GIFTS.(Review)(Brief Article)

Nuruddin Farah. Arcade, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 1-55970-484-5

In Gifts, the second volume in Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy (see Maps, above), the same forces of war and unrest in Somalia shape the life of Duniya, a widowed nurse with three children trying to juggle a career and the emotional needs of a mature woman in the big city. Nearing 35 years of age, she is pitied by her fellow nurses as a woman whose happiest years have already passed her by. As Duniya recalls the dearth of choices in a rigid patriarchal society, she tells how her dying father asked his friend, Zubair, to marry his young daughter and how she was unable to refuse the old blind man, who …