Читать книгу Black Mamba Boy - Nadifa Mohamed - Страница 9

The muezzin’s call startled Jama out of his dream, he pulled himself up to look at the sun rising over the cake-domed mosques and the gingerbread Adeni apartments glowing at their tips with white frosting. The black silhouettes of birds looped high in the inky sky, dancing around the few remaining stars and the full pregnant moon. The black planets of Jama’s eyes roamed over Aden, the busy, industrial Steamer Point, Crater the sandstone old town, its curvaceous dun-coloured buildings merging into the Shum Shum volcanoes, the Ma’alla and Sheikh Usman districts, white and modern, between the hills and sea. Wood smoke and infants’ cries drifted up as women took a break from preparing breakfast to perform their dawn prayers, not needing the exhortations of the old muezzin. A vulture’s nest encircled the ancient minaret, the broken branches festooned with rubbish, the nest corrupting the neighbourhood with the stench of carrion. The attentive mother fed rotting morsels to her fragile chicks, her muscular wings unhunched and at rest beside her. Jama’s own mother, Ambaro, stood by the roof edge softly singing in her deep and melodious voice. She sang before and after work, not because she was happy but because the songs escaped from her mouth, her young soul roaming outside her body to take the air before it was pulled back into drudgery.

Ambaro shook the ghosts out from her hair and began her morning soliloquy, ‘Some people don’t know how much work goes into feeding their ungrateful guts, think they are some kind of suldaan who can idle about without a care in the world, head full of trash, only good for running around with trash. Well, over my dead body. I don’t grind my backbone to dust to sit and watch filthy-bottomed boys roll around on their backs.’

These poems of contempt, these gabays of dissatisfaction, greeted Jama every morning. Incredible meandering streams of abuse flowed from his mother’s mouth, sweeping away the mukhadim at the factory, her son, long-lost relatives, enemies, men, women, Somalis, Arabs, Indians into a pit of damnation.

‘Get up, stupid boy, you think this is your father’s house? Get up you fool! I need to get to work.’

Jama continued to loll around on his back, playing with his belly button. ‘Stop it, you dirty boy, you’ll make a hole in it.’ Ambaro slipped off one of her broken leather sandals, and marched over to him.

Jama tried to flee but his mother dived and attacked him with stinging blows. ‘Get up! I have to walk two miles to work and you make a fuss over waking up, is that it?’ she raged. ‘Go then, get lost, you good for nothing.’

Jama blamed Aden for making his mother so angry. He wanted to return to Hargeisa, where his father could calm her down with love songs. It was always at day break that Jama craved his father, all his memories were sharper in the clean morning light, his father’s laughter and songs around the campfire, the soft, long-fingered hands enveloping his own.

Jama couldn’t be sure if these were real memories or just dreams seeping into his waking life but he cherished these fragile images, hoping that they would not disappear with time. Jama remembered traversing the desert on strong shoulders, peering down on the world like a prince but already his father’s face was lost to him, hidden behind stubborn clouds.

Along the dark spiral steps came the smell of anjeero; the Islaweynes were having breakfast. ZamZam, a plain, teenaged girl, used to bring Jama the mealtime scraps. He had accepted them for a while until he heard the boys in the family call him ‘haashishki’, the rubbish bin. The Islaweynes were distant relatives, members of his mother’s clan, who had been asked by Ambaro’s half brother to take her in when she arrived in Aden. They had done as promised but it soon became clear that they expected their country cousin to be their servant; cooking, cleaning and giving their family the appearance of gentility. Within a week Ambaro had found work in a coffee factory, depriving the Islaweynes of their new status symbol and unleashing the resentment of the family. Ambaro was made to sleep on the roof, she was not allowed to eat with them unless Mr Islaweyne and his wife had guests around, then they were all smiles and familial generosity, ‘Oh Ambaro, what do you mean “can I”? What’s ours is yours, sister!’

When Ambaro had saved enough to bring her six-year-old son to Aden, Mrs Islaweyne had fumed at the inconvenience and made a show of checking him for diseases that could infect her precious children. Her gold bangles had clanked around as she checked for nits, fleas, skin diseases; she shamelessly pulled up his ma’awis to check for worms. Even after Jama had passed her medical exam, she glared at him when he played with her children and whispered to them not to get too familiar with this boy from nowhere. Five years later, Ambaro and Jama still lived like phantoms on the roof, leaving as few traces of their existence as possible. Apart from the neatly stacked piles of laundry that Ambaro washed and Jama pegged out to dry, they were rarely seen or heard by the family.

Ambaro left for the coffee factory at dawn and didn’t return until dark, leaving Jama to either float around the Islaweyne home feeling unwelcome, or to stay out in the streets with the market boys. Outside the sky had brightened to a watery turquoise blue. Somali men asleep by the roadside began to rouse, their afros full of sand, while Arabs walked hand in hand towards the suq. Jama fell in behind a group of Yemenis wearing large gold-threaded turbans and beautiful, ivory-handled daggers in their belts. Jama ran his hands along the warm flanks of passing camels being led to market, their extravagant eyelashes batted in appreciation at his gentle stroke, and when they overtook him their swishing tails waved goodbye. Men and boys shuffled past ferrying vegetables, fruits, breads, meats, in bags, in their hands, on their heads, to and from the market, crusty flatbread tucked under their arms like newspapers hot off the press. Butterflies danced, enjoying their morning flutter before the day turned unbearably hot and they slept it off inside sticky blossoms. The smell of leather harnesses damp with human sweat, of incense lingering on skin from the night before filled Jama’s nostrils. Leaning against the warm wall, Jama closed his eyes and imagined curling up in his mother’s lap and feeling the reverberations of her songs as they bubbled up from deep within her body. He sensed someone standing over him. A small hand rubbed the top of his head and he opened his eyes to see Abdi and Shidane grinning down at him. Abdi was the nine-year-old, gappy-toothed uncle of eleven-year-old gangster Shidane. Abdi held out a chunk of bread and Jama swallowed it down.

The black lava of the Shum Shum volcanoes loomed over them when they reached the beach. Market boys of all different hues, creeds and languages gathered at the beach to play, bathe and fight. They were a roll-call of infectious diseases, mangled limbs, and deformities. Jama called ‘Shalom!’ to Abraham, a shrunken Jewish boy who used to sell flowers door to door with him, Abraham waved and took a running leap into the water. Shidane’s malnutrition-blond hair looked transparent in the sunlight and Abdi’s head jiggled from side to side, too big for his paltry body, as he ran into the surf. Abdi and Shidane were two perfect sea urchins who spent their days diving for coins. Jama wanted them to take him out to sea so collected wooden planks washed up on the shore, and called the gali gali boys to attention.

‘Go and find twine so we can go out to sea,’ he ordered.

Jama sat on the seaweed-strewn sand while Abdi and Shidane tied the planks into a makeshift raft. Together they pushed the rickety contraption out to sea. ‘Bismillah,’ he whispered before they took off, holding on desperately while Abdi and Shidane propelled him forward. When Abdi and Shidane tired, they clambered on, panting beside him, their faces upturned to the rising sun. Jama turned on his back and smiled a contented smile, they floated gently on the young waves and linked arms, water droplets scattered over their skin like diamonds.

‘Why don’t you learn to swim, Jama?’ Abdi asked. ‘Then you can come pearl fishing with us. It’s beautiful down there, all kinds of fish and animals, coral, shipwrecks, you could find a pearl worth a fortune.’

