Black Mamba Boy (11 page)

“Come on, Jama, on to Plateau du Serpent,” shouted Idea. Beyond the cafés and offices of Place Menelik were the colonial residences, and Idea was keen to walk through this forbidden part of town.

Idea pointed down to the road, which suddenly became tarred as it approached the European houses. “Take note, Jama, take note of all the little differences.”

Jama had had many bad experiences with bawabs when he went to admire the big houses in the European settlement in
Aden, but Idea had no fear of them. He raised his arm and shouted “Hoi-hoi” at the uniformed Africans guarding the grand houses. They did not respond; staves in hand, they watched Jama and Idea with hostile eyes.

Idea took a deep breath. “My boy, this is a sad, sordid place. Everything, everyone can be bought here, the poor live above open sewers while the rich frolic in those European hotel pools, gormless, mindless, empty people. The French have us in their palms, feeding us, curing us, beating us, fucking us as they please.”

Jama wasn’t sure what Idea wanted to show him but he was getting nervous that the police would come. Idea took Jama’s hand and they crossed the road to a fenced garden. “Look at that, Jama.”

Under the shade of palm trees hung two swings, a wooden slide led into a sand pit, an empty merry-go-round spun with the breeze. Idea picked Jama up under his legs and threw him over the fence. “Go and play,” he ordered. Jama was caught between childish excitement and adolescent embarrassment, but he obeyed. He tested his weight against the swings then started to push himself a little, worried that he would break the rope and be arrested.

“Go to the other one now,” Idea called out.

Jama slid down into the sand pit and then got into the merry-go-round and pushed uncertainly, not sure what the machine was meant to do. A Somali ayah came along with a flame-haired baby in a crow black carriage; an old Indian ayah led a young boy by the hand. The European children were stopped by neighbors who ruffled their hair and rubbed imaginary marks off their skin. Already the children expected to be fussed over and adored and did not smile at the attention. Jama
knew that everywhere they went they would be offered good things even though they wanted for nothing. In the shops in Aden, Indian merchants would not allow Somali children over the threshold, while Ferengi children ran in and demanded sweets and toys from Uncle Krishna.

“I’ve had enough now, Idea.” Jama extricated himself from the merry-go-round and climbed over the fence. Idea seemed satisfied that he’d made his point, and he held out his hand for Jama to hold, but Jama didn’t take it, he wanted Idea to know that he was a young man, not a child.

The house was filled with a drowning silence, as if there were things going on far away but the sound of them was submerged under meters of water. Jama got up and walked out of the house. He had slept late; the sun was approaching its zenith. He hoped that Idea had gone to the suq as his stomach was already rumbling. Jama walked absentmindedly through the gloomy room and stared at his reflection in the mottled tin mirror. His eyes were sunken and his brown irises were encircled with broad bands of pale blue; his eyes had a look in them that was at once beseeching and proud. Jama’s eyebrows were thick and dramatically arched, his nose wide and flat like a lion’s. His lips were full, and he clenched them together so that he looked manly and serious. His hair was fine and had a blond tinge near the temples from hunger; it had retreated from his forehead, leaving little tufts where his hairline used to be. His chest was embarrassingly bony and he could count all his ribs, and if he turned around all the vertebrae in his spine, too; his arms were as thin, with elbows sharp and jutting. Jama put his fists on his waist and puffed out his stomach and cheeks, to see how he
would look as a fat rich kid. He turned to the side and laughed at his pregnant silhouette. There was movement at the door, and he saw Idea watching with his loopy smile.

“Don’t worry, Jama, you will get a fat belly one day, just look at mine,” Idea said, lifting his shirt over his stomach and slapping his sagging belly. “I could make a fortune dancing for old Yemenis, don’t you think?” he chuckled. “Come, help me cook lunch, there is some meat today.”

Jama trotted over to Idea’s side and handed him the ingredients to chop and kept watch over the lamb as it sizzled with the onions and spices. While washing the dishes, Jama turned to Idea and asked, “How can I get to Sudan from here?”

Idea laughed. “Sudan? What do you want in Sudan?”

“My father is working there, I am going to visit him.”

