Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy

“Someone cut me yesterday, I was only protecting myself, but now it won’t stop.”

“Wahollah, Jama, how do you expect to work today when there is all this najas on your hand? You’re dealing with people’s food, for God’s sake! Go home, come back when it’s healed,” exclaimed Ismail.

“No, it’s fine, please, let me keep my job.” pleaded Jama, but Ismail was a squeamish man and pulled a disgusted face as the blood dripped down from Jama’s hand onto his.

“Jama, I’m sorry, I will keep you in mind if another vacancy arises. Go and wash this so it doesn’t go bad,” Ismail said, dropping the child’s hand.

Ismail rummaged in the pockets of his thin gray trousers and pulled out a handkerchief and a crumpled note. He handed the money to Jama and wiped his hands with the handkerchief. Ismail threw the bloody cloth away and padded back into his café, shutting the door firmly behind him. Jama stood motionless, looking vacantly at the dirty money in his hand.

Jama wanted to distance himself from any gloating eyes, so he walked away from the market toward the port. The sun was starting to thicken the air into a choking fog, and Jama developed the droopy-eyed, slack-jawed expression of the stray dogs that lived on the city limits. More and more Ferengis appeared in the streets; in the starched white uniforms and peaked caps of the Royal Navy, they ignored the young child and drifted in and out of groups sharing cigarettes and gossip. Jama’s eyes fell on a tall, black-haired sailor who was waving goodbye to a group of men; Jama unconsciously followed him and was drawn deeper and deeper into the busy Steamer Point. Massive steel cranes lifted gigantic crates into the air and into waiting trucks. Camels were suspended in terror as they were unloaded from the ships, their legs stuck rigidly out like the points on a compass. Machines belched dirty, hot fumes into the already claustrophobic atmosphere. Jama let his mind and feet wander in this alien place, a comic, strange, technological land so different to his own antique quarter. Staring at the workers, their loud cranking, whirring machinery, and the goods both animate and inanimate had made Jama lose the shiny, obsidian head of the sailor. He sat on a decayed section of wall and dangled his legs over the edge, balancing himself on his hands, a frightening drop beneath his feet. In the distance, steamer ships chugged toward the port with all the slow grace of turtles. Jama tried to imagine where the ships were coming from and going to, but could not really believe in the icy realms and green forests that people had described to him. The vessels seemed both monstrous and magnificent to Jama. Who could create such colossal objects, were they the work of giants, devils, or of Allah? The torrid black smoke emanating from their stacks frightened him and he shivered at the idea that these ships of fire might at any time erupt into hellish infernos. It was supernatural how they defied the laws of nature — the sea swallowed everything he threw into it, so how did these iron-and-steel cities stay afloat as if they were no more than flower blossoms or dead fish? Jama, thirsty, climbed off the wall and went to search for a drink in one of the busy port cafés, his money stuck to his sweaty, bloody hand like a stamp to an envelope. He waited behind the broad back of a sailor at the counter, while a wiry Arab man scurried about delivering drinks to tables. When it was his turn Jama found the counter was taller than him so he pushed his moneyed hand up and waved it at the man serving. “Shaah now!” The waiter let out a derisive snort of laughter but took the money and put a glass of watery tea on the counter. Jama carefully took it down and walked out with his lips placed against the rim of the sticky glass, jingling his change in his other hand.

Jama was tired of always turning up a beggar at people’s doors, begging for someone’s leftover food, leftover attention, leftover love. “Everyone is too busy with their own lives to think about me,” he muttered to himself as he walked to Al-Madina Coffee. He intended to give the change to Ambaro and buy his way back into her affections. Inside the warehouse, the women had moved positions, and new girls were being trained by the Banyalis. A teenage girl was working in his mother’s spot, and he looked at her disapprovingly. He recognized the large woman next to her. “Where is my mother?” Jama demanded.

“How the hell would I know? Do I look like her keeper?” the woman said, pushing Jama out of her way.

“Did the Banyalis tell her to go?”

The woman put her tray of coffee husks down and decided to give Jama exactly ten seconds of her precious time. “She fell sick a few weeks ago, I haven’t seen her since then. She never spoke to any of us so I don’t know where she’s gone, but I shouldn’t be the one telling you all this, boy, she’s your mother, after all.”

Jama dragged his feet out of the warehouse, his eyebrows knotted in concentration as he ran through the possibilities. His mother was suddenly the only person that mattered to him. Sneaking up the gray worn steps into the dim hallway of the Islaweyne apartment filled Jama with unpleasant memories. It seemed incredible to him that his mother, a woman who had so devotedly tutored him in pride, self-respect, and independence could allow herself to become subject to the petty dictatorship of a fat woman and her overfed family. Jama found the roof empty and snuck back downstairs into the apartment. Ambaro had been moved into a closetlike, air-starved room in which old suitcases lay stacked against a wall, watching her silently. She was stretched out on a grass mat, her thin headscarf slid back over big black waves of hair. The tobe she was wearing had split all the way down the side, revealing a body shrunk to childlike fragility. A strange odor hit him as he got closer to her; he saw a basin brimming with najas; phlegm, blood clots, vomit all curdling together.

Ambaro’s hand was thrown over her mouth. He could hear a terrible gurgling sound with every intake of breath. Jama crept closer to his mother, his eyes darted from her knees to her ankles, swollen with the same fluid that was drowning her lungs. “Where have you been, Goode?” Ambaro gasped.

“I’m sorry, hooyo,” Jama whispered as sorrow, regret, shame seared through him.

“Put me by the window, son.”

Jama threw open the window, picked her up under her arms, and dragged her with all of his strength; he gathered her head in his lap and stroked her cheek. Ambaro’s heartbeat shook her body, every pulse pounding against her ribs as if there were a butterfly inside of her, battling free from a cocoon. A gentle breeze washed over them. Ambaro’s lips were a deep, alarming red but her face was pale yellow. He could never have imagined seeing her so sickly, so ruined. Ambaro’s eyelids were clenched in pain, and Jama looked on jealously as her convulsing lungs took all of her attention. He wanted her back, to shout at him, call him a bastard, get up suddenly and throw a sandal at him. Jama placed his mother’s head gently on the floor and rushed from the room.

“Aunty!” Jama cried. “Aunty, hooyo needs a doctor!”

He ran into each room looking for Dhegdheer, finding her in the kitchen. “Hooyo must see a doctor, please fetch one, I beg you.”

“Jama, how did you get in? What kind of people do you think we are? There is absolutely no money for a doctor, there is nothing anyone can do for your mother now, she is in God’s hands.”

Jama pulled out the remnants of his pay and held it up to her face. “I will pay, take this and I will earn the rest after, wallaahi, I will work forever!”

Dhegdheer pushed his hand away. “You are such a child, Jama.”

She turned her back to him, ladled out soup. “Here, take this through to her and don’t make so much noise. Inshallah, she just needs rest.”