Shidane shifted position and the raft spun around with him. ‘There aren’t any pearls down there, Abdi, we’ve looked everywhere, they’re all gone, taken by the Arabs. Look at those stupid Yemenis, they don’t deserve a boat like that,’ sneered Shidane. ‘If we had a gun we could take everything those fools had.’

Jama lifted his head up, he saw a sambuk hurrying back to port with crates piled up on its deck. ‘Get a gun then,’ he dared.

‘Ya salam! You think I can’t? I can make one, boy.’

Jama pulled himself up onto his elbows, ‘What?’

‘You heard me, I can make one. I’ve been watching the soldiers, some people are always active, always thinking. It’s simple for someone like me to make these Ferengi things; you get a piece of hardwood, make a hole all the way through, get gunpowder, stuff it into the hole, then fill one end with pebbles and in the other put a lit string, then blow fools like those into the sea.’

‘More likely you would blow your burnt futo into the sea,’ chuckled Jama.

‘Laugh all you like, you big-toothed Eidegalle donkey. I will be the mukhadim, if you are lucky you can be my coolie.’

‘Yes! We could be shiftas of the sea, covered in gold, wallaahi everyone will shake when they see our ship,’ enthused Abdi, firing imaginary bullets at the sun.

Jama felt water against his skin. ‘Yallah, yallah, back to the beach! The twine is loosening,’ he cried, as the planks fell apart.

Abdi and Shidane sprang into action, grabbing his arms and bearing him aloft like two well-trained dolphins.

Walking out into the dust and scorching heat, Jama instinctively headed for the warehouse district. He kicked a tin can down the streets of Crater, a town in the heart of a volcano, its hellish heat spilling people and cultures over its sides like a lava flow. Sunlight reflected against the tin roofs of the warehouses, blinding him momentarily. The smell of tea, coffee, frankincense, myrrh swept up the hill and swathed him in a nauseating, heady mix. Reaching the first warehouse, bare-chested coolies chanted as they pushed heavy wooden crates onto the backs of lorries, slightly smaller crates onto the backs of camels and sacks onto donkeys. Standing outside Al-Madina coffee stores, Jama walked through the stone entrance and peered into the darkness, sunlight splintered through the tin roof, illuminating the dust rising from the coffee beans as they were thrown up and down to loosen the husks. A field of underpaid women in bright, flowery Somali robes were bent over baskets full of coffee beans, cleaning them ready for sale. Jama weaved around them looking for a woman with smallpox scars, copper eyes, canines dipped in gold and inky black hair. He found her in a corner, working on her own with a sky-blue scarf holding her hair back. She brought his head down to kiss his cheek, her soft freckly skin brushing against his.

Ambaro whispered in his ear, ‘What are you doing here, Goode? This isn’t a playground, what do you want?’

Jama stood in front of her, legs entangled like a flamingo’s. ‘I dunno, I was bored…do you have any change?’ He hadn’t been thinking of money but now he was too embarrassed to say he just wanted to see her.

‘Keleb! You come to my place of work to hassle me for money? You think of no-one but yourself and may Allah curse you for it, get out now before the mukhadim sees you!’

Jama turned on his heels and ran out the door. He hid behind the warehouse but Ambaro found him, her rough dry hands pulled him against her. Her dress smelt of incense and coffee, he let his tears soak through to her skin.

‘Goode, Goode, please, you’re a big boy. What have I done to you? Tell me? Tell me? Look at the life I’m living, can’t you take pity on me?’ Ambaro asked softly. She pulled his arms up and dragged him to a small wall facing the sea. ‘Do you know why I call you Goode?’

‘No,’ lied Jama, hungry to hear of the time when he had a real family.

‘When I was pregnant with you I grew incredibly large, my stomach stuck out like you wouldn’t believe. People warned me that a young girl of seventeen would die giving birth to such a child, that you would tear my insides out, but I was happy, at peace, I knew I was expecting someone special. Following camels around is terrible work and I got slower and slower. I was often separated from my father’s large caravan and would hobble with my swollen ankles until I caught up with the family. But maybe in the eighth month, I was so exhausted I had to stop even though I had lost sight of the last camel. There was an ancient acacia in a savannah called Gumburaha Banka, and I sat under the old tree to rest in the little shade it provided. I sat and listened to my heavy breath fall and rise, rise and fall, I was wearing a nomad’s guntiino and the side of my stomach was exposed to the sun and breeze. Then suddenly I felt a smooth hand caress my back and move towards my bellybutton, I looked down in shock, and hoogayeh! There was not a hand but a huge mamba curling around my belly. I was scared its heavy body would crush you so I didn’t move even one inch, but it stopped and laid its devilishly wise face against you and listened to your thumping heartbeat. All three of us were joined like that for what seemed like a lifetime until, having decided something, the snake flexed its sinews and slipped down my body, massaging my womb with its soft underbelly till with a flick of its tail it disappeared into the sand. I wanted to name you Goode, meaning Black Mamba. Your father just laughed at me, but when you slithered out with your beautiful dark skin and your smell of earth I knew what your name was meant to be, I kept it as my special name for you.’

Jama melted in the warmth of his mother’s words and he felt the liquid gold of love in his veins, he was silent not wanting to break the spell between them, and she carried on.

‘I know I’m tough on you, sometimes too tough but do you know why I ask things of you? Things that you don’t understand are good for you? It’s because I have such high hopes, you are my good luck baby, you were born to be somebody, Goode. Do you know the year you were born became known as the year of the worm? Fat worms poked their noses out of the earth during the rainy season and came out to consume the grass, the trees, even our straw houses, until finished, they suddenly disappeared. Everyone thought it was a sign of the end but the elders said they had seen it before and it was barako as the rains were plentiful afterwards and our camels would breed fantastically. One old woman, Kissimee, told me that as my child would be born in the thick of that plague he would have the most beautiful luck, as if he had been born with the protection of all the saints and he would see the four corners of the world. I believed her because no one knew that woman to ever make a false prophecy.’

Despite the beauty of her words, Jama felt his mother was threading pearl after pearl of expectation into a noose that would sit loosely around his neck, ready for her to hang him one day. He pulled in close to her for an embrace and she wrapped her golden brown arms around his mahogany back, rubbing her fingers along his sharp spine.

‘Let’s go back home to Hargeisa, hooyo.’

‘One day, when we have enough to go back with,’ she said with a kiss on his head. Untying a knot at the bottom of her dress, she pulled out a paisa coin and gave it to Jama, ‘See you back on the roof.’

‘Yes, hooyo,’ Jama replied and stood up ready to go. Grabbing his hand, his mother looked up at him. ‘God protect you, Goode.’

Mrs Islaweyne had a problem with Ambaro, and she didn’t inconvenience herself by concealing it. In the mother’s long absences she went for the cub. When she realised in her sickly-sweet interrogations that Jama would never speak badly of his mother or let slip embarrassing secrets, she volunteered her own criticisms. ‘What kind of woman leaves her child alone to roam the streets every day?’ and ‘I’m not surprised Somalis have a bad reputation, the way some of these newcomers dress, all naked arms, with their udders hanging out the sides.’ The resentment was mutual and Ambaro and Jama mocked her behind her back. When Ambaro saw Mrs Islaweyne wrapping her nikaab around her face she would raise an eyebrow and sing in a bittersweet voice, ‘Dhegdheer, Dhegdheero, yaa ku daawaan? Witch, oh witch, who will admire you?’