The smile fell from Idea’s face. “Do you know how far it is, Jama? Our people have been thrown to the four winds. You will have to pass countries where there are wars being fought. Even passing through Djibouti is dangerous. Last year three hundred people were killed in one day when the Somalis and Afars took to their spears again.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Idea shook his head. “What makes you so sure?”

“I can do anything, Idea, I can do anything at all. I walked across the desert by myself, didn’t I?”

“And look at the state you were in! I thought that someone had left their rubbish under the tree and there you were, passed out. Look, Jama, stay here and you will be fine, stay in Aden you will be fine, stay in Hargeisa you will be fine, but go through Eritrea or Abyssinia and you will see things you don’t want to see. Wait here—let me show you something.”

He returned with a frayed book, the spine dangling. “In this book are pictures of our land drawn by Ferengis.” Idea flicked
through the green-and-blue pages until he found the image he wanted. “See this horn sticking out the side? This is where Somalis live. Next to us are the Oromo, the Afar, Amhara, Swahilis down south, all of our neighbors.”

Jama peered over the map, which made no sense to him, How could mountains, rivers, trees, roads, villages, towns be shrunk onto a little page?

“Sudan is here.” Idea plunged a fingernail into a pink country. “We are here.” Another nail pierced a purple spot. “Everywhere in between is controlled by Italians.” Idea smoothed over an expanse of yellow. “All this is an abattoir. The Italians are devils, they might imprison you or put you into their army. I read in the papers every day that ten or fifty Eritreans have been executed. There isn’t a town or village without a set of gallows. They kill fortune-tellers for predicting their defeat and the troubadours for mocking them. A frail Somali boy will be like a little bite before the midday meal to them.”

“Well then, I will take a knife.”

Idea stifled a laugh. “And you will kill them all with your knife?”

“If I have to, I will.”

“You remind me so much of my son, Jama.”

“You have a son?” said Jama with a pang of jealousy.

“I had a son.”

“What happened to him?”

Idea shrugged. “I took him to be vaccinated and a few days later he died. He was a healthy, clever boy just like you, there was no reason for him to die.”

Jama could see tears gathering in Idea’s eyes, so he put his arms around him, holding him tight in his thin arms.

_______

As night fell, the neighborhood filled with lights and music, drumbeats picked up speed and then stopped abruptly. A lute was strummed lightly as men walked past the house. Children, infected with excitement, came out of their homes giggling and chasing one another, getting hot and dusty before being called in for their baths. Incense burners were placed on the street to repel the smell of rotting waste that overpowered the town as soon as the sun came down. The shacks built above the open sewer seemed to palpate and shrink away from the rank churning stench that shimmered beneath them.

“Yallah! Let’s go, there’s a wedding,” shouted Amina when she returned from work. She poured water into a tin bath for Jama to wash, and he went to work with soap, lathering and rubbing away at his skin, trying to remove the never-ending layers of dirt. The red soap was new and hard, and Jama played it up and down his ribs as if he were a zither, until his bones jangled and his red skin hummed. He held his mother’s amulet far away from the water but dared not take it off in case jinns stole it.

When he came out clothes were strewn everywhere; even on the floor, the clothes looked festive and special. There were fabrics shot with silver or gold thread, lacy underskirts, sequinned shawls; dresses cut in daring, flashy, modern ways, deep purples and turquoise, pinks and jade greens, yellows and ruby reds. Amina came into the room looking like a queen, her hair out of its scarf, magnificent gold earrings dripping down from her ears to her neck. A low-cut red dress, glittering with red sequins, fell loosely from her body; gold bangles cascaded as she threw her arms up in delight at Jama’s shiny clean face. Amina left the room and returned wielding eyeliner and a tin with a reclining lady on it. She passed these to Jama to hold.

“Open the kohl for me, my sweet,” Amina said. He carefully
unscrewed the lid, passed the ornate tip to Amina, and she painted her eyelids with a sweep of black.

“Now rouge, please,” she said, admiring her work.

Jama had never seen rouge before and fumbled with the tin, eventually snapping it open and holding out the red goo to Amina. She dabbed some on her fingers and rubbed it into the small apples of her cheeks, her mouth thoughtfully open, and Jama savored her soft breath against his face. Amina’s skin looked dewy but her bewitching black eyes belonged to a wild woman like Salome.

