Black Mamba Boy Read online

  “Get me food,” Jama growled. Unable to remember anything, he was in no mood for melodrama.

  Before his descent into delirium, Jama had agreed to travel with the maggiore into Abyssinia, to a place called K’eftya, five days’ journey from Omhajer through deserted land; the people had been cleared away to provide farming plots for the Italian colonists. Maggiore Leon took with him four Italian officers, thirteen Somali askaris, and twenty Eritreans in a convoy of speeding trucks to attack an Arbegnoch hideout. Maggiore Leon had a sick feeling about this trip, the emptiness of the landscape depressed him, and he wondered if Jama had disappeared because he had heard trouble was looming. The Italians slept in one truck, the Africans in the other two. Hyenas laughed all night, leopards panted, and watching Arbegnoch held back and waited for the Fascists to drop their guard. Lorenzo slept badly, so he was the first to hear the soft footsteps in the dark. He reached for his gun and clambered to his feet, whereupon Abraha the Fierce cut his throat from ear to ear. Abraha and his patriot gang, hidden by the colluding clouds, worked their way through the Fascist necks and then started on the Africans. They showed no mercy to the traitors, killing even the young Eritrean boy who had been sent to cook for the Italians. A few men ran screaming for their lives into the dark bush; only two returned to Omhajer to report the attack. When a second convoy went to reclaim the Italian corpses, they found them black with flies. The precious white skin had been sliced clean off their faces.

  Jama heard about the attack from Jibreel and didn’t know how to feel. Jama’s clansmen had been killed in one of the trucks, and they discussed how the Italians had buried them in mass graves without any prayers. Jama had escaped two deaths in a matter of days but he still felt pursued, he stayed in the tent longer than he needed to, scared of the dangers that lurked outside. The image of the maggiore’s skinned face haunted Jama’s dreams, as did Abraha’s dagger. Only when he heard the other askaris complaining to Jibreel about the boy holed up in their tent, eating their food, did he rise and stagger to the office. He cast a weary gaze over the teahouse as he passed; it was full of new teaboys, Eritreans in long shirts and trousers, their deep pockets bulging with food pilfered from the tables.

  “It’s you, is it? Well, your Hebrew friend has gone to meet Jehovah, so if you want to keep working here you better do exactly as I say and never even so much as look at me in the wrong way, got that, Alfredo?”

  Jama’s heart sank as he listened to his new superior. He could barely make out the rapid Italian but the cold gaze of the man was as clear as glass. Jama had a strong urge to flee but he lacked the courage or energy.

  “Things are hotting up around here, and I need a disciplined, efficient team. I will take insubordination in this office as a form of treason against the empire,” the Italian bellowed to the men.

  The office now teemed with soldiers and Eritrean askaris coming and going, preparing offensives against the patriots, reprisals against rebel villages, and purges of mutinous askaris. Jama couldn’t imagine a place for himself in this industrious beehive. The Italian grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and placed him by the desk. “Take this and keep the flies off me,” he demanded, thrusting a fly whisk into Jama’s hand.

  Beside the thick arm of the Italian, a coiled hippopotamus-hide karbaash whip waited. Jama knew that despite the pain in his malaria-weak muscles he must continue or risk having his own skin whisked away. Unfortunate civilians and askaris carried the livid geography of lashes on their backs. The Italians used hippopotamus because the tough hide cut through human skin like a razor. One hundred lashes were enough to kill a healthy man, and they were generous with the blows. Jama felt that one stroke of the whip would probably send him to jannah in his delicate state. Standing so close, Jama could count the thin strands of hair greased over the Italian’s pate. He scrutinized the thick line of dirt under the man’s fingernails, the color of old blood.

  Jama stood in the busy street after work. He felt strange and dirty, and he hoped he might find familiar company to lose himself in. Dust kicked up by pedestrians and donkey carts glittered in the setting sun, a crowd came up the dirt road. In its midst a local Takaruri crocodile hunter carried a large drum. He was as-saayih, a town crier, and he marched somberly and ceremoniously.

