Embodied
People are always navigating their bodies, trying to understand them. The body is a powerful tool because it is physical but also metaphysical. Limbs, skin, organs, and a heart are all pieces which make up the external, physical parts of a person. However, a person’s body functions on more than just the bodily level, it is also a vessel for the spirit, intellect, emotions, a life. Farah’s novel Maps, depicts the unique physical connection the characters’ have with their bodies due to their ethnicity. Their relationship with their body and ethnicity acts as an identifier for both the individual and the nation throughout the novel; furthermore, their bodies exemplify nationalism by becoming a tool of resistance.
The physical death of Askar’s mother is a catalyst for him being exposed to ethnical tensions and differences, since the woman that raises him is Ethiopian. As a young child, Askar is blind by the fact that Misra is physically different, speaks a different language, and practices her own form of fortune telling. He is described as her, “third breast or her third leg” (Farah 98). He doesn’t realize that she is racial and ethnically different that, Misra is an Ethiopian “woman who was once a servant” that was appointed to mother him by the “community of relations” (Farah 14). To Askar, she is “the cosmos, and hers was the body of idea upon which your growing mind nourished” (Farah 20). The two are intertwined both physically, as they are never apart, and spiritually because Misra is Askar’s world and a part of his soul. Later, Misra walked through town with Askar who noted a mood of “hostility towards her” (Farah 120) from the townspeople. It isn’t until the Ogaden war began that he “remember[ed] that she was different from us—that she wasn’t a Somali like me and the others” (Farah 120). The townspeople use Misra’s ethnicity and race as a tool of oppression—a marker to distinguish her as ‘the enemy’ or ‘other’. As Askar observes this, he identifies with his Somali counterparts, the people with whom he shares the same language and national pride. Stuart Hall theorizes in his essay “New Ethnicities", that ethnicity “acknowledges [a] place of history, language, and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity (Ashcroft et al. 201). Askar notes that Misra “hasn’t chosen to be one of us…She spoke of this too, although I do not think I understood it at the time. ‘I am an Ethiopian’, she said.” (Farah 120) Misra, though she speaks Somali (poorly), rejects the shared history of the Somali people and partakes in the national identity of Ethiopia. Askar reflects on the situation saying, “But how was I to know what species an ‘Ethiopian’ is?” ( Farah 120). In using the word species, he is otherizing Misra, using her ethnicity and physical attributes to oppress her and separate her from the Somalis. He cannot understand what an Ethiopian is because he is unwilling to humanize them. This ignorance will ultimately keep him from fully understanding who Misra is, causing a strain upon their physical and emotional relationship.
The ethnic and racial differences between Askar and Misra are also used to represent the national tensions between Ethiopia and Somalia. In a conversation with his Uncle Hilaal and Salaado, both of whom are Somali, the question is posed “who is an Ethiopian?” (Farah 154). Salaado responds that Ethiopia means ‘a person with a black face’ in Greek. This depiction of Ethiopia takes a physical attribute of the people who live there and defines an entire race of people based off that one identifier. Systematic forms of oppression develop, as people take physical stereotypes and use them to fuel their hatred for a certain race, subsequently justifying why their race is superior. Uncle Hilaal elaborates saying that “Ethiopia is the generic name of an unclassified mass of different peoples, professing different religions, claiming to have descended from different ancestors. Therefore, ‘Ethiopia’ becomes that generic notion, expansive, inclusive” (Farah 155). Hilaal is claiming that Ethiopia has little ethnic value because it isn’t exclusive but more of a melting pot. It is a country with a race of people who have no unity, no shared history or ancestry to bind them together. From this definition, anybody can be Ethiopian as long as they are of dark skin. Hilaal goes on to argue that Somalia isn’t general but specific, meaning that “you are either a Somali or you aren’t” (Farah 155), then defines a Somali as “a man, woman or child whose mother tongue is Somali. Here, mother tongue is important, very important” (Farah 204). He talks about ethnic differences between the countries proclaiming “Every ethnic Somali is entitled to live in the Somali Republic. They may belong to any Somali-speaking territory, be it Kenyan, Ethiopian or even Djibouti. Every Somali has the constitutional birthright to reside anywhere in the Republic” (Farah192). According to Hilaal, in order to be ‘ethnically Somali’ one has to claim the country of Somalia as their ‘Motherland’ and speak the shared language. This exclusivity is what helps create ethnic and even national identity of Somali causing the people to fight for its liberation.
