Black Mamba Boy

OMHAJER, ERITREA, DECEMBER 1936

A plaintive song creaked out of the wind-up gramophone, a soaring soprano backed by a full orchestra battling against the din of the teahouse. The turntable wobbled with every revolution, its handle turned by a piece of human furniture. The tassel of Jama’s fez fell over his eyes as his body lurched back and forth behind his arm. A group of Italian soldiers sang along to the gramophone, holding their Melotti beers aloft and rocking on broken chairs. Already giddy with power, they sang into Jama’s face, spittle flying from booze-slackened mouths. Askaris walked past and laughed at their inebriated officers celebrating their savior’s birth. Jama didn’t laugh or pay notice to the Italians, he was counting, he was up to six hundred and eighteen turns and would start over again when he reached a thousand. His arm ached but he carried on. Counting occupied the parts of his mind that were becoming unruly and wild, the parts of him that wanted to break off the arm of the gramophone and slit necks with the sharp needle. He swapped arms without losing count and wiped the spittle on his face against his shoulder. The fez had been placed on his head by one of the drunken men to loud laughter as Jama’s head disappeared into it. Even these Italians had probably known his father, had known and owned him more than Jama ever would. A cockerel pranced out onto the terrace, pecking at fragments of roasted corn on the floor. Its long red neck worked up and down like a piston as it made its stately progress between the men’s feet. The voice of a bombastic tenor filled the air and covered up the squawks of the proud bird as he was carried back to the kitchen by the cook, a tight grip around his wrinkled old neck, his yellow feet feeling impotently for the ground. Jama watched the cockerel’s exit and his ear followed the cook’s footsteps, waiting for the scraping of knife against feathers, muscle, tendons. Death seemed inescapable to him now, he wondered at how he had never taken heed of it before. He felt his heartbeat race and skip and tumble over itself but he continued working the gramophone, the resultant music assuring him that he wasn’t dead but real live flesh and blood. The Italians slid off their chairs, and one of them left a lira on the table, plucking his trophy fez off Jama’s head. The Fascist eagle’s beady eyes and outstretched wings threatened Jama from the coin and Jama stared back, his sore arm still needlessly turning the gramophone crank.

Every day a cockerel heralded dawn with all the urgency of an angel blowing the last trumpet. Jibreel crouched over a short broom, sweeping dust and dirt out of the tent opening, his figure throwing Jama back into darkness each time he passed the doorway. Dust blew up Jama’s nostrils and into his mouth and eyes, gritty and salty. Jama threw his arm across his face but Jibreel continued sweeping around him, motes of dust dancing around his head in the weak-tea-colored morning light. In grief, Jama felt cut off from life, as if there were cotton wool in his ears, in his mouth, in his mind, around his heart. His surroundings seemed muted and distant, even his dreams came to him in dull monochrome. Behind him Jama could hear the daily massacre of cockroaches and dung beetles. The unfortunate creatures did not understand the demarcation of their land and Jibreel’s, so were doomed to be bludgeoned by his broom every morning. Their shells were smooth iridescent gems in the dusty tent, they tinkled like jewels when with a flick of the wrist Jibreel threw them onto the hard soil outside. Jama waited for Jibreel’s shadow to disappear before retrieving his aday toothbrush; he barely spoke to Jibreel and the others now, he could not bear their small talk and laughter. He was approaching his thirteenth year and already his limbs were being stretched on an invisible rack, lengthening drastically and painfully each night. His mother’s amulet hung around his neck, a dull weight. Jama massaged his limbs, pulled himself to his feet, and stalked off toward the teahouse, his head and eyes down to avoid his neighbors’ greetings.

With a tray of dirty glasses resting in his hand, Jama surfed over the lunchtime wave of diners. The Italians ate first, and only after the last European had his fill could Africans be served. Plenty of saliva and dirt went into those first batches of spaghetti bolognese. A soldier with two stars on his uniform grabbed Jama by the wrist to chase after his order, Jama twisted his hand free and scooted back to the kitchen, and as he ran in, the tray balanced carefully in his hands, he tripped over a headless goat that lay sprawled across the floor. The glasses flew into the air and smashed against the wall. “Bravo, Jama! There go your day’s wages,” laughed the Eritrean cook.

“Why did you leave the bloody goat in front of the door?” snapped Jama as he brushed dirt off his scraped knees.

“I need some entertainment, don’t I? Stuck in this smelly hot kitchen all day,” replied the cook, laughing harder at Jama’s peeved face.

“I’ll get you back, you dameer, just you wait and see!” shouted Jama, taking the hot plates outside. Pain and irritation scrambled Jama’s usually perfect memory, and he handed the plates to the soldiers who shouted loudest for them. A young Italian at a table of officers took them out of Jama’s singed fingers, his dark olive hands passed lightly over Jama’s, and his dark eyes fixed on the boy. Jama looked back at him. The soldier had a thin goat face, his nose was long and hooked, his eyebrows unruly. His lower lip was fuller than the top and he chewed it ruminatively.

