Black Mamba Boy (8 page)

“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 building a house nearby. 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 wakened by the compound women scurrying around. “She has been possessed, I can a see a jinn in her eyes, call Jinnow,” they cried. Jinnow brought Isir into the aqal, and 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 neighborhood alaaqad with shamanic authority, 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 laughed. “Isir has always been leading men on, and now one of them has finally put a curse on her.”

“Nonsense,” shouted Jinnow, “she is of our blood, we cannot 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, Jinnow took the largest drum and pounded it intermittently while shouting out instructions to the jinn. Isir stood in the center 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 took on a life of their own. 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 loudly. 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 among the other hungry children, but only a few resentful slaps or gobs of spit landed on him. 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 wrapped all of his abattoir money in a cloth and hid
it inside 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 neighborhood looking for signs of the magic that 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 among 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 cut up and the flesh put in a basket outside his family’s hut. His mother collapsed when she brought in the basket and realized where the plentiful meat had come from. His head was at the bottom, broken and gray. No blood money could be demanded by them because they were not strong enough to threaten vengeance, his father went to work 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 laboring 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 ostracized 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.

On a stagnant day, Jama returned home from work to find Ayan in Jinnow’s room, standing on tiptoe, her eyes ringed with stolen kohl, her raccoon eyes widening as she saw him staring at her while she snooped through Jinnow’s things. The beautiful silver kohl bottle rolling on the floor separately from its ornate lid.

“Thief! Thief!” shouted Jama, filled with horror that she might have found the hidden money. “What are you doing? You thief!” he said as he lunged at her.

Surprise had frozen a ridiculous expression on Ayan’s face, her eyebrows arching like the spines of frightened cats and her gap-toothed mouth hanging open. Jama pulled her arms behind her back, lifting her thin, dusty feet off the ground.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“What do you want in here? What are you looking for? Has someone sent you?”

“No, no, please, Jama, I was just looking, wallaahi, let me go!” she begged. Jama in confusion held on to her. Ayan was strong and supple for a girl but she was no match for a feral street boy. He was too embarrassed to check her body for the money, so seeing the imposing dark wood wardrobe with the key in the lock, he opened the door and shoved Ayan in. He quickly turned the key and stood back, shaking, with sweat beads trickling down his forehead. He stared at the wardrobe door as Ayan kicked and shouted to be let out.

“Jama! Jama! Jama! Let me
out
! I can’t breathe!” said her muffled voice.

Jama gathered himself, and with a jabbing finger said, “You are staying in there, you dirty thief, until Jinnow comes back and checks you.”

Ayan screamed long and loud, her erratic breathing and convulsive tears clearly audible in the room. Jama wiped the sweat off his brow and walked out of the room as Ayan continued to wail and weep. “It’s dark! It’s too hot. I’m going to die. Murderer! Murderer! Jama the Bastard Murderer!”

Jama waited and waited outside Jinnow’s room while inside the cupboard Ayan gulped down the warm old air and emitted a low, strange whine. Her jail was lined with nuptial gowns and undergarments given as part of ancient dowries, the relics of dead loves and youthful dreams of glamour and romance. The velvety blackness around her shifted and made room for its young visitor. She felt like she was at the bottom of a deep, deep well, too deep in the earth to ever be found, and panic washed over her in rapid waves. The noon prayer came and went as did the afternoon prayer, and it was not until it was nearly time for the sunset prayer that Jama could hear Jinnow’s voice rising up from a commotion in the courtyard. Jinnow
walked down the hallway followed by a loud troupe of compound women, with a beleaguered look on her wrinkled face.

“Have you seen Ayan? Her mother can’t find her,” Jinnow asked.

Jama looked up, and it was only then that it occurred to him how long he had spent on that doorstep and how long Ayan had spent in her makeshift prison. Jama got up creakily on weak legs. With slippery fingers before a roomful of expectant females, Jama turned the key on the wardrobe lock. Immediately a stink of urine swelled out of the hot, stuffy cell. There lay Ayan, barely conscious, her head flung back, her too-red tongue lolling. A collective gasp surged from the audience and Jinnow shoved Jama violently out of the way to get to Ayan, she shook Ayan and kissed her face until the girl’s eyes snapped open and a long scream coiled out from her. Ayan’s mother grabbed her child and hugged her suffocatingly against her bosom. “May God break your back, you devil,” she said over Ayan’s shoulder, her eyes ringed with antimony shooting daggers of hate deep into him.

Jama stuttered, “She’s a thief, Jinnow, check her, she was trying to steal my money.”

“May God break your balls, you lying bastard, you are cursed by all the saints,” screeched the mother. “Oh tolla’ay, tolla’ay, my poor child. May God put you under the ground, you eunuch, you devil!”

Jinnow’s head sank down and fat tears rolled down Jama’s face. Young women bearing water and cloths dragged Ayan from her mother’s grip and took her away to revive and clean her. Ayan’s mother stretched out to her full height and with a long sharp fingernail pushed up Jama’s face. “I want you out of here, or I swear to God I will cut your nasty little thing off.”
The courtyard women departed, leaving behind them a miasma of hair oil and incense.