Black Mamba Boy

PORT TALBOT, WALES, SEPTEMBER 1947

The Runnymede Park hung close to the white chalk of England before reaching the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel, and Swansea Bay. Beyond the tubes, funnels, and chimneys of the steelworks, thick smoke hung over Port Talbot. Jama went to Captain Barclay and received his fortune of eighty pounds in an envelope thick with notes. Another hundred pounds and he could live like a suldaan in Eritrea. When Captain Barclay asked if he would be staying on the Runnymede Park, Abdullahi, the serpent in paradise, whispered in his ear, “The next ship will earn you twice this one. If you stay on for a woman you will be the biggest fool in the world.”

Jama wrung his hands, looked over his shoulder at the broad sea, squeezed the envelope in his pocket. “I’ll come with you.”

Captain Barclay shook their hands in farewell and gave Jama his leaving card; his behavior had been marked down as “Very Good.” Jama stepped down onto his Promised Land and put a handful of cold earth into his pocket to take back to Gerset one day. Sidney gave Jama a salute as he left for the train station, a canvas sack thrown over his strong back.

The Somali men found their way to Port Talbot’s main street, and people observed their progress as if they were invaders. Jama felt very conspicuous; everyone was so pale, their skin looked cold to the touch. It was September but a chilly wind swept through the cramped streets and vague specks of rain floated on the wind. Workmen spat and made obscene gestures as the Somalis walked past, and wild-haired women stood in doorways, some holding their brooms out in front of them like weapons, others with come-hither looks in their eyes. The Ferengis’ clothes had been made for fatter people, and large holes gaped in their stockings and the cardigans had been patched and darned. They found the Eidegalle hostel, a damp, brown building in a particularly poor part of town. Here they would sleep, eat, socialize; it was their bank and post office, their only sanctuary while they stayed in the Wild West. A Welsh woman named Glenys worked for Waranle, the hostel owner. She was a bubbly woman, her blond-white hair curled and face painted every day. Glenys enjoyed using her smattering of Somali: “Maxaad sheegtey, Jama?” she would say in her singsong voice, “What you saying, Jama?”

The older men did not enjoy going into town. “What’s the point? They look at us as if our flies were open.” Only rarely could Jama persuade Abdullahi to take him out. Abdullahi would always wear shirt, tie, waistcoat, best suit, and trilby to impress on the locals that he might be colored but he was a gentleman of means. Jama eschewed the stiff, itchy jackets and knitted hats that Glenys tried to force on him. He hated the smell of damp wool, and this foreign cloth brought his skin out in red welts, so he went out in just his thin Egyptian shirts, to everyone’s disapproval.

“Look at this, Jama, another sign, ‘No Blacks.’ There aren’t any other blacks in this town but us! Let’s go back to the hostel,” fumed Abdullahi, pointing out the handwritten sign on the pub door.

“This is just like Eritrea.”

“Of course, and you’d better get used to it, it’s like this all over the world for black men.”

A girl was watching from a café doorway and beckoned them over. Abdullahi tugged at Jama’s sleeve to ignore her, but Jama could not, he walked over to the entrance and sat down at the wooden table.

“There’s nothing to smile about, Jama, she’s just too desperate to refuse our money,” Abdullahi chastised him as he ordered two teas and sat in his finery, looking forlorn amid the cheap clutter.

They finished the tea and Abdullahi left a penny tip for the waitress. “Thank you, sirs!” she exclaimed and bowed before them. It was the first time a Ferengi had ever bowed to Jama, so he gave her another penny to see what she would do. She kissed Jama on the cheek, closed the café door, and ran with her money over to the grocer’s.

Abdullahi laughed. “That’s probably the biggest tip of her life.”

“Honestly?”

Abdullahi continued, “Oh yes, they have a saying in this country, all fur coat and no knickers, understand? On the outside everything looks grand and pompous, but underneath…” Abdullahi waved his hand disgustedly.

“Underneath it’s just abaar iyo udoo-lullul, hardship and banditry, yes, I understand.” Jama laughed.