Dhegdheer was a strange, vain woman with short, plump limbs, always oiled from head to toe, her eyebrows drawn on thickly with kohl, a fat, hairy mole on her cheek blending into a luxurious moustache, small, swollen feet squeezed into shoes that Ambaro could never afford. Sometimes Dhegdheer would appear on their roof glaring at them for no particular reason, marking her territory. When she returned downstairs, Jama would copy her signature waddle and squint to perfection. ‘Go eat yourself, witch!’ he shouted when she was safely out of earshot.

‘The one thing that woman is good at is breeding, she must have a highway between her legs, she gives birth to litters of two and three as if she was a stray bitch,’ Ambaro would say, and she was right, Jama had counted eight children but behind every door there seemed to be more sleeping or crying. The older Islaweyne boys went to school and chattered away in Arabic, even at home. Jama had learnt a rough, street Arabic which they mocked, mimicking his bad grammar and slang in slow, imbecilic voices. Although ZamZam was not the most alluring of girls, Dhegdheer had her eye on one of the wealthy Somali men who imported livestock from Berbera and wanted her daughter to appear a delicate flower cultivated in the most refined of settings.

Jama heard Dhegdheer complaining to her husband that Ambaro and her guttersnipe son lowered the honour of their family. ‘How can we be first class when we have people like that in our own home?’

Mr Islaweyne grunted and waved her away, but it was clear to Jama that his place in the home was precarious. As Jama spent more time on the streets to avoid Dhegdheer and her sons, the more their complaints about him increased.

‘Kinsi said she saw him stealing from the suq.’

‘Khadar, next door, said that he hangs around the camel mukhbazar joking with hashish smokers.’

Jama did joke with the hashish smokers but it was because he did not have brothers, cousins or a father to protect him like the other children. He knew his powerlessness so did not argue or make enemies. He had recently befriended Shidane and Abdi who were kind and generous, but friendships between boys of different clans tended to form and collapse like constellations of new stars forged in the heat of Aden, never lasting.

In the apartment the cold war between the women was thawing and simmering in the summer heat. Ambaro, tired and frustrated after work, became more combative. She used the kitchen at the same time as Dhegdheer, helped herself to more flour and ghee, picked out whichever glass was clean instead of the ones set aside for them, and left the laundry waiting for days at a time. Even with Jama she was like a kettle whistling to the boil; one day she wanted him to work, another day to attend school, another day to stay on the roof and keep away from those market boys, and yet another day she didn’t want to see him ever again. Jama at first tried to soothe her, massaging away all the knots in her body with his keen, sprightly fingers but soon even his touch irritated her and he left her to spend the nights with Shidane and Abdi. He returned every few days to wash, eat a little and check on his mother, until one evening he came in to find Ambaro and Dhegdheer in the kitchen, bosoms nearly touching, nails and teeth bared, ready to pounce on one another. From what he could tell through the shouts of ‘Slut born of sluts!’ and ‘Hussy!’, Dhegdheer was ordering his mother out of the kitchen and she was cursing back and standing her ground, looking as if she was ready to spit in Dhegdheer’s face. Jama grabbed his mother’s arm and tried to pull her away. Dhegdheer’s sons, older and stronger than Jama entered the kitchen, unable to ignore the shouting women any longer. Ambaro and Dhegdheer were now grappling with each other, pushing and shoving amongst the hot steaming pots. Jama hustled the pans off the fire and put them out of harm’s way. Ambaro was younger, stronger and a better fighter than the housebound Dhegdheer and she pushed the older woman into a corner, daring Mrs Islaweyne to lay a finger on her.

‘Soobax, soobax, come on,’ jeered Ambaro.

Dhegdheer’s oldest son grabbed hold of Ambaro and jostled her onto the floor.

‘Stop that shameful behaviour,’ he squeaked in his breaking voice.

Seeing his mother lying on the floor, Jama without any thought, picked up a pan of boiling soup and slung the steaming liquid in the boys’ direction. The soup fell short of their bodies but cascaded over their bare feet. Dhegdheer was beside herself. ‘Hoogayey waan balanbalay, my precious boys, beerkay! My own livers,’ she keened. ‘May Allah cut you up into pieces Jama and throw you to the wild dogs.’ Dhegdheer picked up a long butcher’s knife and began sharpening it, while Ambaro tried to wrench it out of her hands, Jama darted beneath their legs and escaped from the apartment.

Shidane and Abdi applauded Jama when he told them he was never going back to the Islaweyne house. Aden was a huge, dangerous playground for market boys and Shidane knew all of the secret nooks, crevices, holes and storerooms that made up the map of the unseen Aden. Together they could avoid older boys who would rob or beat them.

It was only when they became a gang that Jama realised Abdi was nearly deaf, he would put his ear right up to your mouth to compensate and hold your hands while he listened. As they sat on their rooftop, watching the setting sun turn the pools of water in the ancient tanks into infant suns, Jama and Abdi snuggled up under an old sheet. Shidane laughed at their canoodling and they laughed at his big ears.

‘No wonder your poor uncle is so deaf! You have taken enough ears for both of you,’ said Jama grabbing hold of Shidane’s flapping ears.

‘You can talk!’ exclaimed Shidane in response, pointing at Jama’s big white teeth. ‘Look at those tusks in your mouth! You could pull down a tree with them.’

‘You wish you had teeth like mine, rabbit ears, with a lucky gap like this in my teeth, you wait and see how rich I become, you would die for my teeth, admit it.’ Jama displayed his teeth for them to envy.

Ambaro had spent days holding her breath when Jama had disappeared. Mr Islaweyne had allowed her to move into a tiny room in the apartment while Dhegdheer took quiet satisfaction from Jama’s disappearance. Ambaro searched for Jama in dark, filthy alleys late at night, long after her twelve-hour shift had finished she was still looking, she went to his old haunts, asked around the other market boys but could not find him. She had no friends amongst the coffee women and unlike other Somali women whose troubles gushed forth at every opportunity, her anguish stayed locked up within her without release. Jama regularly disappeared but Ambaro had a panicky feeling that this time he would not come back. Her daughter Kahawaris began appearing in her dreams and she hated dreaming of the dead.

Unlike many Somali women, who abandoned four- and five-year-old boys on the street when their fathers absconded, she had guarded Jama as best as she could, and thought day and night ‘How can I keep my baby safe? How can I keep my baby safe?’

Jama was the only family she had or wanted, she had not seen the rest since leaving for Aden. Ambaro had grown up in the care of her aunt after her mother, Ubah, had died of smallpox. Izra’il, the angel of death, had barged down Ubah’s door fourteen times to decimate her legion of children, spiriting them away with diarrhoea, petty accidents, hunger, coughs that had wracked tiny rib cages until they had cracked. Ubah had left one live child, a heartbroken sickly little girl, who haunted her grave waiting for the day of judgement to arrive and restore her mother to her. Smallpox had laid its pockmarked hand on Ambaro’s body but she had survived, wearing her scars as proof of her mother’s ghostly protection. As she grew older Ambaro became a lean, silent young woman. Grief for her mother and lost brothers and sisters kept her detached from the other members of the family, who feared her and worried that misfortune might lead her to perform some evil witchcraft on them. Ambaro’s eyes were too deep, too full of misery to be trustworthy. It was only Jinnow, the level-headed matriarch of the polygamous family, who showed her any affection. Jinnow had delivered Ambaro into the world as a baby, had named her, and had demanded a veil be drawn over her growing intimacy with her cousin Guure. Guure the orphan lived with his elderly aunt and Ambaro imagined him a kindred spirit as well as a kinsman. She thought only he would understand how it felt to be an outsider in their family, to be called ‘cursed’ and ‘miserable’. She watched him for a long time before he noticed her, but then he began sneaking up behind her as she trekked to the well or collected firewood.

