Black Mamba Boy

KEREN, ERITREA, JANUARY 1941

Jama met a group of white-robed and turbaned traders on the road out of Omhajer. A young Sudanese man among them saw the poor state Jama was in and offered him ful medames wrapped in flatbread. They rode a lorry together toward Abyssinia, and before long the trader had agreed to employ Jama as a tea boy in his stalls in K’eftya and Adi Remoz, towns in the vast highlands of the Gondar region. They traveled for five days in the back of the lorry, marveling at the paradise they passed through; the landscape was a juicy emerald green, beside the dirt track were wild mango trees full of frolicking, singing birds, herds of giraffe and zebra gathered around blue watering holes. Jama would have been happy to jump off the lorry and stay in this small heaven but shiftas and patriots lurked among the trees and long grass. It was unsettling to see a place so lush, so full of promise, without one tukul or any kind of human dwelling. They did not see a soul until they reached the outskirts of K’eftya, where Jama and the Sudanese trader jumped off. Jama spent listless days walking around K’eftya, selling tea to the few people who could afford it; loneliness and boredom filled his days. He didn’t want to even remember his mother or father, a new bitterness was infecting the way he thought about them; their mistakes had left him in this destitute state. When it rained he waited under a tree, when the sun returned he would walk, he rarely talked to anyone, just eavesdropped on conversations and stared at the women under their colorful umbrellas. The months crawled past. Far away beyond the mountains, someone else’s bad decisions were about to throw his life into a deeper maelstrom. To crowds of millions, by radio and by special appearances, Benito Mussolini — hands clasping his belt and chin pushed into the air — declared tribal war on Britain and France with proclamations of “Vincere! Vincere! Vincere!”

Jama and the other tea boys gathered in the market to hear the digested and translated version.

“Should I plant more tomatoes? Will the Ferengis be buying from here or Adi Remoz?” one woman asked.

“Will we get a railway station now?” asked another.

All the young men were hushed; some wondered whether this war would be as ruinous as the invasion of their country, while others wondered if it would be more profitable to become askaris now or later. Five years after they had conquered a country they could not afford to govern, the Fascists wanted the heady glory of another conquest. In Rome, Mussolini the opportunist, the failed elementary school teacher, the syphilitic seller of ideas fallen from the back of a lorry, calculated how many hundreds or even thousands he would need to claim dead before Hitler would deign to cut him a slice of the victory cake. A few thousand, he told his aides, that’s all. Fascist officers toured Italian East Africa touting for the upcoming attraction, and young Somalis, Abyssinians, and Eritreans were tricked, cajoled, and forced into signing up.

Two enlistment officers finally arrived in K’eftya and set up a table outside the new redbrick police station. A long line of men and boys waited to enlist; Jama passed bright-faced twelve-year-olds running away from home, starving rheumy-eyed farmers, shiftas who had betrayed their fellow thieves, strong village men who could not afford dowries. Jama waited in the midday sun until his turn came. The Italians behind the wooden table laughed at the battered cardboard suitcase clenched in his hand, but they also seemed amused by most of the Africans. They asked his name and age, and told him to give them a twirl. Jama was exactly the kind of indigent boy they were looking for, and he put his thumbprint where they told him, for once neither knowing nor caring where they sent him. They issued him a rifle, a shirt, a pair of shorts, a blanket, a kit bag with all kinds of toys, a knife, tin bowls, field dressing, a water flask, more possessions than he had ever owned — and in exchange all they wanted was for him to join something called 4th Company. They even gave him a flour ration and an adult wage of fifty lira a month. With this he was meant to buy sandals, he had long outgrown the pair Amina had given him, and the Italians thought shoes were an optional extra for their askaris. At his tender age he could not imagine grown men sending him to his death; neither could he imagine the kind of mechanized, faceless slaughter the Italians would bring to Africa.

Jama had never seen war; the only battles he could imagine were the sporadic feuds that nomadic Somalis engaged in, played according to a strict set of courtly rules that forbade the killing of women, children, old men, preachers, and poets. He could feel the money being thrown into this conflict and it thrilled him, it felt like a festival was being prepared. Everywhere he looked, lorries filled to bursting zoomed past. More and more Italians appeared in the highlands and then disappeared back to the safety of Eritrea. Tanks and all sorts of strange vehicles trundled along roads feverishly built ahead of them by tired African laborers. Installed in his company with a quiet, well-behaved commander by the name of Matteo Ginelli, Jama awaited orders. The Italian war machine decided that Jama “Goode” Guure Mohamed Naaleyeh Gatteh Eddoy Sahel Beneen Samatar Rooble Mattan would be most useful as a signaler. He crossed the little Eden in between K’eftya and Omhajer once again, this time in a military convoy, and began his training. He fell in love with his first task: he was to write out messages on the ground to planes flying overhead. With huge strips of white cotton Jama spelled out words, memorizing the squiggles and lines of the Roman alphabet by giving them nicknames. A was the house, B was the backside, C was the crescent moon, D was the bow; his favorite was M, which looked like two boys holding hands. Commander Ginelli called Jama “Al Furbo,” the witty one, for his quick grasp of Italian, and the other askaris adopted this as his nickname. While the other boys asked to see the card again and again to replicate the strange symbols written on it, one look and Jama could copy out perfect messages. Even though planes never flew overhead to read these messages, working in the sun, running about, wrangling with the huge sheets in the breeze with other boys shouting for his help made Jama feel capable for the first time in his life. He practiced writing letters in the sand, mastering “Jama,” “ciao,” and his mother’s and father’s names.

When Commander Ginelli brought two new boys to join the signalers, Jama was too engrossed in his messages to bother looking up, but a sharp slap on his shoulder brought him to attention. It took him a second to recognize the face but there stood Shidane, taller than him now and with a shaven head, chewing on a matchstick. Shidane grabbed hold of him and over his shoulder Jama saw little Abdi looking on with a big smile.

