Formerly the British Somaliland Protectorate, Somaliland was independent for only five days in 1960 before it joined its southern neighbor, then the Italian Trust Territory of Somaliland, to form the Republic of Somalia, with its capital in Mogadishu. In 1991 Somaliland broke away. Despite the war that followed, it has remained separate ever since.
As if to contradict the title of the 2013 novel by Hargeisa-born writer Nadifa Mohamed, Somaliland can no longer be regarded as The Orchard of Lost Souls. The book’s tale of a trio of women who help each other survive the civil war is being succeeded by new stories of women such as 80-year-old midwife, educator and public-health pioneer Edna Adan, as well as others, including many of Adan’s own students.
To find Adan in the maternity hospital and nursing school that carries her name (Edna Adan Hospital), one asks for her only by her first name, Edna. It’s all that is needed, and it’s best to come early, before she sets off on a routine 12-hour day into Somaliland’s countryside to interview candidates for the school’s incoming class. Work on the hospital had begun in the late 1990s, and it opened in 2002 with 25 beds. Even before that, Adan was already training scores of nurses and lab technicians.
Adan’s public service career includes 30 years with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as government posts as both foreign minister and minister of family welfare and social development. Nonetheless, she modestly calls herself “the guinea pig of my generation,” as if to show that she has merely passed a test to prove a woman can succeed in a public role.
“My lesson to others is do not be afraid to do anything, keep at it,” she says, “because if it works for one of us, it will work for all of us. I am not disrespectful of male leadership. Rather, I want to be helpful to them so they will come to me convinced that I am right.”
Adan was profiled by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their 2009 book, Half the Sky, as well as the eponymous 2012 documentary about extraordinary women around the world leading the charge to a better future for all.
The daughter of a Hargeisa doctor, she was determined as young as 11 years old to pursue a medical career. She trained first as a midwife in London in the 1950s, and she returned to her homeland as its first professional nurse-midwife. The civil war, from whose damages her family did not escape, inspired her to create something for the country.
“My father’s house, the house where I was raised, was destroyed,” she says. “Building this new hospital became my way of healing after so much heartbreak.”
At the hospital now, on a typical busy day, Somali colleagues are joined by volunteers from neighboring countries Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as from Denmark, the UK and the US. The day might bring a complex surgery, a routine delivery, a rare lab specimen—or more.
The needs are great. The hospital’s website notes that Somaliland’s overall public health ranks among the lowest in the world, in large part because the civil war “caused the death or departure of nearly all the country’s health care professionals.” Since then, much has been accomplished: Maternal mortality has fallen from 1,600 per 100,000 live births before the civil war to around 400 per 100,000—still nearly double the global average, according to the United Nations.
Adan looks to her own life to counsel midwifery recruits as well as their parents. She recounts a mother who came to her distressed over her daughter’s desire to study nursing in England, expressing fear that the young woman would inevitably come home in shame. “I had to convince her that, no, it is not shame; it is a great honor,” she says. “And now that same woman says, ‘I want my daughter to be like you.’”
Among the 1,500 nursing, midwifery, and lab-technician students she has trained, two in particular stand out: the hospital’s chief doctor, Shukri Mohamed Taher, and midwife leader Khadan Abdilahe of the Somaliland Family Health Association. Taher was trained as a nurse by Adan, after which she graduated from medical school and returned to the hospital, where she has performed several of Somaliland’s first-ever pediatric procedures.
“I was 15 years old when I applied to Edna,” Taher says. “I had to lie that I was 18 in order to qualify for admission. I remember being asked in the interview what I would do if a patient vomited on me. I answered, ‘I would clean it up and keep talking to her.’”
More than half of the clinical residents are women, Taher says, and when husbands of patients and female relatives think a female doctor might not do something right, she offers professional reassurance: “I say, ‘I’ve done this 1,000 times already.’ My mother is not surprised by my success, but she is surprised that I’m doing even more than she expected of me.”
Like Taher, Abdilahe also credits Adan with guidance that has strengthened her own will.
“I was born after the civil war,” she says, “so I didn’t see that madness, but my father suffered a stroke, and my mother almost died in childbirth with a younger sibling. I could not help either one because I knew nothing. So that is why I became a nurse.
“I took my exam five days after an appendectomy, and my teachers told me to rest in bed, take the exam the next year, but nothing could stop me. Even when I fainted on the last day and could not complete it, they let me pass because everything I had written on the first day was perfect.”
Abdilahe admits she and her colleagues often find themselves fighting combinations of misinformation and superstition.
For example, many expectant mothers do not understand the benefits of a prenatal diet, she says. “But they feed their goats spinach, so I said, ‘You should eat spinach too.’ Once I had to attend a difficult home birth of a boy whose mother was reluctant to come to the clinic, even though we begged her for the baby’s sake. Now little Abdulrahman is one year old and healthy, and I am happy to say that she brings him for routine checkups without question.”
The most difficult medical fight for Adan and her students is against the tradition of female genital mutilation, which the who condemns as a violation of human rights.
As a leader in Somaliland’s campaign to end the practice, Adan has won support from both civic and religious leaders, including the mufti, the country’s top religious authority. And they are not all.
As long ago as 1855, British explorer Richard Burton noticed that “the country teems with poets, poetasters, poetitos, and poetaccios,”—but he overlooked poetesses. That was a major omission. Somali women are leaders also in the arts of language in a society where verse, song and rhetoric are vital in both public and private discourse. Under the banner of a Somali proverb, “War destroys, peace nurtures,” Adan convened a meeting of the Somali Studies International Association in 2001 and commissioned poems for the occasion. Poet Mohamed Ali Masmas bluntly exhorted his listeners on the basis of Islamic teaching: “You need to stop this right now / and do what our religion asks of us.”
Somali British poetess Warsan Shire, whose lyrics Beyoncé sang on her album Lemonade, wrote a poem “Things We Had Lost in the Summer”:
My mother uses her quiet voice on the phone
Are they okay? Are they healing well?
She doesn’t want my father to overhear.
Her collection’s title, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, is an ironic reference to the proverb, “These youth taught their mother to give birth”—meaning that the younger generation has the cheeky presumption to teach its elders something already well-known.
