Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

The journey to Hamburg brought back all the memories the refugees had been suppressing for months, smothered with fanciful ideas of a Jewish heaven in Palestine. On German soil there could be no denial of what had happened, the smell of burnt corpses would return to nostrils and the pain of unending hunger would torment stomachs whatever food they were given. Brendan the donkeyman had no time for the refugees, he called them “smelly ungrateful yids” and encouraged the soldiers to take a hard line with them. The soldiers were angry and resentful; they had been duped along with the refugees, having been told that they were only to escort the ship to Cyprus. Now they vented their frustration whenever they could, shoving the children, refusing small requests, and talking loudly as the prisoners tried to sleep. It was a forlorn ship that approached Hamburg, the long, slow funeral march had come to an end. “We have returned. We have returned to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen,” cried one man.

“I lost twenty-eight of my family here,” said an old woman. The refugees broke out in wailing and ripped their clothes, even Mordechai Rosman watched the dark land appearing through the fog with his head bowed, his arms outstretched as if on a rack. The Runnymede Park waited while the two other prison ships, Ocean Vigour and Empire Rival, were cleared out. British troops and German guards dragged out frenzied men and women, American jazz blaring out to muffle the screams. A homemade bomb was found on the Empire Rival, to the pleasure of the British; at last their suspicions had been confirmed, the purported refugees were actually dangerous terrorists desperate to injure their British guardians. The bomb was safely detonated on the dockside, but the refugees on the Runnymede Park would suffer for it. Batons went flying, hair was pulled out, soldiers kicked Mordechai Rosman down the gangplank, and possessions were thrown into the sea. Jama came on deck during this festival of violence, and he had never believed white people could treat each other with such open violence, without regard for age or infirmity, but in front of his eyes was proof.

“Wahollah! My God, this is terrible!” said Jama as he saw Chaja trying to escape down the gangplank, her head bent to avoid the blows as her children skidded and tripped beside her.

The Jews were handed over to the smirking Germans, to be returned to barbed wire and watchtowers in isolated camps in northern Germany. The men from the Haganah and the boys who had thrown biscuit tins and dirty clothes at the British soldiers were arrested for unruly behavior. The Runnymede Park became a ghost ship. After the ABs returned it to a semblance of order, Captain Barclay told the crew that they were going to Port Talbot in Wales for dry-docking before returning to Port Said. Jama would earn eighty pounds for this journey. His aim was to return to Gerset with two hundred pounds, and buy a prize camel and a large store and house for Bethlehem, but the other sailors laughed at his plan.

“Forget it, boy, we’re leaving this ship at Port Talbot. All the work is here, why do you want to return to stinking Egypt? If you stay on, it will be without any of us,” said Abdullahi.

“So what are you going to do?” asked Jama.

“Get another ship from Port Talbot or Hull. We get English wages on ships from England, a quarter more.”

The prospect of even greater pay was seductive but Jama worried that Bethlehem would give up on him; a year had already passed without any contact between them. She wouldn’t wait anymore, he thought. What if she had found someone else, he wondered, a Kunama or some rich Sudanese merchant? Any imam would consider Jama’s disappearance abandonment and grounds for divorce. As a child Jama had wanted desperately to have wings, and to go home now was like asking Icarus to set fire to his wings mid-flight, but he could not fly forever and keep Bethlehem.

Without the distraction of the refugees and soldiers, the Runnymede Park was now an ordinary freighter and the typical tensions in a mixed crew became clear. The British cooks would prepare pork alongside the Muslim men’s food, the British would mock their accents and skinny bodies, the drunken behavior of the ABs was abhorrent to the Somalis. The ABs liked Jama, though, his youth brought out a paternalistic kindness, and his inability to understand their insults meant his happy, ingenuous demeanor was not hardened.

They pronounced his name “Jammy.” “Hey, Jammy”; “You finished, Jammy?”; “Want a jammy biscuit, Jammy?” They enjoyed using his name, and as the chill of the North Sea deepened it was “Want a jumper, Jammy?” and “Bet you’re not used to this,” with exaggerated shivers.

The older Somalis told Jama that he was being mocked but he found it hard to care. His earlier fear of the white men had subsided; the British had given him work, high-paid work, and for that they could say what they liked. The ABs were positively loving in comparison with the Italians he had worked for, they never hit or humiliated him, they were nothing to be scared of despite Brendan the donkeyman’s efforts. Brendan stalked around after the Somalis, his large baby blue eyes threaded with red veins. Buck teeth stuck out from his puckered mouth, and his hair was balding in patches across his skull. The Somalis called him Sir Ilkadameer, “Sir Donkeyteeth,” to his face, and he would glow at the “Sir,” believing Ilkadameer to be a native term of respect.

Sidney would call the Somalis to join the rest of the crew for cigarette breaks and Jama would converse slowly in sign language and broken English. Sidney was especially friendly to Jama, though when he invited him to his cabin, Abdullahi forbade him to go; he will make you drink whiskey, he warned, but Jama went anyway. Sidney had a large cabin to himself underneath where the cage had been, and on the white wall he had stuck up pictures of white women in underwear that made their breasts point like goat horns. The only other picture on the wall was a yellow hammer and sickle on a red background. “You know what that means, Jama?”

Jama thought it must be something to do with his work, maybe he was a farmer as well as a sailor, but he shook his head, not wanting to embarrass himself.

“It means I believe that workers like you”—he poked his finger in Jama’s chest for emphasis and then pointed at himself—“and me should unite, together, understand?” His fingers were now knotted, caressing one another.

The smile fell from Jama’s face. The intertwined fingers meant only one thing and he didn’t want that, but what about the naked women, perhaps they were just to disguise Sidney’s real intentions?

He turned to the door but Sidney grabbed his shoulder. “Hold on a second, take this.” He shoved a fat dictionary into Jama’s hand. “I’m sure you’ve been about a bit, I would like to hear about it someday.”

Jama took the dictionary and ran out, giving a cursory “Tanks much” to Sidney.

For Jama, the rest of the journey to Port Talbot couldn’t have been more peaceful. He met Sidney occasionally in the smoking room, and when he didn’t repeat his hand caressing, Jama brought the dictionary with him and asked for help in learning to read it. Sidney read out articles from Time, following the words with his finger while Jama peered over his shoulder. The smell of cigarettes and the pleasure of reading would forever become entwined for Jama. Not only were his eyes being fed with new sights but the magazine articles poured news from the world into his mind, he listened to Sidney as if he were a sorcerer divining events in tea leaves, and he began to see his place in history. He now understood that the war that had ravaged Eritrea had blazed across the world. Jama stared at the photographs of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Dresden. Naked children screaming with hollow mouths appeared in all the photographs, calling to each other. African, European, and Asian corpses were piled up in the pages of the magazine beside adverts for lipstick and toothpaste. Already the world was moving on, from somber black-and-white to lurid color.