“So, walaalo, fate has brought us together again,” said Shidane, his voice incongruously deep.

“Looks like it,” Jama said uncertainly.

“We thought you were dead! People said that you had been taken to Hargeisa, shitting your guts out, but looks like you’re made of stronger stuff. You would not believe the life I have been living! I found a gold coin in Suq al-Yahud and there are suldaans who have not enjoyed the luxury it bought me,” Shidane brayed.

“So what are you doing here?”

“It was a coin, not a gold mine.”

As they set to work, Abdi told him that they had enlisted only a few weeks earlier, when the Italians had invaded British Somaliland so that they controlled the whole Horn of Africa.

“You should have seen the British pack up their things and run to the coast, my God! It was as if their trousers were on fire,” laughed Shidane, impersonating the British dash out of Somaliland.

Jama laughed happily and remembered how much fun Shidane could be; he had no respect for anyone or anything. Abdi was still quiet and calm, with a serene face caught somewhere between childhood and maturity. Shidane had persuaded him to sign up so that they could earn enough money to travel to Egypt and join the Royal Navy. Joining the navy was all Shidane wanted to talk about.

“Man, you will never believe how much they are paying Somalis to load coal onto the British ships. We are going to be rolling in money, suldaans will want to borrow from us, Ferengis will be jealous of our cars, houses, and women. I’m telling you, Jama Guure, with one month’s pay you could buy more camels than any toothless Garaad.”

Jama was taken aback by the torrent of words that came out of Shidane’s mouth; he didn’t even stop to breathe. “What do you think of these Italians?” Shidane finally asked of Jama.

“Not much. They hate Somalis, and Eritreans or any black people.” Jama thought of telling them about the Italian who had kept him locked up in the chicken pen but realized Shidane would only laugh at him.

“So they’re like the British?” piped up Abdi.

“Yes, but they use more hair oil and my uncle in Djibouti says that they are allowed to kill any African as long as they leave fifty lire on the body for burial. One askari in Omhajer told me that after two Eritreans tried to kill an important Italian in Addis Ababa, the Italians killed thirty thousand Habashis in a few days, and it wasn’t just the soldiers, either. Shopkeepers, barbers, all of them went out with clubs and knives and killed in revenge. I don’t think they left any lire on the bodies, though.”

The boys were silent as they tried to imagine thirty thousand dead. “It would be like a whole desert worth of people,” said Abdi.

“No, it would be like Al-‘Aidarous Mosque filled ten times over,” corrected Shidane. “Maybe we can shoot some of these Italians in the back of the head when they’re not looking, even up the score.” Shidane made a rifle out of his hands.

Jama held his finger to his lips. “Don’t say things like that, you never know who is listening,” he admonished. With Shidane out of earshot, Abdi whispered, “Did you ever find your father?”

“Nearly. He’s buried over the border in Sudan.”

Abdi grabbed Jama’s shoulder. “I will pray for him, and one day you will do hajj for him, agreed?”

Jama nodded.

“Good. Inshallah, we can get rich here and travel to Egypt, or at least steal that airplane you always wanted,” smiled Abdi.

Abdi and Shidane brought joy back into Jama’s life. He laughed deeply, with his head thrown back, for the first time in months. They compared scars, and Jama showed them the two neat nicks Shidane’s blade had made on his arm; Shidane rolled up his sleeve to show off the yellow scar running from his elbow to his shoulder and declared himself the winner. They worked together, ate together, slept together. As a team they spelled out messages for planes that never came near enough to read them. Jama taught them to recognize the letters and they spelled out swearwords when they ran out of official messages. Their commander was relaxed and preferred visiting other Italians to supervising the playful young askaris. Every day more Somalis appeared in clouds of dust along the road, some of them joining the signalers, some traveling to other battalions.

As their messages became more ordered and professional, boredom set in. They were stuck on the outskirts of Omhajer, swallowing dust, so the commander decided to set them on a march. In double file, their packs on their backs, rifles slung over their shoulders, they marched a hundred and thirty kilometers to K’eftya and Adi Remoz, then back again. Shidane carried Abdi’s pack and askaris from Jama’s clan looked after him, carrying his rifle when he dragged it along the ground on the long, thirsty marches. The Somali and Eritrean askaris sang in their own languages, jokingly taunting each other, and a young lieutenant taught them songs; Jama’s favorite was about a Habashi girl taken to Italy after being freed by a Fascist from slavery. “Faccetta Nera, bell’abissina, aspetta e spera che già l’ora si avvicina! Little black face, beautiful Abyssinian, she waits and hopes that the hour is already approaching!” Jama sang loudly. The Italians were obsessed with the local women, and Eritrean girls trailed behind many Italian battalions; some of the camp followers barely had breasts but had already been mistresses to many soldiers. The infants they carried on their backs were not recognized by the Italians and were known officially as the children of X. Jama felt sorry for the thin bundles on the girls’ backs. Despite everything, he had his name and his grandfathers’ names and that made him someone. When he recited his abtiris he felt important; as if he was meant to exist to keep that melodic line going.

Once the signalers had completed the unnecessary marching, the Italian commanders decided to invade Sudan. Flush from their victory in Somaliland, the Italians told the askaris that they were going to kick the British out of Africa completely. Jama was part of another Roman Empire that would conquer this vast antique land. They set off from Omhajer early one morning, their flour rations safely packed, water in their flasks, bullets in their rifles. Shidane had pilfered a few tins of unknown goods and promised to make a delicious meal for the three of them.