Modern and popular songs have also helped to empower women, or at least allowed them to sing in public from their hearts. In the 1970s, Hargeisa’s top singers were Khadra Daahir Cige, from a butcher’s family, who sang, “Our love can’t burn out even in fire,” and Sahra Axmed Jaamac, who sang, “Our love in an endless sea that none can escape.” Professor of African and Middle East history Lidwien Kapteijns of Wellesley College notes that songs are helping reshape ideas about love, equality and social institutions while nurturing post-war national identity.
Indeed Hargeisa is “the mother of Somali music,” says Radio Hargeisa’s music producer, Muhammad Dahir Hayd. “We were recording it here before Radio Mogadishu even went on the air,” he says.
Hayd notes that the Somali language’s greatest love poet, Ilmi Boodhari, died in 1940 of a broken heart at age 32 in a fateful Romeo-and-Juliet-style romance. His story has inspired verse ever since, including Sahra Jaamac’s “My love is like the love that killed Ilmi.” Boodhari’s poetry, translated by B. W. Andrezejewski, includes lyrics still recited today:
And she was radiant in hue, like a lighted lantern
Surely she must have been imprinted on my heart
How else could I be so intoxicated by her?
Inside my breast she tick-tocks to me like a watch
Earlier this year, the album Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa was nominated for a Grammy award for historical recording. It features on its cover a 1970s-era photo of Hargeisa-born singer Hibo Nuura. Two of her most popular lyrics are “She who is successful will get her reward” and “Do not think there is another reason.” Both assert the compatibility of modernity and tradition. Now living in the us, Nuura has recently composed a patriotic anthem to her homeland.
Sahra Halgan, who was born in Hargeisa and came of age during the civil war, sings twice a week in the capital at Hiddo Dhawr, her restaurant and music venue, whose name means “save your culture.” “During the fighting I wrapped bandages in first-aid stations,” she says. “I alternated wrapping and singing, and I remember the song everyone asked me for most often, ‘Follow Together to Fight!’ Some shaykhs complain these days about my singing, so I ask, ‘You wanted me to sing for the fighters before but not today. Why? To encourage our people then is to encourage them now.’”
Shukri Haji Ismail Bandare, minister for environment and rural development and also one of Adan’s first students, received one of four 2011 In Pursuit of Peace awards, which was presented by then-us Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on behalf of the International Crisis Group. “By nature we Somalis are strong, and by culture we are pastoralists,” Bandara says. “As women we must excel, just as we must keep our animals the fattest, and when we travel far to draw water, we must be the first to return home in order to light our kitchen fires earliest.”
“My mother was a farmer, working all the time,” she continues. “Someone once said to her, ‘You must be tired,’ and she answered, ‘I want night to be day so I can work then too.’”
Nafisa Yusuf is executive director of Nagaad Network, a consortium for women-focused social and economic action. “The civil war destroyed men’s role in the economy,” she explains. “In our workshops for women, the question always is asked, ‘When it comes to Somali women’s traditionally subservient place in the household, what is religious injunction and what is mere cultural habit?’
“And I have the answer,” she says, “because when I was young, I always listened to my father’s mother, Saaqa. She lived to be more than 110 years old. She was always talking about weddings, and said that to be a guun, an unmarried woman, was a bad thing. I am trying to reverse that kind of thinking.”
Thoughts such as Saaqa’s are deeply ingrained in Somali society, as one might also see in the occasionally contradictory poetry of Ismail Mire, a veteran of the unsuccessful fight for independence from the British in the early 20th century. After the Somali defeat, Mire returned to his life as a pastoralist and lamented, “Wives reject their husbands, they refuse to stay at home.”
But Mire’s commanding general, Muhammad Abdilahe Hasan, famed both for his resistance to the British and his poetry, extolled the wartime valor of his countrywomen, especially his wife Maryam, for whom he asked God’s help in illness:
She has been a mother to Muslims, wherever they might be
To those fleeing from danger, countless thousands of them,
She offered a refuge, without thought for herself.
Bring unto us, O God, relief in Maryam’s plight.
Khadra Mohamed Abdi, founder of the local nonprofit Somaliland Culture and Sports Association (socsa), was born in 1967 near the Ethiopian border, and she too knows what it is like to suffer from war.
“I was in Hargeisa at the start of the fighting,” she says, “but returned to my village, walking for two days and nights with my mother, my sister, carrying my sister’s newborn baby. No water or shelter. Nothing. After the war,” she continues, “when I returned to Hargeisa, I saw my primary school had been bombed, and I was determined to do something right away. University education was not possible then, but I wanted younger girls to have that chance someday,” she reasons, “so I thought, sport and culture go together—let’s call it ‘art.’”
In addition to passing on heritage through folk dance, song and other programs, what sets socsa apart from most women’s sports programs in the Horn of Africa is its weightlifting gym. “Our girls like to pump iron, dunk baskets and return fast table-tennis serves,” says Abdi.
If Adan can take credit for training the country’s first generation of female doctors and midwives, she can take heart that a younger generation is no less motivated.
Two of Adan’s current second-year nursing students, 21-year-olds Hamda Jama Ali and Hoodo Nuur Ismaa’il, also have personal stories about why they want to become midwives. As a young girl, Ismaa’il says she helped her grandmother attend to the healthy birth of her aunt’s first child. Ali, on the other hand, watched a neighbor almost die when no one could assist her delivery. Both will soon attend a birth for the first time as midwives-in-training.
“I want to see that happy moment when everyone is relieved, the baby is healthy, the mother is tired, and all of us are together helping,” says Ali. That attitude, Adan might say, is reward enough for a lifetime.
Lanky and handsome with a black beard and smiling eyes, Arsan, 42, has a ready grin, and in conversation he can jump easily from the technicalities of Sumatran rhino physiology to a chat about a particular animal’s personality.
“The more I know, the more I love about the Sumatran rhino,” Arsan says. He grew up with animals, both wild and domestic—including a favorite pet heron. Having decided to be a vet at a young age, Arsan graduated in 2003 from Bogor Agricultural University in West Java. As a student, he interned at the srs, located deep inside Way Kambas National Park in southern Sumatra. In 2014 he became the sanctuary’s head veterinarian.
