Читать книгу Black Mamba Boy - Nadifa Mohamed - Страница 10

The chaperone finally released his hold on Jama’s forearm, leaving a sweaty handprint on his skin. Jama’s legs shook from the long journey in the back of the old lorry and he clasped both of his thighs in his hands to steady them while his clansman went to replenish his stash of qat. Jama had put up with the mushy green spittle and the acrid stink that had accompanied his chaperone’s habit for the day and night it took to cross the Red Sea and get to Hargeisa. Jama’s bloated, gaseous stomach bulged out before him and he wondered why it stretched further and further out the hungrier he got. His stomach had been relatively peaceful throughout the journey, but for weeks after the burial it had contracted, cramped, made him vomit, given him diarrhoea as well as constipation, until he had passed blood and little slivers of congealed flesh. A clanswoman of his mother had found him huddled in an alley, covered in dust and flies. It took just three days for a human telephone network of clansmen and women to locate his great-aunt and deliver Jama to her like a faulty parcel. In Aden the Islaweynes had paid for Ambaro’s burial but expected Jama to look after himself, separated from Shidane and Abdi, he had hung out with the dirtiest of Aden’s street children. Jama had eaten fitfully and badly, sometimes picking up food from the dirt and giving it a casual clean before swallowing it in a few untasting bites. He became argumentative and loud, often fighting with the other abandoned children. To appease the hungry demon in his stomach, seething and cursing from his cauldron of saliva and acid, Jama had fought with stray cats and dogs over leftover bones. He tried to be brave but sadness and loneliness had crept up on him, twisting his innards and giving him the shakes. Jama dreamt of his mother every night; she followed a caravan in the Somali desert, he would follow, calling out her name, but she never turned around, the distance between them growing until she was just a speck on the horizon.

Jama looked around him; Somaliland was yellow, intensely yellow, a dirty yellow, with streaks of brown and green. A group of men stood next to their herd of camels while the lorry overheated, its metal grill grimacing under an acacia tree. There was no smell of food, or incense or money as there was in Aden, there were no farms, no gardens, but there was a sharp sweetness to the air he breathed in, something invigorating, intoxicating. This was his country, this was the same air as his father and grandfathers had breathed, the same landscape that they had known. Heat shimmered above the ground, making the sparse vegetation look like a mirage that would fade away if you reached out for it. The emptiness of the desert felt purifying and yet disturbing after the tumultuous humanity of Aden, deserts were the birthplaces of prophets but also the playgrounds of jinns and shape-shifters. He heard from his mother that his own great-grandfather Eddoy had walked out of his family’s encampment and into the sands, he had given no-one word of where he was going, and was never seen again. Eddoy became one of the many bewitched by the shifting messages that were left amongst the dunes. Though these stories of people losing their minds and vanishing terrified Jama, his mother used to tease him, telling him that it was no bad thing to have a jinn in the family and that he should call on his great-grandfather if he ever became lost. His ancestors had been crow-worshippers and sorcerers before the time of the prophet, and the people still kept tokens of their paganism. Precious frankincense and myrrh still smouldered in the same ornate white clay urns; black leather amulets hung from the chubby wrists of infants. His mother’s amulet was tied as tightly as a noose around his neck, the sacred pages grubby and hardened together. He lay down under the acacia tree and spread his arms out, the sky covered him like a blue shroud and he felt cooled by the watery blueness washing over him, he guessed the time by looking at the position of the sun and decided to rest. He awoke, disturbed by the sound of two voices above his head, and opened his eyes to see an old woman standing over him as tall as an Amazon. She bent down to wipe the drool from his sleepy face and held him to her bosom, filling his nose with her sour milk smell. Tears beaded up in the corner of his eyes but he drew them back afraid of embarrassing them both. Jinnow took his hand and led him away, Jama floating from her hand like a string cut loose from its kite.

It was only the expanse of emptiness around it that made Hargeisa seem like a town but unlike the straw and skin collapsible desert homes they had passed, the houses in Hargeisa were forbidding white stone dwellings, as utilitarian as beehives. Large barred windows were decorated above with simple, geometric designs, the wealthier houses had courtyards with bougainvillea and purple hibiscus creeping up their walls. Everywhere you looked there were closed doors and empty streets, all the town’s dramas were played out by figures hidden behind high walls and drawn curtains.