“Do you think there will be serious fighting over there?” asked Jama, a ball of nerves gathering in his stomach. He was crossing an invisible boundary in his mind, from the land he knew into the unknown territory that had claimed his father. His footsteps slowed the closer they got to Sudan and it was only Shidane and Abdi’s presence that made him control his rising panic.

“I doubt it. The British can’t fight anyone armed with more than a sharpened banana,” Shidane replied. He was fearless. His name meant “alight,” and he was on fire with intelligence and courage, he could burn with a look, warm with a touch. They passed through plains where grass grew higher than the tallest man, and the singing and dancing quietened as they approached the border with Sudan. Two Eidegalle men were dragging a howitzer on a large-wheeled carriage, and Jama, Shidane, and Abdi hung back with them, smoking and talking.

“Have you had any girlfriends, Ascaro Jama?” Shidane smiled.

“Yes, Ascaro Shidane, women love me.”

“Yeah, yeah, in your dreams they do. I’ve got eight girlfriends.”

“What! You think there are eight days in a week?” Jama scoffed.

“No, I know exactly how many days there are in a week, but you need an extra girl for those special times when you’ve worn one out.”

“Dirty bastard. What about you, Ascaro Abdi, got any girlfriends?”

“No,” cut in Shidane. “He’s already had enough trouble. He made us leave Aden when he was caught with an Arab girl. I saw her with a baby just before we left, and guess what, even from far away I could see the light bouncing off that baby’s big forehead.”

“Ya salam!” Jama laughed. “What really made you leave Aden?”

Shidane and Abdi giggled. “We were caught stealing shoes from outside the mosque. We had new shoes every Friday! Sometimes we even sold the idiots back their shoes saying we had found them in an alley. It was working well until we stole the shoes of a detective, then we were put on the first ship back to the homeland.”

The Italian officers rode on horseback ahead, trying to hide their fear from their charges, but many of them kept ducking into bushes to ease their loosened bowels. When they finally reached the border, panic and jubilation took hold of the hundred askaris and they charged in all directions, searching for something to conquer. There was only desolation; deserted homes, burnt cooking pots, and the paraphernalia of refugees, forgotten shoes and sheets. The invaders passed along dirt tracks, their guns and artillery useless against the oppressive susurrations of cicadas. Just as Jama was about to fall asleep on his feet, he heard shooting, and clambered up a date palm to get a better look. With a pounding heart he saw two white-robed Sudanese policemen on horseback fleeing from the Italians. Their black stallions evaded the bullets and Jama could see puffs of dust where the bullets hit. Askaris fired into the air in excitement and it felt like a genuine battle was taking place rather than a routing of two sleeping policemen by a hundred soldiers. Italian officers chased one another to the saddles that the Sudanese policemen had abandoned in their haste, and held them aloft as if they had found the Ark of the Covenant. Everyone cheered and whistled. “We are part of a victorious army,” the Italians said. “Every man should be proud of what they have achieved here today.”

Shidane, Jama, and Abdi laughed deliriously at the sight of the Italians fighting over the busted old saddles, pushing and shoving one another for the glory of taking home a souvenir from the day they conquered the mighty British Empire. Eventually, some agreement was reached and the saddles were handed over to the askaris to carry back to Omhajer. Four askaris proudly carried the saddles on their shoulders and even Jama and Abdi reached over to touch the old leather for remembrance’s sake.

“We are the testicles of the Ferengis,” sang the askaris, but Shidane frowned at them. “We have thrown our balls away,” he grumbled.

Despite their victorious foray into Sudan, the war was not going well for the Italians. British Hurricanes made raids on Asmara and Gura, shooting to pieces fifty Italian aircraft before they could ever leave the ground and read Jama’s messages. Although the Italian army in East Africa outnumbered the British by four to one and Jama had yet to see the enemy, the Italians were fighting a losing battle. Agordat fell even though the Italians had inflicted heavy losses on the small contingent of Indian and Scottish troops. All it took was for a turbaned sepoy to get too close and yell “Raja Ram Chander Ki Jai,” and Italian officers would drop their guns and head for the hills, they had not come to Africa to die. Barentu was left to the British without so much as a fistfight while the generals in Rome and Asmara desperately tried to find a town for their last stand.

They chose Keren, a Muslim town of whitewashed buildings, camel merchants, and silversmiths; it was nestled like a medieval fort in the bosom of a severe mountain range, with only a small gorge for access. The Italians bombed this gorge with more energy and vitality than they had brought to any other activity in the war. They pulled up their imaginary drawbridge and awaited the Scots, Indians, French, Senegalese, Arabs, and Jews who made up the Allied effort against them. Jama and the signalers were called to Keren along with ninety thousand other askaris and were among the last to arrive, it having taken days of marching with blistered feet and nauseating lorry rides to get there.

On the fifteenth of March 1941, the battle began. Ten thousand shells an hour were fired by the British and Italian guns, and even a mile behind the front, Jama’s bones were rattled by explosions. Jama, Shidane, and Abdi trembled as they watched over the valley where Indian and Italian killed each other over African soil. “Ya salam!” exclaimed Shidane every time a British bomb hit the askaris. Everything became more serious: they were finally taught how to shoot, using cans as targets, and Shidane the Fearless, as he started to call himself, became the best shooter among them. The askaris were constantly scrutinized and observed. The British were said to be using northern Somalis as spies, so the Italians kept them away from the fighting while they still could. Trains regularly brought up supplies to the Italians, and Shidane used his quickly established friendships with Somali cooks to obtain delicacies such as chocolate, tinned chicken, tinned peaches, and his new addiction, condensed milk. His pack always rattled with tins of sweet, thick milk, and he charged askaris for the pleasure of a drop in their tea.

