Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

One day, Glenys knocked on his door. “You all right, Jimmy? Haven’t seen you downstairs for days.”

Jama pulled the blanket up to his neck; he didn’t understand what she wanted.

“You’re looking right peaky, lad, get up and I’ll take you out for some fresh air, you can’t keep this fire on all day with the window closed.” She threw Jama’s clothes at him and walked out.

The sailors were playing cards downstairs; they wolf whistled when they saw Jama and Glenys walking out together.

“Waryaa! Where do you think you’re going with her?” Abdullahi yelled.

“I think she is going to take me to her doctor,” Jama stuttered.

“That better be it, Jama, you come straight home after you’ve seen him.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Abdullahi, but you should keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you,” said Glenys before bundling Jama out.

Glenys was twice Jama’s age but she aimed to show him a grand old time. “Doctor? Doctor?” attempted Jama a couple of times, but Glenys had other ideas, they had ice creams and donkey rides on the beach, and climbed the foreboding hills, she showed him the violently green countryside and the fat Welsh sheep.

Finally she treated him to afternoon tea. “See, you didn’t need any stuck-up doctor, did you?” Glenys giggled, happily buttering Jama’s scones for him.

Glenys’s big mistake was to show Jama the funfair as they walked home. One look and he was gone. Machines dedicated to fun and excitement had never existed in his world, and here was a whole field of delirious mayhem, lightbulbs of red-yellow-blue-green flashed and popped, burnt onions and sugar perfumed the air. Raucous songs and melodies played cacophonously over one another, interrupted by random bangs and pings. Most of the rides stood idle but the cheaper ones were flying, the screeches of girls and boys howling down. Rides to frighten, to elate, to compete in, every emotion was for sale, and when the girls saw the dark handsome sailor there was a stampede toward Jama. He was pulled from Glenys’s grip and taken away by a troop of Welsh sirens who wanted candy apples, bumper car tickets, goldfish, all the things they knew Jama could buy them.

Every evening Jama snuck out. “Where are you going now?” Glenys would ask if she caught sight of Jama skulking away.

“To buy a jumper!” he would reply before running off, but he was meeting Edna, Phyllis, Rose, or any other of the fairground girls. The girls cheered when he turned up, and he never got bored of spinning and whirling with them, but his real downfall was the bumper cars. A fix of five minutes cost sixpence, and he drove the cars from afternoon to late in the night, a pretty girl’s thighs squashed by his and another squealing in delight when he crashed into her. He paid for all the girls and even a few boys. “What’s he about?” the boys asked.

“He’s a prince from Africa here on holiday,” the girls insisted.

Jama finally had a chance to play and live his lost childhood and his father’s motoring dream; the frustrations of a caged, demeaned, stunted life exploded out of him in that fairground. Each evening his precious pile of British money diminished until only the shiny bottom of the biscuit tin stared up at him. Now he went to the fairground or to the café with only lint in his pockets and sat watching, hoping that one of the girls would sit by him, but Edna, Rose, Phyllis, and the others coolly cast their gaze somewhere else.

“Eighty pounds! Eighty pounds! You spent all your money on those hussies!” fumed Glenys when she heard he had run out. “Well, back off to the dock with you then, there is a ship to Canada that’s looking for firemen, you better get on it, laddio.”

Abdullahi concurred with Glenys for once. “I signed for that ship today, I’ll take you to put your name down.”

The ship was taking coal to St. John, New Brunswick. Abdullahi took Jama to the British Shipping Federation office, where he gave his name and then put his fingerprint and shaky cross next to the man’s calligraphy.

“You can take your wage now if you want but you will have to wait two months for the next payment,” Abdullahi explained.

“Tell him to give it to me, I owe money to Waranle.” They walked down the street, Jama counting the money.

“Now, in Canada, you will have to wear a jumper, coat, hat, none of this nakedness you have got used to, the cold there will kill you straight, it’s happened before to foolish Somalis,” Abdullahi admonished.

“Twenty-four pounds!” Jama exclaimed.

“What did I tell you! English wages.”

“How long will the voyage take?” asked Jama.

“What’s it matter? The longer it takes the more you’ll get paid. You still want to go back to Africa?”

“I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything. All these men are killing themselves to get here and you wanna go back to one meal a day, heat, thirst… You’re a strange boy to even think about it.”

As the departure date neared, Jama tried to believe that Abdullahi was right, that to return to Africa would be the worst mistake of his life, that he would never have this chance again, that he owed it to himself to go to Canada, that Bethlehem would accept or forgive anything if he came home a rich man. All of this became a kind of philosophy passed on from Abdullahi, that gray seas would be their gold mines, seagulls their pets, hairy blue-veined Britons their companions. Women and Africa were not a part of this exciting new world. Beyond the rationing, the bomb sites, the slumlike housing, the angry dungareed men, Port Talbot was still the Promised Land, with every new technology obtainable, gas cookers, vending machines, top-class radios, picture houses. Even though many white people pulled faces when they saw him, there were unexpected kindnesses, such as an old woman who invited him into her small, cozy home for a cup of tea and who stroked his hair, a photograph of her lost son shining from the mantelpiece; men who asked what Jamaica was like as they escorted him home on foggy nights. There were enough humane Ferengis to make life interesting.

_______

Life carried on peacefully until one day a stranger came to the hostel, a dapper Somali from London. He was looking for Jama.

“What do you want him for?” Abdullahi challenged.

“Family business,” replied the stranger shortly.

“I’ll go get him for you, sir,” said Glenys, dashing up the stairs. “Jama, Jama, open up,” she said, hammering on his door, “there’s a nice-looking man asking for you!”

Jama, alarmed, rushed down the stairs behind Glenys. A black-suited man sat opposite Abdullahi in the sitting room.

He stood up to greet Jama, saying, “Long time no see, cousin.”

Jama grabbed hold of Jibreel’s hand. “Man! Where has this ghost appeared from?” was all that he could say. Jibreel looked like he had stepped down from a film poster, nothing remained of the thin askari that had snored beside him in Omhajer. Shiny black hair, neat thin mustache, black hat in his hand, he was more debonair than anyone Jama had seen.

“Let’s go to your room, I have news.”

Sitting in the damp room, with wallpaper falling down around them, Jama’s heart stopped when Jibreel delivered his news. “Your wife has had a child.”

“Allah!” exclaimed Jama.

“Manshallah, Jama! Praise God, I leave you a sad little boy and now you’re a father before me.”

“Allah!” Jama said again.

Jibreel laughed. “Leave God alone!”

“How do you know?” Jama asked when he had finally composed himself.

“Your mother-in-law wants you to come home, she has been telling every Somali in a hundred-mile radius. An Eidegalle man passed through Tessenei and came by ship to East London, where the news reached me. When I heard that you had arrived here, I couldn’t keep the good news to myself, could I?”