  He addressed the bystanders in a sad voice: “Fighters of the land, the seas, and the air, blackshirts of the revolution and the legions, men and women of Italy, of the empire—listen. By decree of Emperor Vittorio Emanuele, all possessions held by the natives of Italian East Africa are deemed to be held only in trust and their true ownership will be adjudicated by colonial legislators. All hunting, fishing, and trapping is prohibited without permission from colonial authorities. O people, hear me, they are telling us we own nothing, and we cannot kill a thing for our mouths without asking them first.” The crowd laughed uncertainly.

  “Oh no, this is no joke, my people! They are saying they own everything that lives. These locusts will take the food out of our children’s mouths,” roared the town crier. Jama walked alongside him as he made the announcement at every corner, his voice getting hoarser and more tragic with every declaration.

  Jama pulled at the man’s sleeve as they walked. “What will you do? Will you still catch crocodiles?” he asked.

  “No, son, not around here. When a jackal is shitting, the ants give it space. I will find some other work for the moment.”

  Jama was surprised by the hunter. He could wrestle with man-eating crocodiles but like everyone else had been beaten by the arrogance and violence of the Fascists.

  “You’re late, Alfredo!” barked the Italian as Jama ran in one morning. He avoided looking at the angry red face. He had developed a terrible fear of invoking someone’s unrestrained anger; he knew what some people were capable of and hated being around reckless fury. He didn’t try to explain that his sickness had still not left his body. “Scusami, signore,” muttered Jama as he reached for the fly whisk. Jama caught his breath as the Italian grabbed the karbaash and struck him on the palm. Tears shot out of Jama’s eyes and his hand curled up like a leaf in a fire. The Italian stared into Jama’s eyes and Jama stared back, waiting for a glimmer of remorse.

  The Italian slowly sat back down, his face calm and unworried. “You dare be late once more and see what happens to you.”

  Jama looked down at his palm. The skin was churned up like a freshly dug field, he could see the meat of his hand and the sight made him retch.

  “Filthy brat! Get some sand and clean that up.” Jama staggered out. A Somali clansman stopped him in the street and washed his cut and wrapped a clean cloth around it. Jama was sobbing in pain and the clansmen tried to calm him.

  “Ilaahey ha ku barakeeyo, God bless you, he will stop you hitting the ground, he will keep your head up,” chanted the clansman. “Go right back inside, Jama, and show him that you are a man. We will get our time, that stupid man doesn’t realize how vindictive we Somalis are.” He smiled and held Jama loosely against him.

  “Go now, life is long.”

  Jama returned to the office with a scoop of sand and threw it carelessly over the curdling vomit. He refused to make eye contact but picked up the whisk with his good hand. He felt proud and brave as he endured the stinging in his hand, he kept his chin up like a soldier.

  It is hard to avenge yourself on someone you fear when everything about them, their height, power, possessions, confidence, imposes a sense of your own inferiority. Even a child’s imagination shrinks in the presence of terror. Jama returned every day to be bullied and shamed, despite the humming sickness in his bones he was like a moth drawn to the harsh light of the Italian’s power. Every day askaris were brought in, and Jama would watch over Silvio’s shoulder as he sentenced them to hanging or flogging or some original torture that he had devised. The Somalis, Eritreans, and Arabs were like dumb little children in front of him. Jama studied the way the Italian operated; he learned that neither physical ugliness nor moral weakness mattered in the world of
men. A man was respected if other men feared him, and the Italian had somehow cracked the mystery of manufacturing fear in people. He was unpredictable and uninterested in the camaraderie of his peers, he reminded Jama of a wild boar, always on the verge of attack. There had been boys like that in Aden and they were the most dangerous, drowning smaller children while appearing to play or dropping rocks onto their sleeping heads. There were times when the Italian would try to show his gentility and he would put elegant music on the gramophone as he wrote letters home. With the floating up and down of the swaying music, he would close his eyes and a greasy smile would spread across his face like animal fat over a griddle. He never said please or thank you like the dead Italian had done but he would moderate the usual harshness in his voice while the music played, though soon after he would return to his usual brutality with a slap or thrown pen. Jama invented new insults silently in his head that made him smile patronizingly at the Italian. “Son of a thousand donkeys”; “Son of your sister and grandfather”; “Dirty-bottomed infidel”; “Pig-eating pig”; “Molester of goats and chickens.” But Jama also began to unconsciously emulate Silvio. He stood up straight and stuck his nose in the air, he avoided eye contact, he slicked his hair down with water, swearwords began to pepper his speech.