While 4th Company guarded a munitions store near town, caravans of refugees trundled past, some on camels, some on mules, and the poorest on foot, weighed down by their children, fleeing as their country was destroyed. Shidane’s enlistment pay was burning a hole in his pocket, so he frittered it away buying refreshing camel’s milk from the camel merchants. As the battle raged over the hills, Jama made binoculars of his hands and watched explosions that gave the mountains the appearance of erupting volcanoes. It seemed to him that the mountains would eventually crumble under the bombardment. Occasionally, 4th Company had to desert the munitions as the RAF flew ominously over, but the British planes sought out more substantial targets; they scored a perfect, deafening hit on a train bringing ammunition to the Italian front line. The train flew off the tracks as the mortars, grenades, and magazines blew up. The driver in the steam engine tried to race away from the burning carriages but was engulfed in a white-hot inferno. Jama watched the man struggling in the flames, he was a beating heart at the center of the fire, dancing and flailing, refusing to give his life up. It was the most courageous thing Jama had seen in this war.

The boys listened for the roar of the British airplanes, and waited impatiently for the next humiliation to be meted out against the Italians. On the one day it seemed that their signaling would be finally put to use, they looked up eagerly to the sky to see eight Italian planes in formation above them; but they were quickly attacked by three British Hurricanes. In the ensuing dogfight three of the Italian planes crashed one after the other into a valley and the other five limped away. It was so exciting that the Eritrean bulabasha pulled out his whip to quieten the boys. Jama was the first to become afraid of the bombers and began to tie twigs onto his head so the planes could not see him from above. Shidane and Abdi humored him, competitively adding to the foliage until they resembled walking bushes, their faces lost behind veils of leaves.

Every night the British would halt their bombardment for ten minutes to play caterwauling Italian opera on their loudspeakers followed by summaries of all the defeats the Italians had suffered that day. After the Italian-language segment, Eritreans and Somalis working for the British would take control of the microphone and translate the news, exhorting the askaris to desert, offering them rewards and medals if they did so. The askaris did not need much encouragement. Every night under the cover of darkness, thousands crept away, never to be seen again. All the Amhara disappeared when the British reported that Haile Selassie had returned from exile and Abyssinian patriots were pressing on to Addis Ababa. Ogadeni Somalis returned to their families and camels when leaflets were dropped on their heads, reporting that rebellion was brewing in Hararghe. Saturn and Mars had slid into conjunction, and the nomadic Somalis saw that a great defeat lay before the Italians and left before the stars punished them, too. That left a hodgepodge of Eritreans and young urban Somalis who used the leaflets to wipe their bottoms. From the ninety thousand askaris who had been present at the start of the battle for Keren, sixty thousand remained. The Italians tried to keep these obedient by shooting deserters or tying hands and feet behind backs and throwing insubordinate men into mountain gullies where jackals waited for them. The Italians also reprised one of their special forms of execution: they tied mutinous askaris, usually nomadic Somalis unused to taking orders, to the backs of lorries and accelerated along the rough road until there was nothing left on the end of the rope apart from a pair of manacled hands. One askari showed Jama and the boys a postcard he had bought from a hawker in Mogadishu. They squinted at the picture of the lorry, unable to see anything of interest. “Allah,” shouted Abdi, and he pointed to the shackled hands that hung off the back, piously cupped as if in prayer, but the wrists were shredded stumps, inscribing their curses in bloody script on the dusty road.

“Where’s the rest of them?” asked Jama.

“Probably still along the roadside,” said the askari, taking back his postcard.

Every askari returned from the front line with tales of the daily carnage, the lack of sleep, dead bodies exploding in the heat, men going mad with shellshock, the evil ways in which the Italians humiliated their black comrades.

“The lieutenant told me to bury the white bodies but to leave the black to rot. I couldn’t believe it, we had all just sacrificed our fucking lives for them,” raged one Eritrean askari. “When I said I would bury them all together, he raised his pistol to me.”

Jama, Abdi, and Shidane listened to these stories at night around the campfire. “Let’s stay until we have earned enough money to travel to Egypt,” Jama agreed. They hadn’t yet seen the violence and savagery of the war close up and still believed they could escape it altogether. At night, the askaris pooled their flour rations and cooked together. Shidane usually commandeered the pots and pans to make lahoh and surprisingly delicious stews with stolen cooking oil and spices.

“My mother is the best cook in Aden, she doesn’t make the sloppy bowls of grease you people are used to,” he boasted.

They crouched down around the fire and burned their fingers trying to get to the stew before the others. Even if bombing sorties flew overhead, the men would rather stay put in the open than risk missing out on Shidane’s cooking. Some jittery ones would be half standing, half crouched, nibbling the sour bread between shaking fingers. A man jumped out of his skin as a munitions store exploded, and put his foot right into the boiling pot. The askaris jumped up in a rage.

“Waryaa fulay! Hey, coward! Look where you’re stepping, get your dirty feet out of our food!” the boys shouted at him with no concern for the red, scalded foot he pulled out of the cauldron.

Jama and the boys angrily returned to the food as the man shuffled away. They slept huddled together behind a boulder. Shidane, as always, slept with one eye open like a caiman, keeping guard over his charges. When it was too loud to sleep, Shidane told ghost stories that made Jama hold his breath. Backlit by the bombs, he would describe all the kinds of evil that he had seen.

“Wallaahi, may God strike me down this moment if even one word is untrue. One night when you two were snoring away, I saw something hunched moving down the mountain, it had white, white skin and long claws that scratched against the rock. I closed my eyes, thinking I must be dreaming, but when I opened them again, the thing was stood up like a man. Its red eyes were looking right at me so I ducked down behind a rock, praying for my life. The English had stopped bombing and everything was totally black. I lit a match, thinking the beast was coming for me, but it had already found a victim. It had an askari by the throat and it was carrying the limp man back up the mountain. It disappeared, but all night I could hear bones breaking and flesh being ripped apart. There are cannibals here, I am sure of it.”