When he tells them goodbye, he sets out on a nine-hour trip that plods though Jakarta’s traffic, ferries across the Sunda Strait and then navigates potholed, sometimes-flooded roads through the rainforest.
“As a father and a husband, it is hard to be away from my family. They need me, and also I need them,” Arsan says. “But we have to do it, and they also understand and [are] proud for what I am doing here.”
His older children, 12 and 10, text him to check in on the rhinos. His four-year-old twins, he says, “love the rhinos.” One day he hopes to bring them to meet the rhinos in person.
For the rhinos, his job carries the highest of stakes.
There are few big mammals on the planet today closer to extinction than the Sumatran rhino. Only the vaquita porpoise, in Mexico, is closer—about a dozen vaquita are thought to remain.
While officials estimate there are still around 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the wild—down from some 200 a decade ago—most independent experts believe the number is smaller, not more than 80 and possibly as few as 30. These are spread among four geographically disconnected populations. No one really knows if, with these numbers, any of the populations can prove sustainable.
This makes Arsan, the team at the srs and others like them the best hope for the species. At the srs, each of the seven rhinos lives in its own 10-hectare enclosure. Two of them— Andalas and Ratu—have produced offspring, in 2012 and 2016, respectively.
With these recent successes, conservationists say what needs to happen now is to bring more wild rhinos to the srs—or similar facilities—for captive breeding. Like many big mammals, Sumatran rhinos are slow breeders: Females can give birth at most every three to four years, and gestation lasts 15 to 16 months. (Then they spend a couple of years raising the calf.) Females mature sexually at six or seven; males at 10. With a life span estimated at 40 years, a healthy female could bear seven to eight young, at best.
While Arsan works to help his charges create new life, across the Java Sea, in the Malaysian state of Sabah in northern Borneo, another vet is doing all he can to preserve a life.
Zainal Zahari Zainuddin has spent the last few months trying to heal a Sumatran rhino named Iman, one of two rhinos housed by the Borneo Rhino Alliance (bora). She and a 30-year-old male named Tam are believed to be the last Sumatran rhinos of Malaysia.
Iman was captured in 2014 after a camera trap revealed her traveling route. With a pit dug and covered, the team waited eight anxious months before they safely captured her and flew her by helicopter to the bora facility.
On first inspection, Zainuddin recalls that she looked pregnant. But it turned out to be a uterine tumor, a common problem for female Sumatran rhinos linked to the scarcity of mates.
Zainuddin, 59, came to bora in 2010 with 15 years of experience with the species. He knew something was wrong when Iman refused to leave her wallow.
“When they are sick, they always go back to the wallow,” says Zainuddin, who describes a wallow as a kind of “sacred place” for a rhino: Every Sumatran rhino builds one by digging out a puddle where it can enjoy a comforting mix of mud and water.
Eventually, Zainuddin and the bora staff were able to coax Iman, by then also dangerously dehydrated, out of her wallow into her night quarters, where the bora medical team could attend to her.
Iman’s tumor had ruptured. Zainuddin feared she wouldn’t pull through.
“Some days we gave her 15 liters of fluid, and it took us eight hours to finish 30 bottles,” says Zainuddin. “It took us almost two months to get her back to near normal condition.”
Iman was likely Malaysia’s last wild rhino. A year after her capture, officials declared the Sumatran rhino extinct in Sabah—their last place in the Southeast Asian country. As recently as 2008, researchers had estimated there were 50 rhinos left in Sabah. Although in hindsight this had likely been a mistake, counting wild rhinos is imprecise: They are rare and difficult to see, and their tracks are nearly identical to those of tapirs. Even a rhino wallow can be difficult to identify conclusively.
The Sumatran rhino is unlike any other. Although a full-grown one weighs in at nearly a metric ton, that’s only half the weight of male African white rhinos, which also stand half a meter taller at the shoulder. A Sumatran rhino also sports a shaggy coat of sometimes-reddish hair. While it has two horns—hence its genus name Dicerorhinus, Greek for “two-horned rhinoceros”—it’s not related to Africa’s two-horned rhinos nor to either of Asia’s, the Javan or Indian rhino.
Junaidi Payne, executive director of bora, calls the Sumatran rhino “the last living relic of the Miocene era,” which lasted from about 23 million to five million years ago—ages before we humans showed up. As a genus, he explains, Dicerorhinus split off from other rhinos around 20–25 million years ago. Despite being little known by the global public, there is nothing remotely like Dicerorhinus left on Earth.
“The Sumatran rhino is particularly special because it is the most ancient of the remaining rhino forms,” says Payne. “Most significantly, it represents a genus, not just a species or subspecies or race of rhinos.”
Two of its four surviving populations are in southern Sumatra, in Way Kambas National Park, where the srs is located, and in Bukit Barisan National Park. A third population survives in remote Aceh, at the northern end of Sumatra. A fourth population, discovered in 2013, lives across the Java Sea in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The Bukit Barisan and Kalimantan populations are the most fragile—so much so that they may be nearly, or even already, gone.
Historically, the Sumatran rhino had ranged widely in southeast Asia, as far north and west as Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. Millennia of hunting, slaughter for its horn and deforestation meant it has been all but wiped out, one by one. Yet despite this dire picture, a recent genetic study suggests that the Sumatran rhino has been struggling against extinction since 9,000 years ago, when scientists estimate a minimum of 700 survived climatic changes and, likely, hunting by early humans. In many ways, it’s amazing they had survived the Pleistocene (2.5 million to 12,000 years ago) at all when other large mammals of the epoch, including mammoths, giant sloths and wooly rhinos, had not.
The cold prospect of extinction is not merely a biological loss, says Zainuddin. It is also an emotional one: Sumatran rhinos are sophisticated communicators, gentle and lovable in their relations with humans.
“They tame easily to you,” says Zainuddin. “They can associate to you and … they will accept you within the species. You can go close to them.”
