Black Mamba Boy

by Nadifa Mohamed

  ASSAB, ASMARA, AND OMHAJER, ERITREA, OCTOBER 1936

  The passengers gathered their bundles and children while the crew ran around preparing for landing. Jama stood up and walked to the bow. After docking, a man in a vest announced, “Assab, Eritrea.” Jama had to keep pushing back the clamoring bodies behind him, who crushed him as they yelled to be let off. Finally, a gangplank was placed against the vessel and the gate released.

  Jama followed the other passengers, mainly Afars returning to see family in Dankalia, but a few Somalis and Yemenis were mixed in with the crowd. Jama’s attention was caught by a gigantic board on two poles. A helmeted head with menacingly large nose and heavy lantern jaw in a white face were all Jama could make out in the growing darkness; European writing encircled the image. Jama noticed other men raising their right arm to the picture so he did the same, wondering why anyone would go to the effort of painting such an ugly Ferengi. Jama sidled up to a Somali man, barely distinguishable from the Afars apart from his shapely teeth that had not been filed Dankali-fashion. The Somali man looked askance at him. “Yes, boy?”

  “Uncle, I am looking for a clansman, do you know an askari called Talyani?”

  “Talyani? I know of one Issa man named Talyani but the devil knows where he lives, ask at the police station,” the man replied.

  “What do you want? It’s too late to be begging, isn’t it?” shouted a voice behind the door.

  “I was sent to you by Idea in Djibouti, I am his nephew, can you help me go to Sudan?” Jama said, his voice higher than normal. The heavy door was unlocked and Jama stepped in.

  Talyani’s home was immaculately clean. Sitting on the floor was a young woman with a baby suckling at her breast; she gave a polite nod to Jama. “You can stay for a few nights. The boat to Massawa is due soon. This is my wife, Zainab, and my son, Marco.” Talyani was neck-achingly tall, he wore only a short sarong and his strong legs and hulking back were thatched with wiry black hairs.

  “Get him something to sleep on when you’re finished, Zainab, and food, too. I’m going to bed.” Talyani disappeared into the dark hallway but then came back. “You’re his nephew, huh? On what side?”

  Jama thought quickly. “On both sides. My mother is Amina’s half sister and my father is his brother.”

  Talyani twisted up his eyebrows but let it go. “We’ll speak properly in the morning.”

  Jama let out a long breath. He was lucky Talyani had not asked him to recite his grandfathers’ names. The house was silent, only the baby’s sucking disturbed the air, and Jama stood awkwardly near the door. Zainab moved quickly and quietly around the room, arranging blankets on the floor for him.

  “Let me help,” Jama offered. Zainab shook her head, her hair falling across her face and casting a shadow, but he could pick out another shadow within it, the purple-black print of a fist around her eye.

  While she laid out a plate of rice and stew, Jama gazed at her baby. Marco’s round cheeks were shiny and smooth, his little chin resting on the blankets he was coddled in, and he slept like a king without a care in the world. Jama ate in silence while Zainab fluttered around, fetching water and straightening furniture that was already straight. They could hear Talyani through the wall, clearing his throat and making himself comfortable, reminding them he was still there. The plates were quickly emptied and Zainab spirited them away, washing them immediately. She returned to pick up her baby and hesitated at the doorway.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Her small face as she turned around was that of a teenager, with puppy fat and pimples.

  “No, thank you,” replied Jama, wondering how much older than him Zainab was.

  The room looked strange in the early-morning sun, bare and shiny, as if it had been licked clean. Black-and-white photographs of Talyani in the uniform of a colonial soldier, an askari, stood proud in varnished wooden frames, the schoolboy socks pulled high up toward his knees, a strange tall hat on his head. His hair was black and wavy like an Italian’s, hence his nickname. He was a smiling colonial mascot in costume and Jama couldn’t imagine him pouring sand into the engines of Italian trucks or spitting in their food the way he would. Talyani must be like the ones Idea mentioned, thought Jama looking at the pictures, the ones who gunned down the Abyssinian farmers and children.