Jama could believe anything Shidane reported. He hated the strange noises that carried on the air on quiet nights: growls, howls, screams, prayers. The wounded askaris’ pleas of “Brothers, help me” would turn into “May you all be damned to hell” before there was silence.

The stench of bodies grew. Jama was separated from Shidane and Abdi, sent with a small unit to defend a munitions store close to the front line, while they were ordered to Keren to collect binoculars for the Italian officers. They were to leave their secluded dugout, behind its sandbags and hidden mines, and venture out into the tumultuous expanse beyond.

Shidane embraced Jama. “Don’t worry, walaalo, I will have a mouthwatering meal waiting for you. If it gets too bad up there, desert and leave a message with one of your clansmen, and we will come and find you, Al Furbo,” he said.

Jama didn’t dare speak, his voice would betray him. He climbed onto the lorry with shaking legs. Shidane stood proud in his uniform as he waved goodbye. From a distance the dirt on it was invisible and Shidane looked more elegant than any other askari, with his handsome brown face, bright eyes, and long limbs.

Some details Jama would piece together with time, some he would not, but askaris described to him seeing Abdi and Shidane in Keren. Their requisition papers were scrunched up in Shidane’s hand. The town teemed with deserters and men separated from their battalions, and military police herded them to camps before sending them back into battle. Abdi tightly held Shidane’s hand as they maneuvered around the mad drunken men. They arrived at the huge tent that housed the supply depot and had to suppress gasps when they ran in. It was like Ali Baba’s cave, glinting with hundreds of treasures, tins of food, coffee, bags of sugar, sacks of tea, weapons, shoes, binoculars and other gadgets.

They were the only askaris in the depot and they instantly drew the attention of the white men. “Ascaro, what are you doing here?” one middle-aged man shouted over.

Shidane held out the flimsy requisition order and waited for the man to come and get it.

“Come here, boy, it’s not your place to be waiting for me to walk over to you,” the man shouted.

Shidane handed him the note, and the clerk put on spectacles to peruse the order. While he read, Shidane and Abdi looked around to see if they could sneak anything into their pockets. At the top of a sack lay chocolate bars in brown wrappers; Shidane wrapped his fingers around one and snuck it into his shorts.

“Put that down now,” ordered the supply clerk.

Shidane returned the chocolate bar and smiled.

“That is a serious crime, ascaro, count your lucky stars I don’t walk you straight back to your commanding officer and report you.”

Shidane listened with a defiant smile on his face, he only picked out the words “ascaro,” “officer,” and “report,” but could understand the gist of what the clerk was getting at.

“Go and wait outside while we prepare the order,” said the supply clerk, pointing to the exit. The boys left, scouting all around them.

“Don’t worry, I will find something. I wanna get Jama a surprise for when he returns, inshallah.”

“Don’t bother, Shidane, it’s a bad idea,” pleaded Abdi, trying to give his voice an avuncular authority but whispering with fear.

The supply depot was within an Italians-only area, although a few German soldiers worked there, flying about like Nazi flags, their hair bleached white and their skin red. Abdi and Shidane were the only nonwhites within the wire perimeter, and they could feel their skin tightly wrapped around them.

_______

Meanwhile Jama had to hike up narrow paths and ease his way past supply mules to reach the munitions store high in the mountains, a cave packed with guns and mortars, its entrance shielded by a heavy metal door. All around the satanic guns roared and clattered. An Eritrean askari joined them and he and Jama stood guard at the door while the Italians observed the scene below them. The British broadcasted new positions they had taken every night, and most Italians were hoping their defeat would be swift and painless. Jama could see only stick figures running about through the smoke, and when he crept closer to the precipice, he saw askaris fleeing the bombardment, feebly holding on to their heads as if that would stop them getting blown off. Somalis usually said that holding your head would bring calamity, but in the askaris’ case the calamity was already upon them. Jama had a terrible feeling about this day: it would bring death for sure, he knew by the bloodred sky, all churned up like the entrails of a dead beast, and the burning men who rolled desperately on the ground, unable to put themselves out. Jama was ordered back to the cave by an Italian and he dragged his feet, he wanted to stay as far away from the dark oily munitions as possible, his skin itched with the fear of being blown up. Hardened Indian and Scottish soldiers were close to breaking through the rubble the Italians had blown into the gorge to take the peak that Jama and a thousand other askaris were guarding; and these shaking, illiterate boys, their stomachs tight with fear, their pants wet with terror, waited to be overwhelmed.

One calm fifteen-year-old waited for his chance to line his pockets at the Keren supply depot. Shidane squatted on the white dust, trying to peer in, while Abdi stood nearby, trying to locate their dugout.

“Come here and get it then,” barked out the clerk to Shidane.

They returned to the cavern of treasures, the clerk handed Abdi a heavy crate of binoculars and Shidane reached up to help his uncle carry it out. The clerk laughed at them. “You skinny Somalis, you’re no use to anyone.”

Shidane and Abdi shuffled toward the exit and the clerk returned, whistling, to his paperwork.

“Psst, keep a look out,” Shidane whispered to Abdi before placing the crate down next to open sacks of spaghetti and rice.

Shidane pretended to fix his sandal as he stuffed handfuls of rice into his pockets and the crate. Abdi kicked him sharply in the ribs but Shidane had already seen shadows and smelled their sulfuric fumes. Three Satans had walked into Shidane’s life: Privates Alessi, Fiorelli, and Tucci emerged from the shadows looking as if they had just sailed out from the underworld. They were stocky young men who had spent their time in Africa stacking boxes and cleaning spillages in the depot; they were as pale as worms but their hands and hearts thirsted for blood.

“What do we have here?” exclaimed Fiorelli.