This trust gives keepers the ability to train the rhino to come when called and to lie down passively when, say, they need a footbath or another procedure. Arsan calls them “clever” animals that “can learn.”
“Tam is the perfect gentleman,” Zainuddin says. When Tam eats, he always sniffs the food first and never goes “for your hand.” (In contrast, he says, Iman is a “shredder.”)
Tam has even learned to open his night-stall door by lifting the bolt with his head and moving it aside.
“He does it so confidently,” says Zainuddin. “One flip, second flip, and door is open. He just pushes [the] door in, and he walks in. He’ll make a noise, calling for the keepers.”
Still, behavior depends on context. Sumatran rhinos are malleable and calm in their pens because they have come to associate them with human territory. But in the wild, Sumatran rhinos will be protective of their territory.
“Every keeper and I treat the rhinos as family,” says Zainuddin. “They are never pets to us. We understand their feeling and their moods.” For example, he adds, when they are ill, “they let us handle them, and they give in to us, knowing we want them well. [They] can sense this. They are survivors and never give up hope as long as they know we are there for them.”
Both Zainuddin and Arsan stress that each rhino has a distinctive personality, and bonds to its keepers. Zainuddin says that when he and his colleague leave the pen for a time, they hear Iman “yelling from the gate, calling for them.”
In addition to snorting through its nostrils, a Sumatran rhino produces a sound from its larynx that experts compare to a singing whale or a whistling dolphin, as if the rhino is squeaking out a tune.
Arsan says he believes the rhino’s “song” is commonly used when the animal is “asking permission.” He says the rhinos tend to sing when they are waiting to be fed fruit, or wanting to leave their pens to go back to their wallows. A calf will sing out if it loses sight of its mother.
But aside from a short study in 2003 in the Cincinnati Zoo in the us, no one has researched the songs of Sumatran rhinos.
“There is so little known,” says Susie Ellis, executive director for the International Rhino Foundation, which helps manage the srs.
“Everything that we know about their biology has been learned in the captive setting because it’s just very, very difficult to study [in the wild].”
Given their rarity and timidity, very few experts have even actually seen a wild Sumatran rhino. Neither Arsan nor Zainuddin nor Ellis have ever seen one. Payne saw one, once, in 1983.
This paucity of knowledge makes support for captive breeding especially challenging. In the 1980s and 1990s, conservationists captured around 40 Sumatran rhinos for captive breeding, but it took 15 years just to begin to understand how they bred. By that time most of those captured had died.
Finally, on September 13, 2001, Andalas was born in the Cincinnati Zoo. He was the first Sumatran rhino birthed in captivity since the 19th century.
Arsan explains that Sumatran rhino females are “induced ovulators,” which means they require something outside themselves to kick off ovulation. Biologists still aren’t certain what the female needs, but they suspect that natural breeding behavior—chasing, fighting, ramming and wallowing with a male—activates the required hormones. This is difficult to impossible to trigger if no male is around, and doubly worrisome given the high risk among females—such as Iman—for uterine cancer if they do not breed.
“I think the normal cycle for female [rhinos] is that they are pregnant, have a baby, and then wean and then are pregnant again,” Arsan says. “Waiting is not normal.”
Tumors can lead to infertility. This has likely proven catastrophic: As wild populations declined, surviving females would meet fewer males, likely leading to a more frequent incidence of uterine tumors, all hastening the demise of the population.
Uterine cancer has also plagued captive populations. Last summer Zainuddin had to euthanize Puntung, bora’s other female. Puntung, who had survived losing a foot in a snare as a calf, suffered from both uterine and skin cancer.
At the end, says Zainuddin, she couldn’t even sing.
“That’s when I had to make the decision that we can’t let her go on like this,” Zainuddin says. “It’s a really hard decision to make, but it had to be made because she was suffering.”
Fortunately, Iman’s time has not come: Her condition has only improved. She has been allowed to return to her wallow, and she is eating close to her regular amounts. Still, Zainuddin is skeptical she will ever give birth.
That makes the best chance for the bora program in vitro fertilization. bora has collected 10 eggs from Iman to date, and it hopes to secure Indonesian government approval to send them to srs to be implanted for gestation.
“We shouldn’t give up,” Zainuddin says, noting he thinks extinction can be avoided if Indonesia “acts soon” to do more.
For Arsan, his relationship to the rhino requires a dichotomy. On the one hand, he says, he loves them each individually, sometimes as if they were his own children. On the other, he knows he also has to treat them professionally as a mammal population on the brink of extinction: He has to keep his gaze on the horizon and do everything possible to keep the species going.
“We are aware how important our work is,” Arsan says. “And we are also aware … there [are] many pressures that come with it. All eyes and ears will go to us ... if bad things happen.”
In the face of such scrutiny, he and his team focus on “doing our job” and “keep[ing] our protocols.” They are in constant contact with experts around the world, and they work hard to learn from the mistakes of the past.
History proves that dedicated people can save a species this close to extinction. Both the European bison and the Arabian oryx at one time survived only in captivity. From a population that was down to just 12 animals, the bison is today more than 2,000 strong in the wild, and it thrives in several European countries. Like the Sumatran rhino, it is a rare survivor of the Pleistocene, having avoided the fate of mammoths and cave bears. The Arabian oryx is now more than 1,000 strong, and it has been reintroduced into the wild in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan and Israel.
Payne believes the best chance to save the Sumatran rhino now would be “one program, managed by experts” with the goal to “boost births by any and all means possible.”
“What gives me hope now is that … people are realizing ‘Oh my gosh, we have this window of time that’s going to be a make-or-break window,’” says Ellis. This year, she adds, she has seen increased attention and funding for the species.
Thus nothing brings on unbridled celebration more than the birth of a healthy calf.
At the srs, all eyes remain on not-so-little-anymore Delilah, who turned two this May. She is healthy, playful and, according to Arsan, more independent than her older brother.
“Delilah loves to be touched and rubbed, and she knows and trusts us who care for her daily,” he says.
She is spending less and less time with her mother, and soon they will part—just as they do in the wild. And in about four years, when she’s ready, Arsan hopes she can bear children.