  Zainab became melancholic as the day of Jama’s departure approached. She told him he had been her first guest since she had arrived in Assab, and she envisioned a long stretch before anyone else came to visit. While Jama picked the stones from the rice or washed the vegetables for her, Zainab let slip little details about her life. She had been a market girl in Burao, and was planning to run away to Aden when Talyani proposed marriage. There was still something of the market girl about her; she spat regularly into the yard, swore and gesticulated extravagantly with her toothstick. She told him she had nearly forgotten what it was like to have someone to talk to and do things with. Her teenager’s life, with its cast of sisters, aunties, friends, and neighbors, had come to an abrupt end when she married, a sacrifice she had made without any real knowledge of what she was leaving behind. Her friends had been impressed with her bravery in leaving Somaliland and so had Zainab, until she realized that she was in thrall to a drunk and would only ever see the four walls around her and the ceiling above her head. Talyani, on the other hand, had freedom and a life in the outside world but he was rude and patronizing to their Afar neighbors, families who were largely opposed to the Italian invasion of their country. Talyani sang Italian songs loudly in the backyard and had taken to giving the Fascist salute to passersby. If it wasn’t for the baby, Zainab would have stowed away on one of the steamboats and hotfooted it back to Burao.

  Jama was woken on his last morning by the clatter of pots and pans crashing to the floor. Talyani’s voice rang through the house as he shouted at Zainab in the kitchen.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you anything, you idiot! Pick these things up, I didn’t buy them for you to destroy.”

  Jama covered his ears to block out Talyani’s viciousness and chased after his sweet dreams. Talyani’s boots approached. “Are you ready? I have places to go,” he said. Jama slunk out of the covers and went to the basin, the water washing away the last vestiges of his dreaminess.

  They waited outside while Talyani secured two large locks on the front door. Marco kicked his legs out from his mother’s hip and gurgled with excitement at feeling fresh air on his skin. Zainab squinted up at the cerulean sky. Her red clothes made her look young and free, but she held on tightly to her son. Jama could not imagine Zainab growing old in this town.

  Assab was buffeted by hot, dry winds blowing in from the volcanic black deserts of Dankalia. Maybe Assab was too close to that apocalyptic waste for the Italians to make much effort, despite it being their first imperial foothold since the Caesars. They had bought Assab for a moderate sum from the Egyptians. Its buildings were ancient and crumbling, stained gray and deformed by the unrelenting wind. The people were a ragbag of wanderers: Abyssinians looking for work, Yemeni fishermen following the shoals of the Red Sea, nomadic Afars with their teeth filed into points, Somalis on their way to somewhere else. Although it was a busy port like Djibouti Town, most people slept long into the day, and those up and about had a pinched, frustrated look on their faces, angry at missing the epoch when this area was one of the richest on earth. As part of the Axumite Empire, Assab, many centuries ago, had exported rhino horn, hippo hides, apes, and lions to Rome, Egypt, and Persia.

  A cargo boat swayed to the side of them, its paint shedding swaths of metallic leaves. It was the only vessel moored and it seemed to have come in to die, heaving and sighing as heavily as it was. Talyani stopped and handed Jama his flimsy two-lire ticket, his pass to his father.

  “The journey will take about half a day. I will find someone to escort you to Asmara. Wait until you see that place, wah wah!” he explained, eyes blazing. “The Italians have turned it into one big paradise; there are picture houses, hotels,
shops that sell whatever you could want to buy.” Talyani left to find Jama an escort for the rest of the journey. He returned quickly with two other askaris, young men with smooth skin.

  “These boys can accompany you some of the way, they are going to their new barracks in Asmara,” said Talyani, proudly tapping them on the back. “This little boy is going to Sudan, his father is working there. Must be in Gedaref, many Issa have gone there to work for the British. There is a train from Asmara to Agordat, and then a bus will take you over the border into Sudan. The roads are fantastic now, the Ferengis have brought progress to this country at last.”

  Talyani shook Jama’s hand, nearly crushing it. “Maybe you will become an askari, like your father and me.”

  “My father is a driver, not an askari,” corrected Jama, put off them by Talyani’s example.

