Shugri Said Salh is a Somali writer, now living in San Diego, USA.

Her memoir, The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert (2021) won the 2022 Gold Nautilus Award, Multicultural and Indigenous Category; and was a finalist for the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize; the 2021 CALIBA/Golden Poppy Award; as well as the Northern California Book Award (NCBA) in Creative Nonfiction.

Shugri has also written several short stories, and has acted in an episode of Little America.

She works as an infusion nurse in San Diego.

Talking About Books interviewed Shugri on her life as a nomad, poetry in Somalia, and why she felt it was important to write her memoirs.

TAB: What inspired you to write The Last Nomad?

SSS: A few things inspired me to write my unusual story. In Somalia, we say, “Waarimayside way hakaa haro”. This loosely translates to, “You are not going to live forever so you may as well leave your words behind”. I have always known the uniqueness of my story and knew one day, I would share it with the world.

I lost my mother at the tender age of about six, and in my book, The Last Nomad, I wrote how my mother was like a mirage that refused to give up the promise it once held. Not growing up with my mother left a gaping hole in my heart. And when my oldest daughter turned six, the age I was when I lost my mother, the need to know my mother became urgent.

The last reason I finally wrote my memoir is that I am of a certain generation, one that lived through Somalia’s brutal civil war. I did not want the knowledge I carried about my country prior to the war to die with me. Many young Somalis who read my book thank me for connecting them back to their culture. I believe that in order for us to know where we are going, it is important to know our history, culture, and the people we came from.

TAB: In your memoir, you describe living as a child with your nomadic grandmother in the Somali desert. Could you tell us about your experience and the thing that impressed you the most?

SSS: Writing about the nomadic way of life was one of my favorite parts of my memoir. Nomads are the most resilient and impressive people I have ever seen or met. As a child, I grew up under the guidance of my maternal grandmother. My ayeeyo made everything she owned by hand, including our portable hut. She was a medicine woman who healed and fixed broken bones.

One of the most dangerous jobs in the desert is to tame headstrong young camels, and while this job was mostly done by men, my ayeeyo did it easily. When I was young, I thought all women were camel herders because my ayeeyo was, but in the writing of The Last Nomad, I learned that was not the case. Camel herding is more dangerous than goat herding. The herder travels far away from home, often away for weeks or months. That means you are in conflict with not only wild animals but also other clans who would not hesitate to kill you if they mark you as a threat. Expectant camel mothers are notorious for running away when labor hits, therefore putting themselves and the rest of the herd at risk. This often creates a dilemma as the camel herder must navigate the pros and cons of these situations.

My ayeeyo was the earliest feminist I met before I even knew what the word meant. There were stories of my ayeeyo putting together intricate poems to insult men who refused her rights. This was an effective way to get one’s point across to a society that values and respects poems. I am very impressed with nomadic people’s ability to adapt, no matter what nature throws at them.

As a seven-year old child, my job was to take our family’s 200+ goats and sheep out into the desert by myself every day in search of grazing land. I learned to be self-reliant from a very young age. My favorite memory is me coming home after a long day of herding, and spying my family’s huts in the distance. After I helped my family milk our goats and camels and prepare our evening meal, we would sit by the fire for stories. I would soak in the tales of my ancestors, brave men and women who came face to face with wild animals and had the scars to prove it. One dark night, as the fire cracked toward the sky, I saw my great uncle sitting by the fire, its glow lighting up the deep scars on his face. When I asked him what happened, he nonchalantly said, “I fought with a lion”. Hearing my uncle speak like that infused me with bravery. When I look at young children today glued to their electronics, I feel lucky to have learned everything I needed to know from interacting with nature and my family.

TAB: How have the lessons you learned in the desert helped you in later life, when you had to leave Somalia and eventually move to North America?

SSS: The desert is full of raw life lessons. I think the biggest lessons are adaptability and resilience. In the desert, we constantly moved to find water and grassland for our livestock. In each new area we moved to, we could face wild animals, enemies, bad drought, and hunger. Landing in Canada at the dead of the winter shocked my body and mind. Compared to the desert, Canada was an unknown galaxy. At the time, I did not speak English or know how to execute the simple task of taking an elevator. The learning curve was huge, but in the end, I was able to adapt rather quickly, learn English and make a living. I was able to go to college and then nursing school, all because it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to do these things. I grew up watching people do seemingly impossible things, including escaping from a civil war. North America was new terrain for me, but I tackled it with the same determination I had when I took my goats out for the first time alone.

TAB: You have moved often, crossing countries and continents. Where, for you, is home? And how would you define home?