Finally the door to his grandfather’s compound creaked open and a smiling girl said, ‘Aunty, is this Jama?’ but Jinnow pushed past her, still holding Jama solidly by the arm.

In the courtyard, women stood up to get a closer look at the boy.

‘Is this the orphan? Isn’t he a spit of his father!’, ‘Miskiin, may Allah have mercy on you!’ they called.

The girl bounced along in front of Jinnow, her big eye constantly peering back at Jama.

Jinnow reached her room, ‘Go now, Ayan,’ she said, shooing the girl away and pulled Jama in after her. A large nomad’s aqal filled the room, an igloo made of branches and hides, she caught Jama’s look of surprise and patted his cheek. ‘I’m a true bedu, could never get used to sleeping under stones, felt like a tomb, come lie down and rest, son,’ she said.

The inside of the aqal was alight with brightly coloured straw mats. Jama lay down obediently but couldn’t stop his eyes roving around. ‘Do you remember that you once stayed here with your mother? No, look how my mind is rotting, how can you remember, you couldn’t even sit up,’ Jinnow chattered.

Jama could remember something, the snug warmth, the light filtering through woven branches, the earthy smell, it was all imprinted in his mind from a past life. He watched Jinnow as she fussed around, tidying up her old lady paraphernalia. She had the same high cheekbones, slanted eyes and low toned, grainy way of speaking as Ambaro, and Jama’s heart sunk as he realised his mother would never be old like Jinnow.

After a restless sleep, Jama ventured into the courtyard; the women carried on with their chores, but he could hear them whispering about him. He ran towards a leafless tree growing next to the compound wall, he climbed its spindly branches, and sat in a fork high up in the tree. Leaning into the cusp Jama floated over the roof and tree tops, looking down like an unseen angel on the men in white walking aimlessly up and down the dusty street. The tree had beautiful brown skin, smooth and dotted with black beauty spots, like his mother’s had been, and he laid his head against the cool silky trunk. Jama rested his eyes but within moments felt tiny missiles hitting him, he looked down and saw Ayan and two little boys giggling. ‘Piss off! Piss off!’ Jama hissed. ‘Get out of here!’

The children laughed louder and shook the tree, making Jama sway and lose his grip on his seat. ‘Hey bastard, come down, come down from the tree and find your father,’ they sang, Ayan in the lead, with a cruel, gappy-toothed leer on her face.

Jama waved his leg at that smile, hoping to smash the rest of her teeth in. ‘Who are you calling a bastard? You little turds, I bet you know all about bastards with your slutty mothers!’ he shouted, drawing gasps from the women near him.

‘Hey Jinnow, come and get this boy of yours, such a vile mouth you would think he was a Midgaan not an Aji. No wonder he was thrown into the streets,’ said a long-faced woman.

Jinnow, startled and ashamed, charged over to Jama and dragged him down. ‘Don’t do that, Jama! Don’t drag down your mother’s name.’ She pointed towards her room and Jama slunk away.

Inside the aqal, Jama cried and cried, for his mother, for himself, for his lost father, for Shidane and Abdi and it released something knotted up and tight within his soul, he felt the storm leave his mind.

Jinnow spent her days tending her date palms, selling fruit in the market near the dry riverbed that bisected the town or weaving endless mats, while Jama appeared and disappeared throughout the day. With all the men away with the camels Jama spent time on the streets to avoid the harsh chatter of the compound women who treated him like a fly buzzing around the room, swatting him away when they wanted to talk dirty. Their faces a bright cruel yellow from beauty masks of powdered turmeric, they dragged each other into corners, hands cupped around mouths, and in loud whispers languidly assassinated reputations, they drew shoes in fights as quickly as cowboys drew pistols.