  Zainab shook Jama’s hand, and he boarded his second ship. Talyani marched on ahead and Zainab reluctantly followed, turning back to wave intermittently, her sad smile bright in the morning light.

  Underneath his feet Jama could hear the bleating of sheep and their hooves jittering on wooden planks. He crouched down away from the hot wind and peeped through the cracks in the wood. He could make out bony noses and fluffy bodies in the shafts of light cutting through the hold, and an oily scent drifted up in the heat. The young askaris climbed the gangplank, their heavy slow steps belying their age. Look at all those hot clothes, thought Jama, and he felt faint just looking at them. The ship slipped its mooring quickly and with little warning, leaving behind hollering stragglers who raced along the quay to catch up with it, holding their sarongs up between their legs. “Masaakiin, poor men,” muttered Jama as he watched them desperately gesticulate to the laughing crew. Jama stretched out on his stomach, sea spray cascading over his back, and tried to pursue that morning’s lost sleep.

  The shriek of seagulls made Jama sit up, he was surrounded by families eating lunch, and he wiped the drool from his cheek. Ahead of him lay mountains and hills higher than he had ever seen, reaching beyond the clouds. Underneath the Eritrean mountains nestled a pretty whitewashed town, its jetty reaching welcomingly out into the sea. As Massawa got closer, Jama could see an island of elegant arches and stuccoed white palaces looming over another island crammed with shantytowns of corrugated sheets and wooden planks. The rich town and poor town were tied together by a concrete umbilical cord. A sign faced out to sea, and one of the askaris leaned forward, trying to pick out the words on the salt-scoured board. “The pearl of the Red Sea,” he recited slowly. Jama smiled at the glamour the sign promised. Dhows plied the placid sea and birds fluttered, pecking at snails on the mud flats surrounding the causeway. They entered a maze of streets, the askaris leading the way, through dark mysterious alleys that suddenly opened up into light-filled squares and then led back into darkness. Jama looked up. Some of the houses had wooden shutters and intricately carved balconies, and one had a mammoth, onion-shaped dome sitting squat on its roof. Ancient mosques, their walls uneven with repeated whitewashing, stood separate from the homes, like dignified grandparents sitting on the street watching the world go by. The silver cross of the Orthodox Church shone a supernatural white on the skyline, behind the star and crescent of a mosque. Jama let out a happy sigh at the covered market bedecked with bright awnings over the stalls, goods neatly laid out on tables like booty recovered from Aladdin’s cave. Despite its antiquity, Massawa was tidy and well kept, with pockets of incredible wealth hidden like teeth in an infant’s gums. Servants piled in and out of the grand homes of Armenian, Arab, Jewish, and European merchants. Everywhere there was the sound of quiet and profitable industry. And yet, nearby lay shantytowns where sparsely filled cooking pans burned easily and Italians in shiny boots idled about in cheap bars, nursing glasses of beer.

  They crossed a longer causeway into mainland Massawa. This part of town seemed plainer, more residential, where everyone went to rest after all the allurements of the old town.

  “We’ll get a lorry along this main road,” said one of the askaris.

  It didn’t seem like much of a main road to Jama, it was barely wide enough for one vehicle. Jama stared at the horizon. His father could just appear around the curve, it was more than possible that he drove up and down these roads, he thought. It wasn’t a busy road, and the sound of anyone approaching made Jama’s heart lurch. One of the askaris ran out into the road to flag down a lorry, and seeing the uniforms, the driver stopped. Jama quickly glanced up into the cab; “Not him,” he reassured himself, and they all piled in. The lorry left behind the vast depression in the earth that had begun in Djibouti, and creaked and screeched to manage the incline. The driver recited Al-Fatiha under his breath, while the askaris joked to hide their fear. The lorry nearly lost its balance as it clambered up, scraping its underside as it righted itself.

  “It never gets easier,” said the driver through gritted teeth.

  Jama, at first terrified by the precarious highway, began to enjoy it, calling out hazards. “Look! A pothole! And over there some loose rocks, be careful, driver!”

  He could hear the driver’s heart pounding near his ear and the gears of the vehicle crunching beneath him. The askaris, relaxed by Jama’s vigilance, fell asleep, their heads lolling from left to right in unison.

