The Fortune Men

by Nadifa Mohamed

  Then, April arrives and their roles are reversed. MISSING IN ACTION. His pretty script replaced by the typed bureaucracy-ese of the Air Ministry. Ben’s Wellington left the RAF base at 11 p.m. on 13th April to attack an enemy airport, and then nothing. No wreckage. No body. As if they had flown straight up and into space. Hope. Hope. Hope for God’s grace, if nothing else. That’s what everyone said. And she did, with a force that could have raised Lazarus himself. He disappeared on the second day of Passover, an auspicious time, they reassured her. It was even Easter Sunday, God damn it, what other time could you ask for a miracle, a resurrection? She read stories of airmen rescued and nursed by Somali Bedouins or appearing suddenly in distant prisoner-of-war camps. Strange stories, but anything is possible in wartime. The baby was readying itself, stretching little fists and knees against Diana’s stomach, just a few more weeks left. The Red Cross sent her a letter: they would contact the Germans and see what information they had on Ben and his crew.

  ‘Hold your nerve,’ Diana told herself, ‘all you have to do is concentrate on delivering this baby safely so that when he comes home, injured or not, you will all be together.’ The birth coincided with another short blitz over Cardiff. It was too dangerous to try for the infirmary so the baby arrived at home, with only Violet to help guide her out by candlelight. With sirens wailing, fire engines shooting along Bute Street, V2 bombs whinnying down, the force of explosions nearby swooping through the house and billowing dust into their hair, Diana dug her face into a pillow and bellowed her daughter into the world.

  When morning arrived, Diana padded to the window, Grace swaddled in her arms, to survey the damage from her childhood perch: number 184 had lost its exterior and looked like an open doll’s house with colourful beds and chairs on show; silvery barrage balloons bobbed over the charred, broken-boned warehouses on the docks; a cloud of white smoke obscured the low sun. The air burned her nostrils, carrying the smell of burning sugar, explosives and evaporated whisky into the room. A fire engine stood abandoned at the top of the road, its thick tyres molten and pooling like treacle on the ground. Someone had chalked ‘THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A TIGER BAY’ on to the roof-slate-strewn pavement.

  Hearing a cry from the right, Diana turned to see a woman in a gas mask run into the arms of an air-raid warder, sobbing against his shoulder as she pointed a brown finger behind her. The warder sprinted to a pile of rubble under the Marquis of Bute pub and began to dig through the bricks and mortar. Passing dockworkers rushed to help him, and then Diana watched as a green-coated arm and black trousers were excavated from the debris. Then laughter. Squinting hard, Diana saw a decapitated body. The laughter was unsettlingly hysterical now. The woman approached the men unsteadily, her face hidden behind the macabre gas mask. The dockers lifted the body up on to its buckle-booted feet and the poor woman jumped back in fright. Diana recognized the blitz victim as the four-foot statue of the marquis that had stood pompously on the pub’s cupola. The scene had made her laugh so much that Grace had startled and begun to wail. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A TIGER BAY. ‘Bloody right there will,’ she thought.

  In London, the past year, she had seen THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND scrawled everywhere: on the ruins of bombed-out homes in Victoria, on the plinth of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, on the grey stones of Waterloo Bridge. It was a kind of talisman, a prayer, and it worked, she never entertained the notion that they might lose the war. The capital city had developed a malevolent romance during the Blitz; the river brooded beneath the bridges, black and muscular; the stars shone and reconquered the night sky; blacked-out streets susurrated with lovers hidden in doorways and alleys. Full of longing for Ben, Diana would meander north and south over the Thames in the few hours she had free from Balloon Command. They were stationed in Green Park, close to Buckingham Palace, but she went east regularly, to Whitechapel, to visit Ben’s large, boisterous family. On the journey home once, she had caught two burglars breaking the window of a tall Georgian terraced house. Without thinking, she had yelled and chased the thieves up the street, their figures darting between the plane trees that shaded the pavement. Fit and strong from her work, Diana had kept close behind them, shouting ‘Thief!’ until an air-raid warder and policeman ambushed the pair and got them in handcuffs. She had never told Ben about that adventure but she was proud that at no point had she been afraid: exhilarated, yes, angry, yes, nervous, yes, but never afraid.