“You’re that boy from the bus, aren’t you? Who nearly got thrown off?” the soldier asked in Arabic. Jama stayed silent.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he continued.

“Stop talking to the Africans,” interrupted the Italian’s companion. He slapped Jama hard on his bony rear and shouted, “Move it. Move it!”

Jama stole a glance at the first Italian before running back to the kitchen, he had recognized him, it was the gangly man who had persuaded the thieving bus driver in Agordat to let him board.

“What’s the matter, Jama? You look like you’ve been bitten by a devil,” said the cook.

“One of the Italians keeps staring and talking to me.”

Cook laughed, “Shayddaans! Here, give me that glass on the side,” Jama handed it to him. Cook turned his back and slowly dribbled urine into the glass, mixing it with tea and sugar and handing the whole concoction back to Jama.

“Tell him it is free, our special drink for special customers.”

Jama laughed with sadistic mirth. He took the glass and placed it gently, deferentially in front of the gangly Italian; “For you, signore.”

The Italian raised an eyebrow, “Well, I guess he does recognize me after all.” He drained the amber filth down his throat in a few long gulps and Jama felt a pang of unexpected guilt at the sight.

The last few Italians were clearing out of the teahouse and hungry askaris waited under the shade of a dying acacia. Jama kept away from the gangly Italian after handing him the dirty drink, he hadn’t even told the other boys what he had done. Jama felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped when he saw the man looming over him.

“Thank you for the drink, it was kind of you,” the Italian began. His lips were wet and Jama turned his face to the side fearing his breath. “You Somali or Eritrean? I still can’t tell yet.”

Jama drew a shape in the sand with his big toe. “Somali,” he mumbled.

“You speak Italian? You after a job?”

Jama shook his head and carried on looking toward the side; he had seen and heard from askaris the value of keeping your distance from the Italians.

“Suit yourself, but the offer is open if you want it,” said the Italian with a shrug. His black-haired, long fingers felt in his breast pocket and emerged holding delicate wire-framed glasses. Jama watched from the corner of his eye as the fingers fumbled and placed the beautiful glasses on his too-long nose. Jama coveted them. It looked as if a metal-and-glass butterfly had decided to spread its translucent wings across the hard, bony face, giving the Italian a kinder, more thoughtful appearance. With his second pair of eyes in place the Italian strolled off, acknowledging the salutes of the askaris with a loose salute of his own.

After that day Jama watched the Italian. The Fascist legs splayed open in languorous authority, the booted feet playing with each other, crushing beetles underfoot with a satisfying crunch. Jama’s legs were stiff, tired poles compelled to keep moving, his feet so dry, gray, hard he could barely feel the ground underneath them. The Italian clinked a beer bottle against his friend’s. Jama collected glasses from the broken tables. More and more Fascists and askaris were being sent to fight the guerrillas, and the teahouse had a portentous, melancholy atmosphere. The Ethiopian Arbegnoch were a menace to the Italians; they overran forts, ambushed checkpoints, invaded garrisons. The army of ghosts in white shammas was impossible to fight; with the mournful faces of Coptic saints, the patriots skewered Italians on homemade bayonets. They materialized and vanished as if they had wings under their homespun cotton. Near Omhajer, the famous Abyssinian fighter Abraha and his men in their lion skins stalked the Italians, and like lions they picked off the last man or the last vehicle in a convoy. The trees hid them, the leopards warned them, the wind swept away their footprints.

A few askaris returned to Omhajer to report back on the front, where the Italians had turned against their own askaris when they could not catch the spectral Abyssinians. One man had seen the Italians force askaris to lie down one on top of another in the muddy water of a narrow river so they could cross along their backs, the men at the bottom drowning, murky water gurgling down their throats.

In this dangerous climate, a few of the lazier boys had been let go, but Jama had held on to his job. The gangly Italian and his stumpy friend got up and stretched out their arms, yawning with afternoon ennui as they picked up their rifles. The other Italian had dark patches of sweat growing out of his armpits, groin, and back.

“Waryaa! Hey, you,” shouted the tall Italian at Jama in heavily accented Somali. “We are going hunting, come and collect what we shoot, there will be a few coins in it for you.”

Jama walked over to the cook, who was standing on the veranda, a cigarette in his hand, and piled all the glasses at his feet.

“I’m off now, I might earn some real money with these Italians,” said Jama as the glasses tumbled against one another with a soft tinkling. The cook took a deep drag on his cigarette and smoke drifted from his nostrils. “Keep your wits about you, Jama. Run away if they start behaving strangely, or you might return as one of their wives.” The cook pursed his lips and blew out a long plume of smoke. “Seriously, be careful, Jama.” The cook winked before putting out the cigarette with his calloused bare foot and padding back to the kitchen.

