Black Mamba Boy

“Where’s the rest of them?” asked Jama.

“Probably still along the roadside,” said the askari, taking back his postcard.

Every askari returned from the front line with tales of the daily carnage, the lack of sleep, dead bodies exploding in the heat, men going mad with shellshock, the evil ways in which the Italians humiliated their black comrades.

“The lieutenant told me to bury the white bodies but to leave the black to rot. I couldn’t believe it, we had all just sacrificed our fucking lives for them,” raged one Eritrean askari. “When I said I would bury them all together, he raised his pistol to me.”

Jama, Abdi, and Shidane listened to these stories at night around the campfire. “Let’s stay until we have earned enough money to travel to Egypt,” Jama agreed. They hadn’t yet seen the violence and savagery of the war close up and still believed they could escape it altogether. At night, the askaris pooled their flour rations and cooked together. Shidane usually commandeered the pots and pans to make lahoh and surprisingly delicious stews with stolen cooking oil and spices.

“My mother is the best cook in Aden, she doesn’t make the sloppy bowls of grease you people are used to,” he boasted.

They crouched down around the fire and burned their fingers trying to get to the stew before the others. Even if bombing sorties flew overhead, the men would rather stay put in the open than risk missing out on Shidane’s cooking. Some jittery ones would be half standing, half crouched, nibbling the sour bread between shaking fingers. A man jumped out of his skin as a munitions store exploded, and put his foot right into the boiling pot. The askaris jumped up in a rage.

“Waryaa fulay! Hey, coward! Look where you’re stepping, get your dirty feet out of our food!” the boys shouted at him with no concern for the red, scalded foot he pulled out of the cauldron.

Jama and the boys angrily returned to the food as the man shuffled away. They slept huddled together behind a boulder. Shidane, as always, slept with one eye open like a caiman, keeping guard over his charges. When it was too loud to sleep, Shidane told ghost stories that made Jama hold his breath. Backlit by the bombs, he would describe all the kinds of evil that he had seen.

“Wallaahi, may God strike me down this moment if even one word is untrue. One night when you two were snoring away, I saw something hunched moving down the mountain, it had white, white skin and long claws that scratched against the rock. I closed my eyes, thinking I must be dreaming, but when I opened them again, the thing was stood up like a man. Its red eyes were looking right at me so I ducked down behind a rock, praying for my life. The English had stopped bombing and everything was totally black. I lit a match, thinking the beast was coming for me, but it had already found a victim. It had an askari by the throat and it was carrying the limp man back up the mountain. It disappeared, but all night I could hear bones breaking and flesh being ripped apart. There are ca

Jama could believe anything Shidane reported. He hated the strange noises that carried on the air on quiet nights: growls, howls, screams, prayers. The wounded askaris’ pleas of “Brothers, help me” would turn into “May you all be damned to hell” before there was silence.

The stench of bodies grew. Jama was separated from Shidane and Abdi, sent with a small unit to defend a munitions store close to the front line, while they were ordered to Keren to collect binoculars for the Italian officers. They were to leave their secluded dugout, behind its sandbags and hidden mines, and venture out into the tumultuous expanse beyond.

Shidane embraced Jama. “Don’t worry, walaalo, I will have a mouthwatering meal waiting for you. If it gets too bad up there, desert and leave a message with one of your clansmen, and we will come and find you, Al Furbo,” he said.

Jama didn’t dare speak, his voice would betray him. He climbed onto the lorry with shaking legs. Shidane stood proud in his uniform as he waved goodbye. From a distance the dirt on it was invisible and Shidane looked more elegant than any other askari, with his handsome brown face, bright eyes, and long limbs.

Some details Jama would piece together with time, some he would not, but askaris described to him seeing Abdi and Shidane in Keren. Their requisition papers were scrunched up in Shidane’s hand. The town teemed with deserters and men separated from their battalions, and military police herded them to camps before sending them back into battle. Abdi tightly held Shidane’s hand as they maneuvered around the mad drunken men. They arrived at the huge tent that housed the supply depot and had to suppress gasps when they ran in. It was like Ali Baba’s cave, glinting with hundreds of treasures, tins of food, coffee, bags of sugar, sacks of tea, weapons, shoes, binoculars and other gadgets.

They were the only askaris in the depot and they instantly drew the attention of the white men. “Ascaro, what are you doing here?” one middle-aged man shouted over.

Shidane held out the flimsy requisition order and waited for the man to come and get it.

“Come here, boy, it’s not your place to be waiting for me to walk over to you,” the man shouted.

Shidane handed him the note, and the clerk put on spectacles to peruse the order. While he read, Shidane and Abdi looked around to see if they could sneak anything into their pockets. At the top of a sack lay chocolate bars in brown wrappers; Shidane wrapped his fingers around one and snuck it into his shorts.

“Put that down now,” ordered the supply clerk.

Shidane returned the chocolate bar and smiled.

“That is a serious crime, ascaro, count your lucky stars I don’t walk you straight back to your commanding officer and report you.”

Shidane listened with a defiant smile on his face, he only picked out the words “ascaro,” “officer,” and “report,” but could understand the gist of what the clerk was getting at.

“Go and wait outside while we prepare the order,” said the supply clerk, pointing to the exit. The boys left, scouting all around them.

“Don’t worry, I will find something. I wa

“Don’t bother, Shidane, it’s a bad idea,” pleaded Abdi, trying to give his voice an avuncular authority but whispering with fear.

The supply depot was within an Italians-only area, although a few German soldiers worked there, flying about like Nazi flags, their hair bleached white and their skin red. Abdi and Shidane were the only nonwhites within the wire perimeter, and they could feel their skin tightly wrapped around them.

_______

Meanwhile Jama had to hike up narrow paths and ease his way past supply mules to reach the munitions store high in the mountains, a cave packed with guns and mortars, its entrance shielded by a heavy metal door. All around the satanic guns roared and clattered. An Eritrean askari joined them and he and Jama stood guard at the door while the Italians observed the scene below them. The British broadcasted new positions they had taken every night, and most Italians were hoping their defeat would be swift and painless. Jama could see only stick figures ru