Clutching her brown, spindly fingers against the wall of the compound, Ayan would peer over and watch as Jama tripped down the road. Ayan was the daughter of one of the younger wives in the compound and lived in a smaller room away from Jinnow. Jama would throw stones at her every time she approached him, so now she just satisfied herself with staring at him from a distance, crossing and uncrossing her eyes, flapping her upturned eyelids at him. As a girl she was rarely allowed out, and Jama’s bad reputation within the compound and filthy mouth had slowly begun to win her admiration. She hoped to stare him into friendship but he had too long a memory for that and was still planning a revenge for the time she dared call him bastard. Jama slyly observed her daily routine of housework, childminding and standing around, one leg scratching the back of the other, and plotted her downfall. Ayan’s mother was a tall shrewish woman with a missing front tooth, a neglected third wife who beat her children down verbally and physically. In front of her mother, Ayan was a well-behaved, hard-working child but in private she was a gang-leader and vicious fighter. Her troupe of scraggly infants would gather behind her after lunchtime, and prowl around the compound, catching lizards by the tail, spying on older children and going through their belongings. If challenged, the younger children would take flight while Ayan fought the angry object of their snooping. Scratches and cuts formed patterns on her skin like the tattoos on a Maori warrior, her young face knocked into a jagged adult shape by the fists of her mother and cousins. Jama had no possessions to filch or secrets to hide but for Ayan he presented an enigma, he was a strange silent boy from a foreign land.

Jama would sometimes see Ayan in the evening as the women gathered around the paraffin lamp to tell stories. Tales about the horrors some women were made to suffer at the hands of men, about the secret lovers some women kept, or about Dhegdheer who killed young women and ate their breasts. Ayan would regularly be mocked as ‘dirty’ and ‘loose’ by the women and older children for being uncircumcised and her head would droop down in shame. Her stupid mistakes would be recounted; she had once tried to open a lock with her finger and instead got it stuck. ‘I thought that is how people open locks!’ Ayan wailed.

‘Served you right, that was Allah’s reward for your snooping,’ rejoiced her mother. Jama’s favourite stories were about his grandmother Ubah, who travelled on her own as far as the Ogaden desert to trade skins, incense, and other luxuries despite having a rich husband. ‘What a woman, Ubah was a queen and my best friend,’ Jinnow would sigh. All the storytellers claimed to have seen a shapeshifter, nomads who at night turned into animals and looked for human prey in town, disappearing before daybreak and the first call to prayer. Ayan’s eyes would form frightened wide circles in the orange light and Jama could see her trying to nestle next to her mother and getting pushed irritably away. Jama hoped that one of these shapeshifters would snatch Ayan away, and take her out into the pitch black night where shadows slipped in and out of alleys. Alleys where hyenas stalked alongside packs of wild dogs, hunting lone men together, ripping out the tendons from their fleeing ankles as they tried to run for their lives, their helpless screams piercing the cloistered night.

Jama’s life was no different to the goats tied up in the compound, staring blankly as they chewed on peelings. He was just a lump of dull clay that no-one wanted to mould or breathe life into, he was not sent to school, not sent out with the camels, only told ‘Fetch this’ and ‘Get out!’The wives made a show of exchanging glances and locking their rooms if he was nearby, they were all like Mrs Islaweyne in their pettiness. The only comfort he found was at night in Jinnow’s aqal, when Jama would allow her to tuck him in under the thin sheets and wait for her to start talking about his parents. With his eyes tightly closed Jama would listen to Jinnow describe how his father leapt out one night in the desert and with a flaming torch scared away hyenas that were stalking the family camels, how his mother had run away as a child and got as far as the sea before she was brought home. Jinnow remembered them at their best, young and brave before hunger, disappointment and illness brought them low.

She recited old gabays to make him laugh: ‘Life in this world allows one man to grow prosperous, while another sinks into obscurity and is made ridiculous, a man passing through the evil influence of red Mars is feebler than a new born lamb punched on the nose.’

Jinnow told Jama one night, ‘I know you are sick of milk, you think you are a man already but don’t hurry to that, Jama, the world of men is cruel and unforgiving, don’t listen to those fools in the courtyard, you are not an orphan, you have a father, a perfectly good father who will return.’

‘Why hasn’t he come to collect me then? What’s he waiting for?’

‘Don’t be like that, Jama, we are all servants of our fate, he will come when he can. Hopefully he has made a good life for you both somewhere.’

‘What’s wrong with here? This is where we belong.’

‘Your father has too much music in his soul for this kind of life, your mother did too but she tried hard to drown it out. Life here is too hard, everyone is peering over the horizon, but one day inshallah you will also see how wide the world is.’