They walked in line across the Eritrean plains, Jama slowing down to maintain the requisite distance behind them. The shorter Italian was breathing heavily and going red in the heat, a black swipe of hair plastered to his forehead. “This little boy reminds me of my greyhound, both long, lean, black. God, I miss that dog, he knew me better than anyone,” he puffed. “Might be dead by the time we get home. Poor Alfredo, he had problems pissing when I left. I’ll never find a dog like him again.”

The tall one didn’t respond, but took off his glasses to wipe condensation from them.

“Are you a dog man, Lorenzo? City boys never truly understand animals like we do, it’s about understanding what their eyes are telling you, you have to know what an animal needs better than he does. Look at this little black face with us. If we told him to walk over there, he would do it, because he knows that we know better than him.” He stopped to take a swig from his water flask.

Lorenzo stopped ahead of him and took a gulp as well. Jama looked away to hide his thirst but the tall Italian walked over to him and thrust his flask into his hand.

Jama drank, wiped the top of the flask with his sarong, and handed it back to the tall Italian with a small nod of thanks. Jama’s grasp of Italian was sketchy but he understood that these two soldiers were fighting their own private battle. Their arms moved all the time and they threw out their words as if they were grenades. With their fast rat-a-tat speech and whirring arms, they seemed as mechanical as all the other things the Ferengis had brought to Eritrea.

They carried on marching. The grass was high and rustled against their legs as they passed, crickets made small talk within it, birds sunbathed stock-still on branches. Jama noticed a venue of vultures flying overhead, following an imperceptible trail of death. The Italians were after big game, zebras, leopards, maybe one of the few elephants still left in Eritrea, anything to boast about back home. They walked and walked, unable to see anything bigger than a rat.

The short Italian, drenched in sweat and frustration, threw his hands up. “Enough! Enough walking! Let’s stop. We’ll just shoot what we find.”

Lorenzo looked around, there was nothing, just yellow grass and blue sky. “We’ve walked this far, Silvio, why stop now? Near a stream there would be better game,” he reasoned, still walking on ahead with Jama a respectful distance behind him.

“No, no, absolutely not, I am stopping here, tell Alfredo to scare up the birds or something,” panted Silvio. Lorenzo sighed and gave Jama his instructions.

Jama gingerly walked up to a spindly tree and gave its trunk a gentle shake. Nothing stirred. “What’s he doing? Tell him to make some goddamn noise,” barked Silvio with growing irritation.

“Make noise, run around,” said Lorenzo in Somali. Jama felt stupid but he ran around, yelled out, kicked at the grass, beat the scrubby bushes with a stick. A few sleepy birds rose drowsily off their nests and flew straight into a volley of rifle shots, their proud chests blown into a cloud of feathers.

“More, more!” shouted Lorenzo. Jama whooped and swooped.

“That big tree over there now, throw stones at it,” said Lorenzo. Jama ran over to it and did as he was told. A large shape shifted behind the leaves, a leopard hiding in the branches, its ears on end. Jama leaped back and pointed into the foliage. The leopard came scrambling down the trunk, its muscular back gold and black. Lorenzo and Silvio fired shot after shot, but the leopard sprang out of range, just a shadow in the long grass.

Jama looked on as it ran past him and away into a dark tangle of thornbushes and aloes. He chucked the last few stones in his hand at the leopard’s back. “For fuck’s sake, chase it, Alfredo, don’t let it escape, tell him, Lorenzo!”

“It’s gone, Silvio, leave it,” said Lorenzo, lowering his rifle.

“Goddamn it!” exploded Silvio. “A leopard! I said if there was one thing I would bring back from Africa it would be a leopard that I had shot myself, and look! This imbecile just lets it run right away. I’m tired of blacks, I really am, I have had it up to here with them.” Silvio raised his fingers up to his neck.

“Calm down, Silvio, it wasn’t his fault, we weren’t fast enough.” Lorenzo pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face and hands. The gunshots still rang in the air with an electric effervescence. “Come, let’s collect what we’ve got and go back,” said Lorenzo softly.

“Tell him to collect any birds that are still alive,” Silvio demanded.

Lorenzo gave a long sigh and told Jama to collect them. Jama poked around the grass, found a few birds still moving and guiltily picked them up by their wings, piled them in front of the Italians.

“He wants you to grab one by its feet and hold your arm out to the side,” said Lorenzo as he lit a cigarette. Jama did as he was told, though the bird was nearly half his size and it hung heavily, flapping its wings and struggling forcefully for its life, digging its claws into his palm.

Silvio, a few paces away, brought his rifle up. One of his blue eyes scrunched up into a white and pink fist, he moved his shoulders around and steadied his aim. Jama looked at the rifle barrel pointed straight into his face, flared like the angry nostrils of a charging bull, and bit down on his tongue as he realized what the Italian was about to do. But Lorenzo grabbed Silvio’s arm just as he was about to fire and pulled him back.

