Black Mamba Boy Read online

  “I want to know more about my father,” replied Jama, as if it was his due. He squatted in the corner and waited as the man eased the toothstick over each tooth, spitting out its fibers.

  “You don’t even know my name yet, you little suldaan! I’m Jibreel. Guure is a great friend of mine, he is a happy, generous man, and the best company you can find. When we marched, we used to jostle to be close to Guure, so we could hear his jokes and impressions. He mimicked everyone to perfection, especially the Eritrean bulabashas—time would just fly by. He was always first to start off the marching songs. Do you have a beautiful voice like him?”

  Jama shook his head regretfully.

  “He talked about you a lot, you know. He would sometimes get word of you from askaris who had lived in Aden and knew your mother. He was proud of you.”

  Jama wanted to ask Jibreel if his father had ever explained why he did not send word to them or ever visit but he became embarrassed and instead asked, “Isn’t he a driver?”

  “Maybe. You need identity papers and money and other things, we all left home with only the clothes on our backs, maybe in Gedaref it’s easier. A group of them disguised themselves as Sudanese traders and snuck off in a truck, pissed off with the Italians and their stupid white-man, black-man laws. They want you to step into the gutter when they approach, say master this and master that. I think Guure left just after he saw an Italian sergeant make two askaris drink his piss as a punishment. That’s the way here, it’s not a life but it’s better than death, but good on Guure for getting out . . . The longer you stay, the less of a man you become.” A sleepy soldier repeated this dozily after Jibreel.

  Jama’s appetite for information grew as it was fed. “What does he like look?” he asked with bright eyes.

  “He is smallish, stocky, looks young for his age, your kind of brown, he has a big head, strange yellowish hair, strong arms, big teeth like you.”

  Jama’s face contorted as he tried to picture his father, but the image was too sketchy to be satisfying, and not as handsome as the man in his fantasies.

  Jibreel laughed. “Don’t tax yourself, you’ll soon be able to see him with your own eyes. Your presence here is big news, so it won’t take long for someone to reach Guure and tell him you’re on your way. It’s unlikely he will be able to get back here—they don’t take kindly to deserters—but we will have a collection and see if we can help,” he said with a wink.

  Jibreel put a cigarette to his mouth and Jama watched the way he held it between his lips, struck a match, and let tendrils of smoke escape from his nostrils as he inhaled. “Let me have a try.”

  Jibreel handed the cigarette over with an amused smile; Jama put it to his mouth and sucked too hard, smoke shooting up his nose, singeing all the soft membranes. His eyes watered terrifically and his lungs burned; it was as if he had shoved his face into a thick fire. Jama stifled his coughs and shamefacedly handed back the cigarette.

  Jibreel continued to laugh at him, so he returned to his tent and chewed over everything Jibreel had said.

  As a frontier town, nestled between the borders of Abyssinia, British Sudan, and Eritrea, there was wildness to Omhajer. Every day some askaris would arrive while just as many deserted. It was the Wild West of Eritrea. Jibreel told Jama of the suffering he had seen. Refugee women and children picking undigested grain from cow dung, emaciated men with bodies like mobile skeletons sitting on the road and expiring, their eyes wide open. Gunfire occasionally rang out from the checkpoint and the prison before it was drowned out by market trader calls and donkey brays.

  One day, a week after Jama had arrived, Jibreel appeared dusty and panting, but the herald of good news. “I have just received a message from Guure passed on by a returning Somali merchant. He has become a lorry driver for Ilkacas, a Habr Yunis man in Sudan. The merchant told Guure that you were here in Omhajer.” Jibreel took Jama’s shaking hands in his. “Your father is coming to pick you up.” Jama’s heart fluttered around his rib cage as he drank in this blissful news. He grabbed hold of Jibreel’s waist and squeezed him tight, unable to communicate his joy in another way.

  “Let go, Jama, I can’t breathe.”

  Jama loosened his grip but held on, imagining Jibreel’s lean body was his father’s. Finally Jibreel pried Jama off him and together they looked for askaris to tell the good news to. They handed over celebratory cigarettes to Jama and shook his small hand, Jama could not sit still, could not eat, he laughed hysterically at the askaris’ jokes and grasped them in suffocating embraces. Jama thought about the gifts his father might bring, the stories he would tell, the songs he would teach him, and stayed awake all night.

