From a Crooked Rib

Ebla, a young orphan nomad girl, flees an arranged marriage to an old man and journeys out of the Ogaden bushland to the town of Beledweyne and on to Mogadishu, where she is passed between husbands and struggles to claim some measure of freedom in a society that treats women as property. Farah's first novel, and a landmark of Somali literature, follows her across a real geography on the eve of independence: the pastoral interior, the river town, and the coastal capital.

Ebla

The Ogaden

The flight

In the Ogaden bush, the orphan Ebla lives with her grandfather's nomad camp until she learns she is to be married off to an old man, and slips away in the night. Farah opens in the harsh pastoral world whose customs bind women absolutely, the order against which Ebla's whole flight, and the novel, is a quiet act of rebellion.

The opening chapters

inspired by Ebla's nomad childhood and the encampment she flees are set in the Ogaden bushland of the Somali interior; drawn from that real pastoral region and sited there.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