When Ambaro heard that her father and uncles had rejected Guure in favour of another man, she asked Jinnow to send word to Guure to meet her. She wrapped herself in her newest shawl and escaped into the night. Guure stood waiting under the great acacia as she planned, lithe and smiling, his skin shining in the moonlight. His brown afro formed a halo around his head and with his luminous white robes she felt she was running away with the archangel Jibreel. He had brought with him a cloth bundle. He kneeled down to open it and brought out a pomegranate, and a gold bangle stolen from his aunt; he passed these to Ambaro, kissing her hands as she took them. Then he removed a lute and pulled her down to sit next to him, placing the cloth underneath her. He plucked the strings sparsely, delicately, watching the shy smile on her face grow mischievously; he then played more confidently, easing out a soft bucolic melody. It sounded like spring, a lover’s lullaby. They sat entwined until the moon and stars tactfully dimmed and took their leave of the secret lovers. They were married the next day, in a wedding witnessed by strangers and conducted by a rebellious sheikh who laughingly placed two goats in the role of the bride’s male guardians. They returned to the family camp and the admiration of their cousins but the elders were furious and gave nothing to the young couple, who were forced to build a ramshackle aqal of their own. Ambaro quickly learned that her husband was a hardened dreamer, always stuck in his head; he was the boy everyone loved but would not trust with their camels. Guure could not accept that his carefree youth was over; he still wanted to wander off with his friends while all Ambaro wanted was a family of her own. Guure played the lute with all of his passion and attention but was listless and incompetent with the practical details of life, they had no livestock and depended on Jinnow’s charity. In the blink of an eye, Ambaro became Guure’s judge, his overseer, his jailer. When Jama arrived a year later in Ambaro’s eighteenth year, she hoped it would force Guure to start providing but instead he carried on endlessly combing his hair and playing his lute, singing his favourite song to her, ‘Ha I gabin oo I gooyn’. He occasionally dangled the baby from his thin fingers before Ambaro snatched Jama away. Ambaro carried both a knife and a stick from the magic wagar tree to protect her son from dangers seen and unseen, she was a fierce, militant mother, her sweet mellow core completely melted away. Ambaro tied the baby to her back and taught herself how to weave straw baskets, make perfume, sew blankets, intending to barter these items in neighbouring settlements for food. Whatever Ambaro did, they remained destitute, and she was reduced to foraging in the countryside for edible plants and roots. When Guure began to spend his days chewing qat with young men from whom he caught the Motor Madness, Ambaro was ready to tear her hair out. He bored Ambaro with obsessive talk about cars and the clansmen who had gone to Sudan and earned big money driving Ferengis around. It all seemed hopeless to Ambaro who had never seen a car in her life and could not believe that cars were anything more than the childish sorcery of foreigners. Ambaro tried desperately to extinguish this fire that was burning in Guure but the more she criticised and ridiculed him, the more Guure clung to his dream and convinced himself that he must leave for Sudan. His talk stole the hope out of her heart and made her wonder how he could desert his family so easily; she would cry and he would hold her but she knew only heartache lay ahead. Guure quietened down when a daughter arrived a year after Jama, a smiling golden child with big happy eyes that Ambaro named Kahawaris, after the glow of light before sunrise that heralded her birth. Kahawaris became the light of their lives, a baby whose beauty the other mothers envied and whose giggles rang through the camp. Jama had grown into a talkative little boy, always petting his little sister, accosting the adults with questions while he carried Kahawaris on his back. With his two children pawing at him, complaining and crying with hunger each night, Guure promised that he would take any work he was given, even if it meant carrying carcasses from the slaughterhouse. He began to help Ambaro with the chores, scorning the jeers of his friends to collect water from the well and milk the goats alongside the women. Life carried on bearably like this until after a long exhausting day, Ambaro unstrapped her daughter from her back and found her limp and lifeless. Ambaro screamed for Guure and he took the child from her arms and ran to Jinnow. Ambaro’s soul emptied after her baby’s death, she wept in sunshine and moonlight, she refused to get up, to feed herself or Jama. She blamed Guure for making her carry a young baby from village to village in the heat and dust. Ambaro had feared for Jama, she had constantly put her ear against his heart to check it was still beating but he had thrived with her. Now she felt that she had failed Kahawaris, had been a bad mother to the beautiful child. Guure hopelessly struggled to look after them, he fed and bathed Jama but he could not trade and barter like Ambaro so they often went hungry or begged. Guure’s father had died before he was born so he had no idea what a father did or didn’t do, he just floundered along guiltily, frightened that Jama would also die. Finally, when a drought decimated the clan’s camels, sheep and goats, everything disintegrated and families dissolved as people sought survival down every dirt track.

Guure cupped Ambaro’s face in his hands and said, ‘Look, either I go and make a living for us or you do. What will it be?’ Ambaro took his hands away and kept silent.

The very same day Guure set off on a mapless, penniless journey to Sudan. That was the last they saw of him, though they heard tales of his wanderings. Ambaro waited and waited for him, not knowing if he had died, gone mad, met someone else. Her family demanded that she divorce him, the clerics told her that she had been abandoned and was free but still she waited. She went to Aden and its factories hoping to earn enough to track him down. She cursed her admirers and sent them away in the hope that one day Guure would appear over the horizon with his lute strapped to his back.

Returning to the Islaweynes’ house was too bitter a fruit for Jama to stomach; the bloated, pompous pig of a woman treated Jama and his mother like flies hovering around her heaped dinner plate. He had grown tired of making his small body even smaller so that false queen could feel like the air in the room was her sole reserve. Jama had also grown weary of his mother, she did nothing but give him a headache. Living in the open had furnished him with a wolfish instinct for self-preservation; he could sense danger through the small hairs on his lower spine and taste it in the thick, dusty air. He thought from the primitive, knotted tangle of nerves at the base of his spine, like Adam

– his needs were primal, to find food, find shelter and avoid predators. Sleeping on roofs and streets had changed his sleep from the contented slumber of an infant, safe within his mother-sentried realm, to a jerky, half-awake unconsciousness, aware of mysterious voices and startling footsteps. His favourite place to sleep was an earth-smelling crook on the roof of a teetering apartment block. The crook was made up of a mud wall that curled over to make a three-walled tomb, inside it Jama felt as safe as the dead, in this world but not of it, floating high in the sky. At dawn he would wake up and watch the little insects as they carried on with their busy lives, scurrying across the wall with so much self-importance, crawling over his fingers and face as if he was just a boulder in their way. He felt as small in the world as them but more vulnerable, more alone than the ants with their armies or the cockroaches with their tough shells and hidden wings. But this night he would return to the new apartment block he had been sleeping in with Shidane and Abdi. Days and weeks and months came and went but Jama rarely knew where he would be eating or sleeping on any given night, there was no order to his life. Jama could easily imagine growing old and weak on these mean streets, eventually being found one day, like other market boys he had seen, cold and stiff on the kerb, a donkey cart carrying him away to an unmarked pauper’s grave outside town before stray dogs made a meal of him. Letting himself into the building, Jama wished the sleepy-eyed caretaker goodnight and went up to the roof, feeling a hollowness in his chest from wanting to be with a mother whose company he found too difficult to bear. On reaching the roof, he saw his inner emptiness matched by complete silence. Abdi and Shidane were not there. The loneliness Jama felt carved even deeper into his soul, he needed Abdi’s small warm body to huddle up with tonight, his wet nose buried in Jama’s neck. Jama stepped onto the ledge and looked up at the unblinking stars and the still pregnant, indifferent moon.