“What’s your problem? I haven’t come all this way to let little black bastards lose me my quarry,” shouted Silvio, shoving Lorenzo in the chest.

Lorenzo gave him a few sharp slaps in the face. “Calm down! You’re behaving like a fucking animal. If you’re not careful I’ll send you home with a bullet in your fat peasant behind.” Jama looked on in shock, holding his bladder tight.

“Come on, you son of a bitch, Jew, Jew, you fucking Jews think you are so much better than everyone else, I’ll teach you a lesson,” dared Silvio.

Lorenzo grabbed Silvio by the testicles and wrenched them down until his knees buckled and he cried out. Lorenzo released his grip and snarled, “Stay the fuck away from me, Silvio, or I will turn you into a Jew with my fucking teeth.”

The tall Italian’s glasses were twisted across his face and his teeth were bared like an angry dog’s. “Hey, boy! Come on! Let’s go!” he shouted at Jama, his voice strained and hoarse.

Jama walked after him, his knees weak. He stepped around the short Italian as he lay on his side in the dry grass, clutching his groin.

The office was inside a khaki tent. A table sat in the middle of the dirt floor with brown files and papers neatly piled on top, a typewriter sitting silently to the left. Maggiore Lorenzo Leon pinched dried tobacco between his fingers and dropped it into the mouth of his pipe. A cup of coffee steamed beside him. Jama waited in front of the desk.

“Welcome, Jama, what can I do for you?” asked Lorenzo, the pipe wobbling in his mouth as he spoke.

“I want to know if you still need an office boy,” replied Jama, using his best Italian. He played down the kh and gh so common in his own language and mimicked the sibilance with which Italians spoke.

Lorenzo took matches from his shirt pocket and lit the pipe. “Yes, I am going crazy with the dust and filth in here, why don’t you get started now?”

“Si, signore,” said Jama. He stood waiting for an instruction, while Lorenzo carried on smoking his pipe.

“Well?” laughed Maggiore Leon.

“What do you want me to do, signore? And signore… how much will you give me?”

“Good question. Let’s start you on five liras a week. You are only a small thing, I don’t expect to get much work out of you.”

Jama’s heart fell. Five liras! It wasn’t worth leaving the café for, and at least he got fed there, but Maggiore Leon seemed to be an important man, and in a place like Omhajer proximity to importance mattered a great deal.

“Start by sweeping the floor, and then I’ll find something else for you,” continued the maggiore. So you’re not so busy after all, thought Jama, his suspicion rising.

Lorenzo watched Jama’s clumsy sweeping, the broom slipping from his grip. Lorenzo laughed and Jama looked questioningly at him.

“Don’t worry, Jama, I just remembered something,” said Lorenzo, still laughing. If only his friends could see him now, sweating in a uniform, watching a native boy cleaning up for him. He found everything amusing now, Fascism, communism, anarchism, he could only trust in the patently idiotic. The blackshirts marching in front of his balcony in Rome, deliriously howling for an Italian Abyssinia, senile housewives rushing into the street to hand over their wedding rings to pay for Mussolini’s war. Demanding the civilization of a country they could not place on a map. He had joined the army late enough to miss most of the fighting but early enough to benefit from the generous officers’ allowances. To his delight he had also found a few Abyssinian girls to enjoy before the others had infected them with unpleasant diseases, but Omhajer was still a hardship posting after the leisure of Libya — a dusty, impoverished town full of the dregs of the Italian army, and a battalion full of ex-prisoners, alcoholics, and lunatics, few of whom had even finished their elementary schooling. They hated Lorenzo’s books, glasses, rumored Jewishness, and bullied him the way only soldiers can their officers. Lorenzo intended to study anthropology back in Italy so took photographs of the local villagers and notes on their lifestyles and societies; he had learned a smattering of Somali from the askaris, and he had even been invited home for a meal by a well-to-do Sudanese merchant. The other officers were shocked and disgusted at this intimacy with the natives, and one had threatened to report his crimes against racial hygiene to the commander.

Lorenzo had been struck by Jama’s self-possession the day he had been thrown off the bus. Lorenzo sometimes observed Jama muttering to himself in the teahouse and saw him loitering around town late at night, and began to feel sympathy for him. He was always alone, his forehead screwed up in concentration, and he reminded Lorenzo of his own solitary childhood. When Lorenzo’s mother’s letters had first arrived, describing in her unsteady, spidery hand the murders and assaults on Jews in Germany that she read about in the Corriere della Sera, he had brushed aside her concerns, reminding her that she had trundled off to the synagogue the day Italy had invaded Abyssinia to sing the Fascist anthem “Giovinezza” with the other neighborhood crones. “Not in Italy, Mama,” had been his final word on the subject. Now that he had spent time with rough, country Italians, and heard their anti-Semitic jokes and rants, he grew more circumspect and advised his mother to get her savings out of the bank and prepare to leave for France. Soldiers idle in their barracks said incredible things. Even Lorenzo was startled to hear a soldier claim the most exhilarating experience he’d had in the army was firing into a civilian crowd in the Ethiopian highlands when villagers there had protested the massacre of monks at Debre Libanos. “Sir, I am finished. How much will I get as a soldier? Can I become a soldier for you instead?” asked Jama, leaning on the broom.

