Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

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?”