Black Mamba Boy

by Nadifa Mohamed

  “Oh yeah?” slurred Jibreel.

  “Yes. Shidane.”

  While they waited for the ship’s departure date, Jibreel taught Jama how to Brylcreem his hair until it was just so, and then they promenaded around London. At the Serpentine, Jama told Jibreel what had happened to Shidane; at a café in Trafalgar Square he described Bethlehem’s beauty; along the South Bank he explained how he had walked from Palestine to Egypt.

  Jibreel listened and smiled. “I think you are lying to me, Jama. The last I remember of you, you were always sulking, pushing your bottom lip out. You tried to turn all of us into your mother, feeding you, nursing you, giving up our mats for you.”

  Jama laughed. An ocean of time separated him from that little malarial boy in Omhajer.

  Finally, on a bench near Putney Bridge, Jibreel was able to tell Jama where he had been.

  “After you left Omhajer, there was meant be an offensive against the Ethiopian fighters. The Italians brought out huge guns, tanks, poison gas, everything, they meant business this time. The night before we were meant to leave, I thought to myself, Do I want to die for them, is there nothing else? Before the sun came up I fled, I walked all the way to Djibouti then through both Somalilands. In Kenya I stopped, I worked as a shoe shiner at Nairobi station, without shame I polished shoes next to little boys. With a bit of money in my pocket I left again, and in Tanganyika I worked for Omani Arabs, then I got sick of that and jumped on a lorry to Rhodesia. There I worked on an Englishman’s farm, and he said to me, ‘Oh, you’re Somali, you must be trying to find work on the ships,’ and I said to him, ‘What ships?’ and he explained how so many Somalis were working for the merchant navy because it paid so well. I was off! I left that stupid farm and went to find a big port. From Rhodesia I walked to South Africa, and then I had to walk all across that damn country until I came to Durban, where the Royal Navy was. I stowed myself onto a British ship, five years to the day I had left Omhajer, I was caught and put in chains, and when we got to Liverpool I ran away and joined another ship!”

  Jama and Jibreel competed over who had walked the farthest, starved the longest, felt the most hopeless; they were athletes in the hard-luck Olympics.

  “Look here, in that prison cell in Egypt, there were men who were bleeding from every hole in their body and we had to sit in that blood day and night,” Jama boasted.

  Jibreel scoffed, “Paradise! Do you know how many times I have been attacked by leopards? I have their teeth marks all over my back. Lions have stalked me, white farmers have shot at me. Man! You wouldn’t believe the trouble I’ve seen, you have spent most of your time in an Eritrean girl’s arms.”

  They laughed over the things they could speak about, the rest was left to rust in the locked chambers of their hearts.

  Jibreel intended to make London his home. He had grown used to the fast life that sailors lived, and could not imagine returning to chaste Somaliland with his new bad habits.

  “Everywhere I go I meet Somalis, always from the north, standing at a crossroads, looking up to the sky for direction, the poor souls never know where they’re going. They all say the same thing, there is nothing in our country, I’ll go back when I can afford some camels. I think that there are more Somalis at the bottom of the sea or lost in the desert than there are left in our land.”

  Jama thought about what Jibreel said. “It’s because we are nomads, land is the same to us everywhere we go, we only care if there is water and food to be found. When I was farming in Gerset I felt this patch of land is mine, this tukul is mine, I planted this tree so I want to see it grow, now I think wherever my family is, that is where I belong.”

  “You’re Cain and I’m Abel. Give me open skies, wide horizons, and new women. Deep down I will always think that the only thing that comes to a man who stays still is death.”

  Jama could also not stay still; he wanted to pick Bethlehem up and swing her around, to pepper his quiet baby’s face with kisses and make him laugh. With the twenty-four pounds from the Canadian ship he would take Bethlehem wherever she wanted to go, share the wings that fate had given him. Jama intended to buy her jewelry in Keren, take her on the hajj to Mecca, take her to the cinema in Alexandria, make up for every day that he had left her alone.

  “Is this address nearby?” asked Jama, pulling out the scrap of paper Sidney had given him.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  They left the riverside bench and walked up the high street. Jibreel asked a bus conductor for directions and he pointed out a side street. Jama pressed the bell and then stood well back; Sidney appeared through the green leaded glass, a huge bearded merman.

  “Aye-aye, comrade,” Sidney boomed.

  Jama held out his hand and Sidney grabbed it, nearly pulling Jama’s arm out of its socket.

  Jama pointed to his companion. “This Jibreel.”

  “Come on in, lads, I won’t bite.”

  Sidney lived in a flat shared with other navvies. Newspapers, heavy boots, and unopened envelopes lay along the dark hallway. He ushered them into his room.

  It was as sparse and tidy as a hermit’s cave, books were neatly stacked along the baseboard, cold air hissed through the windows, and only the sickle-and-hammer flag covered his thin mattress.

  “What can I do for you, mate? You got into trouble already? Wanna a cup o’ splosh?” Sidney held up his mug demonstratively.

  Jama shook his head, pointed at his biceps. “Tattoo?”

  “What a persistent little sod! I didn’t realize you were so envious of mine. All right, let’s go, just don’t go telling your mum that I took you.”

  The sailors took the number 14 bus to Piccadilly Circus, past the boys waiting under the electric signs for their girlfriends and into the dirty red streets of Soho. Jibreel whispered warnings into Jama’s ear, “The needles are dirty, only Ferengis do it, you’ll change your mind,” but Jama didn’t listen, it was the only way to take home everything he had seen and done.

  “I’ve got another lamb for the slaughter,” Sidney called to the tattooist; he was another burly merman, his arm a picture house of fancy women and animals.

  “Tell him I want a black mamba,” Jama ordered Jibreel.