Maggiore Leon looked at Jama. “Why would you want to be a soldier? You’re so young, you haven’t even stopped growing yet.”

“Well, give me lots of macaroni and I will grow quickly,” argued Jama.

Maggiore Leon laughed. “With teeth as big as yours, I am sure you could get through a lot of macaroni, but no, Jama, you have to be fifteen to sign up and then they treat you like dirt anyway, don’t bother yourself with soldiering. Here, go buy me some cigarettes, you can keep the change.”

Jama went to the Sudanese tobacconist and bought the cheapest cigarettes on offer. When he returned to the office, Maggiore Leon had gone. Jama placed the cigarettes on the table and sat on a chair against the wall to wait. The sun rose to its zenith and flies buzzed lazily in the heat. Jama scratched his mosquito bites and paced the room, driven to madness by the buzzing and the boredom. At last he left the office to search for the maggiore.

Maggiore Leon and the other officers were sitting around in the teahouse, Melottis in hand. “Ah, Jama, I thought you would find me. Do you have the cigarettes on you?”

Jama shook his head and scratched violently.

“Go and collect them for me, then go home. I am not going back in this afternoon. The mosquitoes are vicious here, they’ll eat you alive. When you get to the office, open the desk drawer, there is balm for your bites that you can take.”

“Si, signore,” said Jama.

Back in the office, Jama opened the drawer. It was full of scrunched-up papers, forms, letters, and a small pile of black-and-white photographs. Jama checked the door and pulled out the photographs. They were mainly head and profile shots of local Bilen peasants. There was a picture of a Takaruri man holding up the skin of a baby crocodile, and one of a Sudanese merchant smiling, his hands held out over his goods. The last picture was of a teenage Bilen girl, topless, her arms wrapped around her waist, her expression hidden by ornate gold chains that draped down her forehead and from nose to ear. Jama’s eyes scanned the incredible image. He had only ever seen his mother naked, and this girl looked like a mythical creature, unearthly, he could not tell where or when the photo had been taken.

“Sta’frullah, God forgive us,” he said under his breath. He felt his hands burn as he held it, so he stuffed the photo with the others back into the drawer. Jama retrieved the twisted tube of balm and put the cigarettes in the waistband of his sarong. These Italians were becoming more and more perverse to him, he felt that they would corrupt his soul, no wonder his father, God have mercy on him, had fled them. He thumped the cigarette packet on the table and stomped off as Maggiore Leon shouted, “See you tomorrow,” at his back.

Jama slept in whichever tent had spare ground, not that he managed to sleep much. Millions of mosquitoes congregated in the camp, moving in battalions from body to body while they innocently slept. Jama seemed the only one driven to distraction by them. He constantly shifted around, rubbed his legs together, scratched his bites, and slapped his skin, irritating the men whose dreams he punctured. He used the Italian’s medicine but it just seemed to attract the beasts.

“Allah, you look like something pulled from the earth, what happened to you?” said Jibreel.

“What do you think happened?”

Jibreel felt guilty about Jama, the boy’s soul seemed dimmed. “I’ll get you some aloe,” he offered. “Why don’t you rest for a while?”

The aloe soothed his skin but Jama felt like something evil had entered him, as if a jinn were pounding his head with a club, alternately roasting him on a spit and plunging him into ice-cold water. He shivered and sweated, sweated and shivered until his mat felt like a bucket of water had been sluiced over it. Jibreel watched over him and Jama heard his muffled voice through the pounding in his skull but couldn’t even turn his eyes toward him.

Jibreel folded his arms and unfolded them, took a heavy breath and bent down over Jama. “You have mosquito fever. I don’t know what I can do for you but I will go to the Italian clinic and see if they will give us anything.”

Jama couldn’t remember entering the tent or imagine ever leaving.

The medic refused to give Jibreel anything. The quinine for the askaris had run out and the more expensive medicines were reserved for Italian soldiers. Malaria pounded at Jama’s body and made him feel like he had been attacked by a madman. Without painkillers or quinine, he had to wait and see if this unseen madman would cause enough harm to kill him. Far above him his mother realigned the stars, bartered incense and beads so that the angels would spare her son, and browbeaten, they reluctantly complied.

Jama opened his eyes and instantly closed them again as a scorching wind blew across the plains and threw sand and grit into the tent. He shivered in the heat and rubbed his starved stomach. His skin buzzed with bites, red and angry like fire ants. With his leaden limbs too heavy to move, Jama raised his head and saw a pot on the fire. “Jibreel, get me some food.”

