Djibouti
- works
- 5
- 5 books
- period covered
- 1959–1997
- language of writing
- French and Arabic
This country exists because a train had to leave from somewhere. At the end of the nineteenth century, France looked for a maritime outlet to link Ethiopia to the sea, obtained a concession, built a port, then a railway that reached Addis Ababa in 1917. Around the terminus a city took shape, around the city a territory, and around the territory a border traced to protect the line. Djibouti is one of the rare states of which one may say that the infrastructure preceded the country. The port existed before the nation that was to use it.
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That origin explains a recent literature and an ancient position. The region has belonged for centuries to the world of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean: the port of Zeila, close by, was the capital of a Muslim sultanate, and an Arabic chronicle of the sixteenth century recounts from the Muslim camp the war between the sultanate of Adal and Christian Ethiopia. That text is one of the rare accounts of that war written from the side of the momentary victor, and it still circulates in the region.
Literature written in French is almost entirely later than independence in 1977, and often produced outside the country. It deals with exile, drought, the city and khat, a leaf chewed in the afternoon which organises male sociability. The two national languages, Somali and Afar, are transmitted orally with their own poetic forms, while Arabic and French share the official domain. The price is a country whose production, for want of a sufficient internal readership, has to look for its audience in Paris or in the diaspora.
What awaits the reader is a writing at once urban and nomadic, attentive to the languages that cross each other in a single street. The collection that opens this page gathers seventeen stories written in French, among the first texts to show Djiboutians from their own point of view.
A way to begin
The Land without Shadows
Abdourahman A. Waberi · 1994
Seventeen short stories written in French, among the first texts to show the Djiboutians from their own point of view.
Two movements, a detour made of “pages torn from the imaginary novel” and then a return to the “land without shadows”. We meet wise madmen and ogresses, khat chewers, and the country's drama: the abuses of the dictatorship, the frustrations of the youth, dreams as the only hope.
Timeline
- 1800–1950Gabay and Afar songSomali poetry and Afar songs carry the memory of herders, caravans and lineages.
- 1897–1960Port and railwayThe port and the Addis Ababa line bring in administrative, school and newspaper writing.
- 1977IndependenceSchools, radio and press in French create the conditions for a national writing.
- 1985–2015The Waberi generationAbdourahman Waberi, Chehem Watta and their juniors publish in French, from home and from exile.
Reading keys
- There is no family name: everyone bears his first name followed by that of his father, as among the Somalis and the Afars.
- Clan genealogy places a person socially and politically, and the country is run through by the balance between Somali Issas and Afars.
- The Somali xeer and Afar customary law settle compensations outside the state.
- Kinship is patrilineal, and clan belonging passes through the father.
- The balance between Issas and Afars structures political life and is rarely stated head-on, the civil war of 1991 to 1994 remaining present.
- The French military base and the foreign bases installed since, which support part of the economy, are an ambivalent subject.
- Khat, imported every day from Ethiopia, occupies the afternoon of many men and is the object of a contrasting social judgement.
- Restraint is valued and one does not display one's difficulties in public.
- Sunni Islam is practised by nearly the whole population, with Sufi brotherhoods and visited tombs of saints.
- Waaq, the name of the pre-Islamic sky god, survives in formulas and in place names among the Somalis as among the Afars.
- The jinn belong to Quranic cosmology, and rites of healing through possession are practised.
- Lake Assal and the volcanic zones have their narratives and their prohibitions.
- Muslim mourning is brief, with burial on the same day and three days of condolences.
- The chewing of khat follows a precise social protocol, with its places, its hours and its conversations, and a khat scene is a scene of free speech.
- Ramadan and the Eids order the year, with a nocturnal rhythm during the month of fasting.
- 27 June, the day of independence in 1977, is the civil landmark.
- The Arabic chronicle of the conquest of Abyssinia, written in the sixteenth century, is the oldest local historical reference.
- The Afar and Somali narratives collected by French orientalists at the beginning of the twentieth century form the documented corpus.
- Somali poetry and Afar poetry, with their own forms, are a living oral heritage.
- Waaq and the pre-Islamic cults of the Horn are a reference shared with Somalia and Ethiopia.
- Djibouti is not a detached piece of Somalia: the country brings together a Somali population and an Afar population, and that balance is constitutive.
- Khat is not a marginal drug but a daily social institution, with its rules and its economy.
- The small size of the country and of its corpus says nothing about the antiquity of the region, which was a crossroads of Red Sea trade.
- French is an official and not a mother tongue: Somali and Afar are spoken at home.
Tales and mythologies 1
- NarrativeLe Ginnili, devin, poète et guerrier afarDidier Morin · 1991not translated into EnglishThe Afars, divided between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, preserve an oral poetry and soothsayers.Literature
Available in English 1
The books from this country that can be read in English, in the original or in translation.
- Short storiesThe Land without ShadowsLe Pays sans ombreAbdourahman A. Waberi · 1994Djibouti, independent since 1977, lives under a single party in the early nineties.Literature
A selection to begin with 3 / 5
- PoetryKhamsineWilliam J. F. Syad · 1959not translated into EnglishThe first collection of a poet from Djibouti, bilingual, placed under Senghor's patronage.Literature
- NovelLe Cercle et la spiraleOmar Osman Rabeh · 1986not translated into EnglishA philosopher and activist tells his life story in the only Djiboutian book in French of his decade.Literature
- PoetrySur les soleils de HouroudChehem Watta · 1997not translated into EnglishPoems of the body and of plants, between women's cosmetics and the plant that men chew.Literature