Black Mamba Boy

by Nadifa Mohamed

  His favorite place to sleep was an earth-smelling nook on the roof of a teetering apartment block. It was formed by a mud wall that curled over to make a three-sided tomb, and in it Jama felt as safe as the dead, in this world but not of it, floating high in the sky. At dawn he would wake up and watch the little insects as they carried on with their busy lives, scurrying across the wall with so much self-importance, crawling over his fingers and face as if he were just a boulder in their way. He felt as small in the world as them but more vulnerable, more alone than the ants with their armies or the cockroaches with their tough shells and hidden wings.

  This night he would return to the new apartment block he had been sleeping in with Shidane and Abdi for a few weeks. Letting himself quietly into the building, he found the kind old caretaker who allowed them the use of the roof, and wished the sleepy-eyed Haji goodnight. Jama went up to the roof, feeling a hollowness in his chest from wanting to be with a mother whose company he found too difficult to bear. On reaching the roof, he saw his inner emptiness matched by complete silence. Abdi and Shidane were not there, perhaps were sleeping somewhere else. The loneliness Jama felt carved even deeper into his soul; he needed Abdi’s small warm body to huddle up with tonight, his wet nose tucked in Jama’s neck. Jama stepped onto the ledge and looked up at the stars and the indifferent moon.

  He hung there, enjoying the vast drop inches away from his feet, and at the top of his lungs called out, “Guure Mohamed Naaleyeh, where are you? Come find your son!”

  His voice echoed against the buildings and drifted out to sea.

  Shidane led his gang through the streets of Ma’alla, the Arab section, filling in his uncle and Jama on the local goings-on, passing the information he had gleaned from his errand work. Men and women moved behind curtains like jerky Indian puppets, their lives framed by windows and backlit by lamps as the boys watched them from the twilight street.

  “The woman in that house is really a eunuch, I have seen him take off his sharshuf and underneath he has a gigantic club sticking out, hair all over his arms and feet, oof! He looked like a wrestler, wallaahi, I swear.”

  Jama looked incredulously at Shidane and pushed him away. Extravagantly red roses the size of Jama’s face flopped over the exterior walls of the houses, filling the air with their molasses-sweet scent. Jama picked one off its stem, stroking the petals that felt like down on a butterfly’s wing, then waved it in a circle in the dusk breeze, trailing a ballet of insects that urgently followed the arcing fragrance.

  “And that man, see him up there? In the turban? He is always in and out of jail, all of his teeth are gold, he’s a diamond smuggler, he can take out his teeth and hide diamonds inside, I’ve seen him do it at night through the window.”

  Abdi with a rapt expression exclaimed, “Inshallah, I will be a diamond smuggler when I’m older, that’s even better than being a pearl smuggler. I would buy sparkling black pointy shoes like rich men wear and buy my hooyo a house and more gold than she could ever wear.” Silently the three boys looked at their naked feet shod only in sand and dirt.

  “Do you know what I would buy?” asked Jama.

  “A car?” replied Shidane.

  “No, I would buy an airplane, so I could fly through the clouds and come down to earth whenever I wanted to see a new place, Mecca, China, I would travel even farther, to Damascus and Ardiwaliya, and just come and go as I wanted.”

  “Allah! They are the work of the Shayddaan! You wouldn’t get me in one of those things,” Shidane harrumphed. “My mother says they’re haram, it’s only angels, insects, and birds that God intended to fly, it’s no surprise that they burst into flames. Then when you die your body is turned into ash so you can’t even have a proper burial and you go straight to hell. Serves the Ferengis right, though.”

  The rose torn from its bush wilted in the stifling heat and Jama tore it apart petal by petal. “Hey, do you remember that flower merchant we worked for last Ramadan?”

  “That shithead, how could we forget him? We are still waiting for our pay. We can’t all flutter our eyelashes at the women like you, Jama. ‘Good evening, aunty, any flowers for you, aunty?’” mimicked Shidane. “Sickening!”