Shidane stood up and went to pick up his crate. Fiorelli kicked it away forcefully and the binoculars and rice spilled out with a clatter. The clerk ran over, shouting obscenities. Alessi and the clerk had a quick discussion, and with a shrug the clerk walked away. Alessi ordered Abdi to clear up the mess, then the soldiers surrounded Shidane and led him away. Shidane turned around to look at Abdi before he disappeared into the bright sun.

The depot clerks led Shidane to a tin shack in a corner of the compound, the corrugated metal buckled and cracked in the heat, and the door resisted but eventually admitted them with a shriek. The hut stank of urine and the only light came from the chinks in the metal, but Tucci lost no time in getting a coil of wire that was hanging from his belt and tying Shidane’s hands behind his back. It was only then Shidane’s bravado faltered and he let the smile leave his face. Fiorelli kicked Shidane’s feet away from under him and the others laughed. Shidane could smell alcohol on their breath.

“You shouldn’t have stolen from us, little nigger,” said the one called Fiorelli. “We are trained killers.”

Shidane stared up at them, his jaw tense. Alessi kicked Shidane in the side of his face and the bone shielding his eyeball was crushed. Shidane stumbled to his feet, blood pouring out of his eye.

Tucci had left the shack and come back with a metal pole and a small tin. “Musulmano, I thought your religion forbade theft, don’t they cut off your arms for that?” he said, twisting Shidane’s hands as if to tear them off. “I guess if you’re so hungry we should feed you. I’ve got something you’ll love so much you will be licking your lips for days.”

Shidane, blind in one eye, rocked back and forth and squirmed about like a snake cut in two. Tucci pried open the tin and pulled out slick, gristled slices of pork, shoving them down Shidane’s throat. Shidane choked on the dirty meat and the oily thick fingers in his mouth. Fiorelli hefted the pole and hit the back of Shidane’s head with it. The boy keeled over onto his side. Alessi took hold of the pole and struck Shidane’s kneecaps until he heard the loud cracks he was looking for. At this Shidane began to beg.

“Per favore, buoni Italiani, smettere,” he pleaded, and for that Alessi bludgeoned his mouth until all Shidane’s beautiful teeth were obliterated.

“Are you frightened now? Don’t you wish you had never stolen from us?” whispered Alessi as he pried Shidane’s mouth open into a ghastly smile.

“Let’s strip him,” suggested Tucci tentatively.

“Yeah, look at him twisting around like a bitch in heat,” said Fiorelli.

As they stripped Shidane, Abdi was marched out of the compound by the clerk. “Ascaro, where is the other ascaro, signore?” asked Abdi desperately.

“Get out,” shouted the clerk. “I am going to make sure you get your punishment, too.” He kicked Abdi in the behind. Abdi skirted the wire perimeter, trying to catch sight of Shidane. He saw the clerk enter a rusted shack and soon walk back to the depot, his expression stern and hard.

When the clerk peered into the gloom and saw the naked young askari, raw flesh where his eye and mouth should be, he nodded to his colleagues but didn’t know why. Many would pass by the shack when they heard what was happening in there. Some hung around to watch but most drank in the sight and then scampered away like little boys who had seen up their teacher’s skirt but didn’t want to be caught staring. Shidane floated in between dreadful consciousness and a watery dream world that glided around him, pulling him into a narcotic stupor before it evaporated and he fell back into his flesh, his eyes two glowing coals in a dying fire. He could feel his shinbones splintering with each strike and then his innards were raped with the pole. At this his soul died and he waited for his body to follow it. They were relentless; they toiled over him like mechanics pulling a car apart for scrap. They needed to see how his strange, beautiful black body operated so they tore it up, raided it; it took hours, but they were dedicated laborers and this was perhaps their last chance to do something other than stack boxes. Fiorelli delivered Shidane back to his pagan God with a blow to the back of the head that sent mosaic shards of bone into Shidane’s brain, extinguishing his fifteen years of dreams, memories, and thoughts. Once Shidane had stopped twitching and the Italians realized the fun had ended, they looked at the dull, cumbersome cadaver lying at their feet and left the shack aroused but unsatisfied. They washed their hands at the faucets near the latrines and agreed to meet later at the army brothel. It was left to two anonymous Italians to drag out the corpse and dump it outside the perimeter fence. Abdi, waiting there, saw the crumpled naked body laying facedown in the dirt but didn’t approach it; he had prayed and prayed, so he did not believe that it could be Shidane. Only after a group of Eritrean askaris kicked it over and he could hear them saying “Somali, Somali,” did he approach. It was a clumsy approximation, a human stain, not the boy he had loved and grown up with. This was something a hyena had chewed up and spat out.

While Shidane was stolen from this world, Jama too was battling with Izra’il, the angel of death. His time came in a dark mountain cave; British rockets lanced through the black sky to seek him out, lighting up the clouds with lethal white arcs of death. The rockets chased each other, hurtling with indecent speed until finally one snub-nosed missile smashed into the door of the cave just as Jama tried to slam it shut. It forced its way through, splitting the steel door open. Jama got up, eyes blinded by the light and heat. He was covered in what felt like blood, his arms and torso were slick with it, he believed he was dead, and his first thought was one of disappointment. The soul was pulled away from the body just to be dumped in a dark, echoing void. He stumbled and felt something yielding underneath his foot, and kicked it away in panic.

“Audu billahi min ash-shaidani rajeem, I seek refuge with Allah from the Shayddaan,” he stammered. The heat and stench in the cave was infernal, and Jama cursed himself for not having prayed or fasted throughout his short life.

