Black Mamba Boy

Hargeisa appeared all of a sudden in a valley scattered with trees. On the outskirts of town Jama and Ji

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

Finally the gate to his grandfather’s compound creaked open and a smiling girl said, “Aunty, is this Jama?” but Ji

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

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

The girl bounced along in front of Ji

Ji

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

Jama could remember something, the snug warmth, the light filtering through woven branches, the earthy smell, it was all imprinted in his mind from a past life. He watched Ji

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

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

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

“Hey, Ji

Ji

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

Ji

Clutching her brown, spindly fingers against the wall of the compound, Ayan would peer over and watch as Jama disappeared down the road. Ayan was the daughter of one of the younger wives in the compound and lived in a smaller room away from Ji

Jama would sometimes see Ayan in the evening as the women gathered around the paraffin lamp to tell stories. Tales about the horrors some women were made to suffer at the hands of men, about the secret lovers some women kept, or about Dhegdheer, who killed young women and ate their breasts. Ayan would regularly be mocked as “dirty” and “loose” by the women and older children for being uncircumcised, she had been feverish with chicken pox when the Midgaan woman had made all the girls halal with her razor, and now her head drooped down in shame. Her stupid mistakes would also be recounted; she had once tried to open a lock with her finger and instead got it stuck.

“I thought that is how people open locks!” Ayan wailed.

“Served you right, that was Allah’s reward for your snooping,” rejoiced her mother. Jama’s favorite stories were about his grandmother Ubah, who traveled on her own as far as the Ogaden desert to trade skins, incense, and other luxuries despite having a rich husband. “What a woman. Ubah was a queen and my best friend,” Ji