  Jama held his finger to his mouth. “Be quiet and listen, Shidane. I heard that he is now a seaman and earned enough on one voyage to take two wives and buy a large house in Sana’a.”

  “Two wives!” said Shidane with a whistle. “That ugly sinner! I would be surprised if he managed to trick one blind old baboon into marrying him.”

  Abdi creased up at his nephew’s cruel tongue. Abdi’s face was usually set in a grave, contemplative expression, but then with a flicker of light in his eyes, a crooked smile would crack it open, revealing teeth that tumbled over one another.

  Jama had enjoyed carrying the big baskets laden with jasmine, frangipani, and hibiscus from door to door in the cool quiet twilight, smiling at the pretty wives and daughters of wealthy men in the rich neighborhoods. By nightfall his skin and sarong would be infused with an intoxicating smell of life and beauty. He returned home to decorate his mother’s black hair with the crushed pink, red, and purple flowers at the bottom of the basket that the rich women didn’t want. The bruised petals were the only gifts he had ever brought her; with the flowers he could make her beautiful, run his fingers through her hair and over the soft skin of her neck, his fingers scented with jasmine.

  As the three boys padded down the street, a racket broke the silence of the neighborhood. A woman’s screams rose above the general shouts and Jama nervously looked at the others. A small middle-aged woman darted around a corner, running barefoot past them with the front of her gown ripped open revealing an old gray brassiere, her face contorted in unseeing terror.

  Behind her chased a group of older men, one of them bearing a knife, another a thick cane. They hollered after her, “Ya sharmuta! Whore! Adulteress! You have brought shame on our street. By God, we will catch you.”

  Behind them a ragtag bunch of children came, some crying, some cheering and laughing. This human storm engulfed Jama and then flowed away just as quickly. Jama stood still, bewildered by what he had seen, his head still turned in the direction of the lynch mob.

  “Let’s chase them!” shouted Shidane, and they pelted after the crowd. “Which way did they go?” Jama asked, trying to pinpoint where all the commotion had gone.

  The screams were piercing when they reached the dirty alley where the woman had been cornered. Her children clung to her, a howling, shaking little girl holding her mother around the waist, and a teenage boy desperately trying to put his slight body between his mother and the man holding the knife. Shidane pushed through the crowd to the woman, the knife frozen in the air above their heads.

  “Let go of her!” he screamed. “Let go of her, you son of a bitch.”

  Jama saw the man with the cane slap Shidane around the back with it, and the other thug held him back as the old man cursed and lunged at Shidane: “Get away from here! Ya abid, slave,” he raged.

  The crowd of excited children shifted around Jama, their eyes wide with terror and joy at what they were seeing. One boy kept climbing Jama’s back for a better look but he threw him to the ground. Abdi was hanging from the arm of the man with the cane. Jama, worried that Abdi would be beaten, grabbed hold of the knife man’s arm and sunk his teeth in. He bit harder and harder until the knife dropped to the ground. Shidane picked it up and dragged Jama and Abdi away, into the night, the dagger tucked into Shidane’s ma’awis.

  The next day, the boys stalked the outdoor restaurant of Cowasjee Dinshaw and Sons like a pack of stray dogs. They flanked the seated cosmopolitan diners, who had ordered heaped plates of rice with chicken, spaghetti with minced lamb, maraag with huge hunks of bread. The clinking of full glasses and chatter drifted up into the air along with faint arabesques of cigarette smoke. Jama wiped his salivating mouth and made eye contact with Shidane, who was standing behind the table of a suited Banyali merchant and his elegantly sari�
��d companion, her juicy flesh peeking out from underneath her fuchsia choli. The boys had barely eaten or drunk anything for days and they had to restrain their desire to knock the waiters down and snatch the steaming plates from their hands. The waiter took the white towel hanging over his forearm and flicked Abdi roughly around the back of his legs with it. “Yallah! Yallah! Leave our customers in peace,” he shouted. The boys pulled back from the restaurant and regrouped at the palm trees lining the road. Abdi gestured toward the Indian couple, who were settling their bill. Jama and Shidane sprinted to the table and in one swift movement tipped two plates of leftover spaghetti into their sarongs, which they had pulled out into makeshift bowls. Abdi collected all the bread and then ran after Jama and Shidane as they scrambled up the road. They stopped the instant they realized they were not being pursued and dropped down by the side of the road with their backs against a wall. They pulled the food to their mouths as if they would never eat again, silently and with a fixed attention to the meager meal in their laps. Abdi tried to pick spaghetti from Jama’s and Shidane’s laps but had to dodge their frenetically moving fingers. They in turn grabbed at the bread in his hands, and it was only after he shouted in despair that they slowed down and allowed him his share of the booty. Jama and Shidane wiped their greasy fingers on the sand beneath them and watched as Abdi lethargically finished off the scattered bread crumbs. Jama’s eyes scanned over the little boy’s protruding ribs and matchstick-thin ankles and wrists. “Abdi, why do you eat like a chicken? You’re always getting left with the crumbs, you have to be fast!”

