Legend of Tarzan: Profiling a tough Somalian mayor

Mogadishu’s half-ruined, half-built urban landscape is strangely compelling. This is an ocean-front city, its masonry bleached by the sun, every block and intersection holding a memory of what was once there, and an imagination of what it might yet be, if today’s economic regeneration continues. Somalia’s capital has gone through a quarter-century of battle and rebuilding in rapid cycles, each leaving its own mark on the fabric of the city.

Andrew Harding, who has repeatedly visited Mogadishu as a BBC journalist since 2000, is fascinated by the city and how to make sense of it. In his new book, Mogadishu becomes legible through the biography of one man, Mohamed Nur, known as “Tarzan”.

Tarzan was born into a nomadic family in the country’s arid hinterland. After his father died, he came to Mogadishu as a child, arriving in 1961 on the one-year anniversary of independence.