  Lorries came and went regularly from Sudan, with supplies of cigarettes and other necessities, but still his father did not appear. Each day was an ordeal of waiting, each minute, every hour was not fully lived because his heart was suspended between hope and despair. He hung about the main thoroughfare, teetering around on tiptoe, staring into the cabs of arriving lorries.

  Jama scrutinized the place his father had tarried for so long. It was a khaki kingdom, with absolutely no women to be seen anywhere. Italians stomped around, their skins tanned to nearly the same color as those they professed to be civilizing, whips made from hippopotamus hide hanging from their belts. Somali soldiers, some young, some approaching middle age, some polite, some rough, greeted him as he passed. Nearby, ancient black veterans from the Italian defeat at Adwa in 1896 sat begging, an arm and a leg amputated by the Abyssinians to punish their disloyalty. Jama walked all over the small busy town, avoiding the more secluded alleys and lanes, before returning to the tent with a handful of sultanas and peanuts pilfered from a Sudanese merchant. Each day he got up at dawn and followed askaris around until sunset. His clansmen made him a communal little brother, patting his head and giving him puffs of their cigarettes. They all knew his father and could recount memories of him. He would be passed on from one askari to another like a pack of cards, only returning to his mat at night, when the booze came out and the soldiers favored more adult conversation.

  One windy afternoon, a few days after the news from Gedaref, Jibreel entered the tent, his dark face ashy, and he stared at Jama for a moment. “There is someone here to see you, Jama,” he said.

  Jama trotted by Jibreel’s side, kicking pebbles out of the way and waving to his friends, his face burning with white-hot joy. Jibreel was stiff and silent beside him. Jama tidied himself up, spat on his dry white elbows and knees and fluffed up his hair with his fingers. Jibreel’s eyes were wide and shiny; Jama saw the reflection of a flock of crows taking flight in them. A man spilled a basket of lentils as Jama passed, and crouched down to scoop them up, while a group of Somali askaris stood nearby smoking.

  “Wait here, he’s coming,” mumbled Jibreel, before joining the other askaris. The minutes ticked by as long as days, the sun’s heat felt like a heavy weight on his head, Jama prayed for his father to hurry up, the Arabic words muddling in his mind as mosquitoes buzzed beside his ears. A man came over the horizon, a small cardboard suitcase hung from his fingers. Jama took tiny steps forward. As the man approached, Jama’s heart sank as he looked up and saw a middle-aged, gray-bearded man staring down at him. His skin was a creamy light brown and he wore a red fez perched on the side of his head; his stomach hung a few inches away from Jama’s face. This was not the man he had imagined.

  “As-salamu alaykum, Jama, forgive me, but I come with unfortunate news. Guure’s life has ended, he was on the road from Gedaref when he ran into a military roadblock. He owed a favor to the godforsaken Sudanese merchant who had helped him desert the army, and was carrying weapons to sell to the patriots in crates hidden in the cab, as the Italians neared them he panicked and tried to flee. They shot him there and then. We buried him yesterday in Gedaref. We all live on borrowed time and by the decree of Allah-Kareem, Guure’s time on earth has passed. It was not his fate to see you. Here are his belongings. May Allah have mercy on you.” The man’s word
s swam around him without meaning. They sounded like the crashing of waves or the gurgle of blood to him, their substance broken up and diluted. Jama crouched down on the dirt, covered his ears; he couldn’t breathe, grief had stolen the air from his lungs, drained the blood from his veins. He clawed at the earth to bury himself.

  Jibreel pulled at Jama’s arm but he refused to rise, to open his eyes, and Jibreel withdrew to stand by the wall and wait. At last, Jama inhaled a deep breath and took hold of his father’s flimsy suitcase. The touch of the handle, its shape molded to his grip, its color stained with his sweat, set Jama’s hand aflame. He stared into the stranger’s eyes, and the man nodded and walked away, back over the horizon.

  Jama crouched down, bent over the suitcase, his body taking the shape of the boulders placed above nomads’ graves. He untied the string holding the case shut and delicately opened it. He hoped to find his father’s head inside, just so that he would finally know what he looked like. He wanted to press his hand against his father’s stubble, to trace the face that contained the only likeness of his own. Instead, he found a threadbare mauve ma’awis, a few notes and coins, an amber tusbah, a worn-down toothstick, a stringed musical instrument, and a rusted toy car. Jama pressed his face against the grit of the Eritrean wasteland, his journey at a bitter end. The moon hid in shame and left Omhajer in black. One by one, the planets Jama’s life orbited around had spun away and he floated in starless obscurity.

