out a significant space for African literature, as envisioned by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.