  The pain was excruciating, fire lapped along his veins and bit at his bones, but with relief Jama watched the bad blood welling out of him, the blood that had pumped fear and grief and pain around his body for so long. From the fire emerged a beautiful black snake. Jama, the black mamba boy, had become a man of the world, his totem etched into his skin as a mark of where he had been and what he had survived.

  “Sterling job,” said Sidney admiringly.

  Jama traced his fingers along the red ridge of ink, the snake pulsated under his fingertips, as if it had crawled out of the earth, through his mother’s belly button, and into his mouth, to watch the world from his arm.

  Jibreel frowned. “Your wife will hate it.”

  “No, I’ll explain to her what it means.”

  “Come, let’s go, we have to get up early for the ship tomorrow,” said Jibreel, shaking his head.

  The steerage-class ticket to Aden dampened in Jama’s clammy hand. “I should buy them something from here,” he panicked, as the barrowmen of East India Docks pushed past him. He blew white smoke over his cold hands and nervously stamped his feet on the icy crystal ground.

  “Leave it, I’m sure they’ll be happy with your pocketful of dirt, but . . . here, take this.” Jibreel pushed five pounds into Jama’s jacket pocket. “Take it,” ordered Jibreel, “I should have known that day I saw you, careering around Omhajer with your big knees, crying out for Eidegalles, that there wasn’t any distance you wouldn’t travel for your family, but times are changing now. You might be able to bring your family back here; I have seen quite a few of our women pushing those baby carts along these streets.”

  They embraced before Jama climbed aboard the P&O ship, his father’s battered suitcase somehow still holding together, even with the many new dreams and fears sque
ezed in between his clothes. Jibreel raised his hat to him and walked along the frozen dock with long, elegant strides, his black overcoat merging into the dark dawn light. The ship pulled away, sliding along the oily serpent back of the Thames, with Jama leaning over the rail, taking long full draughts of London before it disappeared. The great city was painted in charcoal and slate watercolors, with cooing pigeons nestling in her blackened arches and spires. The world beckoned to Jama and he wanted Bethlehem to see it all with him. They would pack up their bags and move like nomads over Africa, over Europe, discovering new worlds, renaming them Jamastan and Bethlehemia if they wanted. Rich English youths were gathered around a gramophone on deck, “Tell ol’ pharaoh to let my people go,” growled Louis Armstrong. Jama let his legs move to the swinging jazz, let his hips whine a little, his shoulders shimmy, anything to free the music trapped within his soul.

  _______

  Looking above him, the stars were hot diamonds scattered over the black earth of the universe. Jama knew that his loved ones were with him. His mother, his father, his sister, Shidane and maybe Abdi were roaming among the stars, arguing, laughing, and watching. He would join them eventually but not until he had devoured all the seeds that the pomegranate world offered. He wanted to be a flesh-and-blood father to his son, a flesh-and-blood husband to Bethlehem, and not to observe the hustle and bustle of life but to be it. A smiling Somali man in a white T-shirt was the sweetheart of the stars, the world was a beating heart around him, all fear and pain momentarily suffocated in its folds. “Hoi hoi,” he called to Bethlehem’s star. He would come home to her a different man, and he knew that she would be changed too. She would be like his mother now, flinty, brave, iron-eyed, with a child growing out of her back. He was ready for that, he was ready for anything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many books and articles informed this novel, but there are a few that deserve special mention: Banjo by Claude McKay, Eritrea 1941 by A. J. Barker, The Yibir of Las Burgabo by Mahmood Gaildon, Exodus 1947 by Ruth Gruber, and An Account of the British Settlement of Aden in Arabia by Captain F. M. Hunter.

  I would like to thank my father, Jama, for many things: laying his life before me—both to admire and to embellish; for his unwavering support in writing this book; and for surviving everything with peace and love in his heart.

  I am indebted to my mother, Zahra Faarax Kaahin. The next book will be for you, hooyo. Wax kasta ood ii karikarto waad ii kartay libaaxaday.

  Yousaf Ali Khan set this book off on its journey into the world.

  Butetown History & Arts Centre, Abdi Arwo, and The Arts Council enabled me to start writing.

  My earliest readers: Hana Mohamed, Dr. Lana Srzic, Dr. Srinika Ranasinghe, Khadar Axmed Faarax, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Liz Chan, Sabreen Hussain, and Emily Hayward. Thank you.

  My family in Hargeisa: Abti Maxamed Faarax Kaahin, Edo Caasha and Edo Faadumo, Liban, Xamse, Saciid, Abbas, Naciima, and all my cousins, thank you for making my journey to Hargeisa so memorable.

  To the friends and family who gave me encouragement or necessary distraction: Ahmed Mohamed, Nura Mohamed, Mary Mbema, Rosalind Dampier, Sarah Khawaja, Attiyya Malik, Danielle Drainey, Mei Ying Cheung, Emily Woodhouse, Sulaiman, and Lies and Saleh Addonia.

  Selma El-Rayah, as-saayih extraordinaire, you championed me and spread the word far and wide.

  Abdi Mohamed and Osman El-Nusairi gave me their time and knowledge.

  Alex Wheatle—the Brixton bard—you set a high standard in so many ways.

  Chenoa Marquis, thank you for that day in the Rhodes House library.

  Dr. Virginia Luling, your timely assistance helped me trace Ibrahim Ismaa’il’s autobiography.

  My gali-gali agent Ben Mason, you saw the pearl in the oyster shell, and your faith and counsel are invaluable to me.

  Courtney Hodell, you are incredible. Mahadsanid for the passion, sagacity, and brilliance you brought to this novel.

  I would like to express my gratitude to Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Mark Krotov, and everyone at Conville and Walsh and FSG for making this novel happen.