Fresh air blew in through the gash in the door, and he put his mouth to it, sucking the sweet air into his burnt throat. When his legs and arms stopped trembling, he pulled himself weakly through the shredded door. Outside, everything remained the same, rockets still cascaded down, fulminating angrily, striking men and mules. Jama looked behind him and in the phosphoric light saw the bulabasha’s shaved head; it had been blown away, and lay at rest by the blackened, shredded leg of an Eritrean askari. The men were all dead, but they looked like they were playing, their legs splayed in dynamic poses, their shirts ripped open, their limbs entangled without care of rank or race. Lazy dogs, Jama thought, why don’t they get up and walk like me? But then he realized. They were not Muslim, God would leave them where they fell because they had denied him, while Jama could wander until Judgment Day consigned him to his rightful place. So he wandered, fearless, aimless, with the power of a zombie, back down the narrow pathway to Keren. As the sun crept out of its bunker, Jama realized that it was sweat soaking his clothes, not blood, and he carried on walking.

He reached Keren and attracted jeers and laughter from drunks squatting on the sidewalks. He looked like a cartoon character, his face blackened with ash, his shirt blown open, and his wavy hair, thick with dust, standing on end. Jama kept his head down and wanted to walk straight through town but was stopped.

“Ascaro, which position have you come from, looking like that?” asked the sergeant blocking his path.

Jama’s clothes stank and still appeared to be smoldering. He looked up into the sergeant’s blue eyes. “Arms store number fifteen. The rest are dead.”

The sergeant looked up toward the mountain and tutted. “Go back then, we are still fighting. You can’t leave your position unless you have been told to. When will you askaris learn some fucking discipline? It’s because of you people that we’re losing this war.” He took a long breath. “Take another uniform and some food from the supply depot, get the men at the depot to arrange a few other askaris to go with you.” He ripped off an order sheet and thrust it into Jama’s hand. Jama’s eyes bored into the sergeant’s back.

Askaris marched past Jama with shifty glances in his direction as if he would spontaneously combust, but he had fought off death, and inside he was triumphant. His life took form around him again, his heart beating, warmth returning to his skin, and all around Italians bellowing commands and insults. He tried to imagine the expressions on Shidane’s and Abdi’s faces when he told them that he had miraculously survived while all the others had been turned into mincemeat.

He smoothed down his hair and approached an angry-looking Somali. “Uncle, where is this depot place?”

“Waryaa, look at the state of you, tolla’ay, what have they done to us? Fuck the depot, get away from here, I’m warning you to stay away from that hellhole. They killed one of us there last night, in cold blood, a young boy like you. Run now, if you know what’s good for you,” the man raged.

The uncle seemed crazy. He was wearing an army shirt with a ma’awis wrapped around his waist, and he kept clutching at his groin. Jama roamed all over town until he found the depot, calm, businesslike, and sated after the night’s bloodletting. Alessi, Tucci, and Fiorelli were the hardworking, baby-faced army mules that they seemed; they served Jama quickly and politely, even dropping a couple of out-of-date chocolates into his bag as a treat. Jama filled his flask over and over at the tap and then went into the daylight, ready to find Shidane and Abdi and show them the carnage at the cave.

Abdi was close by, crouched down by the perimeter fence. Jama raced up to him, trying to form the story in his mind. He knew that his mother had placed a shield of the coolest air between him and the rocket, but the boys would never believe him. He looked around, needing Shidane to hear the first telling of it, too, when it was still spicy and dramatic.

“Ascaro Abdi, you will never guess what happened to me. Look at me Abdi, look at me.” Jama pulled Abdi’s chin up so that he faced him.

Abdi was muttering and rocking on his heels, covered in dust, his jaw trembling. Jama saw a stain of rust-red blood on Abdi’s shirt. He tried to put an arm around Abdi and gather him closer but Abdi shot to his feet and started yelling. He picked up rocks and threw them with all his might at the compound, and a rock bounced off the tin roof before Jama dragged him away.

“Where’s Shidane? What’s happened, Abdi?”

“Come with me, Jama. You want to see, come with me,” shouted Abdi, and he abruptly began running, Jama chasing after him.

Abdi led him to a clearing beside the road, before stopping and turning toward Jama. It was the first time Jama could look into Abdi’s eyes, and they were chilling. Under the furrowed eyebrows they were wide and lost, behind them nothing, a bare ruin. His mind had been startled from its temple and had circled above before flying away. Jama took a step back, but Abdi grabbed his hand in a hard, clumsy grip and pulled him forward.

Abdi’s face was ripped open by a smile. “Look, there was nothing here when I buried him, and now this bush.” Abdi pointed at a huge sprawling shrub, its grasping leaves violently green and alive.

“Who did you bury here?”

“Shidane, of course. I buried him myself. Where were you, Jama? We could have saved him.”

Jama started to tremble and Abdi stared at him before pulling a disgusted face and turning back to the bush. “When I left, nothing, and now this.”

The bush frightened Jama, it seemed to grow in front of his eyes, and it shone independently of the fading light.

“Who killed him, Abdi? What happened?” said Jama numbly through his tears.

“Who do you think, idiot? The people I saw you with at the depot, they ate him and threw out what they didn’t want.”

They were in a valley, desolate, gravelly and full of craters, and for a moment Jama felt like they were standing on the face of the moon.

“Let’s go, Abdi, come with me, let’s go to Egypt. I have enough food on me, come, get up, let’s go, enough,” coaxed Jama in a panic. He felt cold and dead again.

“I would rather die than eat their food. I’m staying here with my blood, you can go where you like.”

Jama’s sobs became louder and louder but Abdi just snarled at him, “Leave me alone, take your stupid noise somewhere else.”

“I’m not leaving you,” cried Jama. “What happened? You just went on an errand, Abdi, what happened?”