  Today, Silvio was excited and energetic; he had made Jama polish his shoes until Jama could see the hairs in his nose clearly in the leather. The commanders had visited Omhajer and expressed their satisfaction with Silvio’s work. The office was full of Italians playing cards and drinking. One of them had found the maggiore’s camera somewhere and was trying to operate it, fumbling around with its delicate mechanisms. The flash popped like a slice of lightning in the man’s eyes and he threw it back on the table. Jama’s boss picked it up and began to arrange the drunk men in rows for photographs. He demanded someone take portraits of him alone, and he posed with his chin jutting out like Mussolini. He ordered askaris in from outside and with great happiness told them to hold him up in the air; four emaciated Eritreans and a Somali maneuvered him onto their shoulders and grimaced under his weight.

  “Take a picture quickly, take it!” shouted the Italian. The askaris looked down as their shame was memorialized. The Italian’s buttocks reeked of too much rich food, and his monstrous thighs felt like pythons around their necks. The other Italians applauded and wolf whistled at him, and as soon as he came down, they all wanted to take a similar photograph to send to their brothers, fathers, wives.

  Jama staggered to work the next day, malaria pounding at his head and his legs like weights beneath him. He looked up at the hazy sky; he had to approximate the time from the sun and the events around him. He did not understand the Italian’s insistence on arriving at a particular minute, he thought it stupid of the white man to place so much importance on portioning up time into meaningless fragments rather than following the fluid movement of the sun as rational people did. He hurried as fast as he could and saw the Italian waiting at the entrance of the tent, his hands on his hips, his whip curled up in his fist. Jama turned to run away but his legs were too slow, Silvio grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him off.

  Jama called out, “Help me! Help me!” to the Somali askaris but they stood in fearful silence. Jama was brought to a wooden pen where chickens had been kept. It was empty now apart from floating down feathers and streaks of chicken shit. The Italian stopped and kicked Jama ferociously into the pen.

  “How many chances do I have to give you? You should all be wiped out, you good-for-nothings. Stay there or I’ll hunt you down and whip that black skin of yours clean off.”

  Jama clutched at his side, fearing his ribs had been broken; he cried out in his mother tongue, “To hell with you! You miserable sister-fucking pig,” but the Italian strode away, not deigning to turn his head.

  Jama studied the jagged wound on his palm and felt his bruised ribs and demanded that God kill his offender. The clouds dissolved as the sun rose higher and higher. Jama waited to be let out but no one came for him, he stared longingly at the low gate but was too afraid to let himself out. Shooting pains ran through his body when he tried to lie down. An Eritrean askari he did not know gave him a sip of water, hurrying away before anyone could chastise him. The pain in his side, the scalding sun overhead, the twisting hunger in his gut wrenched out pitiful, hesitant tears. He wanted his mother badly, to salve his wounds and hold him to her breast; she would have fought anyone for him, even the Italian, but without her Jama was a nobody. He felt old and hopeless. If his life ended here in this animal pen there would be no prayers, no tears, nothing to mark his life as being worth more than that of a chicken. His stars had failed him and if his mother was still watching from heaven she could feel nothing but shame. Jama watched a figure approach the pen; it was the crocodile catcher with a small tortoise wriggling in his hands.

  “What are you doing in here, boy?” asked the crocodile catcher incredulously.

  “That swine put me in here,” replied Jama, gesturing toward the tent with his chin. “Where are you taking that tortoise?” he asked back.

  “I thought I would take these madmen at their word. I found this little tortoise in my plot eating my tomatoes, so considering we don’t own anything anymore, I thought I would give it to them to deal with,” and with that the crocodile man spat out a wad of tobacco and marched over to the tent.