‘But where is my father?’

‘Far, far away, in a town called Gederaf in Sudan, beyond Ogaden, beyond Djibouti, many months’ walk, son, I heard that he was fighting in Abyssinia but now it seems he is in Sudan trying to become a driver again.’

‘Can I go to him?’

‘Allah, how could I let you do that? I owe it your mother to make sure you don’t come to any harm. She is watching me, I feel her here,’ Jinnow placed her hand on her stomach. ‘She is like a light there, you understand, son? Your mother, Kahawaris, sometimes the dead are more alive than the living, no-one really dies, not while there are people who remember and cherish them.’

Jama was ready to explode cooped up in the compound. He needed a job so that he could add to his mother’s money and find his father. He scoured the barren town for places to work, but shops and homes operated on the most basic levels of survival and there was no room for luxuries such as paid servants. The market consisted of a handful of women laying out dying fruits and withered vegetables on dusty cloths in the sand, they sat in the sun gossiping, collecting their meagre income in their laps. The eating houses were the busiest places in Hargeisa but they offered only two dishes whatever the wealth of their diners, boiled rice with boiled goat or camel. The cook would serve as waiter and dishwasher as well and would earn a pittance for all three jobs. Children and young men mobbed each other for the leftovers from the eating houses, pushing the smaller ones out of their way. Men chewed qat constantly to stave away the nagging hunger in their stomachs, so they wouldn’t succumb mentally to it, wouldn’t humiliate themselves. Late in the afternoons, the steps of the Haber Awal warehouses were clogged with men talking over each other, laughing and composing epigrams, but later as the qat left their systems they became morose, reclining like statues as the town darkened around them. Even with qat, the fear of hunger determined every decision every person made, where to go, what to do, who to be. Destitute nomads would come in from the countryside and sit under trees, too exhausted to move any further. Jama thought himself tough but the youth of Hargeisa were desert hardened, belligerent brawlers, uninterested in small talk with strangers, and the boys his age just wanted to sing and dance with the market girls. Jama, not finding any companionship inside the compound or outside, retreated deep into himself and made his mind his playground, fantasising all day about the father he had somehow lost. Conjuring his father was a pleasure, his strong muscles, gold rings and watches, nice shoes, thick hair, expensive clothes could all be refashioned on a whim, he said and did only what Jama wanted without the intrusion of reality. The fact that his father was alive made him everything Jama could want, while seeing his mother in his mind’s eye was agonising, he could recall the way she smelt before dying, the sweat running down her temples, the fear she was trying to mask from him.

Jama had seen young boys working in the slaughterhouse, ferrying the carcasses of freshly killed animals to the eating houses and market. He watched the couriers, their necks awkwardly bent forward by the weight on their shoulders, their feet frantically shuffling forward, propelling whirlwinds of sand up their legs. The work was hard and dirty, but Jama resolved to get money by whatever means necessary.

He woke up early one morning, the sky grey and the air still cool, and snuck out of the room, Jinnow’s snores chasing after him. A hyena rich darkness covered the town and Jama could feel jinns and half men at his back stalking the alleys, making the hairs on his neck stand on end. He sped to the slaughterhouse, the cries of camels and sheep growing in volume as he got closer. He summoned up an image of his father; a dreamboat of a father, tall, strong, elegant in uniform, a smile playing on his dark lips. The slaughterhouse was empty of people; only the penned-up animals, waiting since nightfall for their deaths to come, acknowledged him, fixing their pleading eyes on him, sticking their flaring nostrils into the air. Jama felt the impending bloodshed sizzle in the air and rubbed down the tiny hairs on his lower spine as they nervously stood up, as if they were frightened conscripts standing to attention before a bloodied old general. He paced up and down, avoiding the eyes of the animals, turning his back to them, counting the stars, as they one by one bowed and left the stage. As the sun rose, more tiny figures emerged from the dawn horizon, approaching Jama with hostile eyes. Jama looked around with satisfaction as he realised that he was amongst the tallest of the motley crew of boys which had formed, waiting for the butchers to come and make their selection from them. With the same swift appraisal of strength and value that they usually trained on livestock, the butchers would pick their couriers for the day. The Midgaan and Yibir boys, those too young to believe that they would never be chosen, were insulted out of the line-up, ‘Get out of here, you dirty shit, go and clean some latrines!’ They moved away, forming a separate line, silent and enraged. The oldest porters were camel herders who had been possessed by jinns in the lonely haunted desert and were now forbidden from approaching the camels. The smallest were barely five years old, bewildered little children who had been dumped in Hargeisa by nomad fathers keen to toughen them up, they had been ripped from their mother’s arms and now slept huddled in groups on the street. Hungry and lonely they followed older children wherever they went, their fathers occasionally visiting to ask, ‘So, how much have you made?’