He hung there, enjoying the vast drop inches away from his feet, and at the top of his lungs called out, ‘Guure Naaleyeh Mohamed, where are you? Come find your son!’

His voice echoed against the buildings and drifted out to sea.

Shidane led his gang through the streets of the Arab part of Aden, Ma’alla, filling-in his little uncle and Jama on the local goings on, passing on the information he had gleaned from his errand work. Men and women moved behind curtains like jerky Indian puppets, their lives framed by windows and back-lit by lamps as the boys watched them from the twilight street.

‘The woman in that house is really a eunuch, I have seen him take off his sharshuf and underneath he has a gigantic club sticking out, hair all over his arms and feet, oof! He looked like a wrestler, wallaahi, I swear.’

Jama looked incredulously at Shidane and pushed him away. Extravagantly-red roses the size of Jama’s face flopped over the exterior walls of the houses, filling the air with their molasses-sweet scent. Jama picked one off its stem, stroking the petals that felt like the down on a butterfly’s wing, he waved it in a circle in the dusk breeze, trailing a ballet of insects that urgently followed the arcing fragrance.

‘And that man, see him up there? In the turban? He is always in and out of jail, all of his teeth are gold, he’s a diamond smuggler, he can take out his teeth and hide diamonds inside, I’ve seen him do it at night through the window.’

Abdi with a rapt expression exclaimed, ‘Inshallah I will be a diamond smuggler when I’m older, that’s even better than being a pearl smuggler. I would buy sparkling black pointy shoes like rich men wear and buy hooyo a house and more gold than she could ever wear.’ Silently the three boys looked at their naked feet shod only in sand and dirt.

‘Do you know what I would buy?’ asked Jama.

‘A car?’ replied Shidane.

‘No, I would buy an aeroplane, so I could fly through the clouds and come down to earth whenever I wanted to see a new place, Mecca, China, I would go even further to Damascus and Ardiwaliya and just come and go as I wanted.’

‘Allah! They are the work of the Shayddaan! You wouldn’t get me in one of those things,’ Shidane harrumphed. ‘My mum says they’re haram, it’s only angels, insects and birds that God intended to fly, it’s no surprise that they burst into flames. Then when you die your body is turned into ash so you can’t even have a proper burial and you go straight to hell. Serves the Ferengis right though.’

The rose torn from its bush wilted in the stifling heat and Jama tore it apart petal by petal. ‘Hey, do you remember that flower merchant that we worked for last Ramadaan?’

‘That shithead, how could we forget him? We are still waiting for our pay. We can’t all flutter our eyelashes at the women like you, Jama. The old hags would open the door, see me, and slam the door back in my face. He still owes me for the few flowers I did sell,’ said Shidane.

Jama held his finger to his mouth. ‘Be quiet and listen Shidane, I heard that he is now a seaman and earned enough on one voyage to take two wives and buy a large house in Sana’a.’

‘Two wives!’ said Shidane with a whistle. ‘That ugly sinner! I would be surprised if he managed to trick one blind old baboon into marrying him.’

Abdi creased up at his nephew’s cruel tongue. Abdi’s face was usually set in a grave, contemplative expression but then with a flicker of light in his eyes, a smile would crack it open, revealing teeth that tumbled over one another. A crooked smile made up of a hundred broken pearly whites.

Jama had enjoyed carrying the big baskets laden with jasmine, frangipani and hibiscus door to door in the cool quiet twilight, smiling at the pretty wives and daughters of wealthy men in the rich neighbourhoods. By nightfall his skin and sarong would be infused with an intoxicating smell of life and beauty. He would return home and decorate his mother’s black hair with pink, red and purple flowers.

As the three boys padded down the street, a racket broke the silence of the neighbourhood. A woman’s screams rose above the general shouts and Jama nervously looked at the boys. A small, middle-aged woman came around a corner, running barefoot past them with the front of her gown ripped open revealing an old grey brassiere, her face contorted in unseeing terror.

Behind her chased a group of older men, one of them bearing a knife, another a thick cane. They hollered after her, ‘Ya sharmuta! Whore! Adulteress! You have brought shame on our street, by God we will catch you.’

Behind them a rag tag of children came, some crying, some cheering and laughing. This human storm engulfed Jama and then flew away just as quickly. Jama stood stock still, bewildered by what he had seen, his head still turned in the direction of the lynch mob.

‘Let’s chase them!’ shouted Shidane, and they pelted after the crowd. ‘Which way did they go?’ Jama asked, trying to pinpoint where all the commotion had gone.

The screams were piercing when they reached the dirty alley where the woman had been cornered. Her children clung to her, a howling, shaking little girl holding her mother around the waist, and a teenage boy desperately trying to put his slight body between his mother and the man holding the knife. Shidane pushed through the crowd to the woman, the knife frozen in the air above their heads.

‘Let go of her!’ he screamed. ‘Let go of her you son of a bitch.’ Jama saw the man with the cane slap Shidane around the back with it, the other thug held him back as the old man cursed and lunged at Shidane. ‘Get away from here! Ya abid, slave,’ he raged.

The crowd of excited children shifted around Jama, their eyes wide with terror and joy at what they were seeing, one boy kept climbing Jama’s back for a better look but he threw him to the ground. Abdi was hanging from the arm of the man with the cane. Jama, worried that Abdi would be beaten, crept up to the knifeman, grabbed hold of his arm and sunk his teeth in. Jama bit harder and harder until the knife dropped to the ground. Shidane picked up the knife and dragged Jama and Abdi away. They fled into the night, the dagger tucked into Shidane’s ma’awis.

The next day, the boys stalked the outdoor restaurant of Cowasjee Dinshaw and Sons like a pack of hungry hyenas. They placed themselves to the left, right and front of the seated, cosmopolitan diners, who ordered heaped plates of rice with chicken, spaghetti with lamb mince, stew with huge hunks of bread. The clinking of full glasses and chatter drifted up into the air along with faint arabesques of cigarette smoke. Jama wiped his salivating mouth, and made eye contact with Shidane, who was standing behind the table of a suited Banyali merchant and his elegantly sari’d companion, her juicy flesh peeking out from underneath her fuchsia choli. The boys had barely eaten or drunk anything for days and they had to restrain their desire to knock the waiters down and snatch the steaming plates from their hands. The waiter took the white towel hanging over his forearm and flicked Abdi roughly around the back of his legs with it, ‘Yallah! Yallah abid! Leave our customers in peace,’ he shouted. The boys pulled back from the restaurant and regrouped at the palm trees lining the road. Hunger was the motivating principle in their lives, whether they were searching together or alone. Abdi gestured towards the Indian couple who were settling their bill. Jama and Shidane sprinted to the table and in one desperate movement tipped two plates of leftover spaghetti into their sarongs, which they had pulled out into makeshift bowls. Abdi collected all the bread and then ran after Jama and Shidane as they scrambled up the road. They stopped the instant they realised they were not being pursued and dropped down by the side of the road with their backs against a wall. They pulled the food to their mouths as if they would never eat again, silently and with a fixed attention to the meagre meal in their laps. Abdi tried to pick spaghetti from Jama’s and Shidane’s laps but had to dodge their frenetically moving fingers. They in turn grabbed at the bread in his hands and it was only after he shouted in despair that they slowed down and allowed him his share of the booty. Jama and Shidane wiped their greasy fingers on the sand beneath them and watched as Abdi lethargically finished off the scattered breadcrumbs. Jama’s eyes scanned over the little boy’s protruding ribs and matchstick-thin ankles and wrists. ‘Abdi, why do you eat like a chicken? You’re always getting left with the crumbs, you have to be fast!’