  “Well, I would eat more if you two pigs didn’t swallow everything before I can even sit down,” Abdi replied sullenly.

  Abashed, Jama and Shidane giggled but did not meet each other’s eyes.

  “I want to go see my hooyo again,” said Abdi sadly. “I think she’s ill.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll go tomorrow. We’ll all be going back to Berbera soon anyway. The dhows are already leaving for Somaliland. I can’t wait for this year’s fair: coffee from Harar, saffron, tusks, feathers from our great Isse Muuse, Garhajis with myrrh, gum, sheep, cattle, and ghee, and the Warsangeli with their bloody frankincense. And all those Arabs and Indians to pickpocket before our morning swim. Are you not going, Jama?” asked Shidane.

  “No, I’m staying here, in the big city. I’ve got nothing to go back for,” lied Jama. Shidane stared at him, a smile pulling at his mouth.

  “Where is your father, anyway? Why did he run off? Was it you or your mother that got on his nerves?”

  “Shut up, Shidane,” Jama replied sternly. Shidane picked on people the way he picked at scabs, trying to get to the red, pulpy stuff underneath. Jama hated Shidane when he was like this. Shidane’s mother was a prostitute in a port brothel, but Jama still never dared insult Shidane back. The boys never took Jama with them when they visited Shidane’s mother but Jama had followed them once, he watched from behind a post as Shidane and Abdi embraced a small woman in a Ferengi shirt, her red hair flying in the breeze. She was surrounded by the hard-living women of the port who drank, chewed tobacco and qat, and attracted sailors by shaking tambourines and dancing. Shidane’s mother looked like a lost bride with her red lips, kohled eyes, and copper jewelry, but behind the makeup was the bloated, yellow face of a drunkard.

  Shidane’s father had been killed by a British bomb left behind from their campaign years earlier against the Mad Mullah, and the rage that this had spawned in Shidane sometimes made his temper flare up as brightly as magnesium. He would seek out fights and get pulverized. Jama and Abdi would then huddle silently around him, tentative, as he wheezed and swore at them for being cowardly, stupid, pathetic, his eyes bloodshot with held-back tears. Jama and Abdi loved Shidane, so they tolerated his foul mouth, his unreasonable demands, his cruelty; he was too charming to hold a grudge against. His gigantic eyes could be so sincere and full of compassion that they could not stay angry with him.

  Without Shidane and Abdi, Jama’s days would be long, lonely, and almost silent. They had insinuated themselves deep into his heart, and Jama liked to pretend that they were his brothers. The only time they were separated now was when Shidane and Abdi went to Steamer Point to dive for pennies. Cruise ships on the way to India or the Far East stopped off in Aden and idle passengers would throw coins into the water to watch the gali gali boys risk their lives to collect them. Jama occasionally watched them, Shidane dangerously sleek and elegant in the water, Abdi struggling always with a mouthful of saltwater. After hours in the sea they would come ashore with their cheeks full of coins and spit them out at Jama’s feet; it was begging, but they made it look beautiful.