  The summer came and went without news of Ben. Diana wrote letters describing Grace’s smallest changes, the head lifts, smiles, rolls and babbled words that he’d missed, and stored them in a drawer for when he returned. Ben always wrote about the minutiae of his days in Egypt, from the cup of tea his bearer, Mohammed, brought him in the morning to the chatter in the mess room and the books he read at night. By writing, she could kindle some hope that he was still out there, wondering what was happening in Cardiff. The Air Ministry wrote again in November to say that he was now presumed dead, but too much time had elapsed for her to believe that he was just another Jew fallen under Hitler’s scythe. She felt deeply that he was somewhere beyond her reach, fighting a never-ending, nocturnal war up in the clouds, his machine gun rat-tat-tatting and spitting fiery stars.

  In Queen Street, just as Diana emerges from one of the genteel arcades, juggling a wrapped silk dress for Grace and some treats from Wally’s delicatessen, she feels a tap on her shoulder. She turns around and sees an elderly woman in a green headscarf, the wire of a hearing aid trailing down into her collar.

  ‘Mrs Tanay, isn’t it?’ she asks, extending a bony hand.

  Diana frees her hand from her bags and shakes it. ‘It is. Have we had the pleasure of meeting?’

  ‘Once or twice, but it was your sister, God bless her soul, who really knew me.’

  Diana smiles, nods, waits for a chance to get away. ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Gray, Mrs Gray. I have a little second-hand shop on Bridge Street, nothing as grand as yours, mind.’

  ‘I daren’t call our shop grand.’

  ‘You have a buyer yet?’

  Diana is surprised by the bold question and murmurs a vague reply.

  ‘Great big place like that, you’ll make a fortune.’

  ‘I’ll be getting on now, Mrs Gray, I have to collect my daughter from school.’

  ‘Righty-ho, don’t let me keep you, dear, but one last thing. Everyone and their maiden aunt has been asking me if anyone has claimed that reward yet?’

  Diana has already turned away. She picks up her stride and gives the old gossip a faint, ‘Good afternoon, madam.’

  ‘And a good day to you too,’ Mrs Gray cries after her retreating back.

  SEVEN

  Toddoba

  ‘So, you say your father is dead?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Last I heard she still living.’

  ‘What was your father’s profession?’

  ‘He had a shop, grocer’s shop, and he had lorries for transport too.’

  ‘Well off, then?’

  Mahmood nods vaguely. ‘Not very rich but not poor, he was a clever man, liked new things, modern, yes, a modern man.’

  The prison doctor has already taken Mahmood’s height, weight, temperature, blood, urine, and now he wants his life story too.

  ‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’

  ‘Four brothers, all older, no sisters, two girls die as babies and one get sick around seven years old.’ Mahmood’s cell is messy, his prison-issue pyjamas are in a heap on his unmade bed, and he has dumped the morning’s bread uneaten into the chamber pot along with the thin, tasteless milk. He might have tidied up if he had known the doctor was coming today, but he doesn’t really care. It’s his modest protest to show them he shouldn’t be here at all.

  ‘My brothers they take over my father’s business, they all big men with families. Why do they put me here and not in the normal prison?’

  ‘You’re on a capit
al charge.’

  ‘They stupid but soon they’ll know I’m innocent. They give men compensation for wrongful jailing, true?’

  ‘That is true. But I have nothing to do with that, I’m a medical officer.’

  ‘I understand, carry on.’

  ‘When did you arrive in Britain?’

  ‘In 1947. I was a pantry boy on a cargo ship, but later I become a fireman.’

  ‘Can you read or write English?’

  ‘No, I only go to religious school in my country. I can read the Qu’ran.’

  ‘You read and write Arabic, then?’

  ‘No, I just read the Qu’ran, it’s … different. Not the same as Arabs write now.’

  ‘What languages can you speak?’

  ‘I know Somali, Arabic, English, Swahili and a little Hindi.’

  ‘A bona fide polyglot.’

  Mahmood doesn’t ask what he means, puts it down to white-coat talk.

  ‘Do you have any injuries or disabilities?’

  ‘Nothing, just a small problem here …’ His lashes flutter as he points a finger close to his right iris. ‘When the sun is too hot, it looks like a small fly is in my eye. Happened at sea when burning coal hit me in the face.’