‘Well I would eat more if you two pigs didn’t swallow everything before I can even sit down,’ Abdi replied sullenly.

Abashed, Jama and Shidane giggled but did not meet each other’s eyes.

‘I want to go see my hooyo again,’ said Abdi sadly. ‘I think she’s ill.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll go tomorrow. We’ll all be going back to Berbera soon anyway, the dhows are already leaving for Somaliland. I can’t wait for this year’s fair, coffee from Harar, saffron, tusks, feathers from our great Isse Muuse, Garhajis with feathers, myrrh, gum, sheep, cattle, ghee, and the Warsangeli with their bloody frankincense. And all those Arabs and Indians to pickpocket before our morning swim. Are you not going, Jama?’ asked Shidane.

‘No, I’m staying here, in the big city. I’ve got nothing to go back for,’ lied Jama. Shidane stared at him, a smile pulling at his mouth.

‘Where is your father anyway? Why did he run off? Was it you or your mother that got on his nerves?’

‘Shut up, Shidane,’ Jama replied sternly. Shidane picked on people the way he picked at scabs, desperately trying to get to the red, pulpy stuff underneath. Jama hated Shidane when he was like this. Shidane’s mother was a prostitute in a port brothel but he still never dared insult Shidane back. The boys never took Jama with them when they visited Shidane’s mother but Jama had followed them once, he watched from behind a post as Shidane and Abdi embraced a small woman in a Ferengi shirt, her red hair flying in the breeze. She was surrounded by the hard-living women of the port who drank, chewed tobacco and qat and attracted sailors by shaking tambourines and dancing. Shidane’s mother looked like a lost bride with her red lips, kohled eyes and copper jewellery, but behind the make-up was a face that had lost all innocence, bloated and yellow with alcohol.

Shidane’s father had been killed by a British bomb left behind from the campaign years earlier against the Mad Mullah, and the rage that this had spawned in Shidane sometimes made his temper flare up as brightly as magnesium. He would seek out fights and get pulverised, Jama and Abdi would then huddle silently around him, tentative, as he wheezed and swore at them for being cowardly, stupid, pathetic, his eyes bloodshot with held-back tears. Jama and Abdi loved Shidane, so they tolerated his foul-mouth, his unreasonable demands, his cruelty; he was too charming to hold a grudge against. His gigantic eyes could be so sincere and full of compassion that they could never stay angry with him for long. Without Shidane and Abdi, Jama’s days would be long, lonely and almost silent, they had insinuated themselves deep down into his heart and Jama fantasised that they were his brothers. The only time they were separated now was when Shidane and Abdi went to Steamer Point to dive for pennies. Cruise ships on the way to India or the Far East stopped off in Aden and idle passengers would throw coins into the water to watch the gali gali boys risk their lives to collect them. Jama occasionally watched them, Shidane dangerously sleek and elegant in the water, Abdi struggling always with a mouthful of saltwater. After hours in the sea they would come ashore with their cheeks full of coins and spit them out at Jama’s feet; it was begging, but they made it look beautiful.

At Shidane’s instigation the gang would sometimes go looking for trouble. Indian kids, Jewish kids, and Yemeni kids, all lived with their parents however poor they might be. It was only the Somali children who ran around feral, sleeping everywhere and anywhere. Many of the Somali boys were the children of single mothers working in the coffee factories, too tired after twelve hours of work to chase around after boisterous, hungry boys. Their fathers came and went regularly, making money and losing it, with the monsoon trade. With no parental beatings to fear, the Somali boys saw the other children as well-fed and soft enough to harass safely. Jama, Shidane and Abdi liked to prowl around Suq al-Yahud and the Banyali area as well as old Aden. Today, they penetrated the Jewish quarter, walking under the flapping laundry crisscrossing the alleys, looking for boys their age to fight. The Jewish boys looked so prim and proper in comparison to them, over-dressed with little skullcaps balanced on their heads, books tucked under their arms as they returned from yeshiva.

Shidane picked up a stone and lobbed it at one. ‘Hey Yahudi, do they teach you this at your school?’ he said with the secret envy of the illiterate. Abdi and Jama although hesitant picked up smaller stones and threw them as well.

The Jewish schoolboys piled up their books in a heap. ‘Somali punkahwallahs, your fathers are dirty Somali punkahwallahs!’ they shouted and started bombarding the Somali boys back.

Adrenaline flowed on both sides, and soon vile insults in Arabic against each other’s mothers were exchanged along with the stones, Jama chipped in with a few Hebrew insults he had learned from Abraham, a boy he used to sell flowers with, ‘Ben Zona! Ben Kelev.’

The Jewish boys had sweat dripping down their temples into their ringlets, and down their backs onto their tunics. Jama and Shidane cackled as they avoided the sharp stones, pushing Abdi out of the way whenever one was targeted at him. Hearing the commotion and obscenities, Jewish matrons came out onto their balconies to hector the little brats. They went un-heeded until one no-nonsense woman went indoors and returned with a large basin, tipping half of the dirty water on the Somali intruders and splattering the rest on the Sabbath-disrespecting Sons of Israel. All of the boys ran away, Jama, Shidane and Abdi fled together, passing fabric shops as they closed for the Sabbath.

Abdi pinched a black waistcoat that was hanging from a nail and they ran even faster, their booty held aloft while a burly, bearded man chased them. ‘It’s the Sabbath, you shouldn’t be running!’ shouted Jama over his shoulder, and Shidane and Abdi roared at his wit.

The man huffed and puffed behind them but eventually gave up, cursing them in Hebrew. ‘You shouldn’t swear on the Sabbath either!’ shouted Jama in a parting shot, as they bolted out of the neighbourhood.

The camel mukhbazar was a small, white-washed greasy spoon serving pasta and rice dishes to Somali migrants. A few round tables were placed inside the mukhbazar and Somali baskets hung from the wall in an attempt at decoration. Most of its customers preferred to stand or sit outside in loud groups, metal plates balanced in their hands. The camel mukhbazar had become a meeting place for all the Somalis who washed up on the Yemeni coast looking for work. Merchants, criminals, coolies, boatmen, shoemakers, policemen all went there for their evening meal. Jama often hovered around its entrance hoping to see his father or at least someone who had word of him. Jama did not know what his father looked like, his mother rarely talked about him. Jama always felt, however, that if he ever had the chance to catch his father’s eye, or watch him move or talk, he would instantly recognise him from amongst the untidy men with shaved heads and claim him as his own.