  OMHAJER, ERITREA, DECEMBER 1936

  A plaintive song creaked out of the wind-up gramophone, a soaring soprano backed by a full orchestra battling against the din of the teahouse. The turntable wobbled with every revolution, its handle turned by a piece of human furniture. The tassel of Jama’s fez fell over his eyes as his body lurched back and forth behind his arm. A group of Italian soldiers sang along to the gramophone, holding their Melotti beers aloft and rocking on broken chairs. Already giddy with power, they sang into Jama’s face, spittle flying from booze-slackened mouths. Askaris walked past and laughed at their inebriated officers celebrating their savior’s birth. Jama didn’t laugh or pay notice to the Italians, he was counting, he was up to six hundred and eighteen turns and would start over again when he reached a thousand. His arm ached but he carried on. Counting occupied the parts of his mind that were becoming unruly and wild, the parts of him that wanted to break off the arm of the gramophone and slit necks with the sharp needle. He swapped arms without losing count and wiped the spittle on his face against his shoulder. The fez had been placed on his head by one of the drunken men to loud laughter as Jama’s head disappeared into it. Even these Italians had probably known his father, had known and owned him more than Jama ever would. A cockerel pranced out onto the terrace, pecking at fragments of roasted corn on the floor. Its long red neck worked up and down like a piston as it made its stately progress between the men’s feet. The voice of a bombastic tenor filled the air and covered up the squawks of the proud bird as he was carried back to the kitchen by the cook, a tight grip around his wrinkled old neck, his yellow feet feeling impotently for the ground. Jama watched the cockerel’s exit and his ear followed the cook’s footsteps, waiting for the scraping of knife against feathers, muscle, tendons. Death seemed inescapable to him now, he wondered at how he had never taken heed of it before. He felt his heartbeat race and skip and tumble over itself but he continued working the gramophone, the resultant music assuring him that he wasn’t dead but real live flesh and blood. The Italians slid off their chairs, and one of them left a lira on the table, plucking his trophy fez off Jama’s head. The Fascist eagle’s beady eyes and outstretched wings threatened Jama from the coin and Jama stared back, his sore arm still needlessly turning the gramophone crank.

  Every day a cockerel heralded dawn with all the urgency of an angel blowing the last trumpet. Jibreel crouched over a short broom, sweeping dust and dirt out of the tent opening, his figure throwing Jama back into darkness each time he passed the doorway. Dust blew up Jama’s nostrils and into his mouth and eyes, gritty and salty. Jama threw his arm across his face but Jibreel continued sweeping around him, motes of dust dancing around his head in the weak-tea-colored morning light. In grief, Jama felt cut off from life, as if there were cotton wool in his ears, in his mouth, in his mind, around his heart. His surroundings seemed muted and distant, even his dreams came to him in dull monochrome. Behind him Jama could hear the daily massacre of cockroaches and dung beetles. The unfortunate creatures did not understand the demarcation of their land and Jibreel’s, so were doomed to be bludgeoned by his broom every morning. Their shells were smooth iridescent gems in the dusty tent, they tinkled like jewels when with a flick of the wrist Jibreel threw them onto the hard soil outside. Jama waited for Jibreel’s shadow to disappear before retrieving his aday toothbrush; he barely spoke to Jibreel and the others now, he could not bear their small talk and laughter. He was approaching his thirteenth year and already his limbs were being stretched on an invisible rack, lengthening drastically and painfully each night. His mother’s amulet hung around his neck, a dull weight. Jama massaged his limbs, pulled himself to his feet, and stalked off toward the teahouse, his head and eyes down to avoid his neighbors’ greetings.

  With a tray of dirty glasses resting in his hand, Jama surfed over the lunchtime wave of diners. The Italians ate first, and only after the last European had his fill could Africans be served. Plenty of saliva and dirt went into those first batches of spaghetti bolognese. A soldier with two stars on his uniform grabbed Jama by the wrist to chase after his order, Jama twisted his hand free and scooted back to the kitchen, and as he ran in, the tray balanced carefully in his hands, he tripped over a headless goat that lay sprawled across the floor. The glasses flew into the air and smashed against the wall. “Bravo, Jama! There go your day’s wages,” laughed the Eritrean cook.

