The entry begins:When I first asked the Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur, if he would allow me to write a book about him – a book, I stressed, that would not be an “authorized” biography and would contain plenty of criticism about him – he hardly gave it a thought. The answer was yes. “Write what you like,” he said with a shrug. But almost immediately, he started talking about Hollywood. A film of his life - now that was what he really wanted.Visit Andrew Harding's website.
And you could see his point. Mogadishu – the city of Black Hawk Down, in the country of Captain Phillips. And the Mayor himself - often profiled by the international media as “the man with the world’s most dangerous job.” Which was true enough. I’d seen it up close, driving round the rubble of Mogadishu with Tarzan, pistol tucked in his trousers, two dozen armed guards in pickup trucks to guard him, and a succession of unsuccessful assassination attempts in his wake.
How could Hollywood resist?
Well, we shall see.
But in the meantime I can’t deny having given it some thought during the six years that I’ve got to know Tarzan and his family. With his white, aristocratic beard, and his scarred, brawlers face, I’ve imagined Omar Sharif – back from the grave – to play the lead. And perhaps Sophia Lauren to play his elegant young wife, Shamis. After all, she used to stroll along Mogadishu’s Italianate beach front in her mini-skirt in the 1970s.
But I can feel myself getting in trouble. Surely African actors should play these roles. Absolutely. But which Africans? Somalis are a particularly...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: The Mayor of Mogadishu.
--Marshal Zeringue
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