“Get your sandals on, Jama, quickly, quickly,” Amina ordered. Jama awoke from his reverie and looked behind him. She had bought him enormous sandals, with brass buckles at the ankles.

“Thank you, aunty,” he said as he struggled to put the heavy sandals on.

Idea followed them into the night. He wore a baggy beige suit that glowed in the darkness, and Amina had put on oily Yemeni perfume that hung sweetly in the air behind them. She sauntered along, greeting her neighbors as they came out of their houses, gossiping and pinning up their hair. The wedding was to be in the center of the African quarter, at the Hotel de Paradis, and the beat of a drum and the soaring of a female voice could already be heard from the hotel. Young women in high heels tripped up and down the road, ferrying makeup, clothes, and rumors to one another. Around the veranda of the hotel, poor people lingered, their clothes dusted off and their faces spit-shined, hoping to slip into the banquet unnoticed. They followed the Yemeni, Somali, and French guests up a spiral staircase to the roof. The view from the top reminded Jama of the gowned and bejeweled English that he used to see dancing on the rooftops of the expensive hotels in Aden when he
retired to his rooftops with Shidane and Abdi. Those hotels always had African bawabs to shoo away anyone who looked too poor or too black. A band sat in the corner, the drummer chewing qat and the female singer humming softly to herself. They soon realized that the men and boys were drifting toward the back to give the women the prime seats at the front. Idea took Jama’s hand and led him to the wall. The whole neighborhood had turned out to celebrate the teacher’s wedding. The women of Djibouti stalked around him with their perfect makeup, wearing layer after layer of glittery clothing in the sweltering heat. They were so wild and free in comparison with Hargeisa women; they were crude, they flirted with men, jeered at their manhood and their mothers, nothing was safe from them. The food was laid out on tables along the side and the men hung close, pinching small cakes and samosas when the women were not looking.

The marriage was between a Somali man and a Yemeni woman, and Idea said that it might be a difficult match, as the Yemeni women all seemed to be around three feet tall. The band got up and played a popular song that got the crowd clapping and ululating, then the couple came up the stairs. The bride was wearing a large European dress that swamped her tiny frame, her husband wore a dark suit and a fantastic smile, and both had fragrant garlands of jasmine around their necks. They were led forward by their serious-looking mothers and seated on gold thrones. The bride’s friends and female relations rushed up to fuss around with her gown, as guests lined up to kiss and embarrass the groom, and place money in his lap. When everyone, apart from Jama and Idea, had gone up to harass the couple, the food was handed out. Whole families had turned up without invitation to partake of the banquet, and the families of the bride and groom gave freely so as not to bring any bad
luck to the marriage. Frenchmen sat together, looking uncomfortable, grasping their expensive presents between their legs.

Idea turned to Jama. “What do you think of Djibouti?”

“It’s too hot and the Ferengis look stupid but I like you.”

Idea took Jama’s hand. “I like having you here, Jama. Why don’t you stay with me and Amina? I’ll teach you to read and write. You can always find your father when you’ve got taller and bought yourself a bigger knife.”

Jama set his face against this seduction. “No, Idea, I can’t wait, I have been waiting my whole life. I want my father now. What if I wait and he dies?”

Idea understood, he patted Jama’s hand. “All right, Jama, I tried. Let’s see tomorrow how we can get you to Sudan without having your head blown off halfway there.”

The party carried on late into the night, with the women dancing scandalously, broiling inside their hijabs and expensive dresses. Market boys who had not been allowed into the wedding occasionally pelted them from below with handfuls of gravel, and secret lovers took advantage of the crowd and confusion to sneak off together. Amina finally led Jama and Idea back along the dark road to their house, ignoring the illicit susurrations around them. A few sunburnt French legionnaires skulked around in their dirty white shorts, whispering up to their girlfriends’ balconies to be let in. Jama looked up at the sky. Beside the moon was a bright star he had never noticed before; it flickered and winked at him. As Jama squinted he saw a woman sitting on the star, her small feet swinging under her tobe and her arm waving down at him. Jama waved to his mother and she smiled back, blowing shooting star kisses down on him.