  The doctor’s handwriting disappoints Mahmood; he might be illiterate but he feels he can still judge good penmanship from bad. ‘What you write down?’

  ‘Blowback from furnace caused small vision impairment.’

  ‘Blowback from furnace caused small vision impairment, yes, that’s nice.’ Mahmood prefers the doctor to the screws. He finds them both oafish and overly sensitive. They cry over every little thing and report him to the governor. The young doctor is calm and handsome, wears a nice tie and cufflinks, he waits expectantly as Mahmood answers his questions and seems intrigued by his replies.

  ‘Have you ever had tuberculosis?’

  ‘No, but they keep the ships so cramped and dirty it be a miracle.’

  The doctor hesitates and then asks, ‘Have you ever been diagnosed with syphilis, gonorrhea or any other venereal disease?’

  Mahmood leans back and almost shouts, ‘No! What you take me for?’

  ‘Have you or any family member experienced fits, hallucinations, psychosis or mental illness?’

  ‘We are and always have been sane, thanks be to God.’

  ‘Any nervous trouble such as bedwetting, nail biting, fear of the dark, irrational fears?’

  Mahmood rolls his eyes so hard the doctor smiles.

  ‘You mean to tell me that men come to prison who are scared of dark and can wet their beds?’

  ‘We get all sorts here.’

  ‘Man! That make me wonder about this bed I’m sitting on.’ Mahmood laughs and makes a show of checking the bedding beneath him.

  ‘What marvellous teeth you have!’ the doctor exclaims.

  Mahmood clamps his mouth shut, embarrassed, he doesn’t like white people talking about his teeth because it’s something they only compliment coloureds on, as if it’s some kind of miracle that they have something beautiful about them. ‘What you writing now?’

  The doctor finishes the sentence before looking up with his warm brown eyes and replying, ‘A healthy negroid individual, active, in good health, with excellent teeth!’

  ‘Well, Moody, how are you going to get out of this? You know that this is a hanging offence, don’t you?’ Laura jiggles Mervyn on her lap as he begins to fuss, but Mahmood holds his arms out over the wide table and takes his youngest son in his arms.

  ‘It is if you’re guilty, I ain’t got nothing to do with it.’ Mahmood tickles the boy’s full cheeks with his scraggly moustache and coos in his ear. ‘Wiilkayga, macaaney.’

  ‘He usually naps at this time.’

  Other prisoners hunch over tables around them, talking quietly with their wives or mothers.

  Mervyn’s large eyes fix on his father’s face with a look of alarm, and he claws curiously at his father’s nose and lips.

  Mahmood laughs as he is manhandled. ‘He don’t know me! Look!’

  ‘Course he does, he’s just cranky. Anyway, I bought you these cigarettes …’ she digs around in her handbag before sliding over a packet of Players.

  Mahmood’s eyes light up at the sight of the blue wavelets and bearded sailor pictured on the box.

  A warder marches over before Mahmood has even had a chance to reach across.

  ‘That’s not permitted. He’ll get his tobacco allowance like everyone else, Tuesday next.’ The warder snatches up the cigarettes in his hairy paw and glares at Laura, before returning to his spot by the wall and pocketing the box.

  Laura says nothing but gives Mahmood a ‘rude bugger’ look. He smiles and then squeezes Mervyn closer to his chest, trying to hide his shame at having dragged his wife and child into a place like this.

  ‘I spoke to Berlin, he says that they’ve got the money for the solicitor, at least for the hearings at the magistrates, but that the Allawi Friendship Society at the mosque ain’t going to lift a finger to help. The sheikh said that in their charter it says if a fella gets into trouble of his own making they’ll take no part in his affairs.’

  ‘Yemeni sons of bitches. They take our money when it suits them but don’t wanna give nothing in return. How is any of this my own making? I have nothing to do with that woman, that shop, that murder.’

  ‘I know that, Moody, I know that. It’s a misunderstanding. You’ve never laid a hand on me so how are you going to get up one day and cut a strange woman’s throat? But you got too many enemies and too few friends. The sheikh is just trying to punish you for what happened last year.’

  ‘How much punishment he want me to have? I pay a fine, I’m on probation, I pay back the money. He want to sacrifice me for Eid too? Ibn Sharmuta.’

