Read Online Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed - Free Book Online Page B

it was a Monday and they could drag themselves to the white offices of the Sha’ab in the southwest of town, the district commissioner would hear their appeals, and bestow four annas on the most deserving.
    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. Not finding any companionship inside the compound or outside, Jama retreated deep into himself and made his mind his playground, fantasizing 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 agonizing; he could recall the way she smelled 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 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 gray 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, and he summoned up an image of his 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 realized that he was among the tallest of the motley crew of boys that 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 had for livestock, the butchers would pick their couriers for the day. The Midgaan and Yibir boys, those too young to understand that they would never be chosen, were insulted out of the lineup: “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 camelherders who had been possessed by jinns in the 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, and with an impatient slap on the shoulder and a grunt they pushed out of the line the boys they would employ that day. Jama was one of the straight-backed chosen