Her name, Delilah, was chosen by Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. In Javanese, the name means “God’s blessing.” It’s an aptly optimistic choice for one shouldering hopes from both her own 20-million-year-old species as well a much younger fellow mammal—from among which a few individuals are dedicating their working lives to her songs and those of her future kin.
“Architecture is a sin,” says Ammar Khammash, 57. “I don’t want to be visible, and I don’t want my buildings to be visible.” Standing in the building he designed, this unconventional man—artist, designer, engineer, geologist, musician and polymath—faces a view of dark-green treetops awash in spring sunshine. The forest is silent but for birdsong and cicadas. He names two world-famous “starchitects."
“I want to be the exact opposite of them,” he explains thoughtfully. “Architecture is not that important. Buildings should not become monuments or luxury statements. They can be impressive without being expensive.”
We are meeting at the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation, built by Khammash for Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (rscn) and officially opened in 2015. The academy stands at the entrance to an rscn-run nature reserve established in 1987 to protect forested land beside Ajloun, a town 70 kilometers north of the Jordanian capital, Amman.
Though Khammash’s small architectural practice can claim prestigious private and government clients, he is best known for a string of rscn commissions ranging from Dana, a remote mountain village, to the heart of Amman. His stripped-back designs, using locally sourced materials, referencing vernacular traditions and exemplifying acute environmental sensitivity, are on show in visitor reception centers, rangers’ offices and rural guest houses all around Jordan, enhancing places that many tourists visit—and that many Jordanians cherish.
Chris Johnson, a British ecologist who worked with Khammash for 20 years, speaks of the architect’s “uniquely Jordanian” style. “Ammar has an amazing ability to create new buildings that are respectful of their surroundings and Jordan’s cultural heritage,” says Johnson, whodirected conservation for the rscn in the 1990s, and from 2005 to 2013 led its sustainable-tourism unit “Wild Jordan.”
Growth in outreach has been mirrored by growth in skills development. Since 1997 the rscn has trained around 250 specialists a year, from Jordan and across the Middle East, in management of protected areas, conservation research, ecotourism and socio-economic development. Around 2005 the idea emerged to formalize training in a single, dedicated building. “We had been pioneering capacity-building in conservation throughout the region. With success came demand,” says Johnson, who initiated and managed the project to build the new academy.
For rscn Director General Yehya Khaled, the academy pointed to a breakthrough in public education on the environment. “We wanted the academy to be a model, representing rscn values [in] conservation and community development,” he says.
A site was identified inside the Ajloun Forest Reserve but, as Khammash explains, “I kept passing a quarry just outside the reserve boundary, and I said, ‘Why should we cut another wound in nature when we already have this cut? Let’s fix this and celebrate it as a human intervention.’
“Whoever was driving the last bulldozer in the last week this quarry was operating—back in the early ’90s—never knew that he was designing the front elevation of my building for me,” Khammash continues, with typical self-effacement. “He left a cliff, and I followed it. This building is designed by chance.”
Khammash had the quarry pit cleared, but instead of bringing in stone for construction, he used the rubble, which would normally have been discarded. The result is external walls of unusually small limestone rocks neatly fitted together. The impression is of a building at one with its setting, as if it has been lifted whole from the quarry and placed on the ridgetop.
To reach it from the road, Khammash designed what was (until he built a longer one last year) the longest masonry arch in Jordan, an elegant bridge extending 30 meters over the now-empty quarry. “This bridge has almost no foundation,” he says. “Its lateral thrust is like when you take a cane and bend it across a corridor: It can’t go anywhere, so the more load it takes the more it pushes into the quarry sides.”
The bridge delivers you to the building’s public entrance, a slot in one flank that opens to … almost nothing. The lobby, like its architect, impresses by stealth. You could cross this low transitional room in four paces, but a glass wall in the opposite flank keeps the forest in view. The ambience is of spacious calm. Free of adornment, displaying a deliberately rough finish of raw concrete, it is artful.
Khammash calls it simply a “void” where the building’s two functions meet. To the right a restaurant generates income to help pay for the training courses that are run in the rooms to the left.
The restaurant area draws you out through airy interiors to shaded rear balconies woven about with foliage and forest views. But the heart of this building’s beauty shows when you turn left.
Double-loaded corridors—ones that have doors opening
on both sides—tend to be dark. Here, though, sunlight moves across the rubble-stone walls: Khammash has opened a glass roof above the corridor and created an end-wall of windows facing west. In summer cool winds flow through as natural ventilation.
The architect explains how he drew inspiration for this sinuously angled passageway from Jordan’s famous ancient city of Petra, where you enter through a towering cleft between mountains lit from above by shafts of sunlight. “The light pulls you in the right direction,” he says. “And the bending is important. If you expose the whole length of the corridor, it’s too much. Also, the bend mirrors the profile line of the quarry outside.”
Underfoot, Khammash has used ceramic floor tiles that are familiar from Jordanian apartments—but with a twist. “I specified the cheapest tile in Jordan,” he says, “but here we spread them wider and filled the gaps between each one. You end up with this interesting pattern, like a carpet with pulled threads.”
This lack of pretension, eschewing the temptations of Italian marble, Scandinavian wood or even plaster for the walls, can cause confusion: Visitors seeing rough, concrete walls and gappy floor tiles ask when the building will be finished—and then tut when they hear it is.
Some think it’s a joke, but Khammash says he is demonstrating how low-budget ideas can deliver high-quality outcomes. “Materials pick up social value,” he adds. “People want to imitate Amman, using expensive imported stuff, but the result is a hodgepodge. This is a crude finish, but very durable, and it should age nicely. It’s a very rugged building.”
Another consequence is an agile minimalism. Khammash’s balconies, for instance, narrow to the slenderest of cement edges, supported beneath by angled beams anchored in the smallest possible foundation. To stand on one is to fly above the trees.
But visuals tell only part of the story. The building, completed in 2013, deploys an array of environmentally progressive techniques, from straw-based insulation and gray-water collection to geothermal energy for heating and cooling. During this two-year, $3.9-million construction project in dense woodland, not a single tree was felled.
