Black Mamba Boy

DJIBOUTI TOWN, DJIBOUTI, SEPTEMBER 1936

No border or sign alerted Jama to the fact that he was in a new country, it was just a feeling of going under. The lorry moved along with its nose pointing down, down until it straightened out in a plateau of bewildering heat. Djibouti looked even more barren and fearsome than Somaliland, and the few trees that dared exist held up their arms in defeat. The earth was bleached white and the few comforts that the Somali desert shyly held out, blossoming cacti, large matronly bushes, lush candelabra euphorbia, were here maliciously denied. The air had a corruption to it, a mingled scent of sleaze, sweat, and goat droppings. Jama could hear people talking in a strange language over the din of road drilling. To his amazement they drove past a knot of reddened European men in tight little shorts, grown men in shorts so small that they nearly revealed what Allah had commanded be hidden. They stood, hands on hips, thick mustaches bristling under their boxy hats, ordering around a group of sweating Somali workers. Jama’s neck craned back to look at these men as the lorry sped past, certain that it was his first glimpse of the dangerous, womanly men of sin he had heard about in Aden. Jama’s hands gripped the planks of the crate as he watched the mysterious men retreat into the distance.

A man with moss green teeth waved him back down. “Fransiis, Fransiis, settle down, they’re just Frenchies, country boy, haven’t you been out of the wilderness before?” His mocking bloodshot eyes stayed on Jama as he sat down and self-consciously composed himself.

A breeze blew into Jama’s face, the smell of salt blowing in from the Red Sea, and the warm wetness of the air gave him an impression of traveling through a town at the bottom of the ocean. The lorry slowed down in traffic, and arms and legs grew out of the blankets around him, stretching and straightening. They had reached their destination. Their lorry sat sadly in the traffic, after so many miles of whistling along clear desert roads, chuggering out sooty smoke from its rattling exhaust pipe. They climbed out of the back, passing a few coins to one of the many arms sticking out of the driver’s cab, heads all fixed ahead, cheeks bulging with masticated qat. Jama felt like fainting; the heat from the vehicles pushed up the temperature by a few more unbearable degrees. Cars and lorries were strung in a neat chain while army vehicles tried to weave in and out of the line, their horns blasting a path through, and muscled pink forearms waved directions at the uninterested crowd. Drivers had left their seats to converse but now they jeered at the pompous legionnaires. Still only on the outskirts of Djibouti Town, Jama could already feel its bustling energy. He approached the beginning of the traffic jam and saw its cause; European soldiers manned a checkpoint and were nearly taking apart the vehicles in search of smuggled goods. Ignoring the complaints and abuse of drivers, banana crates were jimmied open, livestock were released from their pens, sleeping travelers were patted down. Amid all this commotion Jama eased his way around the checkpoint behind the backs of armed legionnaires.

A wide boulevard opened up before him. Jama dawdled along, enjoying the novelty of paving slabs under his feet. In Hargeisa the ground was made up of a hundred different types of sand but there was not one paving slab in the whole town. Here, palm trees grew by the side of the street, evenly paced out like guards. Buildings stood in the distance, with a style at odds with Somali or Adeni construction; they were curvaceous and tall, and built to last much longer than the edifices of the British in Hargeisa. This town was conjured up from the fantasies of its conquerors, a home away from home despite the anti-European climate; a provincial French town picked up and dropped into the hottest place on earth. Stalls were laid out by the street under grass awnings, groups of women sold just watermelons, or just bananas, or just oranges.

As Jama walked on, the street came to life, market boys argued and fought, young mothers with chains of copper coins over their foreheads sat outside chatting as their babies slept. Old women shuffled around barefoot, discreetly begging, suited men came back home for siestas and to await the qat deliveries. A pretty mosque with red and turquoise banners flying from its minarets gave out the aadaan; water was sold from the backs of dozy-looking donkeys like in Hargeisa. No one paid any notice to the eleven-year-old, as this was a town accustomed to a constant tide of newcomers, Yemenis, Afars, Somalis, Indians, French colonials, all feeling that this town belonged to them. There were clashes, love affairs, and friendships among the communities but there was also just plain indifference.