The butchers arrived already smelling of blood, with an impatient slap on the shoulder and a grunt they pushed out of the line the boys that they would employ that day. Jama was one of the chosen few. The unlucky ones returned to their mats or patches of dirt and prepared to sleep away the day and its insidious hunger pains. Jama walked towards the killing ground but hung back, hoping to avoid seeing the actual slaughters. A man shouted ‘Hey you! Whatever your name is! Come here!’

Jama turned around and saw a broad, bare-chested man kneeling over a dead camel, still holding onto its reins as if it could make an escape. ‘Jama, my name is Jama, uncle.’

‘Whatever. Come and take this carcass over to the Berlin eating house for me. Wait here while I prepare it.’ Jama stood back and waited as the butcher cut off the neck and legs, removed the skin from the camel’s torso and emptied it of heart, stomach, intestines and other organs that only the poorest Somalis ate. The carnage shocked Jama, its efficiency and speed making it even more dreadful, he stood before the giant, naked, gleaming ribcage, frightened and awed by its desecration. The butcher got up wiping his red hands on his sarong before picking up the ribcage and balancing it on Jama’s head. Its weight made him stagger and the soft, oozing flesh pressed revoltingly onto his skin. Jama pushed himself forward, trying not to career around, but the heavy load drove him left and right. He stopped and pushed the ribcage down his neck onto his shoulders and held it wedged there as if he was Atlas holding up the world in his fragile arms. The broad bones jutted into Jama’s back and blood trickled down from his hair onto his shoulders and down his spine, making his brown back glisten with a ruby lustre. His nose was filled with the dense, iron smell of blood and he stopped against a wall to retch emptily. Blood dripped onto the sand, decorating his footprints with delicate red pools, as if he was a wounded man. He finally reached the eating house and hurriedly handed over the ribcage to a cook through a window. The cook grabbed it as if it were weightless and turned back to his talking and chopping without acknowledging the human carriage that had brought the delivery to him. Jama walked back to the slaughterhouse, a grimace set on his face, his sticky arms held away from his rancid body so that they wouldn’t rub and release the metallic fumes. He delivered four more carcasses that morning and by the end he resembled a little murderer covered in the juices and viscera of his victims. Jama carefully tied his hard-earned money in the bottom of his sarong and walked home. The blood dried quickly in the noon sun and his hair and skin began to itch, he rolled his palms over his skin and the blood peeled off in claret strips. The insides of his nails were choked with dried blood and his sticky hair attracted fat, persistent flies, their buzzing causing an infuriating pandemonium by his ears. Jama had grown used to his own high, rich smell but the scent of death clinging to him was unbearable. Knowing that the precious water in the compound was only occasionally used for bathing, he hurriedly removed as much of the filth from his body as he could, using sand to clean himself as the Prophet advised. He arrived at the compound door and it was opened by Ayan before he had even knocked, she had fresh cuts on her face and one of her plaits had come apart, her wavy hair fanning out over one side of her head. ‘Nabad Jama,’ she enunciated slowly, looking into his eyes intensely. ‘Where have you been? You look tired, and what is that in your hair?’ she reached out to touch his hair but he slapped her hand away.

‘Get off, you idiot,’ he said gruffly, walking away to Jinnow’s room. He could hear Ayan skipping behind him, her rubber sandals clapping the earth. ‘I’ll get you one day,’ he threatened. Tired and hungry, he just wanted to collapse onto his straw mat. Ayan continued to follow him until unable to contain herself any longer, she exploded with her news, ‘The ginger cat is pregnant! She’s not just fat, there are kittens in there! Come and see, Jama! Come.’

