Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

“This is shit,” sneered one of them. “You’re not Egyptian. I can tell by your faces that you’re damned Somalis.”

“Chief, we were just going to Port Said, to look for work, chief, that’s all,” Liban pleaded.

At the mention of Port Said the police officers pulled themselves up, stuck their chests out pugnaciously.

“Working for the British, eh? I see, Gamel, we have found two British spies in our country, think of that.”

“Let’s take them to the station, Naseer, they will turn their arses inside out.” On the spot, Jama and Liban were handcuffed together and marched into the industrial town. The locals jeered and spat at the detainees, and now and again one of the policemen would shove them from behind as they were made to walk in the road among the donkey carts and horse carriages. A crowd of street boys followed their progress after the excitement of Jama catching his shirt in the harness of a horse carriage and being dragged along beside it.

The police station was a grim place, alternately full of shouts and moans and tense silences. They were put in a room next to the main entrance, an armed policeman keeping guard. The handcuffs were taken off them and Jama’s suitcase was taken away for inspection. He let it go sullenly, and they sat down on the cement floor to await their fate. Jama was called out first for questioning, and they sat him on a broken wooden chair and stared him down. The chief policeman was fat and clean-shaven, his thinning hair stood up in a black fuzz over his head, and the dark bags under his eyes gave him a threatening look, but when he spoke his voice was even and dispassionate. “How did you get here?” “What do you want in Egypt?” “Where did your friend get the fake document?”

At the end of the interrogation the policeman told Jama that he would be deported back to Sudan and banned from entering Egypt again. Liban and Jama were put on the next train, without Jama’s rababa, which had been stolen from his suitcase. The whole carriage was full of Somalis who had also entered Egypt illegally, all roamers who had known only porous insubstantial borders and were now confronted with countries caged behind bars. Some of the detainees had been shuttled back and forth on this train in the past, and were amused when they reached the border to be told that the Sudanese would not accept the Egyptians’ “trash.” Liban breathed a sigh of relief but Jama was infuriated; he hadn’t left Gerset just to be treated like dirt again.

Back in the Damietta police station, Jama and Liban were placed in one of the large cells while the police decided what to do with them. They were locked up with suspected murderers and rapists, thieves and madmen, drunks and drug addicts. Jama and Liban huddled together in terror as the worst prisoners prowled around, casting wild looks at anyone who met their gaze. They had to pay for their own bread each day, and water was given to them in small cups that they had to share with men bleeding from the nostrils and ears. At night, hands would go exploring and knives were pressed into backs to extort money or caresses. Jama and Liban stayed awake in shifts so that they could protect each other. Liban had a small pocketknife but the other men had daggers and screwdrivers secreted in their waistbands or in crevices in the bare brick wall. The prisoners spoke in a rough dialect that Jama could barely understand, but this was a blessing, as they were a verbal bunch who grew tired of the two Somalis when they couldn’t understand or respond to the insults thrown at them. The balance of the cell was thrown off kilter when a man unlike any other was brought in. He was a giant, an African goliath, a megastructure, his head touched the ceiling and each of his thighs was wider than Jama’s waist, he blocked out the light as he came in and fury was etched across his face.

“Thieves! Thieves!” he roared at the police, who scampered out, afraid that one of those granite fists would come down on them. Veins stuck out all over the new prisoner’s hands and over his forearms and neck, and his anger sucked out noise and movement from the room. “Give me my hundred pounds back, you Arab dogs!” he bellowed.

Jama stared up at the goliath, felt his hot breath gust over him, and gathered his legs away from the crushing feet. The emasculated Egyptians had gathered in one corner for protection. The prisoner seethed in strange tongues, clenching and unclenching his fists, boxing with his shadow, a wad of tobacco forced into his cheek, a bruise just perceptible along his blue-black jaw.

“Just look down,” whispered Liban fearfully. Jama tried to, but his gaze was constantly drawn back to the man. The new prisoner met Jama’s eyes.

“What you want, kid?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” muttered Jama, hiding his head between his knees.

“You Sudanese?” he asked. Jama shook his head and hoped the man would reveal where he came from. “Bastards taking me to Sudan, I don’t want Sudan, I live in Lebanon.”

“They took us to Sudan but we were deported from there, too, they will probably send us to Palestine now,” said Jama, growing in confidence.

“I want to go to Palestine too, I can cross into Lebanon there. Will you speak for me? I speak their language badly, they don’t listen,” said the man tentatively in Arabic. “Good boy, good boy,” he exhorted as Jama nervously got to his feet.

Jama went to the bars of the cell and called for a policeman. When two policemen arrived, truncheons in hand, Jama explained that the new prisoner had come from Palestine and not Sudan, and if they took him to Sudan the border police would not let him in, but they were uninterested and shrugged their assent to deporting him to Palestine as well. Jama gave the good news to the prisoner, who picked him up and threw him in the air, kissing him profusely on the cheeks. “I go home to my woman! My baby! My taxi!” he yelled. Back on the ground, Jama took the man’s hand and introduced himself and Liban.

“My name is Joe Louis, you know Joe Louis, famous boxer? That me!” said the man, crushing their hands.

“Joy Low Is,” repeated Jama and Liban, trying to master the strange name.

“You speak French, garçons?” Joe Louis asked. “I speak perfect French.” Jama and Liban shook their heads.

From that evening Joe Louis treated Jama and Liban like his sons, paying for their food, giving them cigarettes, and shielding them. In broken Arabic he told them about his life in Lebanon, where he had a French wife and a young daughter, and made a nice living as a driver and occasional boxer. He had gone to Palestine to fight in a match against British soldiers but had gotten into trouble.

“Palestines bad bad people, everywhere they call me abid, you know abid? Slave! Me slave! So I fight, I fight too much, so they call police, take my taxi, say I’m illegal and bring me here, dirty Palestines, spit on them.” Every night Joe complained about the Palestinians until Liban and Jama were convinced that they were the most dangerous, bigoted, savage people on earth, and became afraid of their upcoming deportation. When the day came, Joe Louis took their arms and they were all put on the train to the border. The armed police played cards and smoked in the carriage, leaving the mostly black deportees to sleep out the long journey through the Sinai Desert. Deep in the night, Joe Louis became agitated, fidgeting and looking furtively around him. Jama, in the throes of sleeplessness, watched him. “What’s the matter, Jow?”

“I gonna jump off train,” whispered Joe.

“Why?” Jama whispered back, aghast.

“They will send us prison in Palestine, I want wife and baby, can’t wait.”

Jama glanced through the window at the black-and-silver desert and knew his friend was making a mistake. “You will die, Jow, you’ll never see your wife and baby again, halas, I also have a wife and she would be very angry if I did that,” warned Jama. Joe looked out at the desert and his face was twisted in doubt. “Don’t do it, Jow.”