In a monotone, Abdi told him about the rice, the shack, and the noises, and by the end Jama understood and could look into Abdi’s eyes without flinching. As evening fell, a large full moon sat imperially in the sky, glaring down at them, and as Jama collected firewood, Abdi picked up rocks and threw them at its white, pockmarked face. His feet kicked up fine dust as like a dancer he leaped up at the moon. Jama turned his back on him and got the fire blazing with a box of matches Shidane had given him. Afterward he held the box tight in his hand and prayed for Shidane’s soul. They both slept without eating, as if in sympathy with Shidane, who would never eat again, or boast about his cooking again, who was now a meal for worms. Jama wrapped Abdi in his new shirt and lay down, nearly on top of the fire, afraid that the chill inside him would freeze his heart. He could not sleep. Morbid thoughts ran through his mind; life was tenuous, there was no value to it, each day brought the threat of annihilation, or the loss of those you loved. He eventually fell into a sleeplike state, beside the smoldering heap of the burnt-out fire. At dawn, Jama woke as cold as death, his feet in the tight roots of the bush. As he paced around, waiting for Abdi to wake up, his feet gained feeling; they were like the hooves of a racing camel, like Guure’s feet, not happy unless they could feel miles of earth passing underneath them every day. Ambaro always said, “The only thing that comes to you if you sit around is death”; this was his family’s only philosophy. Jama felt an urgent need to empty his bowels, and walked away to relieve himself. From where he crouched, Abdi appeared consumed by the bush. Jama quickly finished and ran to wake him up.

“I told you I was staying here,” Abdi snapped. His eyes were still vacant, but now he hit and pinched himself, and muttered prayers under his breath, seeming embarrassed by Jama’s presence.

“You can’t stay here, they will throw us down the mountain as deserters. You can’t do anything for Shidane now, let’s go,” Jama begged.

“You go, I will catch up with you,” stuttered Abdi. Jama was keeping him from something and he was growing agitated. Jama looked around him, at the gray mountains echoing with the distant din of guns, the dusty road snaking away. He gave half of his food ration to Abdi, held his skinny body for an awkward embrace, and then walked away.

Jama took off his mutilated army shirt and marched away from Keren, jumping into bushes when he heard convoys approaching, chasing after traders who fled on their camels when they saw the half-naked mad boy pursuing them. At nightfall he stopped, lost and hungry. With his dwindling flour ration he made gloopy tasteless pancakes, threw them down his throat and ate sweet, yellow meke berries he had picked along the way. Unable to lie still, he started walking by moonlight as well. He had long left the straight slave-built road and now just followed the magnetic pull of the stars. As the sun came up he saw more evil, corpses crushed by British tanks rushing to victory, the dusty white tracks still visible on the black men. Jama broke into a cold sweat and struck out in a different direction. The straps of his sandals had broken, and the loose soles rubbed against his blistered feet. He sucked on stones to ease his parched throat. By a ravine he staggered to a stop and fell asleep, lullabied by the gurgling water. For a long time Jama heard whistling, but in the no-man’s-land between sleep and wakefulness, he ignored it. When the whistling turned into humming and laughing, he shot up. He scanned around: nobody, just scrub and silence. He lay down again, only for the whistling to start as his head touched the ground.

He stood up with a roar. “Soobah! Come out,” he yelled. Only a child would play like this, he thought. He stood stiffly, chest out ready to fight. A hand waved out from behind a tree, but Jama didn’t move.

A man in white Somali robes came out into the open and smiled. He looked familiar. Jama squinted at the face, trying to place it.

“What do you want?” Jama shouted over.

“Don’t you recognize me?” With a sad smile the dark figure beckoned for Jama to follow. Jama picked up a jagged rock and followed the apparition; they didn’t talk.

It took Jama a long time before he accepted who had that dancing stride, those long fingers that clicked gently with every step, that face that carried the blueprint of his own. “Father, it’s too late,” Jama said.

Guure led Jama away from soldiers, crocodiles, leopards, to sanctuary; it was all he ever would do for his son. Jama cried when the apparition disappeared near a burnt-out village, and he searched amid the scorched tukuls, stepped over cold ashes, spilled pots, and lost shoes. He entered the skeleton of a hut, only to jerk back at the sight of a young child cowering in the corner. Jama turned to run away from this village of ghosts but the young boy ran after him, grasping at his shorts. Jama stopped and looked at the boy, whose ribs hung out, the skin on his old-man face loose and his eyes like two large moons, he was definitely alive. Jama opened his knapsack, retrieved flour and his water flask, stoked up a fire, and began to prepare bread. While he worked, the child stuck to his side. He had finished the water in the flask, and now silently watched the bread take form. Jama felt no warmth emanate from him. As soon as the bread was cooked, the boy grabbed it from the fire.

He could not have been older than seven. Jama shook his head and asked, “Why are you here?” The boy was still laboriously eating the bread.

“I am waiting for my family to come back.”

Jama had not seen civilians for days. “They won’t come back,” he said flatly, holding out his hand for the boy.

“What is your name?” Jama asked as the boy put his small cold hand in his grip.

“Awate,” he replied.

“Come with me, Awate, I’ll take you somewhere safe,” Jama said, unable to leave this small human spirit in the dead village that his father had led him to. Awate knew of a town nearby and directed Jama as he carried him on his back, holding him too tightly around the neck. Awate had been playing in the woods when bombs had fallen on the village, and had run back to his tukul to find his mother and brothers gone; he had been alone for days and he clung now like a leech to Jama’s skin.

Jama and Awate fled into the lowlands around the Gash River. In a few days they had left behind the rubble and burnt vehicles and reached the date palms of Tessenei. British soldiers had taken control of Italian East Africa, so Jama threw away his army papers before lining up at the checkpoint. Jama went to the river, bathed his feet, closed his eyes, and rested on the quiet bank. He tied weights to the images of corpses, burning men, and lost eyes lodged in his mind, and plunged them to the bottom of the river.