Jama wandered around, happy to be back to the energy of Aden, getting a thrill from the taxis whizzing past, the wet heat wrapped around his body. The shops and stalls, their bright goods laid out for admiration, pulled at him. If it wasn’t for his hunger to see his father, he would have disappeared into the market’s crowded alleys to find friends among the filth and chicanery. Nosy goats peered out from doorways, nibbling delicately on vegetable peels and oily paper wrappers as they silently observed the passing crowd with inquisitive eyes. Their thirsty, frustrated kids jittered around under their feet, trying to grab at their hoisted teats, the milk commandeered for human enjoyment by red, blue, or yellow cloth guards tied around their mothers’ dripping udders. The crush of life around Jama was breathtaking, after the space and wide horizons of Somaliland. It seemed bizarre for so many people to be concentrated in one place. And the noise! It was as if he had been deaf for months and his ears had cracked open, allowing a cacophony of shouting, swearing, music, and arguing to pour in. Men stood around corners in knots, leaning against crumbling walls, their thin chests sticking out from unbuttoned shirts, sweat cascading down their fine features, qat stalks clamped between their teeth, their eyes followed market girls, probing and prodding them as they sashayed past.

Jama sat under a palm tree and scanned around for another lorry, but he was at the heart of a vast shantytown and could see no way out. Under the shade of the palm, surrounded by noise and movement, everything started to swim around Jama, donkey carts traversed the sky and birds flew with their backs to the ground. Jama’s eyes rolled back and his head slammed onto the dirt.

_______

When he woke up, Jama realized he had been moved. He was in a small damp room, facing a peeling blue door that creaked on its hinges with the breeze. Through the dim light he saw a cat with a leopard coat dart out into the street as clattering footsteps approached. Jama shut his eyes quickly as a man and woman entered. “What have you done, Idea?” the woman gasped.

“I found him outside, Amina, he had collapsed under the palm tree. I tried to wake him and give him water, but he was dead to the world, so I brought him in.”

The woman rushed over to Jama and placed a hand on his head. “Honey, you’re burning up, what’s wrong?”

Jama mouthed words at her but nothing came out. She put a glass of water to his mouth, and it burned as it slid down his parched throat. “I’ll get him some rice.” She rushed off, agile legs like springs beneath her, uncovered hair flaring around her in black and gray rivulets. The husband stood over Jama, his mouth lopsided, Jama staring at it from the corner of his eye. When he smiled a row of golden teeth peeked out, and a smile inched across Jama’s face at the memory of Shidane and his silly tale of smugglers hiding diamonds within their gold teeth. The husband, thinking that the boy was smiling at him, released his full, droopy, manic-looking smile, his eyes twinkling in the dark room. “So, who is this strong young man?” the wife called out.

“This boy has come to be my ally, Amina, so I won’t be bullied anymore by you and the hags you call friends,” replied her husband in a deep voice.

“Ignore him, my son, he’s unemployed,” teased his wife.

“Jama Guure Mohamed Naaleyeh Gatteh Eddoy Sahel Beneen Samatar Rooble Mattan,” stated Jama proudly. The man and woman nodded approvingly, hiding their amusement.

“And who are your people?” asked Amina.

“Eidegalle.”

“Ah, a noble Eidegalle has fallen into our Issa hands. Don’t you know our clans are at war?” Idea laughed. Jama was entranced by this eccentric man and his outlandish face. When he was serious, he cocked his head to one side and his mouth was set in a sad slope, but then he would explode with mirth, and his eyes, nose, lips, and teeth would fly in different directions. Jama quickly learned that this man could speak English, French, Afar, and Arabic as well as Somali, but spent his time cooking, cleaning, and loving his wife, who worked as a cleaner in a colonial office.

Idea was the man’s name, or to be more precise his nickname, given to him by his childhood friends because of his intelligence. He had been a teacher in government schools until, disheartened with the uses that the colonial government made of that education, he had put down his chalk and become the only male wife in Djibouti. Idea saw that the schools did not disseminate knowledge but propaganda, blinding the young to any beauty or good in themselves. On hard benches the children were taught everything French and nothing about themselves; they were only dark slates to be written over with white chalk. He spoke to Jama as if he were talking to an old friend. In fact, so beguilingly that Jama lost his guarded manner and told him things in return; how he was going to find his father, why he had left Hargeisa, and how he had learned Arabic and a smattering of Hindi and Hebrew on the streets of Aden. They spoke animatedly in a Somali interlaced with Arabic, attracting Amina’s mockery. “Oh, here he goes again! Always showing off, why don’t you use that babble babble to get a job, eh? No use knowing those birdy languages if you just sit at home.”