_______

After their few excursions outside, Abdullahi said it was too cold for him. He would not venture outside until there was another ship to sign on to. Jama became miserable in the hostel, he brooded on his loneliness and felt as if Bethlehem was lost to him, separated by time and distance. He sank deep into melancholy, and spent all his time in his freezing bed, in a room that stank of damp and gas, a sooty old paraffin heater burning all day giving him headaches and nosebleeds. Out the dirty window he could see the faded green hills, molting in patches like a sick jackal’s fur, kissing the low dark sky.

One day, Glenys knocked on his door. “You all right, Jimmy? Haven’t seen you downstairs for days.”

Jama pulled the blanket up to his neck; he didn’t understand what she wanted.

“You’re looking right peaky, lad, get up and I’ll take you out for some fresh air, you can’t keep this fire on all day with the window closed.” She threw Jama’s clothes at him and walked out.

The sailors were playing cards downstairs; they wolf whistled when they saw Jama and Glenys walking out together.

“Waryaa! Where do you think you’re going with her?” Abdullahi yelled.

“I think she is going to take me to her doctor,” Jama stuttered.

“That better be it, Jama, you come straight home after you’ve seen him.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Abdullahi, but you should keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you,” said Glenys before bundling Jama out.

Glenys was twice Jama’s age but she aimed to show him a grand old time. “Doctor? Doctor?” attempted Jama a couple of times, but Glenys had other ideas, they had ice creams and donkey rides on the beach, and climbed the foreboding hills, she showed him the violently green countryside and the fat Welsh sheep.

Finally she treated him to afternoon tea. “See, you didn’t need any stuck-up doctor, did you?” Glenys giggled, happily buttering Jama’s scones for him.

Glenys’s big mistake was to show Jama the funfair as they walked home. One look and he was gone. Machines dedicated to fun and excitement had never existed in his world, and here was a whole field of delirious mayhem, lightbulbs of red-yellow-blue-green flashed and popped, burnt onions and sugar perfumed the air. Raucous songs and melodies played cacophonously over one another, interrupted by random bangs and pings. Most of the rides stood idle but the cheaper ones were flying, the screeches of girls and boys howling down. Rides to frighten, to elate, to compete in, every emotion was for sale, and when the girls saw the dark handsome sailor there was a stampede toward Jama. He was pulled from Glenys’s grip and taken away by a troop of Welsh sirens who wanted candy apples, bumper car tickets, goldfish, all the things they knew Jama could buy them.

Every evening Jama snuck out. “Where are you going now?” Glenys would ask if she caught sight of Jama skulking away.

“To buy a jumper!” he would reply before running off, but he was meeting Edna, Phyllis, Rose, or any other of the fairground girls. The girls cheered when he turned up, and he never got bored of spinning and whirling with them, but his real downfall was the bumper cars. A fix of five minutes cost sixpence, and he drove the cars from afternoon to late in the night, a pretty girl’s thighs squashed by his and another squealing in delight when he crashed into her. He paid for all the girls and even a few boys. “What’s he about?” the boys asked.

“He’s a prince from Africa here on holiday,” the girls insisted.

Jama finally had a chance to play and live his lost childhood and his father’s motoring dream; the frustrations of a caged, demeaned, stunted life exploded out of him in that fairground. Each evening his precious pile of British money diminished until only the shiny bottom of the biscuit tin stared up at him. Now he went to the fairground or to the café with only lint in his pockets and sat watching, hoping that one of the girls would sit by him, but Edna, Rose, Phyllis, and the others coolly cast their gaze somewhere else.

“Eighty pounds! Eighty pounds! You spent all your money on those hussies!” fumed Glenys when she heard he had run out. “Well, back off to the dock with you then, there is a ship to Canada that’s looking for firemen, you better get on it, laddio.”

Abdullahi concurred with Glenys for once. “I signed for that ship today, I’ll take you to put your name down.”

The ship was taking coal to St. John, New Brunswick. Abdullahi took Jama to the British Shipping Federation office, where he gave his name and then put his fingerprint and shaky cross next to the man’s calligraphy.

“You can take your wage now if you want but you will have to wait two months for the next payment,” Abdullahi explained.

“Tell him to give it to me, I owe money to Waranle.” They walked down the street, Jama counting the money.