“Well done, Jama, you’re a clever boy, I thought you were gone,” Jibreel said.

“Get me food,” Jama growled. Unable to remember anything, he was in no mood for melodrama.

Before his descent into delirium, Jama had agreed to travel with the maggiore into Abyssinia, to a place called K’eftya, five days’ journey from Omhajer through deserted land; the people had been cleared away to provide farming plots for the Italian colonists. Maggiore Leon took with him four Italian officers, thirteen Somali askaris, and twenty Eritreans in a convoy of speeding trucks to attack an Arbegnoch hideout. Maggiore Leon had a sick feeling about this trip, the emptiness of the landscape depressed him, and he wondered if Jama had disappeared because he had heard trouble was looming. The Italians slept in one truck, the Africans in the other two. Hyenas laughed all night, leopards panted, and watching Arbegnoch held back and waited for the Fascists to drop their guard. Lorenzo slept badly, so he was the first to hear the soft footsteps in the dark. He reached for his gun and clambered to his feet, whereupon Abraha the Fierce cut his throat from ear to ear. Abraha and his patriot gang, hidden by the colluding clouds, worked their way through the Fascist necks and then started on the Africans. They showed no mercy to the traitors, killing even the young Eritrean boy who had been sent to cook for the Italians. A few men ran screaming for their lives into the dark bush; only two returned to Omhajer to report the attack. When a second convoy went to reclaim the Italian corpses, they found them black with flies. The precious white skin had been sliced clean off their faces.

Jama heard about the attack from Jibreel and didn’t know how to feel. Jama’s clansmen had been killed in one of the trucks, and they discussed how the Italians had buried them in mass graves without any prayers. Jama had escaped two deaths in a matter of days but he still felt pursued, he stayed in the tent longer than he needed to, scared of the dangers that lurked outside. The image of the maggiore’s skinned face haunted Jama’s dreams, as did Abraha’s dagger. Only when he heard the other askaris complaining to Jibreel about the boy holed up in their tent, eating their food, did he rise and stagger to the office. He cast a weary gaze over the teahouse as he passed; it was full of new teaboys, Eritreans in long shirts and trousers, their deep pockets bulging with food pilfered from the tables.

“It’s you, is it? Well, your Hebrew friend has gone to meet Jehovah, so if you want to keep working here you better do exactly as I say and never even so much as look at me in the wrong way, got that, Alfredo?”

Jama’s heart sank as he listened to his new superior. He could barely make out the rapid Italian but the cold gaze of the man was as clear as glass. Jama had a strong urge to flee but he lacked the courage or energy.

“Things are hotting up around here, and I need a disciplined, efficient team. I will take insubordination in this office as a form of treason against the empire,” the Italian bellowed to the men.

The office now teemed with soldiers and Eritrean askaris coming and going, preparing offensives against the patriots, reprisals against rebel villages, and purges of mutinous askaris. Jama couldn’t imagine a place for himself in this industrious beehive. The Italian grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and placed him by the desk. “Take this and keep the flies off me,” he demanded, thrusting a fly whisk into Jama’s hand.

Beside the thick arm of the Italian, a coiled hippopotamus-hide karbaash whip waited. Jama knew that despite the pain in his malaria-weak muscles he must continue or risk having his own skin whisked away. Unfortunate civilians and askaris carried the livid geography of lashes on their backs. The Italians used hippopotamus because the tough hide cut through human skin like a razor. One hundred lashes were enough to kill a healthy man, and they were generous with the blows. Jama felt that one stroke of the whip would probably send him to jannah in his delicate state. Standing so close, Jama could count the thin strands of hair greased over the Italian’s pate. He scrutinized the thick line of dirt under the man’s fingernails, the color of old blood.

Jama stood in the busy street after work. He felt strange and dirty, and he hoped he might find familiar company to lose himself in. Dust kicked up by pedestrians and donkey carts glittered in the setting sun, a crowd came up the dirt road. In its midst a local Takaruri crocodile hunter carried a large drum. He was as-saayih, a town crier, and he marched somberly and ceremoniously.

He addressed the bystanders in a sad voice: “Fighters of the land, the seas, and the air, blackshirts of the revolution and the legions, men and women of Italy, of the empire — listen. By decree of Emperor Vittorio Emanuele, all possessions held by the natives of Italian East Africa are deemed to be held only in trust and their true ownership will be adjudicated by colonial legislators. All hunting, fishing, and trapping is prohibited without permission from colonial authorities. O people, hear me, they are telling us we own nothing, and we cannot kill a thing for our mouths without asking them first.” The crowd laughed uncertainly.

“Oh no, this is no joke, my people! They are saying they own everything that lives. These locusts will take the food out of our children’s mouths,” roared the town crier. Jama walked alongside him as he made the announcement at every corner, his voice getting hoarser and more tragic with every declaration.