One windy day as Jama’s legs and feet were being buffeted by flying refuse, he joined a group of men gathered around Ismail, the owner of the mukhbazar. The Somalis were flowing out into the road to the consternation of Arab donkey drivers and coolies, who struggled past with their heavy loads. Jama heard them cursing the Somalis under their breath, ‘Sons of bitches should go back to the land-of-give-me-something,’ one hammal said, Jama fought the temptation to tell the men what the Arab had dared say. He eased his way into the crowd until he was at Ismail’s shoulder. Ismail was reading from an Arabic newspaper, ‘Italy declares war on Abyssinia, Haile Selassie appeals to the League of Nations,’ he translated.

‘To hell with that devilish imp!’ shouted out a bystander.

‘Coloured Americans raise money in churches but the rest of the world turns its gaze,’ Ismail carried on.

‘Good! They turned their gaze too when the Abyssinians stole our Ogaden, if they can take our ancestral land then let the Ferengis take theirs,’ shouted another.

‘Runta! Ain’t that the truth! Look at this small boy.’ Ismail suddenly lifted his head from the paper, and pointed an angry finger at Jama. ‘Selassie is no bigger than him yet he has the nerve to call himself a king, an emperor no less! I knew him in Harar, when he was always running to the money lenders to pay for some work of the devil he had seen the Ferengis with, I bet he needs his servants to pick him up before he can relieve himself in his new French pisspot.’

Jama inched back, the finger still pointed at him as Ismail returned to reading. ‘The Italians have amassed an army of more than one million soldiers, and are stockpiling weapons of lethal capability.’

Ismail stopped and screwed up his face. ‘One million? Who needs a million of anything to get a job done? This war sounds like the beginning of something very stupid.’ Ismail impatiently scrunched up the newspaper, wiping the ink from his fingers with a handkerchief and padded back inside his mukhbazar.

Jama was eavesdropping on the men’s war talk; the names of strategic towns, disloyal nobles, Somali clans that had decided to fight with Selassie were thrown about over his head. Ismail leaned out of the kitchen window and whistled at Jama, ‘Come in and make yourself useful, boy!’

Two cooks were working in the kitchen, a bald-headed, yellow-toned Somali man cooked the rice and pasta and another taller man made vats of the all-purpose sauce.

Ismail fluttered around moving dirty dishes to the basin on the floor. ‘Get here, boy, and wash these dishes, do them well and you’ve got yourself a job.’

Jama’s eyes widened with happiness at the prospect of regular money and he rushed towards the pyramid of dishes as if it was a newly found goldmine. The hot water scalded his arms but he scoured and rinsed the heavy pots and pans without complaint. Ismail stood behind him scrutinising his work but soon left to talk with new customers. Within a few minutes the dirty pyramid had been transformed into a sparkling display of almost new-looking dishes. Jama turned around with a jubilant look but the two cooks were uninterested in his achievement. Ismail came back into the kitchen and after casting an eye over his rejuvenated dishes said, ‘Come back tomorrow, Jama, you can start at seven in the morning, there’s a plate of rice waiting for you inside.’

Jama skipped past as Ismail slapped the back of his neck. A large plate of steaming rice and stew was placed on a table and he stopped to smell the delicious aroma and wonder at all this food that was entirely his own. Eating slowly was a luxury he rarely allowed himself but he chewed the lamb meditatively, removing all the meat from the bone and sucking out the marrow. He licked the plate clean then sat back as his stomach strained against his knotted sarong. Jama couldn’t sit still he was so excited about this unexpected good luck. As soon as he felt able, he waddled out and stumbled towards the beach, where he expected Shidane and Abdi to be. Jama laughed at the memory of stealing from the camel mukhbazar, Shidane’s idea was to tie a fresh date to a stick, and use the contraption to pick up paisas left on tables for the waiters. Jama was the best at casually, innocently walking past and picking up the coin with the stick. When they had finally been caught, they had moved onto the Banyali quarter. Shidane would throw a bone into the shops of the vegetarian Hindus and Jama would offer to remove it for a price.

Shidane and Abdi were kicking at the surf. The waistcoat Abdi had stolen looked ridiculous hanging from his bony shoulders and Jama burst into laughter at the sight of Abdi in a fat Jewish man’s clothing. Jama skipped up and jumped onto Shidane’s shoulders, Shidane shook him off in irritation and said, ‘Leave me alone you donkey.’ Abdi looked gloomily at them both, rubbing his red, teary eyes, silently gathering the waistcoat around his ribs to stop the sea breeze blowing it away. Shidane was in one of his moods, he kept staring at Jama and his nostrils were round and flared, his face set in a stony grimace. ‘Something has happened to Shidane’s mother,’ Abdi tried to explain, but Shidane hushed Abdi with a stern finger against his lips.

‘What’s the problem, walaalo? You need money? I’ve just had some good luck.’

‘What?’ asked Shidane defensively.

‘I’ve got a job starting tomorrow at the camel mukhbazar, Ismail wants me to do the dishwashing from now on.’

‘Ya salam! You Eidegalle really know how to look out for each other, don’t you?’ interrupted Shidane.

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Jama in shock.

‘Well, it just seems strange that you’re always getting work and you never think to ask for us as well, all you care about is yourself.’

‘Have you gone mad?’ exclaimed Jama.

‘Don’t raise your voice to me, saqajaan, do you hear me? What do you want from us anyway?’

‘Stop it, stop it,’ pleaded Abdi. ‘Just leave Jama alone.’

‘What’s going on with you, Shidane? Why are you acting like this? You know I’ll look after you, you can come and eat there anytime now.’

‘Do you think we need your charity, huh? Is that it? Do you think we need the charity of a saqajaan bastard like you?’ spat Shidane.

Jama froze, Abdi froze, the children playing nearby froze, even Shidane froze once these spiteful words had left his mouth. Jama felt his pulse beating hard in his temple, in his throat, in his chest, and he felt a trickle of shame running down his back.

‘Take that back now, Shidane,’ threatened Jama.

‘Make me.’

There was only one way to save face after Shidane’s insult and Jama threw up his fists and charged. A crowd of boys surged forward emitting a savage cry for blood. Jama pounded his fists clumsily against Shidane’s soft face and slapped away Abdi’s attempts to tear them apart; unable to watch his friends hurt each other Abdi preferred to take the blows himself. Jama pinned Shidane down on the sand, between his knees was the face he had looked for in crowds, the body he had slept next to for months, it was as if the world had been turned upside down. Jama couldn’t bring himself to look into Shidane’s eyes as they fought, a shadow Jama stood to the side and frowned at the pain he was inflicting on his friend. Abdi unable to stop this cataclysm threw in his towel at playing peacemaker and waded in to defend his nephew, he pulled at Jama’s hair and feebly tried to pull him off Shidane. Jama turned around and punched Abdi hard in the mouth. Seeing this Shidane pulled the trophy dagger from his sarong and plunged it deep into Jama’s arm. Jama jerked away as Shidane lunged forward for another stab but was caught in the hand. Red blood poured onto the sand and was lapped up by the surf. Jama rose woozily from Shidane and squeezed his bleeding arm. Tears gathered burning hot behind his eyes but he kept them hard and unblinkingly focused on Shidane.

‘Jealous of me, you’re just jealous of me, because you’re a sea-beggar, diving for the pennies that Ferengis throw you and your hooyo opens her legs for them,’ Jama yelled.

Shidane clutched howling Abdi in one hand and the bloody dagger in the other. ‘Don’t ever let me see you again or I will cut your throat.’