  “Why did you leave the bloody goat in front of the door?” snapped Jama as he brushed dirt off his scraped knees.

  “I need some entertainment, don’t I? Stuck in this smelly hot kitchen all day,” replied the cook, laughing harder at Jama’s peeved face.

  “I’ll get you back, you dameer, just you wait and see!” shouted Jama, taking the hot plates outside. Pain and irritation scrambled Jama’s usually perfect memory, and he handed the plates to the soldiers who shouted loudest for them. A young Italian at a table of officers took them out of Jama’s singed fingers, his dark olive hands passed lightly over Jama’s, and his dark eyes fixed on the boy. Jama looked back at him. The soldier had a thin goat face, his nose was long and hooked, his eyebrows unruly. His lower lip was fuller than the top and he chewed it ruminatively.

  “You’re that boy from the bus, aren’t you? Who nearly got thrown off?” the soldier asked in Arabic. Jama stayed silent.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” he continued.

  “Stop talking to the Africans,” interrupted the Italian’s companion. He slapped Jama hard on his bony rear and shouted, “Move it. Move it!”

  Jama stole a glance at the first Italian before running back to the kitchen, he had recognized him, it was the gangly man who had persuaded the thieving bus driver in Agordat to let him board.

  “What’s the matter, Jama? You look like you’ve been bitten by a devil,” said the cook.

  “One of the Italians keeps staring and talking to me.”

  Cook laughed, “Shayddaans! Here, give me that glass on the side,” Jama handed it to him. Cook turned his back and slowly dribbled urine into the glass, mixing it with tea and sugar and handing the whole concoction back to Jama.

  “Tell him it is free, our special drink for special customers.”

  Jama laughed with sadistic mirth. He took the glass and placed it gently, deferentially in front of the gangly Italian; “For you, signore.”

  The Italian raised an eyebrow, “Well, I guess he does recognize me after all.” He drained the amber filth down his throat in a few long gulps and Jama felt a pang of unexpected guilt at the sight.

 
The last few Italians were clearing out of the teahouse and hungry askaris waited under the shade of a dying acacia. Jama kept away from the gangly Italian after handing him the dirty drink, he hadn’t even told the other boys what he had done. Jama felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped when he saw the man looming over him.

  “Thank you for the drink, it was kind of you,” the Italian began. His lips were wet and Jama turned his face to the side fearing his breath. “You Somali or Eritrean? I still can’t tell yet.”

  Jama drew a shape in the sand with his big toe. “Somali,” he mumbled.

  “You speak Italian? You after a job?”

  Jama shook his head and carried on looking toward the side; he had seen and heard from askaris the value of keeping your distance from the Italians.

  “Suit yourself, but the offer is open if you want it,” said the Italian with a shrug. His black-haired, long fingers felt in his breast pocket and emerged holding delicate wire-framed glasses. Jama watched from the corner of his eye as the fingers fumbled and placed the beautiful glasses on his too-long nose. Jama coveted them. It looked as if a metal-and-glass butterfly had decided to spread its translucent wings across the hard, bony face, giving the Italian a kinder, more thoughtful appearance. With his second pair of eyes in place the Italian strolled off, acknowledging the salutes of the askaris with a loose salute of his own.

  After that day Jama watched the Italian. The Fascist legs splayed open in languorous authority, the booted feet playing with each other, crushing beetles underfoot with a satisfying crunch. Jama’s legs were stiff, tired poles compelled to keep moving, his feet so dry, gray, hard he could barely feel the ground underneath them. The Italian clinked a beer bottle against his friend’s. Jama collected glasses from the broken tables. More and more Fascists and askaris were being sent to fight the guerrillas, and the teahouse had a portentous, melancholy atmosphere. The Ethiopian Arbegnoch were a menace to the Italians; they overran forts, ambushed checkpoints, invaded garrisons. The army of ghosts in white shammas was impossible to fight; with the mournful faces of Coptic saints, the patriots skewered Italians on homemade bayonets. They materialized and vanished as if they had wings under their homespun cotton. Near Omhajer, the famous Abyssinian fighter Abraha and his men in their lion skins stalked the Italians, and like lions they picked off the last man or the last vehicle in a convoy. The trees hid them, the leopards warned them, the wind swept away their footprints.