Jama pulled at the man’s sleeve as they walked. “What will you do? Will you still catch crocodiles?” he asked.

“No, son, not around here. When a jackal is shitting, the ants give it space. I will find some other work for the moment.”

Jama was surprised by the hunter. He could wrestle with man-eating crocodiles but like everyone else had been beaten by the arrogance and violence of the Fascists.

“You’re late, Alfredo!” barked the Italian as Jama ran in one morning. He avoided looking at the angry red face. He had developed a terrible fear of invoking someone’s unrestrained anger; he knew what some people were capable of and hated being around reckless fury. He didn’t try to explain that his sickness had still not left his body. “Scusami, signore,” muttered Jama as he reached for the fly whisk. Jama caught his breath as the Italian grabbed the karbaash and struck him on the palm. Tears shot out of Jama’s eyes and his hand curled up like a leaf in a fire. The Italian stared into Jama’s eyes and Jama stared back, waiting for a glimmer of remorse.

The Italian slowly sat back down, his face calm and unworried. “You dare be late once more and see what happens to you.”

Jama looked down at his palm. The skin was churned up like a freshly dug field, he could see the meat of his hand and the sight made him retch.

“Filthy brat! Get some sand and clean that up.” Jama staggered out. A Somali clansman stopped him in the street and washed his cut and wrapped a clean cloth around it. Jama was sobbing in pain and the clansmen tried to calm him.

“Ilaahey ha ku barakeeyo, God bless you, he will stop you hitting the ground, he will keep your head up,” chanted the clansman. “Go right back inside, Jama, and show him that you are a man. We will get our time, that stupid man doesn’t realize how vindictive we Somalis are.” He smiled and held Jama loosely against him.

“Go now, life is long.”

Jama returned to the office with a scoop of sand and threw it carelessly over the curdling vomit. He refused to make eye contact but picked up the whisk with his good hand. He felt proud and brave as he endured the stinging in his hand, he kept his chin up like a soldier.

It is hard to avenge yourself on someone you fear when everything about them, their height, power, possessions, confidence, imposes a sense of your own inferiority. Even a child’s imagination shrinks in the presence of terror. Jama returned every day to be bullied and shamed, despite the humming sickness in his bones he was like a moth drawn to the harsh light of the Italian’s power. Every day askaris were brought in, and Jama would watch over Silvio’s shoulder as he sentenced them to hanging or flogging or some original torture that he had devised. The Somalis, Eritreans, and Arabs were like dumb little children in front of him. Jama studied the way the Italian operated; he learned that neither physical ugliness nor moral weakness mattered in the world of men. A man was respected if other men feared him, and the Italian had somehow cracked the mystery of manufacturing fear in people. He was unpredictable and uninterested in the camaraderie of his peers, he reminded Jama of a wild boar, always on the verge of attack. There had been boys like that in Aden and they were the most dangerous, drowning smaller children while appearing to play or dropping rocks onto their sleeping heads. There were times when the Italian would try to show his gentility and he would put elegant music on the gramophone as he wrote letters home. With the floating up and down of the swaying music, he would close his eyes and a greasy smile would spread across his face like animal fat over a griddle. He never said please or thank you like the dead Italian had done but he would moderate the usual harshness in his voice while the music played, though soon after he would return to his usual brutality with a slap or thrown pen. Jama invented new insults silently in his head that made him smile patronizingly at the Italian. “Son of a thousand donkeys”; “Son of your sister and grandfather”; “Dirty-bottomed infidel”; “Pig-eating pig”; “Molester of goats and chickens.” But Jama also began to unconsciously emulate Silvio. He stood up straight and stuck his nose in the air, he avoided eye contact, he slicked his hair down with water, swearwords began to pepper his speech.

Today, Silvio was excited and energetic; he had made Jama polish his shoes until Jama could see the hairs in his nose clearly in the leather. The commanders had visited Omhajer and expressed their satisfaction with Silvio’s work. The office was full of Italians playing cards and drinking. One of them had found the maggiore’s camera somewhere and was trying to operate it, fumbling around with its delicate mechanisms. The flash popped like a slice of lightning in the man’s eyes and he threw it back on the table. Jama’s boss picked it up and began to arrange the drunk men in rows for photographs. He demanded someone take portraits of him alone, and he posed with his chin jutting out like Mussolini. He ordered askaris in from outside and with great happiness told them to hold him up in the air; four emaciated Eritreans and a Somali maneuvered him onto their shoulders and grimaced under his weight.

“Take a picture quickly, take it!” shouted the Italian. The askaris looked down as their shame was memorialized. The Italian’s buttocks reeked of too much rich food, and his monstrous thighs felt like pythons around their necks. The other Italians applauded and wolf whistled at him, and as soon as he came down, they all wanted to take a similar photograph to send to their brothers, fathers, wives.