  At Shidane’s instigation the gang would sometimes go looking for trouble. Indian kids, Jewish kids, and Yemeni kids all lived with their parents, however poor they might be. It was only the Somali children who ran around feral, sleeping everywhere and anywhere. Many of the Somali boys were the children of single mothers working in the coffee factories, too tired after twelve hours of work to chase around after boisterous, hungry boys. Their fathers came and went regularly, making money and losing it, with the monsoon trade. With no parental beatings to fear, the Somali boys saw the other children as well fed and soft enough to harass safely.

  Jama, Shidane, and Abdi liked to prowl around Suq al-Yahud, and the Banyali area as well as old Aden. Today, they penetrated the Jewish quarter, walking under the flapping laundry crisscrossing the alleys, looking for boys their age to fight. The Jewish boys looked so prim and proper in comparison with them, overdressed with little skullcaps balanced on their heads, books tucked under their arms as they returned from yeshiva.

  Shidane picked up a stone and lobbed it at one. “Hey, Yahudi, do they teach you this at your school?” he said with the secret envy of the illiterate. Abdi and Jama, although hesitant, picked up smaller stones and threw them as well.

  The Jewish schoolboys piled up their books in a heap. “Somali punkah-wallahs, your fathers are dirty Somali punkah-wallahs!” they shouted and started bombarding the Somali boys.

  Soon vile insults in Arabic against one another’s mothers were exchanged along with the stones. Jama chipped in with a few Hebrew insults he had learned from Abraham, a boy he used to sell flowers with: “Ben Zona! Ben Kelev! Son of a whore! Son of a dog!”

  The Jewish boys had sweat dripping down their temples into their ringlets, and their tunics were damp with it. Jama and Shidane cackled as they avoided the sharp stones, pushing Abdi out of the way whenever one was aimed at him. Hearing the commotion and obscenities, mothers came out onto their balconies to hector the little brats. They went unheard until one no-nonsense woman went indoors and returned with a large basin, tipping half of the dirty water on the Somali intruders and splattering the rest on the Sabbath-disrespecting sons of Israel. All of the boys ran away, Jama, Shidane, and Abdi fleeing together, passing fabric shops as their shutters closed for the holy day.

  Abdi pinched a black waistcoat that was hanging from a nail and they ran even faster, their booty held aloft while a burly, bearded man chased them. “It’s the Sabbath, you shouldn’t be running!” shouted Jama over his shoulder, and Shidane and Abdi roared at his wit.

  The man huffed and puffed behind them but eventually gave up, cursing them in Hebrew. “You should have had a shit. You’re too heavy to catch us!” shouted Jama in a parting shot, as they bolted from the neighborhood.

  The Camel mukhbazar was a small, whitewashed greasy spoon with a few round tables inside and Somali baskets hung from the wall in an attempt at decoration. Most of its customers preferred to stand or sit outside in loud groups, metal plates of overcooked pasta or spiced iskukaris rice balanced in their hands. The Camel had become a meeting place for all the Somalis who washed up on the Yemeni coast looking for work. Merchants, criminals, coolies, boatmen, shoemakers, policemen all went there for their evening meal. Jama often hovered around its entrance, hoping to see his father or at least someone who had word of him. Jama did not k
now what his father looked like; his mother rarely talked about him. Jama always felt, however, that if he ever had the chance to catch his father’s eye, or watch him move or talk, he would instantly recognize him from among the untidy men with shaved heads and claim him as his own.

  One windy day, as Jama’s legs and feet were being buffeted by flying refuse, he joined a group of men gathered around Ismail, the owner of the mukhbazar. The Somalis were flowing out into the road to the consternation of Arab donkey drivers and coolies, who struggled past with their heavy loads. Jama heard them cursing the Somalis under their breath. “Sons of bitches should go back to the land-of-give-me-something,” one hammal said. Jama fought the temptation to tell the men what the Arab had dared say. He eased his way into the crowd until he was at Ismail’s shoulder. Ismail was reading from an Arabic newspaper. “Italy declares war on Abyssinia, Haile Selassie appeals to the League of Nations,” he translated.