“Now, in Canada, you will have to wear a jumper, coat, hat, none of this nakedness you have got used to, the cold there will kill you straight, it’s happened before to foolish Somalis,” Abdullahi admonished.

“Twenty-four pounds!” Jama exclaimed.

“What did I tell you! English wages.”

“How long will the voyage take?” asked Jama.

“What’s it matter? The longer it takes the more you’ll get paid. You still want to go back to Africa?”

“I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything. All these men are killing themselves to get here and you wanna go back to one meal a day, heat, thirst… You’re a strange boy to even think about it.”

As the departure date neared, Jama tried to believe that Abdullahi was right, that to return to Africa would be the worst mistake of his life, that he would never have this chance again, that he owed it to himself to go to Canada, that Bethlehem would accept or forgive anything if he came home a rich man. All of this became a kind of philosophy passed on from Abdullahi, that gray seas would be their gold mines, seagulls their pets, hairy blue-veined Britons their companions. Women and Africa were not a part of this exciting new world. Beyond the rationing, the bomb sites, the slumlike housing, the angry dungareed men, Port Talbot was still the Promised Land, with every new technology obtainable, gas cookers, vending machines, top-class radios, picture houses. Even though many white people pulled faces when they saw him, there were unexpected kindnesses, such as an old woman who invited him into her small, cozy home for a cup of tea and who stroked his hair, a photograph of her lost son shining from the mantelpiece; men who asked what Jamaica was like as they escorted him home on foggy nights. There were enough humane Ferengis to make life interesting.

_______

Life carried on peacefully until one day a stranger came to the hostel, a dapper Somali from London. He was looking for Jama.

“What do you want him for?” Abdullahi challenged.

“Family business,” replied the stranger shortly.

“I’ll go get him for you, sir,” said Glenys, dashing up the stairs. “Jama, Jama, open up,” she said, hammering on his door, “there’s a nice-looking man asking for you!”

Jama, alarmed, rushed down the stairs behind Glenys. A black-suited man sat opposite Abdullahi in the sitting room.

He stood up to greet Jama, saying, “Long time no see, cousin.”

Jama grabbed hold of Jibreel’s hand. “Man! Where has this ghost appeared from?” was all that he could say. Jibreel looked like he had stepped down from a film poster, nothing remained of the thin askari that had snored beside him in Omhajer. Shiny black hair, neat thin mustache, black hat in his hand, he was more debonair than anyone Jama had seen.

“Let’s go to your room, I have news.”

Sitting in the damp room, with wallpaper falling down around them, Jama’s heart stopped when Jibreel delivered his news. “Your wife has had a child.”

“Allah!” exclaimed Jama.

“Manshallah, Jama! Praise God, I leave you a sad little boy and now you’re a father before me.”

“Allah!” Jama said again.

Jibreel laughed. “Leave God alone!”

“How do you know?” Jama asked when he had finally composed himself.

“Your mother-in-law wants you to come home, she has been telling every Somali in a hundred-mile radius. An Eidegalle man passed through Tessenei and came by ship to East London, where the news reached me. When I heard that you had arrived here, I couldn’t keep the good news to myself, could I?”

“I have to go to Bethlehem, what can she be living on? I didn’t leave her any money.” Jama embraced Jibreel. “But I’ve taken the Ferengis’ money, they’ll make me go to Canada,” he cried.

“You’ve signed on for another ship?”

“Yes, it’s leaving this week, they know my name, where I live, everything, they fingerprinted me!”

“Settle down, we’ll sort something out.”

Jama hid his face in his palms, imagining Bethlehem nursing his child all alone in their tukul. On the ship his love for her had been like a dove in a cage but it now stretched out its wings and soared. “Is it a girl or boy?”

“Jama, I have a letter here from your wife.”

“Read it to me outside, I can’t breathe in this room.”

They walked to the freezing docks, the sea a thrashing gray whale beside them, the wind tearing through Jama’s cotton shirt. They sat on a wall, smoking Jibreel’s cigarettes, the Runnymede Park bobbing gently in the distance about to depart for Egypt. Jama’s heart flipped over every second.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

Jibreel pulled out an envelope from his jacket pocket. It was covered in fingerprints and worn in places, had clearly passed through many hands to reach him. Inside was a sheet of blue paper covered in Arabic script.