Jama staggered to work the next day, malaria pounding at his head and his legs like weights beneath him. He looked up at the hazy sky; he had to approximate the time from the sun and the events around him. He did not understand the Italian’s insistence on arriving at a particular minute, he thought it stupid of the white man to place so much importance on portioning up time into meaningless fragments rather than following the fluid movement of the sun as rational people did. He hurried as fast as he could and saw the Italian waiting at the entrance of the tent, his hands on his hips, his whip curled up in his fist. Jama turned to run away but his legs were too slow, Silvio grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him off.

Jama called out, “Help me! Help me!” to the Somali askaris but they stood in fearful silence. Jama was brought to a wooden pen where chickens had been kept. It was empty now apart from floating down feathers and streaks of chicken shit. The Italian stopped and kicked Jama ferociously into the pen.

“How many chances do I have to give you? You should all be wiped out, you good-for-nothings. Stay there or I’ll hunt you down and whip that black skin of yours clean off.”

Jama clutched at his side, fearing his ribs had been broken; he cried out in his mother tongue, “To hell with you! You miserable sister-fucking pig,” but the Italian strode away, not deigning to turn his head.

Jama studied the jagged wound on his palm and felt his bruised ribs and demanded that God kill his offender. The clouds dissolved as the sun rose higher and higher. Jama waited to be let out but no one came for him, he stared longingly at the low gate but was too afraid to let himself out. Shooting pains ran through his body when he tried to lie down. An Eritrean askari he did not know gave him a sip of water, hurrying away before anyone could chastise him. The pain in his side, the scalding sun overhead, the twisting hunger in his gut wrenched out pitiful, hesitant tears. He wanted his mother badly, to salve his wounds and hold him to her breast; she would have fought anyone for him, even the Italian, but without her Jama was a nobody. He felt old and hopeless. If his life ended here in this animal pen there would be no prayers, no tears, nothing to mark his life as being worth more than that of a chicken. His stars had failed him and if his mother was still watching from heaven she could feel nothing but shame. Jama watched a figure approach the pen; it was the crocodile catcher with a small tortoise wriggling in his hands.

“What are you doing in here, boy?” asked the crocodile catcher incredulously.

“That swine put me in here,” replied Jama, gesturing toward the tent with his chin. “Where are you taking that tortoise?” he asked back.

“I thought I would take these madmen at their word. I found this little tortoise in my plot eating my tomatoes, so considering we don’t own anything anymore, I thought I would give it to them to deal with,” and with that the crocodile man spat out a wad of tobacco and marched over to the tent.

The crocodile catcher returned with two askaris and they were all laughing uproariously. The Italian had charged the tortoise with theft and given it a seven-day custodial sentence. Jama was to be its cellmate and guard. They placed the tortoise in the pen more gently than Jama had been thrown in, and the crocodile catcher gave Jama a handful of roasted peanuts from his deep pockets.

“Did he say how long I have to be in here?” Jama called after them.

The crocodile catcher turned back to him. “I don’t know, son, but he is a very strange man, his soul stinks. Don’t worry, we will look out for you. I will bring you food later.”

The crocodile catcher kept his promise, he brought Jama food and water and even grass for the tortoise, and kept Jama company as the sun set and the hyenas laughed their way into town. Jama was frightened and tried to stop the crocodile catcher departing by telling story after story, but in the end the man stretched with a loud yawn and went home. Jama was left alone with the wild animals, ghosts, and mosquitoes, wondering what the repercussions would be if he went home for the night. Askaris were known to report on one another to earn rewards from the Italians. Jama stayed awake all night, shivering with cold and jumping at every rustle and crack in the darkness surrounding him. He had images of a lion leaping over the fence and carrying him away by the throat. He had just fallen asleep when the first askaris began to arrive at the office. The next day he was still not pardoned and he spent it turning the tortoise over and studying its head, limbs, and shell. It was a beautiful thing, one of the most perfect of God’s creations. It moved around ruminatively, picking at stray weeds without a care in the world. Its hard shell was a source of envy to Jama with his fragile, damaged flesh.

Only on the third day, with his skin bitten to death, did the Italian call Jama out of the pen. He stood humiliated and furious in front of his tormenter; the Italian chuckled at the sight of Jama covered in dust, then cleared his throat for the satisfaction of a lecture.

“Alfredo, you have been a nightmare for me. I sometimes felt that you were not all bad and had a few brains, but you have disappointed me at every turn. You have been a total, total disaster as an office boy. I don’t know what that communist Jew-boy was talking about when he praised you, maybe he had needs that you satisfied, but I am made of better stock and I have seen your worthlessness. Get out and don’t come back.”

Jama walked out with huge relief, but the Italian yelled after him. “Hey! Hey! Come back here; never turn your back to your superior, boy! Come here and salute me now!”

Jama ignored him and ran back to the tent, picked up his aday and little savings, put them in his father’s suitcase and left Omhajer.