Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

They finally left him alone to work his sorcery, but he didn’t know what to do. Protected from view by exuberant banana trees, he bent down and picked up handfuls of soil and rubbed it against his arms and legs, it was cool and soothed his hot skin. He brought it to his nose, it smelled of trees and their breath. He tasted it; iron and blood. In his revelry he walked around Gerset, the women smiled and waved as he roamed, he felt wonderful among these trusting Amazons, their beautiful village untouched by war, hidden from Ferengi maps. They stopped to welcome him. There were no titles in Gerset, no masters or lords, not even misses; respect was given freely, equally, generously, all were descendants of Queen Kuname. According to custom, only the women and older men had met to decide which plot to give Jama; the youths would learn of his presence when they returned from grazing the cows but Jama was assured that they would give him no trouble and there was quiet apart from the shouts of dogs, coughs of goats, and chuckling of lambs. Tired and thirsty, he reached the village shop. He pushed the curtain aside, his footsteps soft, padded by unswept dust. A girl sat behind a crooked wooden counter, her head on her arm, snoring with fat flies buzzing around her head. She jumped at his approach, quickly wiping the drool from her chin. She was beautiful, sloe black eyes and red ripe lips atop the long neck of a gerenuk, her pure brown skin set off by yards of carnelian and amber beads; she had been polished with butter and cream. Meeting her startled antelope gaze, Jama asked for a cup of milk, and with swift, dancing steps, she went to the old cow in the backyard and milked a cupful.

“Good afternoon,” said Jama, his heartbeat skittering.

The girl nodded to him. She emanated light like a saint on a church wall, but her expression was more suspicious than beatific.

“Where have you come from?” she finally asked, her voice deeper than he expected. He could smell honey on her breath.

“You name it, I’ve been there.” He smiled, she smiled back, and that was it.

Bethlehem Bighead was a mule, with a Tigre father and a Kunama mother, Muslim and Christian, born in a cowshed, a shepherdess in the morning, a farmer in the afternoon, and a shopgirl in the evening. With a head full of dreams and fantasies, she would pluck lavender and jasmine and come home with blooms in her braids but minus a goat, only to be beaten and sent back out into the darkening hills until she had found it. Her black thicket of hair earned her the name Bighead, and she wore it like a crown of thorns, pulling at it throughout the day, plucking strands from her eyes, from her mouth, from her food. When her sisters jumped her, they used her hair as a weapon, forcing her head back with it and dragging her across the dirt by it. Her mother would sometimes put an afternoon aside to laboriously braid it, laying it down into manageable rows like their crops, before like a rain forest it burst out of its man-made boundaries and reclaimed its territory. She was a true village girl in that she wanted nothing more than to live in a town; already sixteen, she had to wait for her five older sisters to marry before she could escape. Jama’s face came to her now before she fell asleep. His deep, hypnotizing eyes saddened her, and there was something about his lost and lonely bearing that made her want to suffocate him in her bosom.

From her perch on the hills, amid the bleating goats, Bethlehem could see Jama in his turban, planting seeds. He was clumsy with his tools and to her amusement he would pull seedlings out of the earth to see how much they had grown. He was trying to stare them into life, she thought.

When she brought the goats back down, Bethlehem sidled past his field. “You’re not doing that very well, you know. You shouldn’t plant them so deep. They need to see the sun through the earth.”

“Why don’t you come and help me, then,” Jama said, stopping to stare as she walked past.

“Eeeee! You wish!” she squealed, before striding away.

Jama studied the cycles of her day. He loved to watch her make her yawning advance up the hill in the dappled dawn light. She was a spot of red climbing up the gray-green horizon, her faithful retinue of stinking goats shouting after her. At midday, she would descend, her ramrod-straight back holding up that black flag of hair, and begin work on her mother’s fields. He could smell the flowers in her hair long after she had passed. Jama would wait until she was in the shop in the evenings before going to buy his eggs and milk, and they talked by paraffin lamp while her family ate dinner.

“What did you do before coming here?” she asked once.

“I was an askari.”

“How stupid you must have been,” she taunted, holding a blade of grass between her fingers in imitation of his cigarette.

The womb light of the lamp made them both braver, able to talk about things that bright daylight or deep darkness would have prohibited. Jama told Bethlehem about his parents, and she listened with the attention of a sphinx. In return, to cement their intimacy, Bethlehem described to Jama how her father kicked her for daydreaming and losing goats, how she had never been bought anything her whole life but only given her sisters’ hand-me-downs.

“Not one thing, Jama, can you believe that, never one thing for me only.”

Jama shook his head in sympathy and touched her hand; she let him for a second before pulling away.

Since Jama had arrived in Gerset, Bethlehem never went out with dusty, chapped feet but massaged them with oil every morning. She pilfered her eldest sister’s Maria Theresa coin necklace, earrings, and silver anklets, hiding them until she got near Jama’s farm, when she would put them on, scintillating past until he was out of sight and they could disappear back into her pockets. One day her hair was in agrarian rows, another day in two bunches, on yet another she would plait the front and leave the back out. Jama enjoyed the coiffures which gave her face different shapes and moods. As they grew closer, Jama rose before the sun to wait for her in the hills where they could spend a few hours together, before the village came to life and began its watch. He waited happily in the cold, holding fresh sprigs and blossoms for her, a shiver running through his body when she stepped out of his infatuated mind and became flesh again. Her bounding, voluptuous body appeared every night in his dreams, she wore her red cotton robes tight, and he memorized every contour of her body during the day so he could re-create her in perfect detail at night. He was awkward and giddy around her but she did not complain, she watched him intently and pulled straw out of his hair.

“I have never felt like this before, I feel possessed,” he told her, and she glowed in pleasure.

One dawn, as they sat talking, a deep murmuring came from the skies, a torrent of rain and hailstones fell upon them, bhesh, bhesh, bhesh , and land slid down the hillside.

“Mary protect me,” screamed Bethlehem, desperately trying to gather her terrified goats as the earth tore away her anklets and submerged her knee-deep in mud.

Jama climbed a fig tree and pulled her out. She was so close he could feel her heartbeat thumping against him. Bethlehem buried her face in his neck while he tugged her free.

“Come, let’s get into that cave,” he commanded. She ignored him and ran after the goats, but Jama chased them toward the cave, and only then did she follow him. The mammoth granite hillside split into a cavern that had all the elegance and delicacy of a cathedral, stalactites hung down like censors and the light playing on puddles dappled against the high dome. Bethlehem said a prayer and kissed her rosary.

“Don’t worry, it will be over soon,” reassured Jama. “Come, sit closer, so I can keep you warm.”