Johnson talks of Khammash’s “artist’s eye.” For Khammash, it’s synesthesia that underpins his creativity. “I’m into sound,” he says. “Every time I see light on geological formations, I hear music. It’s like a waterfall hitting rocks, and the light is playing a sound. There’s some strange connection in my brain. The sun plays this corridor differently according to the season and the time of day.”
Once you tune into Khammash’s aural architecture, you find it everywhere. It draws the sounds of the forest—creaking of trees, whistling of wind—into the building. And it sends the sounds of the building—voices, footsteps—spiralling together in unexpected pools and pockets.
Khammash warms to his theme. “Architecture is a beginning. Let others add to your work. You see this in art installations, but architecture can do it too. Buildings can change if you just give people the skeleton to start with.”
In 2016 the academy was shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture—“a great privilege,” says Khaled, not least for international recognition of the building’s potential to deliver a new generation of conservationists. He tells me the rscn is developing curricula for training programs that can be run here with international partners, including the University of Montana, and that it has brought local socio-economic projects developing biscuit-making and handmade-soap production into the building. Rebranding the academy as “Wild Jordan Ajloun” is next, which will help consolidate the efforts to deploy it for tourism as well as education.
Khammash watches with pride. “Architecture is problem-solving,” he says. “This is the spark for me, and every time I design, that’s in my subconscious: Can we solve the problem without the building? If I can, I will. The site is the architect, and I listen to it. Ultimately, I’m just a draftsman, a technician under the site’s command.”
With origins as a plain headdress meant to protect from the sun in summer, from cold in winter, and from wind and dust in the desert, the kufiya is traditionally woven in black or red thread in several well-established patterns. Called kufiya (kuh-FEE-uh) mainly in the Levant, it is known by other names in other regions—ghutra, shamagh or hattah, most commonly. (See “Names,” sidebar below.)
Across the Arab social spectrum—from hinterlands to capitals, from shepherds to software developers, revolutionaries to royalty, the kufiya has long been a sign of Arab identity. With fashion’s insatiable appetite for fusion, and especially since the proliferation of social media, the kufiya has been crossing historic cultural and geographical boundaries to step—confidently, it appears—into the lexicon of global cool.
Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design, and director of research and development at the MOMA, says the kufiya was chosen for the exhibit because “it has had a profound effect on the world at both global and local levels over the last century and, indeed, over millennia. It has been used as a practical accessory that helps people navigate local climates and environments,” she continues. “It has also become imbued with deep political significance. It has also become a fashion accessory that is, in some iterations, completely divorced from its original context and used for its esthetic merits alone.”
To Lebanese architect Salim al-Kadi, who designed the trio of kufiyas that the moma displayed, the kufiya “is transformative.” It “speaks to different geographies, different people and different issues. Depending on how it is worn, it can be a symbol of resistance and protest, or a disguise. [Today] there is no demonstration anywhere in the world where there isn’t at least one person wearing a kufiya. But it also indicates the strength and power of the downtrodden. Like a Wonder Woman bracelet for Arabs, it feels like it protects.”
To make his point, al-Kadi gave literal form to his metaphor with a kufiya made out of Kevlar body armor—painted gold. It was flanked on the gallery wall by traditional cotton kufiyas, one black and white and the other red and white.
The breakthrough into high fashion began a bit more than a decade ago. In 2007 the Spanish fashion house Balenciaga included in its collection French designer Nicholas Ghes’s black-and-white kufiya-designed scarves with pink flowers and frills imposed on the fatha design. (See “Reading a Kufiya,” above.) Brazilian supermodel Flávia de Oliveira wore it on the runway, Vogue Japan featured it on its cover—spurring record sales of kufiyas in Japan—and former InStyle Accessory Director Meggan Crum put the scarf on her “Top Ten Accessories.”
That same year, upscale us label Urban Outfitters featured kufiya-styled scarves and shirts in a variety of colors. Though criticism for cultural appropriation on the one hand and being “pro-Arab” on the other forced the store to pull the line, they were all back the next year with price tags up to $115.
At the lower end of the spectrum, “street kufiyas” have hung for sale in shops selling jeans and T-shirts in many western capitals as well as across the Arab world, priced usually between $10 and $20. Many of these are imported from China and made of synthetic cloth with printed, not woven, patterns.
More recently, French fashion powerhouse Chanel in 2015 used both red-and-white and black-and-white kufiya designs for a range of garments and accessories, including dresses, jackets, shirts, skirts, blouses and clutches. Fabrics comprised silk and wool, and leather accents appeared on some items. Models showing them on the runway included us supermodel Gigi Hadid.
Reina Lewis, who teaches cultural studies at the London College of Fashion, dates the first appearances of kufiyas in trendy shopping areas of London to the early 1970s, where “they would be part of ensembles that included Afghan sheepskin coats.”
By the 1990s, when other fashion items started to be made in the uk from kufiya-patterned cloth, “some people were offended. They felt it was the commoditization of a garment that for others was a marker of cultural, political, or national authenticity and pride—cultural appropriation.” But fashion, Lewis points out, “constantly plunders cultural symbols,” and “what some designers call inspiration others will see as cultural appropriation.”
Lewis says that while the garment has cultural and often political connotations to many, this is partly generational. “Millennials are completely unaware of its cultural and political associations and see it simply as a scarf,” she says. For many youth in London, multicolored kufiyas are “part of their fashion essentials, like a leather jacket or jeans.”
Kufiyas came later to the us, says Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas who studies identity and symbols in Arab cultures, including kufiyas.
“I first began seeing the kufiya in the United States around 1983, without fully understanding its context,” says Swedenburg. “In the last decade, kufiyas, in all colors, are being worn by actors and celebrities.” He goes on to namedrop Mary-Kate Olsen, Kirsten Dunst, Cameron Diaz, Colin Farrell, David Beckham, Justin Timberlake, “and even [us Senator] John McCain’s daughter,” Meghan McCain.
For many, however, wearing kufiyas was largely “a matter of trendiness,” says Swedenburg. “I think we have to ask why the kufiya became trendy, or edgy. That relates to the growth of antiwar sentiment in the us in the 2004 to 2008 period.” It also coincides, he explains, with the moment low-cost kufiyas became more widely available.
