Black Mamba Boy (12 page)

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Idea walked on ahead to the docks at L’Escale, his arms swinging loosely by his side, absentmindedly patting Jama’s hair. Jama tried to keep up with him, all the time wondering if he really did want to leave.

Amina had woken Jama up before she left for work, and passed him a lunch wrapped in cloth. “Good luck, Jama, I hope you meet your father, but whatever happens, don’t lose faith in yourself. You are a clever boy and with a bit of luck you will live a good life,” she had said before smothering his face in kisses. He had not washed his face after, and those kisses still burned red on his skin.

Jama peered up at Idea’s face. The lopsided smile was still there but there was no joy in it, his eyes were in pain. Jama grabbed Idea’s hand as it swung beside him and held it, thinking secretly that if he didn’t already have a father, he would have chosen to be Idea’s son.

Idea looked down on Jama. “When you go to Eritrea, you will see even more clearly, there are Ferengis who think that you don’t feel pain like them, have dreams like them, love life as much as them. It’s a bad world we live in, you’re like a flea riding a dog’s back, eventually you will end between its teeth. Be careful.

“Above all, Jama, stay away from the Fascists.”

“Fascists? What are Fascists?”

“They are disturbed Ferengis who do the work of the devil. In Eritrea they have tried to wipe us out, in Somalia they work people to death on their farms, in Abyssinia they drop poison from their planes onto children like you.”

Jama nodded, but he couldn’t comprehend not being alive, not feeling pain or happiness, not feeling the gritty earth beneath his feet. Perhaps these Fascists should be avoided, he thought, but he didn’t really believe that they could hurt him.
The very first Ferengi Jama had met had worked at Aden’s Steamer Point. The white man had stuck a sharp needle in his arm and worn gloves to handle him but the Somali man accompanying Jama to Aden had said it would protect him from disease. Maybe white doctors couldn’t be Fascists, Jama thought to himself. They reached the watery expanse of L’Escale. Passenger boats and larger merchant ships were being loaded and unloaded. The porters shouted at one another in Somali and Afar and sang work songs originally composed for nomadic toil to make their loads easier to bear. Idea and Jama stopped at the edge of the concrete. Jama bit his lip and his feet wavered in the air before stepping down onto the decking. He thought about telling Idea that he had changed his mind and wanted to stay, but he knew that he could not bear the betrayal of exchanging his real father for another.

Idea conducted Jama through the crowd. “We need to find out which boat is going to Assab. We have a clansman there, an askari called Talyani. Tell him you are my nephew, he will help you get to Asmara and from Asmara you can take the train.”

Old creaky pilgrims with red beards and white shrouds piled into a small dhow, the boatman filling every square inch of space with penitent flesh. Idea spoke a litany of languages to different officials, trying to find out where the boat to Assab was leaving from. They followed the curve of the harbor around to a quieter area, where a small steamship painted yellow waited on the water. “It’s this one, I think,” called out Idea. He rushed on ahead, skipping up the wooden gangplank.

Jama watched him accost a couple of bare-chested sailors before stopping a Somali man in a peaked cap. Idea counted out francs from his pocket and pointed out Jama, waiting by the ship. The captain waved him over with an expansive sweep of his hand.

Idea waited at the top of the gangplank. “I wish I could make you stay, but this will have to be goodbye for a while, I guess. Learn how to read, Jama. I was hoping to teach you while you stayed with us, but you deserted me. Anyway, come here.”

Idea patted Jama’s cheek and put a handkerchief full of coins into his palm. “It’s not much but it will help.”

Jama held back his tears and hid his face in Idea’s paunch, his heart raced and he held on to Idea’s soft, warm stomach for as long as he could.

He boarded and found a shady place on the deck. “I wish I could run away with you but that woman has me bewitched. Don’t forget me, Jama, learn how to read!” Idea called before he turned his back and returned to Amina. Jama watched Idea’s figure recede into the distance, his feet jiggled by the shaking engine underneath. There were a few passengers mingling about, and a couple of crewmen smoking cigarettes beside the railings. Jama approached them, feeling forlorn all of a sudden. He placed an imaginary cigarette between his fingers, tilting his head back and pursing his lips like the sailors, and invisible smoke curled into the sky. When the sailors finished their cigarettes Jama went to investigate the boat. He followed the small steps leading to the lower deck and tiptoed inside, the smell of old fruit and tobacco emanating from behind shut doors. He wondered where the anchor was kept when they were at sea. It must be an ancient, holy-looking thing, he thought, silver encrusted with green barnacles. He wandered to the end of the walkway and peered through a hatch in the floor. It was black, but Jama could see a figure hunched before a furnace in which a small orange fire blazed, naked apart from a pair of shorts and busily piling up chunks of coal, oblivious to the boy behind him.
Jama understood that Djibouti was kept so hot by troops of little men like him feeding underground fires. He left the fireman to his sweltering work and crept away to the upper deck to rest under the tarpaulin next to the bulkhead.

He dreamed happy dreams, dreams in which he disembarked from the ship to find a grand black car crawling to a stop before him. The passenger door was clicked open by a suited arm, a solid gold watch ticking and beaming against the dark skin of the driver. All those promises his mother had made about him being the sweetheart of the stars looked to him as if they would finally come to pass. He was becoming a man and needed a father to light the way. Jama had so many questions for Guure. Where did you learn to drive? What is it like in Sudan? Why did you not come back for me? Jama felt ready to explode; his sentence was finally over.

The boat shook violently then steered away from the harbor; the wait had been interminable. Jama’s mouth tasted sour and his tongue was dry and cottony. He ate the lunch Amina had prepared for him, putting the cloth over his head against the sharp sunlight. The boat cut a clean line through the clear, green-tinged sea, gliding like a rich European dancer on the rooftops of Aden. The boat journey seemed too easy to Jama; he mistrusted ease and comfort. Jama concentrated on the shoreline, hoping to make out some landmark, something he would recognize from the stories he had heard from Idea, but he recognized nothing. Later, as the sun traveled to the west, painting broad sweeps of pink and orange and red and purple across the sky in its wake, islands appeared on the horizon. Islands ringed in fine white sand, the leaves of lazy-looking palm trees swaying heavily, the gentle coral reefs around them lashed by the dueling waves of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Jama counted seven small islands and realized happily that they were the seven wicked brothers. Idea had told him that they had been evil pirates whom God had caught in a raging storm and turned into islands to be forever whipped by the violent winds and waves of the Bab el Mandab Strait, the Gate of Tears.

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.