Jama turned around and gave her the most belittling dead eye he could muster, before going into Jinnow’s room and slamming the door shut behind him. He heard Ayan squeal in frustration before trundling back to the main courtyard. There was a stillness in the air, the compound was silent, cobwebs floated from the ceiling, cockroaches scuttled into crevices, everyone was dozing. The droning of insects in the air was punctuated by the hammering and ratter-tattering speech of workmen outside, the smell of charcoal, onions, meat, tea boiling with cloves and cardamom drifted from underneath the door. As Jama dozed images of Hargeisa appeared in his mind, the roughness of hot rocks and thorns underfoot, the soft prickliness of camel fur, the taste of dates, ghee, hunger, a parched mouth surprised with the taste of food.

A young woman arrived at the compound while he slept, she carried her slim possessions in a bundle on her back and looked ready to collapse. She was one of Jinnow’s nieces, who had recently run away to marry a man from another clan.

‘Isir? What are you doing back here?’ shouted one of the wives.

‘That man doesn’t want me anymore, he’s divorced me.’

‘You see! Has he given you your meher at least?’

Through the thin walls Jama was awoken by the compound women scurrying around. ‘She has been possessed, I can see a jinn in her eyes, tell Jinnow,’ they called. Jinnow brought Isir into the aqal, Jama pretended to be asleep but watched as Jinnow inspected Isir, rubbing her hands all over her body, half doctor, half priestess.

‘How do you feel, girl?’

‘Fine, I’m fine, just keep those crazy women away from me,’ Isir said; she was dressed in rags but her beauty was still intense.

‘What happened?’

‘That idiot, that enemy of God says I am possessed.’

Isir caught Jama’s eyes peeking out from under his arm and he shut them quickly.

‘Has he given you any of your dowry?’

‘Not one gumbo.’

In the dim light, the women looked as if they were ready to commit some mysterious deed. Jinnow gathered herbs from her leather pouches and told Isir to eat them. She left Isir to rest and called the other women of the compound, as the neighbourhood alaaqad with shamanic powers they could not refuse her.

Isir shook Jama, ‘Are you Ambaro’s son?’

Jama nodded, Isir’s large brown eyes had the same burning copper in them as his mother’s had.

‘Go and listen to what they’re saying for me,’ she demanded.

Jama went as Isir’s eyes and ears. ‘Our sister needs us, she has been afflicted by a saar, we must exorcise her tonight, as her husband is not here you must bring perfume, new clothes, halwa, incense, amber and silver to my room to satisfy the jinn. I will conduct the ceremony,’ proclaimed Jinnow.

‘She’s always been like this, it’s the price for her beauty,’ Ayan’s mother scoffed. ‘Isir has always been leading men on, one of them has finally put a curse on her.’

‘Nonsense,’ shouted Jinnow, ‘she is of our blood, we can not stand aside when she needs us, what if a man threw you out with the rubbish?’ The compound women grumbled but agreed to prepare the saar ceremony.

Some cleaned Jinnow’s room, some cooked, some borrowed drums, others collected the gifts. When the children had been fed and sent away, Isir was led by a procession to Jinnow’s room. Jama was locked out, but with a pounding heart he climbed the wall and walked over the roof until he could lean over Jinnow’s window. The room was brightly lit with paraffin lamps, smoky with expensive incense. Jinnow had brought more old women, mysterious crones with shining dark skin and strong hands. After the incense had been passed around, and the gifts presented to the jinn, Jinnow took the largest drum and pounded it intermittently while shouting out instructions to the jinn. Isir stood in the centre of the room, looking stiff and nervous, with every command the old women chanted ‘Ameen’ and the young women clapped. Then the old women brought out small drums, got to their feet and started drumming in earnest. Jinnow stood behind Isir, grabbed her around the waist and forced her to dance, the crowd ululated and danced with them. Jinnow tore off Isir’s headscarf and pulled at her hair. Jama watched as Isir’s movements became more self-willed and definite, Jinnow was an inch away from her face shouting and crying, ‘Nin hun, nin hun, a bad man, a bad man, never tie yourself to a bad man, we told you he was useless, useless while you were brave and strong, Allah loves you, Allah loves you.’ Isir’s tears flowed freely down her face, she looked like a lost little girl to Jama. Jinnow spun around Isir with more energy than he could have imagined, steam was rising from the women and no-one noticed his head hanging upside down in the window. Isir had her head flung back, her eyes half-closed but staring unseeingly into Jama’s, she was saying things that Jama could not understand. Jinnow was encouraging her, shouting, ‘You are carrying this load on your back and you are staggering around with it like a tired camel, stop here and pass your load to me! Send him out of your soul! You are full of ghosts! Spit them out! Get your freedom, my girl!’