The crowd of children, who all knew the combatants, kept a respectful distance and noted this shift in alliances. From now on Jama was on his own, a true loner, a boy without a father, brothers, cousins or even friends, a wolf amongst hyenas. Jama slunk away, intending to walk and walk until he found himself at the end of the world. He wanted to escape like the fake prophet Dhu Nawas, who had ridden his white horse into the waves and crests of the Red Sea, who let the sea bear him away from pain and misery.

Approaching the camel mukhbazar the next morning, Jama’s eyes were sunken and dark, his back aching, but worst of all his hand bled every time he tried to use it. He had a strip of his sarong tied around his arm which stopped that bleeding but he was unable to staunch the flow from his hand. He had walked around the eating house from dawn watching the white walls become more and more luminous against the dark cloth of the sky. He now saw Ismail walking with that camel-like gait that people had named his mukhbazar after.

‘Nabad Jama,’ hollered Ismail.

‘Nabad,’ mumbled Jama, his hands behind his back.

‘You have a long day ahead of you, start by sweeping the floor and wiping the tables and when the first customers have eaten, start on the dishes.’

Jama nodded and followed Ismail into the yellow painted room. He picked up an old broom propped up in the corner and started attacking the piles of sand that had rushed in during the night through the cracked door. Pretty soon springs of blood popped up from Jama’s hand, rivering down the earth of his hand and the broom handle to splash red pools on the white cement floor. Ismail returned to find Jama trying to sweep away the blood but just smearing it over a larger area.

‘Hey, hey! What are you doing? Why is there blood all over my floor?’ shouted Ismail, as he lunged towards Jama. Ismail pulled Jama’s hand up into the air and marched him back outside. ‘Kid, why is your hand bleeding?’

‘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 and come back when it’s healed,’ exclaimed Ismail.

‘No, it’s fine, please, let me keep my job. It will stop bleeding anytime now,’ 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 hand so it doesn’t go bad,’ Ismail said, dropping the child’s hand.

Ismail rummaged in the pockets of his thin, grey 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 towards 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 land, a comic, strange, technological land so different to his own antique part of Aden. 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 towards 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, and he tried to take in every detail as the ships approached. Jama wondered who could create such colossal objects, were they the work of giants, devils, or of Allah? The torrid black smoke emanating from their bellies frightened him and he dreaded the idea that these smouldering 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 grew thirstier and thirstier as he looked into the sparkling sea and dreamed that he could drink it all up and float and frolic like a fish in that blue paradise. He climbed off the wall and went to search for a drink from 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, 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 brought 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, 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 recognised 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 grey worn steps into the dim hallway of the Islaweyne apartment filled Jama with unpleasant memories. It still 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 closet-like, air-starved room in which old suitcases lay stacked against a wall, watching her with zipped silent mouths. She was stretched out on a grass mat, her thin headscarf had slid back releasing 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 odour 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, but he could still hear a terrible gurgling sound, every intake of breath made the gurgling louder. Jama crept closer to his mother, his eyes darted from her knees to her ankles, swollen with the same fluid that her lungs were drowning in. ‘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 frantically pounding against her ribs as if there was 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, Jama 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 out of 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 of 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.’

Jama took the soup, his head drooping down to his chest, his heart a lead weight, and went back to his mother. He gathered Ambaro in his arms and tried to put the soup to her lips. Ambaro jerked her head away. ‘I don’t want anything from that bitch, put it down, Goode.’

Jama felt a surge of power run through Ambaro. She turned her face to the window and took a smooth, deep breath in.

‘Look at those stars, Goode, they have watched over everything.’ The sky was as black and luminous as coal, a white-hot crescent moon hung over them like a just-forged scythe, the stars flying like sparks from the welder’s furnace.

‘It’s another world above us, each of those stars has a power and a meaning in our lives. That star tells us when to mate the sheep, if that one does not appear we should expect trouble, that little one leads us to the sea.’ Ambaro pointed at anonymous specks in the distance.

Jama saw only a sea of solitude, an expanse of nothingness impossible to navigate on his own.

‘Those stars are our friends, they have watched over our ancestors, they have seen all kinds of suffering but the light in them never goes out, they will watch over you and will watch over your grandchildren.’

Ambaro felt Jama’s tears falling on her and grabbed hold of his hand. ‘Listen to me, Goode, I am not leaving you. I will live in your heart, in your blood, you will make something of your life, I promise you that. Forgive me, my baby snake, don’t live the life that I have lived, you deserve better.’

‘I wanted to make you happy, hooyo, but now it’s too late,’ Jama wept.

‘No it is not, Goode, I will see everything that you do, the good and the bad, nothing will be hidden from me.’

Jama pushed his face against his mother’s cheek, rubbed his moist face against hers, hoping to catch whatever she had, go with her to the next life. Ambaro pulled her face away from him.

‘Stop that, Goode. Shall I tell you what the Kaahin told your father?’ she cajoled. ‘A great Kaahin once told your father when he was a boy that his son, the son of Guure Mohamed Naaleyeh, would see so much money pass through his fingers, I know in my heart that you are a child of fate, you were born with the blessing of the stars.’

Ambaro touched Jama’s cheek. ‘Guess what your father said to the Kaahin, he asked him, “What’s money?” Neither of us had seen any before, but now I know money is like water, it will give you life. Take the Kitab amulet from around my neck.’

Jama began to unpick the large knots in the string that hung the amulet over Ambaro’s chest; in a folded paper heart lay prayer after prayer, it was in this heart that Ambaro kept her hope, she did not trust her body anymore. The Arabic script had smudged and faded on the thin exercise paper the wadaad had used. ‘Inside the amulet, I have put one hundred and fifty six rupees, I do not want you using it until you absolutely need to, wait until you have grown up and know what you want to do with your life.’

Jama squeezed the amulet in his palm, he had never seen a rupee, nevermind hundreds of them, his world was of ardis lost in the street, paisas to pay for stale cakes, occasional annas thrown to Abdi from the passenger ships.

‘I have been saving that for you, Goode, promise me you will not waste it, don’t tell anyone about it either, tie it around your neck and forget about it.’

Ambaro’s swamped lungs protested against her chatter and seized up, her face suddenly contorting as she gasped for breath. Jama did not believe a word of the old Kaahin’s prophecy, he knew that no boy born for a special fate would have to see his mother choking on strange liquid that poured out of her mouth and nose. Jama wiped his mother’s face on his ma’awis and held her in his arms. ‘Shush, hooyo, shush,’ he soothed, rocking her gently. His mother fell into a foetal curl with her back turned to him and soon fell asleep. Jama watched the rise and fall of her back and grabbed a handful of her tobe to keep himself connected. The fabric dampened in his nervous grip; she was already slipping from him. He would have preferred his umbilical cord never to have been severed but to extend limitlessly like spider’s silk between them, he belonged to no-one else, she belonged to no-one else, why couldn’t God just leave them together?

Jama’s eyes remained open all night, scanning the pitch black room for any figures that might materialise to take his mother away. The gloom was alive with shifting densities, lumps of grey light that hovered slowly along the floor, furry black masses that shivered in corners. Jama’s fingers finally loosened their grip on Ambaro’s tobe and reached out. Ambaro’s arm was relaxed along her side, her fingers resting on her hip. Jama placed his hand on hers, she felt like one of those shells washed up on the beach, cold, hard, smooth, veins making superfluous swirls under her skin. Everything powerful and vibrant about her had gone, only the worn-out machinery of her body remained, and the little life that wondrous machinery had produced was left to grieve over everything she had once been.