Amina’s husband held up a finger. “Jama, let me tell you one thing, while you stay with us, ignore everything this woman says. I swear she is the most ignorant woman you will ever find, she thinks that you make mules by mating donkeys with dogs.” Amina and her husband both cackled at each other’s insults.

Idea prepared that night’s dinner, and it was the best food Jama had ever tasted, fresh spicy fish served with warm, honeyed roti, a dip made from crushed dates, and another sauce of softened banana. Jama picked at the fish bones until there was nothing left on them. It was a world beyond the slop that the male cooks in eating houses served, and Idea looked delighted at the impact that it made on his guest. “Jama, I bet you have never eaten fish before, eh? Just rice and a little bit of camel or lamb. We Somalis have such a wide coast but we hate fish, why is this?” asked Idea ruminatively.

“I have eaten it before! We used to steal anything we wanted from the cafés in Aden.”

“Good for you, but Jama, I see nomads — Somali and Afar to be fair — holding their noses! Actually holding their noses as they walk past the fish market, and you can see their stomachs caved in with hunger! By God, it makes no sense!”

Jama, feeling full and content, leaned back, his stuffed stomach poking into the air. The paraffin lamp was lit and the adults stayed up talking softly into the amber-lit night. The last thing Jama noticed was a downy cotton sheet being laid over him.

In the morning, piercing white light flooded through the window. Jama dozed while Idea opened the curtains, swept the floor, prepared anjeero, and sang songs in different tongues. He was already dressed in a crumpled European shirt and trousers that swung a little above his ankles, thick-strapped brown leather sandals on his feet. Amina had left for work and Idea bumbled around the room, looking at a loss. “So, Jama, what are we going to do today?” said Idea, flicking his hands as if he were scattering his words over Jama, who looked around the room, at the stack of dusty books in the corner, torn pages sticking out of them, at the clothes neatly folded on a shelf, at the pretty gilt-edged mirror with black dots on its surface, and shrugged his shoulders. They sat looking at each other for a minute before Idea said, “Come on, get washed up, I’ll show you around town.” Jama washed his face, brushed his teeth with his finger, and poured some water over his chest and arms.

“The tour will start here from my house, the center of my world,” declared Idea in a clear, authoritative voice. “This mosque ahead of us was built by the Ottomans, heard of them? No? The descendants of Usman, those plump Turkish lords of the east and west. The little flags are meant to represent Islam’s power in all four corners of the world.

“This alley leads to Boulevard de Bender, where our resourceful women sell everything from green chilies to stuffed cobras, pomegranates and leopard skins, medicines and love potions, absolutely everything,” boomed Idea. “I’m sure there are probably even a few souls to be found. There are definitely bodies; the Arabs here sell little boys your age to their cousins over the sea.”

“Do you miss being a teacher?” Jama asked.

Idea stopped walking and looked down on Jama. “No. When I was a teacher I was working for people who had no respect for me or anyone like me.”

An old beggar woman leaned on a stick by the mosque wall, her raisin black hand held silently out to them. A young boy sat by her feet, a solitary leg emerging from his dirty shorts, his hair and eyelashes dust-matted. Idea passed a coin to the old woman. “Come on, I’ll show you the sadhu.” Idea picked up his step, rushing through the alley as its nighttime corruption faded into daylight commerce. Bras were removed languidly from balconies and curtains were drawn as the port women bade farewell to the sailors and retired for the day. Idea moved around like a sniffer dog, barely looking up as he shuffled along, until they reached an open road with taxis buzzing by. In between a shop called Punjabi Fabrics and a scrum of black-market, female money changers was one of the strangest sights Jama had ever seen. An Indian man, naked apart from a strip of cloth around his privates, sat on a crate with his feet pressed into his lean thighs. Orange markings were pasted on his forehead and his long white hair was coiled in a snake’s nest on his head. The sadhu’s eyes were serenely closed; a fat hand-rolled cigarette burned in his left hand, smelling musky and herbal. Jama touched the sadhu’s foot lightly with his fingertips, hoping that the mystic’s flesh would bring him luck or perhaps ignite the good fortune he was said to possess.

“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.

_______

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.