  The crocodile catcher returned with two askaris and they were all laughing uproariously. The Italian had charged the tortoise with theft and given it a seven-day custodial sentence. Jama was to be its cellmate and guard. They placed the tortoise in the pen more gently than Jama had been thrown in, and the crocodile catcher gave Jama a handful of roasted peanuts from his deep pockets.

  “Did he say how long I have to be in here?” Jama called after them.

  The crocodile catcher turned back to him. “I don’t know, son, but he is a very strange man, his soul stinks. Don’t worry, we will look out for you. I will bring you food later.”

  The crocodile catcher kept his promise, he brought Jama food and water and even grass for the tortoise, and kept Jama company as the sun set and the hyenas laughed their way into town. Jama was frightened and tried to stop the crocodile catcher departing by telling story after story, but in the end the man stretched with a loud yawn and went home. Jama was left alone with the wild animals, ghosts, and mosquitoes, wondering what the repercussions would be if he went home for the night. Askaris were known to report on one another to earn rewards from the Italians. Jama stayed awake all night, shivering with cold and jumping at every rustle and crack in the darkness surrounding him. He had images of a lion leaping over the fence and carrying him away by the throat. He had just fallen asleep when the first askaris began to arrive at the office. The next day he was still not pardoned and he spent it turning the tortoise over and studying its head, limbs, and shell. It was a beautiful thing, one of the most perfect of God’s creations. It moved around ruminatively, picking at stray weeds without a care in the world. Its hard shell was a source of envy to Jama with his fragile, damaged flesh.

  Only on the third day, with his skin bitten to death, did the Italian call Jama out of the pen. He stood humiliated and furious in front of his tormenter; the Italian chuckled at the sight of Jama covered in dust, then cleared his throat for the satisfaction of a lecture.

  “Alfredo, you have been a nightmare for me. I sometimes felt that you were not all bad and had a few brains, but you have disappointed me at every turn. You have been a total, total disaster as an office boy. I don’t know what that communist Jew-boy was talking about when he praised you, maybe he had needs that you satisfied, but I am made of better stock and I have seen your worthlessness. Get out and don’t come back.”

  Jama walked out with huge relief, but the Italian yelled after him. “Hey! Hey! Come back here; never turn your back to your superior, boy! Come here and salute me now!”

  Jama ignored him and ran back to the tent, picked up his aday and little s
avings, put them in his father’s suitcase and left Omhajer.

  KEREN, ERITREA, JANUARY 1941

  Jama met a group of white-robed and turbaned traders on the road out of Omhajer. A young Sudanese man among them saw the poor state Jama was in and offered him ful medames wrapped in flatbread. They rode a lorry together toward Abyssinia, and before long the trader had agreed to employ Jama as a tea boy in his stalls in K’eftya and Adi Remoz, towns in the vast highlands of the Gondar region. They traveled for five days in the back of the lorry, marveling at the paradise they passed through; the landscape was a juicy emerald green, beside the dirt track were wild mango trees full of frolicking, singing birds, herds of giraffe and zebra gathered around blue watering holes. Jama would have been happy to jump off the lorry and stay in this small heaven but shiftas and patriots lurked among the trees and long grass. It was unsettling to see a place so lush, so full of promise, without one tukul or any kind of human dwelling. They did not see a soul until they reached the outskirts of K’eftya, where Jama and the Sudanese trader jumped off. Jama spent listless days walking around K’eftya, selling tea to the few people who could afford it; loneliness and boredom filled his days. He didn’t want to even remember his mother or father, a new bitterness was infecting the way he thought about them; their mistakes had left him in this destitute state. When it rained he waited under a tree, when the sun returned he would walk, he rarely talked to anyone, just eavesdropped on conversations and stared at the women under their colorful umbrellas. The months crawled past. Far away beyond the mountains, someone else’s bad decisions were about to throw his life into a deeper maelstrom. To crowds of millions, by radio and by special appearances, Benito Mussolini—hands clasping his belt and chin pushed into the air—declared tribal war on Britain and France with proclamations of “Vincere! Vincere! Vincere!”

  Jama and the other tea boys gathered in the market to hear the digested and translated version.