(sawir wayn) |
Cabdillaahi Cawed Cige’s ‘Ladh’ (Anguish) is a common Somali painful story narrated poetically in an exceptional way.
A Book Review
(editorial redsea-online.com)
`Ladh’ (Anguish) is the story of Khadija, a Somali refugee mother of one, leading a drugs and sorcery fuelled life in a cold one-bedroom flat in a grey, dreary, windswept council housing estate in north London.
Her disturbing story begins in Somalia 20 years earlier when she was abducted by a sinister group of shadowy government officers who kept her as their concubine in a hellish dungeon where she is impregnated by the hissing reptile-like senior officer in charge of this unearthly prison.
She is eventually rescued by a heroic band of men who communicate only in riddles and gestures. But instead of returning her to her mother now driven insane by Khadija’s disappearance, they take her to a haunted, lifeless valley where she is comforted by a kind sage.
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This is a dark tale of abuse, torture and sorcery where the real world easily melts into the alien and magic is weaved into the daily life of a damaged family.
About the author
Cabdillaahi Cawed Cige is better known to the Somali community in the UK and Europe as a poet whose works has been widely published on the Somali internet-based media but he also wrote a number of short stories including “Hog Baas”(The Cursed Cave). All his stories share the theme of exploring suffering and the different means people learn to cope with it. In his case it includes the creation of magical scenes complete with characters metamorphosing into gluey substances to escape reality; wise men continuously turning massive golden wheels and people travelling through haunted, empty paths surrounded by claustrophobic, rustling forests.
About the series
‘Ladh’ is the first of ‘Cirsankayeedh’ series of Somali novels. The series is directed by Jama Musse Jama and published by Ponte Invisibile Ed. In popular Somali beliefs people can be addressed by invisible voices, but there is some uncertainty as to whether they are mystical birds or spirits. Cirsankayeedh is the name of one of these and is associated with good news. The idea behind ‘Cirsankayeedh’ series is to develop creative writings and culture of reading in somali language.
About the Publisher
Ponte Invisbile Ed (Invisible Bridge) is based Pisa, Italy and has its main branches in Hargeisa (Somaliland) and in London (UK). It started publishing books in 2000 in different languages (Italian, English, Chinese and Somali) and from different cultural context. The main target of the publisher and its sister website (www.redsea-online.com) is to build a bridge, and invisible bridge, to connect the north and the south hemisphere in this era of Information Technology.
