Black Mamba Boy (13 page)

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. Jama 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.

“From the age of five to eighteen, I plowed, and sowed and watered and harvested, hard work like you young people would never believe,” Awrala boasted.

Jama wanted to tell her about all the carcass-delivering he had done in Hargeisa but he left it. A light in her eyes had switched on.

“Then the Italians came and took over his land. Finito! Boof! It was gone, all that hard work wasted. It was beautiful land, so much water and life, unlike our own barren country, but I am still bent over, over a broom now, cleaning Italian villas. Do you want to feel it?” she said, laughing.

Jama was taken aback but his fear of her had gone. He walked behind Awrala, and she guided his hand over the hump. It was as hard and knobbly as a tortoise’s shell, and seemed a heavy thing for such an old woman to be carrying around everywhere. He tried to knead it under his hands but it was too firm.

Awrala chuckled under his fingers. “Enough now, it’s ticklish, get some sleep.”

“Do you want me to tread on your back?” offered Jama, pitying her poor misshapen spine.

“No, no, your weight would break me,” she said, stifling a yawn. She arranged their blankets on the floor and curled up under hers.

“My head is killing me,” Jama whispered.

“Don’t worry, sleep it off. You’re not used to the altitude here,” she replied sleepily.

Jama, unable to sleep, tried to keep Awrala awake. “Don’t you have children?” he asked.

“No, after three husbands I accepted I was barren,” replied Awrala, clicking the beads of her tusbah.

“Why don’t you go back to Hargeisa, then?”

Awrala perked up. “Why should I? I’m not Somali anymore. The place where you are born is not always the best place for you, boy. There is nothing in our country. I have got too used to the rain, hills, and cool air of Asmara. I’ll be buried here.”

Jama listened to Awrala’s breath whistling through her teeth. He understood the desire to find the most beautiful place and stop there. He imagined what Sudan must look like, its rivers, its tall trees and great markets, until he finally fell asleep.

The morning air was frosty and hazy, the grass wet with dew. Everywhere stood moldy green stumps where trees had been cut down for firewood. A smell of burnt coffee and charcoal emanated from the little dwellings, acrid in the sharp air, and Jama coughed and hawked along with the men emerging from the huts. The heat from Awrala’s tea warmed his stomach but his face, fingers, and feet were numb. It was as cold as an October morning in Hargeisa. He had always wanted to see the rumored ice fall from the sky during the dry season, but wondered why God didn’t send the ice to Aden where it was needed more. They left the African reservation and walked down a steep hill; they passed women and girls marching sure-footedly uphill, carrying bundles of sticks and firewood bigger than themselves, their torsos bent over with the strain. To Jama they looked like bewitched women taken over by monstrous humps, with tentacles trying to reach out to other victims. A bus sped
past, and the women jumped quickly out of the way as it skidded dangerously close; the bundles on their backs fell apart. At the front of the bus a few white faces peered out while all the black passengers were squashed in the back. Awrala led the way with a speed that made a mockery of her age, pushing people out of her way. As they got closer to the railway station, Italians appeared, porters trailing behind them with suitcases and large trunks. The station was crammed with workers and travelers milling around like termites. All the men wore hats even though they might be barefoot. On the platform, Jama found the iron beauty that would take him to his father; she had a snub nose and big round eyes, and shone radiantly green through the cloudlike steam.