Jibreel read to Jama:

My Heart,

I have been trailing your vapors since you left, I don’t know whether you are alive or dead. I even went to a fortune-teller in Tessenei and he saw you in the grains of his coffee, he told me that you’re safe, on a sea surrounded by Ferengis and Yahudis, but I don’t believe him. My stomach has been growing ever since you left and we now have a son. I came here to the scribe because your boy is a small, sickly thing and I don’t want him to pass away without ever seeing you. Life is silent without you, the birds don’t sing anymore, even the baby is quiet, we sit together in the evening wondering where you are. Sometimes I am angry but other times I feel nothing because I doubt whether you were ever real, whether our marriage was just a dream, whether my child was put in my stomach by sorcery. Nothing grows here now that you have left, our fields and stomachs are empty. I am sending this letter out into the world in the hope that you will remember me, come home one day and tell me that you are real.

Bethlehem

Jama hid his tears from Jibreel. “What is the quickest way of getting to Eritrea?”

“You can either go to Aden and get a dhow to Massawa, or go to Egypt and travel down through Sudan.”

“Which is cheaper?”

“Through Aden.”

“Let’s go, then, I have no time to waste.”

They finished their cigarettes and walked back to Waranle’s hostel. Abdullahi looked harshly at Jibreel as they walked in. “What’s going on, Jama?”

“I have a son,” Jama replied with a weak smile.

“And what? We all have sons, daughters; doesn’t change anything.”

Jama’s face fell; hearing Abdullahi unable to even extend a kind word cut into his heart. Abdullahi was not someone to take counsel from; he was embittered, chasing money around the world without any meaning to his life.

Jama rushed up to his room, packing clothes into his father’s suitcase. “You know, Jibreel, that day you walked me to meet that man, the man from Gedaref, after he told me my father was dead, I sat there until nightfall unable to move, but I promised myself something. I might have been a scrawny, snot-nosed little boy but I promised myself something, that I would never abandon a child of mine, never.”

“Then you became a man that day,” soothed Jibreel.

“All that hardship my mother and I went through, the hunger, the insults, the loneliness… How could I do that to Bethlehem and my son?”

“You couldn’t, Jama, you don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Let’s go, I’m ready.”

Jibreel paid Jama’s bill with Waranle, and a leaving party gathered around the door. Glenys kissed Jama goodbye. “Good luck, son.” The sailors shook his hand, gave him a few coins for his child.

Jama found Abdullahi in the sitting room, sullenly drinking tea. “I’m going, Abdullahi.”

“Well, go then, fool!”

“What will happen about the wage I’ve taken?”

Abdullahi raised his eyes to Jama. “I’ll tell them you’re at death’s door, and you will have to pay them back if you ever return.”

Jama let out a long sigh. “Thanks, Abdullahi, for everything. See you in Africa maybe.”

“Not in a thousand years,” sneered Abdullahi.

The train pulled in at Paddington. “London,” crooned Jibreel. As they walked through the stony city, Jama looked up and saw blackened buildings that looked like the nests of huge violent birds.

“London’s beauty is not in its buildings, Jama, but in its people, you go to Piccadilly Circus and it’s like walking through the crowds on Judgment Day, people come from all over the world with bits of their villages hidden in their socks and plant them anew here. Just in Leman Street we have a Somali barber, a Somali mechanic, even a Somali writer living next to the Jewish grocers, Chinese cooks, and Jamaican students.”

Jama dug out his Welsh soil from his pocket and showed it to Jibreel. He chuckled. “I’ll plant this in Eritrea.”

Jama stayed with Jibreel in his room in Leman Street, talking late into the night. “I wonder what he looks like. I hope he has his mother’s big eyes,” Jama mused.

“Imagine all the generations that have gone into making your son, marriage after marriage, the men, the women, some forgotten, some remembered, Kunama, Somali, Tigre, farmers, nomads, all to make this little worm,” Jibreel said sleepfully.

“I still can’t believe it, only when I see him will I really know what it means,” Jama replied, eyes wide awake in the dark. “But I know what I will name him.”

“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 squeezed 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.