SSS: That is a good question. Home is elusive and ever-changing. My home is Sonoma County, where I lived for over 22 years, although today I live in San Diego. But deep in my heart, home is the place of my birth, Somalia, and the desert of my foremothers. Leaving my country, I felt like a bird fleeing in terror after her home suddenly burned down. I want to return to Somalia and introduce my kids to where I grew up, but I have yet to visit my home country.

Last year, I traveled to Kenya for a book tour and fell short of visiting Somalia. My country is very different from the one in which I grew up. Somalia is a place where beauty and chaos coexist. On the one hand, we have the longest shores in Africa with breathtaking turquoise water. In the midst of this serene beauty, Alshabab’s suicide bombers can detonate a bomb, extinguishing many lives and ending peace instantly. Somalis live with this reality daily. For me, there is an added layer of concern because I am an author and live in a Western culture. They could target me to make an example of me. This does not deter me completely from visiting my country, because Somalia and I owe each other closure. I just have to make sure to set up proper security for a safe return.

TAB: You quote an African proverb: “When an elder dies, a library is burned.” You write about the importance of story-telling. How have the stories you heard as a child shaped you, and how have they influenced your need to share your own story?

SSS: As a child, I was a big-eared kid with an even bigger imagination. I absolutely loved listening to and retelling stories. I recall sitting by the fire, my hands holding my ever-so-excited face, and listening to stories after a long day of herding. This childhood imbued me with my love for storytelling and collecting stories. I am who I am today because of all the stories and poems ingrained in me from such a young age. If I am not collecting or writing stories, I read a book or listen to podcasts. I am a believer that stories have a way of connecting us and reminding us of our shared humanity. When we know each other’s backgrounds and stories, we are more compassionate toward each other. And last, as a young mother, I shared my nomadic stories with my children and their friends, who often ditched their books to hear my stories. One time, my daughter had friends over and when they took a book out, my daughter excitedly ran toward me. “Mom, mom, can you tell us your nomadic stories?” My stories live on, not only in my children, but also in the children who visited our home.

TAB: You describe Somalia as a land of poets. Could you recommend works by Somali poets?

SSS: Like stories, poetry was part of my earliest education. For Somalis, poems are a form of communication and a tool to capture history as it was happening. I learned how the British attacked Somalia and how Somalia was divided up, from the poems of Sayid Mohamed Abdule Hassan, whom the British called “Mad Mullah”. Sayid would go into battle with British soldiers, and at night he would weave all the tales of what transpired into gut-wrenching poems. These poems were living history to us as young Somalis growing up in post-colonial Somalia.

Somalia is known as the “nation of poets” so it is difficult to pull out just a few. However, the first one I would choose would be Hadraawi, also known as Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame. To Somalis, Hadraawi was more than the “Shakespeare of Somalia”. He was an award-winning poet whom Somalis loved dearly. He had a curious philosophical mind and ways of making words dance to his rhythm. One of his poems is called Jacayl dhiig ma lagu qoray, which means “Has love been blood written?” I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone who is not Somali, but this is a beautiful poem that dives into what one is willing to do in the name of love. When Hadraawi created poems, he used the wind, clouds, birds, and wild animals to help capture fleeting feelings. His poems are stories—you can’t wait to turn the next page because you want to know how it ends. For those who want Somali English poems, I would point to K’naan, a Somali Canadian poet, and Warsan Shire, a Somali British poet, who was quoted in Beyoncé’s album Lemonade.

TAB: When did you first begin to write?

SSS: My writing journey started in late 2015. Around this time, I had graduated from nursing school, and since my kids had gotten a little older, I decided to explore writing. One of the early stories I shared was about an older African woman I saw walking in the foggy rain of northern California, using a black plastic bag to shield her from the rain. She was collecting recycled cans and bottles from the garbage bin. Something about this lady, who reminded me of home, viscerally moved me. In this short writing, I imagined that she was once a beautiful young lady walking in her village in Africa. Men fought to engage her time, for she was a rare beauty. In a way, I was saying, “What became of you? Why is this your fate?” People loved it and encouraged me to write. I followed it by writing a poem about the desert and got more encouragement as well. I always knew I wanted to write, but like all of us, I had my doubts and just needed a starting point.

TAB: Thank you for sharing stories from your life and from the nomadic world. Your book is inspiring and a much-needed glimpse into a world that many of us are unfamiliar with.

Read my review of The Last Nomad for Women on the Road.

Go to Shugri’s website, where you can read her short stories and leave your reviews of her book.