Middle Ground: Hargeysa International Book Fair

For the second iteration of Middle Ground, the annual series that invites literature festivals from around the world to explore literary and oralture practices and networks, HKW is pleased to cooperate with the Hargeysa International Book Fair, Somaliland.

Taking its cue from last year’s edition, Middle Ground: PREE, which reflected upon, reimagined, and contemplated Caribbean literatures, this year’s programme highlights literatures from the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is positioned historically and relationally at a complex intersection where  a network of dynamic and structured relationships are formed, as described by historian Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri, who writes that ‘the unity of the regions we have called the Indian Ocean and that of their economic and social life takes on analytical cohesion not from the observable unity of a spatial construct but from the dynamics of structural relations’.[1] As a crucial space it represents a complex geography that has significantly shaped the history of trade, migration, colonialism, and suppression.

In addition to its complicated history as a site of violence and subjugation, this waterscape is a repository of memories where the movement of peoples, ideas, and cultures has created a mosaic of shared heritage and literary traditions. It is this interplay that the 2024 edition of Middle Ground takes as its focus. This shared heritage positions the Indian Ocean as a cultural intersection, facilitating exchanges, as evident in all the languages in and around it. Take Kiswahili, for example. With its rich collection of assimilated words, Kiswahili illustrates how languages can absorb and integrate new elements. Words like the Arabic salaam (peace), the Persian bangi (hemp), and the Bantu maji (water) have found their way into Kiswahili. Each borrowed term encapsulates a narrative of cultural intermingling and adaptation. These linguistic elements have coalesced to birth a language that reflects the interconnectedness of cultures across the rim of the Indian Ocean. These influences can also be read in the cuisines across the Horn of Africa, in which Indian spice blends, Arabic-influenced dishes like Muufo or Sambusa among others, and African staples commingle. Musically, the region’s combination of Arabian oud, Indian tabla, and African drums such as djembe and bougarabou likewise creates a unique sonic journey.

The circulation of literature is another entry point into the Indian Ocean, one that elucidates on notions of freedom and memory as a place where mythology meets history, and where the past meets the present. In literary contexts, the image of the vast, unpredictable, and merciless sea portrays an unforgiving entity that still evokes haunting underwater soundscapes, having framed the adventures and perilous lives of pearl divers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To this day, the lingering echoes of their struggles and triumphs still resonate through the ocean’s depths, serving as a vivid reminder of their dangerous quests. At the same time, the region’s reputation as a haven for piracy also endures, casting a shadow over its waters. This dual legacy continues to shape the region’s narrative and impacts its future trajectory.

It is impossible to contemplate the Indian Ocean as a memory space without mentioning the poetry that has pervaded in all the countries in and around it for centuries, stretching from the Timor Sea to the coastline of Somalia. The Somali regions in particular serve as an intersection for the material and immaterial, poetry and philosophies, human and non-human histories, traces of which can be found in many oraltures. As words attributed to the late Mohamed Hadraawi observe, ‘Without poetry, we would not exist as a society’.[2] Poetry and philosophies serve as the cornerstones of daily life, grounding and guiding society shaping its values in turn.

Furthermore, one cannot contemplate the Indian Ocean without questioning the name itself or the geopolitical factors influencing the constellation of countries that constitute the Indian Ocean. Over the centuries, the Indian Ocean has been known by various names, including the Erythrean Sea, Eastern Ocean, Afro-Asian Ocean, Arabian Sea, Indian Sea, Bahari ya Hindi, and the Swahili Sea. The literatures produced in and around the Indian Ocean serve as a vital entry point for reflections on cultural exchange and linguistic evolution. We should celebrate the rich literary traditions of the Somali regions while simultaneously acknowledging the current discourse and embracing the complex pluralism that characterizes these areas. If one considers literature as an exploration of strategies of co-existence, these contemplations become an invitation to think through how best to inhabit this world together.

At the western edge of the Indian Ocean lies the Gulf of Aden, a body of water that ancient poets once envisioned as the gateway to paradise, where the phoenix has its nest, a place where the mythical is very much real. Near this storied gulf that runs alongside the Horn of Africa, made up of countries such as Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Somaliland, stands the city of Hargeysa. This urban centre has become the birthplace of one of the region’s most significant literary initiatives: the Hargeysa International Book Fair (HIBF).

Founded by Jama Musse Jama in 2008, the HIBF is an annual book fair organized in Somaliland. Leveraging its location in the Horn of Africa, it investigates cross-border knowledge production and dissemination by selecting and engaging with guest countries yearly through which it explores publishing practices, questions of memory, art, and archival practices, among other facets of the literary world. The fair facilitates poetry performances as well as supporting research, documentation, discourse, translation, and publishing oral literatures through the Hargeysa Cultural Centre’s publishing imprint.

Middle Ground’s collaboration with the Hargeysa International Book Fair, as well as the book fair’s location in Somaliland, offers crucial insight through which to explore the ever-evolving literary traditions of the Horn of Africa to the Indian Ocean. The Middle Ground programme involves a series of workshops, poetry readings, performances, discursive exchanges, installation activations, and sonic interventions between 27–29 September 2024.

To the curatorial statement

[1] Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 23.

[2] ‘Somalia's most famous poet, Hadrawi, passes away in Hargeisa’, Hiraan Online (18 August 2022), www.hiiraan.com/news4/2022/Aug/187470/somalia_s_most_famous_poet_hadrawi_passes_away_in_hargeisa.aspx.