Askar uses his body as a tool for understanding his ethnicity and national identity. Askar finds his identity in other people; therefore, as a young child, his identity reflects Misra. She teaches him “how to best [he] should use [his] own body” (Farah 20). He doesn’t claim ownership of his body but rather is attached to Misra being considered a “third leg and breast” (174). Being raised by a foreigner, he cannot discern where he belongs. Askar has a revelation in a dream/vision where he realized that he is “in a foreign body” (Farah 63) which is a metaphor for his inexplicable link to Misra. In the dream a godly voice questions him asking “Now what does that mean?’ You [Askar] paused. Then, ‘It means that I am in a foreign country’” (Farah 63). Askar is a stranger in his own body; he is an extension of Misra connected to her physically and emotionally. Since the two melded together as one body, Askar takes Misra’s ethnic background upon himself, becoming rooted in the identity of 'foreign'. Though he is physically in Somalia, he feels disconnected from Somalian ethnicity and nationality. Askar is described as being “adrift (and so was the Somali nation everywhere) on a tide of total abandon” (Farah 124). He is trying to define himself both personally and within the larger context of Somalia. To do this, he used “his own body, [and] redrew the map of the Somali-speaking territories, copied it curve by curve, depression by depression…At last he would be reunited with the city of Xamar from whence his father’s nickname came” (Farah 124). Benedict Anderson theorizes in “Imagined Communities”, that nationalism is made up of imagined communities—that there are no nations only groups of people who feel a strong sense of fraternity that exceeds borders, becoming an ideology that people cling to and a ‘nation’ (Ashcroft et al. 123). Askar feels a sense of community with the people of Somalia, even people he never has and will never meet. By redrawing the Somali map on his body, he is taking ownership of his ethnicity/identity as he separates himself from Misra, aligning himself with his Somali heritage. Askar illustrates Anderson’s point by expanding the borders on his body, creating a new Somalia, thus turning his body into a symbol for Somali nationalism.
Misra is viewed as a sexual object because she is Ethiopian, the dehumanization of her body takes away her national identity causing her to fall victim to her oppressor and become a hybrid of two cultures. Unlike Askar who takes pride in his body and his heritage, Misra hates her body. The reader is told that “she was disgusted by her young body—a body which was beautiful, smooth and seductive” ( Farah 78). Since Askar was a child “Misra would get out of bed and wash and prepare and wait for the second knock. At times she would open the door and he would make love to her on the floor or she would follow him to another place” (Farah 54). She doesn’t have control over her body or her sexuality rather; she is continually violated. Uncle Qorrax feels that he has the right to dominate Misra’s body because she is Ethiopian—the enemy, a prisoner of war. She has no rights over her own body. The reader is told that Misra “couldn’t walk up or down the street without someone proposing to her, without feeling the eyes of lust piercing through her body to the core of her soul. You were told that she felt she was a dartboard and an intrusion of eyes were penetration through her” (Farah 78). She is a commodity, the Other who is stripped of their humanity and has become purely the body—a sexualized object to be used at one’s pleasure. After being questioned by Askar as to why certain countries are referred to as ‘Motherland’ and others ‘Fatherland,’ Misra says that Somalia “is seen by her poets as a woman—one who has made it her habit to betray her man, the Somali” (Farah 124). She continues by describing a specific poem where the poet sees Somalia as a beautiful woman adorned in the finest silks and perfumes. In the poem “the woman accepts all the advances made by other men…She goes, sleeps with them, bears each a child named after its progenitor and has a number of miscarriages” (Farah 124). Misra is equating herself with this image of Somalia. She identifies with this image given that during the war for Somalian Independence, she has had to surrender herself to another culture, to men, and to ridicule. The town’s persecution of Misra makes her feel subservient, taking away her free will, agency over her body, and her personal narrative. Misra’s identity has been torn. She “wasn’t decided whether to go back to the Highlands or stay [in Kallafo], she repeated. Although she longer spoke or understood the language of the area of Ethiopia in which she was born” (Farah 120). In “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences”, Bhabha says that“cultures are never unitary in themselves, nor simply dualistic in relation of Self to Other” (Ashcroft et al.156). He proposes the ‘Third Space” “which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroy[ing] the mirror in which cultural knowledge is continually revealed as integrated, open, expanding code” (Ashcroft et al.156156). This ‘Third Space’ is equivalated with hybridity which is a “new heterogenous, non-binary identity arising at the liminal space of cultural enunciation” (Ashcroft et al.156157). Where the cultural difference is enunciated, a Third Space will arise—an ambivalent space that does not fit neatly into either culture but rather is a hybrid. Misra has been a part of Somalia for so long that she can no longer remember or speak her native tongue. She is neither fully Somalian or Ethiopian, but is an ethnic hybrid of the two and rejected by both cultures.
Farah’s Maps, illustrates the complex connection people have with their bodies. It is pivotal in forming an identity for the characters’ as they define themselves through their ethnicity and race. They use their body not only to define themselves but to identify ‘the Other’ and use their differences to oppress them. Farah also demonstrates how the human form can represent metaphysical concepts such as nationalism and a person can embody these ideals. Askar is exposed to the ethnic and racial tensions at a young age because he is raised by Misra, an Ethiopian, who is persecuted due to her physical and ideological differences. As he grows, the physical bond between the two fades as Askar begins to associate as a Somali—claiming his body, allowing him to become a tool of resistance and symbolize nationalism.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, et al., editors. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2005.
Farah, Nuruddin. Maps. Arcade Publishing, 2016.