  ‘Enough, Moody, you’ll agitate the baby.’

  Mahmood rubs his cheek against Mervyn’s soft wispy hair. ‘When will you bring the other boys?’

  ‘I can only manage one at a time. The woman from prison welfare told me off when she saw me carrying Mervyn in, said it was bad for him to be in this environment.’

  ‘Forget that.’

  ‘I’m not going to pay her any mind, don’t worry. I’ll bring David next as he keeps asking where you are, asked if you’ve been naughty again.’

  ‘That boy clever, nothing pass him by.’

  ‘Too clever by half, he tried to stop Daddy entering the house the other night, said that he heard on the wireless that the police were looking for an old man with a moustache.’

  Mahmood throws his head back and laughs. ‘No! Can’t be my son if he take the police’s side.’

  ‘He’s yours alright, he’s still doing that Somali dance you taught him. What’s it called?’

  Mahmood remembers with pure pleasure the four of them, before Mervyn was born, cosy in their little terraced house in Hull. The coal fire burning and a bedsheet wrapped around his shoulders in place of a shaal, a biscuit tin drum in his hand as he taught Omar and David how Somali nomads danced. One, two, three … then a missed beat, Mahmood leaping forward with a shout of soobax in that gap. He had tied pillowcases around the boys’ waists and they toddled around him, their eyes as wide as moons, moving their limbs in uncoordinated, antic shapes, their high-pitched, mispronounced soobaxs completely out of time. Laura watching it all bemusedly from the tweed armchair they had bought cheap from another Somali sailor.

  ‘Dhaanto, it’s called a dhaan-to.’ Trying to make the simple word even simpler.

  ‘Duntoo, I’ll tell the little beggar when I get home.’ Laura stands up to reach for Mervyn and quickly kisses Mahmood’s fingertips as he lifts him towards her. ‘Chin up, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Is it mouth before nose? And feet before ears? Mahmood stumbles over the wudu sequence, repeating many steps until he’s reassured that he’s achieved taharat. The other prisoners look at him strangely as they back away from the spluttering taps with little more than a whisper of water on their face
s. The last time he had prayed properly was in Bombay, in 1949, at the Jama Masjid, between Crawford Market and Zaveri Bazaar. Ablutions were performed there in an old water tank with goldfish flashing through the bright green water and turtles bobbing intermittently up to the surface. Their ship, the SS Emmeline, was docked in the city, disgorging a cargo of British farm machinery and double-decker buses, so he had cajoled the other Somali firemen, trimmers and greasers to head into the sprawling city with him. They quickly ended up in the markets; chomping through mangoes, papayas, stringy tamarinds and dry sugar cane as they idled through the stalls. Nothing you couldn’t buy under that tall vaulted roof: fake gold, squawking chickens, embellished rugs, toupees and henna, Hindu gods and technicolour paintings of Jesus and Mary, oily perfumes and incense sticks, defanged cobras and bleating white kid goats. The masjid had been a welcome discovery after all of that. The ’asr call to prayer bounded off the onion-domed building, pigeons and black kites stirred the inert cloudless sky, intricate tiles adorned every surface of the masjid. Between two grand pillars, surrounding the wide pool of water, crouched a crew of maimed beggars, eating slowly and politely from a shared platter of rice and watery dhal. It was all peaceful enough to move something in him. When a local told them in a mix of Hindi and Arabic that the masjid was known as ‘the ship of the world to come’ because it had been built on water, Mahmood had stored away the phrase in the part of his mind where he kept things of beauty.

  Now, though, praying is a serious business. He wants God on his side, to weigh fate in his favour. At some point, he thinks, his luck had soured. From birth to twenty years of age everything had gone his way with little effort on his part, but since then, in these last four years, bad luck has surrounded him like a fog. The few small respites at the racetrack or poker table not changing anything substantial about his life or bringing the old luck back. He needs God to hear him, to see him in this squalid jail, surrounded by heartless strangers, and to restore him to his family. The gambling and godlessness will go, that’s his part of the deal. Returning to his cell, Mahmood throws his blanket on the floor and plants his feet towards Mecca, as close to the south-east as he can approximate. With his open hands by his ears, he closes his eyes and begins.