Isir carried on weeping while the compound women danced around her, clapping their support and flushing out their own grief.

Isir became a small ally against the compound women; she slept in the same room as Jinnow and Jama and joined in on their late night conversations.

‘I used to sleep right there next to Ambaro, where you are now Jama, plaiting our hair, tickling each other.’

‘That’s right, that’s right,’ encouraged Jinnow.

‘Jinnow would throw a slipper at us to quieten our laughter.’

‘They had no sense of time.’

‘Do you remember, aunty, how she would read our palms? Telling us all kinds of things, how many men we would marry, how many children we’d have, she scared the other girls with that talk.’

Jama sat up on his elbows and listened attentively to the women.

‘It’s because she had the inner eye and she didn’t soften or hide what she saw, I saw it in her from an early age, I watched her read the future in shells when she was not yet five, grown men would come and ask her to tell them their fate. Did she tell you all this, Jama?’ Jinnow asked.

Jama scanned his memory. ‘She only told me that I had been born with the protection of all the saints and that a black mamba had blessed me while I was in her stomach.’

‘That is all true, you had a very auspicious birth, every kaahin and astrologer envied your signs, even Venus appeared the night you were born.’

Jama rested his head on his arm and sighed loudy; if only he could meet his father he would believe all of their fanciful words.

Jama went to the abattoir every morning, and his eagerness and industriousness meant he was always picked out, creating enemies for him amongst the other hungry children. Jama saw the sweaty, smelly work as a kind of test, that if passed would entitle him to see his father, a trial of his worth as a son and as a man. He hid all of his abattoir money in a tin can in Jinnow’s room. The bundle of coins grew and grew in its hiding place, and he could feel the reunion with his father approaching, whether his father came to him or he went to his father Jama knew it was fated to be. He read it in the clouds, in the entrails of the carcasses he delivered, in the grains of coffee at the bottom of his cup.

After work, he often wandered around town, sometimes as far as the Yibro village that nestled against the thorny desert on the outskirts of Hargeisa. He walked through the pariah neighbourhood looking for signs of the magic Yibros were said to possess, he wanted some of their powerful poison to use against Ayan, to watch her hair and nails drop off. Jama peered into small dark huts, an outcast amongst outcasts, hot dark eyes following his progress. But there was no magic to be seen, the Yibros had yet to find spells that would turn dust into bread, potions to make their dying children live or curses that would keep their persecutors at bay. An Aji boy in their midst could easily bring trouble. If a hair on his head was hurt a pack of howling wolves would descend on the village, ripping and tearing at everyone and everything, so they watched him and hoped that his curiosity would quickly be satisfied. The village had only recently stopped mourning for a young man killed by Ajis, his body had been cut up and the flesh put in a basket outside his family’s hut. His mother collapsed when she peered into the basket and realised where the plentiful meat had come from, his head was at the bottom, broken and grey. No blood money could be demanded by them, his father went to work in the town the next day as he did every day, smiling to hide his fury, bowing down to men who had dismembered his child. Jama saw that the village was full of women; Yibro men were usually labouring elsewhere, hammering metal or working leather or in the town cleaning out latrines. The children sat outside picking their noses, their stomachs stretched to bursting point, destitution the way of life. The clan handouts that kept other Somalis afloat were absent here as the Yibros were so few and so poor. Ancient superstitions meant that Aji Somalis ostracised Yibros and Midgaans and other undesirables without any thought; Yibros were just Jews, eaters of forbidden foods, sorcerers. Jama was only dimly aware that these people received a payment from families like his whenever a male child was born and that a curse or spell from a Yibir was more powerful and destructive than from anyone else. Jama could see why they were feared, their clothes were even more raggedy than his, their shacks open to the cruelties of the August heat and the October freeze, their intimacy with misery deeper than that of anyone else.