“You can’t draw a straight line, but that was an important part of the context,” he says. “People with progressive politics began to wear them as part of their statement.” Now, “maybe the kufiya need not choose between being a political or a fashion item. It can be both, and it can be educational, a conversation starter.”
Far closer to the roots of kufiyas are the designers and textile artisans of the nonprofit Social Enterprise Project (sep) in Jordan. Their designs are pushing toward what kufiyas might become while holding to the cloth’s traditions. sep kufiyas often include embroidery—a traditional art especially in the Levant—and thoroughly nontraditional but trendy and seasonal colors—grays, beiges, oranges, reds-on-blacks and more.
What makes these designers distinctive is that they all work out of refugee camps, explains Roberta Ventura, a Geneva-based investment banker who supervises the design and production of handmade kufiyas in the Jerash Camp in northern Jordan. To start, women use the traditional red- or black-and-white designs on cotton, linen and cashmere, before combining them in a series of different colors with the distinctive, fine cross-stitch embroidery used in traditional Palestinian dresses. The crafted kufiyas then sell in high-end stores across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The kufiyas, Ventura says, are among more than two dozen fashion accessories made in the camps for sep Jordan and sold to support the women workers, who are paid middle-income salaries. “The kufiya is our bestselling item,” says Ventura.
“They go like hotcakes, and they’re sold to middle class, to wealthy people, lawyers, managers, from anywhere between $65 to $100. They’re sold to people,” she continues, “who are usually aware of the political and cultural association, but who are also clearly willing to make a statement that they are wearing it for its beauty.”
Ventura is thrilled at the success of the kufiyas, which is poised now for a next step: After years of selling online and in select stores, this year it is producing an exclusive, top-end kufiya for the department store Boutique 1, where it will sit alongside scarves by designers such as Missoni, Rochas and Elie Saab. While the design is not yet finalized, Ventura says, “there’s more embroidery.” The price is set to hover around $280.
Ventura adds that Boutique 1 “already sells our kufiyas, and they wanted to go onto the next level. They are selling them as a fashion statement. They are aware of the political symbolism, but they are also fully buying into our concept, our brand concept, which is, ‘forget the political statement, this is beautiful’—and you buy it because it is beautiful.”
Working from an Amman penthouse studio, Palestinian Serbian architect and kufiya designer Rashid Abdelhamid is similarly fusion oriented. He dismisses talk of cultural appropriation, and his website, Made in Palestine Project, displays kufiyas in an abundance of colors and combinations of fabrics. Original black-and-white or red-and-white fatha fabrics are incorporated, but more frequently they are being replaced by other colors and styles. The original kufiya designs are always present and visible, but always fused, combined, highlighted and sometimes only exist as accents that gives a thin root to the designs, gentle nods of recognition.
Abdelhamid asserts that while indeed his kufiyas reflect his own Arab European hybrid identity, they also symbolize contemporary historical context.
“I was born in Algiers and studied in Florence and Grenoble [France]. I travel between Dubai, Ramallah, Tunis and Amman. What I wear reflects these multiple cultures and identities—and many people are like me,” Abdelhamid says.
He handpicks the fabrics, including cloth from areas and communities not traditionally associated with the kufiya. “I include Tunisian velvet, Egyptian cotton, Turkish brocade, Anatolian peasant designs, Caucasian linen and sheer silks, and I combine them with the fishnet kufiya in a multitude of colors,” he says. “Each piece is unique and handmade, like each one of us.”
From his studio, he creates two collections a year. Internet-based sales, he says, “are exploding at around $100 a piece, and I have orders from high-end boutiques in Florence and London, which sell them for $300 to $500.”
Fashion historians from the Arab world agree on several facts concerning the history of kufiyas. Both the concept of the ‘iqal and the original fatha design originated in Iraq; the cotton used to make kufiyas came largely from Egypt but also from the Indian subcontinent; kufiyas were initially produced on looms mainly in Damascus; and it was the nationalist movements of Palestinians that in the 1960s first made kufiyas globally famous.
According to the Hirbawi family, which owns and operates the only kufiya factory still working in Palestine, three factories in Damascus began to flourish in the early 20th century when the use of the Ottoman tarboosh among men declined along with the empire that had popularized it. Rural men began to change the manner the kufiya was worn by no longer wrapping it like a turban but wearing them more loosely like headscarves.
Swedenburg points out that in the 1920s and 1930s, as Syrian and Palestinian opposition to European colonialism gained strength, urban men too began to wear kufiyas that, at the time, were only either black and white or plain white. This adoption of the previously rural headdress by urban elites as a marker of national unity signified, he says, a moment of “inversion of social hierarchy.”
The red-and-white kufiya has origins that are also military but relatively recent, says Widad Kawar, a Jordanian expert and collector of traditional garments. In the 1930s, Jordan-based British General John Bagot Glubb (also known as Glubb Pasha) sought to create a distinctive headdress among Arabs loyal to British rule. He is credited with ordering the production of red-and-white kufiyas.
These red-and-white kufiyas, mostly manufactured in British cotton mills, were of thicker cotton, and their pattern more densely woven, than traditional black-and-white kufiyas. They quickly became popular among men in the wintertime and in the desert, where the nights could be bitter cold.
“All the men loved the red-and-white one,” says Kawar. “Glubb Pasha could not control who wore it. The Syrians loved it, as did the Iraqis and the Saudis.” The red-and-white kufiya became standard-issue headwear for Britain’s colonial Palestine Police Force, Sudan Defense Force and Libyan Arab Forces.
In the 1960s, black-and-white kufiyas became synonymous with Palestinian nationalism, and thus “the last kufiya factory in Palestine,” Hirbawi’s, in the city of Hebron, has taken on an iconic significance. Founded in 1963 by Yasser Hirbawi, the factory is now run by his three sons.
“When my father founded the factory in 1963, there were no other kufiya-making factories in Palestine,” says 60-year-old Judeh Hirbawi, Yasser’s eldest son. All were made in Damascus. In 1963 Yasser bought two Suzuki mechanical looms made in Japan, which produced some 300 kufiyas a month, explains Judeh. They were all black and white—like the ones from Damascus.