  “Hey, you’re good at this, little boy. You wanna work for me?” the driver said. Jama exchanged smiles with him in the rearview mirror.

  After a few hours they finally reached the manicured avenues of Asmara. Everywhere new houses sparkled, the paint on them barely dry. Large Italian villas were painted in mouth-watering reds, corals, pinks, yellows; blossoming purple-and-white flowers flowed over their walls. It was the tidiest, most fertile place Jama had ever seen. A cool breeze breathed in through the driver’s window. Trees rustled at the side of the road, cleaners swept the immaculate sidewalks, and there was so much paving that everywhere seemed covered in patterned stone tiles. Jama looked around, and all the shops were run by Europeans, the town seemed to belong to the fat-bellied men with upturned mustaches sitting outside the shops. Women in dresses that exposed their arms and legs cycled up and down the gentle slopes. The only Africans he could see were the street cleaners.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? Don’t worry, they have been generous enough to leave us a scrap of land farther down,” said the driver.

  Jama leaned across the askaris so he could see more clearly through the dirty window. Three-story buildings with columned fronts towered over the lorry as they passed down the main avenue. A huge cathedral with an iridescent mosaic cross appeared before them, and women in black-and-white gowns stood on the steps picking at their prayer beads as the church bell tolled. Large-eyed Eritrean beggars sat by the wall of the cathedral, swathed in dirty white shammas.

  Jama shouted, “Look! Gaadhi dameer!” and pointed excitedly as a donkey cart drove past, the donkey cantering and swishing its tail, a small boy holding the reins. A little piece of Hargeisa transported to this foreign town.

  The driver found the way to the African reservation and slowed down. “Where do you want me to drop you off?” he asked.

  “Farther down, where the Somalis are,” answered one of the askaris. They drove on and drew to a halt outside a tearoom full of Somali men.

  Jama let the askaris pay his half lira for him. The driver beeped the horn for Jama. “Nabad gelyo, peace be with you,” he called out before the lorry pulled away.

  “Are you going to pay for the food, little man?” one askari asked.

  Jama begrudgingly picked out a few coins from Idea’s handkerchief. He expected adults to always subsidize him, but these teenagers had no manners. “Get me a lot, I’m hungry,” he demanded.

  The askaris returned with full plates. “Who are you looking for here?” asked the taller askari.

  Jama shrugged, confident that someone would take him in. “Anyone, an Eidegalle, I suppose.”

  “I’ll go and ask in the tearoom,” the tall one said, getting up. Ja
ma could see him circulating around, shaking hands, making jokes. The askari came back a while later, trailed by a lame man with a basketful of charcoal in his hands. They exchanged salaams.

  “An old Eidegalle woman lives this way, but I warn you that she can be difficult,” said the charcoal seller.

  The houses in the reservation were small and packed together, with animals tied to poles outside. “It’s this one,” said the new man, stopping at a beehive-shaped tukul with a rush mat serving as a door.

  Jama shook the rush mat, and the askaris stepped back as an old woman with a hard face and humped back pushed aside the mat.

  “Who are you?” she asked brusquely. Jama recited what he knew of his lineage, skipping over grandfathers and mangling old-fashioned names. He explained that he was en route to Sudan and just needed somewhere to sleep for the night.

  “What does a little runt like you want in Sudan?” the old woman challenged.

  “I am going to find my father,” Jama shot back.

  “Are you sure you have one?”

  The lame man was laughing with the askaris as they returned to the tearoom. Jama turned to march away from the old witch.

  “Wait, wait! Don’t take an old woman’s words so seriously. You can stay for a night. My name is Awrala.”

  They sat far apart in the hut, listening to the couple next door fighting until they also fell quiet. Jama, feeling overwhelmed by the silence, cracked. “How did you get that hump on your back?” he asked.

  Awrala cackled. “Ha! You see, boy . . . my father came here to be a farmer—well, that is not completely true, he actually got bored of the hard work very quickly and made us into farmers. I spent all day like this.” She demonstrated the bentover posture, balancing her hands on her thighs.