By 1965 they started to make red-and-white kufiyas as well. Six years later the Hirbawis had six machines and were producing around 900 kufiyas of both types each month.
“By the 1980s the ‘salad’ design was introduced by my younger brother Izzat Hirbawi, who combined up to six colors to modernize the kufiya,” says Judeh. Today Hirbawi’s produces 42 different color designs, but the most popular is still the black-and-white classic, followed closely by the red-and-white.
It was not until 2000 that the Hirbawis began to export. Today the Hirbawis have 14 mechanical looms, still Suzukis, and 10 new ones were delivered last year. Annual production is around 60,000.
“Business is up, and we are exporting to new designers in Amman and Europe, says Judeh. “The kufiya is in fashion again,” he adds with a smile.
Growing up in southern Turkey in the city of Adana, we eat a lot of bulgur. Kurus is a very versatile dish, so we’re always searching for different ways to use it. Delicious served with yogurt and salad, and, just as well, it makes a great sandwich. Look for pomegranate molasses in Middle Eastern or specialty stores, or substitute lemon juice if you can’t find it.
In a mixing bowl, combine the bulgur and the hot water. Mix well, and then cover with plastic wrap and set aside until the water has been absorbed, about 20 minutes.
In a medium pot, cover the potatoes with cold water and season with salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and cook until tender, about 20 to 25 minutes. Drain the potatoes, grate them and then allow to cool at room temperature.
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. In a large mixing bowl, combine the plump bulgur, potatoes, Aleppo pepper, cumin, olive oil, flour, egg and 1 tablespoon salt. Mix until thoroughly incorporated. Divide the mixture into 20 pieces and form into 3-inch (8-cm) patties using the palm of your hand. Arrange on the sheet pan and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 3 days.
Meanwhile, make the spoon salad: in a medium mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients, tasting the salad before you add the salt.
When you are ready to cook the patties, place a large skillet over medium-high heat and add enough vegetable oil to cover the base by 2 inches (5 cm). Once the oil is hot (about 350° F/180° C), place the patties in the skillet and fry until golden brown and crispy, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer the cooked patties to a plate lined with paper towels and season with salt. Arrange the patties on a serving platter, and top with the spoon salad.
Didem Hosgel was raised in a traditional Turkish family where cooking from scratch and preparing food for family members were ongoing and cherished practices. After moving to the us in 2001, Didem set her roots in Boston and began working for Chef Ana Sortun at the famed Oleana Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After many years at Oleana, she became chef de cuisine at Sofra Bakery, a Middle Eastern-inspired bakery and café. At Sofra she creates innovative new dishes using fresh, local ingredients while still honoring her Turkish roots.
Josh Welsh, president, Film Independent and panel moderator: I just got back—my colleague and I were just in Saudi Arabia until two days ago for our first trip over there.… It truly feels like a historic moment there, where there are significant changes coming to the film and tv and cultural landscape. So I'll start by asking each of you, "What is unique to Saudi filmmaking?"
Mohammed Al-Salman, director: In Saudi Arabia we have untold stories, and our own culture and myths that we can transform into this film form. And also because we have, in our [Arabic] language, kind of metaphors, so we can interpret these into films, with metaphors and surrealism. And lots of filmmakers that I know [also] have this distinguishing sarcastic tone in their films. When we have an issue or something in our culture, we make a joke about it—in writing or now in film.
Shahad Ameen, director: I feel that no matter how many things I try to write, I end up in some magical situation and fantastical one. And I always feel that it goes back to our language, because our language is very metaphorical. And it has vision. If you read an Arabic poem, you’re seeing pictures.
Andy Tennant, director: It’s important to learn from the audience, and I think it’s going to be interesting for [Saudi] filmmakers to actually hear what the response is…. You don’t necessarily give the audience what they want, you give them what you’re feeling.
Mohammed Al-Bashir, screenwriter: There are stories in Saudi that haven’t been even touched before…. We are used to the oral world and oral storytelling. So introducing this image and way of expressing ideas and emotions, and myths and legends, is very exciting for us as modern storytellers.
Welsh: I’m curious about the different regions in Saudi Arabia and how they might influence filmmaking. Are there particular storytelling traditions in those regions that show up in your work or that you think we can expect to see from other Saudi filmmakers?
Al-Salman: I think there are diverse filmmakers…. There are comedy films and realism, and also this surreal and also the sarcastic tone that I talked about. I’m not sure if the region would have this effect.
Welsh: There’s sometimes a perception that Saudi film is starting today, but that’s clearly not the case.
Abdul Rahman Sandukshi, director: At the beginning, when we were starting the experience of filmmaking, we were very excited, and we wanted the first movie to be the best and perfect…. [I worked on a film about] Alzheimer’s that took one and a half years. People would say, “Wow, you took too much time on this movie.” But I wanted it to be perfect. Then, I learned stories really don’t end. There are millions and trillions of stories. You can find a story anywhere. By the door you can find a story. Stories are everywhere. So just finish that [film]…. That I learned the hard way. Just finish the movie and start with the next one.
Al-Bashir: It all started as a personal effort [for me]. I mean, names like Haifaa al-Mansour, Bader Alhomoud, Abdullah al-Eyaf and Ahed Kamel. Those are names that are big now in Saudi film, but they started with their personal efforts and then going to film festivals and winning awards. But all of that was very independent by their own choice and their own funds and support Now there is a more organized kind of approach.
(Question from audience:) Do you see this as a way to change the perceptions of Saudi Arabia?Al-Salman: Sure.… We need to form and tell our stories by our own.
Ameen: I believe film is an emotional experience, and we can’t humanize people [if] we don’t see their emotions. So seeing work that’s coming out of real stories, real emotions from our point of view, an Arab story, I think will just bring us closer because it’s going to humanize us more, and you realize at the end of the day after watching these films you’ll say, “We all feel the same things, and we’re all just humans.”
Mohammed Al-Faraj, director: I see what is happening here as a plant. And this plant is growing out and blossoming. And hopefully it’s going to be fruitful for everyone.