Текст книги "Black Mamba Boy"

Автор книги: Nadifa Mohamed

Соавторы: Nadifa Mohamed
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 17 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 7 страниц]

“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.”

“Why are you acting like this, Shidane? You know I’ll look after you, you can come and eat there anytime, now.”

“You think we need your charity? 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, he preferred to take the blows himself. Jama pinned Shidane down on the sand, between his knees 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, gave up and waded in to defend his nephew, pulling at Jama’s hair and feebly trying 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 into Jama’s arm. Jama tried to jerk away as Shidane lunged forward for another stab but was knifed again. 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 at the howling Abdi with one hand, 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 among hyenas. Jama slunk away, intending to walk and walk until he found himself at the end of the world or could just disappear into the foaming sea. 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 it bleeding, but he was unable to stanch 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 had named his mukhbazar.

“Nabad, Jama,” hollered Ismail.

“Nabad,” mumbled Jama, wringing 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 brown earth of his skin 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 toward 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, come back when it’s healed,” exclaimed Ismail.

“No, it’s fine, please, let me keep my job.” 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 so it doesn’t go bad,” Ismail said, dropping the child’s hand.

Ismail rummaged in the pockets of his thin gray 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 toward 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 place, a comic, strange, technological land so different to his own antique quarter. 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 toward 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. Who could create such colossal objects, were they the work of giants, devils, or of Allah? The torrid black smoke emanating from their stacks frightened him and he shivered at the idea that these 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, thirsty, climbed off the wall and went to search for a drink in 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, while 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 took 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, and 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 recognized 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 gray worn steps into the dim hallway of the Islaweyne apartment filled Jama with unpleasant memories. It 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 closetlike, air-starved room in which old suitcases lay stacked against a wall, watching her silently. She was stretched out on a grass mat, her thin headscarf slid back over 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 odor 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. He could hear a terrible gurgling sound with every intake of breath. Jama crept closer to his mother, his eyes darted from her knees to her ankles, swollen with the same fluid that was drowning her lungs. “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 pounding against her ribs as if there were 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. He 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 from 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 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 in a smooth, deep breath.

“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, to 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. 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. Folded in a paper heart lay prayer after prayer, and in this heart Ambaro kept her hope, as 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 is 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, never mind 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 her face suddenly contorted 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 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 to have never 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 leave them together?

Jama’s eyes remained open all night, scanning the dark room for any figures that might materialize to take his mother away. The gloom was alive with shifting densities, lumps of gray light that hovered slowly along the floor, furry black masses that shivered in corners. Jama’s fingers 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.

HARGEISA, SOMALILAND, MARCH 1936

The chaperone finally released his hold on Jama’s forearm, leaving a sweaty handprint on his skin. Jama’s legs shook from the long journey in the back of the old lorry, and he clasped both of his thighs to steady them while his clansman went to replenish his stash of qat. Jama had put up with the mushy green spittle and the acrid stink that had accompanied the ostrich catcher’s habit for the day and night it took to cross the Red Sea by dhow and get to Hargeisa. Jama’s bloated, gaseous stomach bulged out before him and he wondered why it stretched farther and farther out the hungrier he got. His stomach had been relatively peaceful throughout the journey, but for weeks after the burial it had contracted, cramped, made him vomit, given him diarrhea, the pain in his gut slowing his steps to that of a decrepit old man. A clanswoman of his mother had found him huddled in an alley, covered in dust and blood. It took just three days for a human telephone network of clansmen and women to locate his great-aunt and deliver Jama to her like a faulty parcel. In Aden the Islaweynes had paid for Ambaro’s burial but expected Jama to look after himself. Estranged from Shidane and Abdi, he had hung out with the dirtiest of Aden’s street children, eating fitfully and badly, sometimes picking up food from the dirt and giving it a casual clean before swallowing it in a few untasting bites. He became argumentative and loud, often fighting with the other abandoned children. To appease the hungry demon in his stomach, seething and cursing from his cauldron of acid, Jama had fought with stray cats and dogs over leftover bones. He tried to be brave but sadness and loneliness had crept up on him, twisting his innards and giving him the shakes. Jama dreamed of his mother every night; she followed a caravan in the Somali desert, and he would follow, calling out her name, but she never turned around, the distance between them growing until she was just a speck on the horizon.

Jama looked around him. Somaliland was yellow, intensely yellow, a dirty yellow, with streaks of brown and green. A group of men stood next to their herd of camels while the lorry overheated, its metal grille grimacing under an acacia tree. There was no smell of food or incense or money drifting in the air as there was in Aden, there were no farms, no gardens, but there was a sharp sweetness he breathed in, something invigorating, intoxicating. This was his country, this was the same air as his father and grandfathers had breathed, the same landscape that they had known. Heat shimmered above the ground, making the sparse vegetation look like a mirage that would dissolve if you reached out for it. The emptiness of the desert felt purifying and yet disturbing after the tumultuous humanity of Aden – deserts were the birthplaces of prophets but also the playgrounds of jinns and shape-shifters. He heard from his mother that his own great-grandfather Eddoy had walked out of his family’s encampment and into the sands, leaving no one word of where he was going, and was never seen again. Eddoy became one of the many bewitched by the shifting messages left among the dunes. Though these stories of people losing their minds and vanishing terrified Jama, his mother used to tease him, telling him that it was no bad thing to have a jinn in the family and that he should call on his great-grandfather if he ever became lost. His ancestors had been crow worshippers and sorcerers before the time of the Prophet, and the people still kept tokens of their paganism. Precious frankincense and myrrh still smoldered in the same ornate white clay urns; black leather amulets hung from the chubby wrists of infants. His mother’s amulet was tied tightly around his neck, the sacred pages grubby and hardened together. He lay down under the acacia tree and spread his arms out, the sky covered him like a shroud and he felt cooled by the watery blueness washing over him, he guessed the time by looking at the position of the sun and decided to rest. He awoke, disturbed by the sound of two voices above his head, and opened his eyes to see an old woman standing over him, as tall as a policeman. She bent down to wipe the drool from his sleepy face and held him to her bosom, filling his nose with her sour milk smell. Tears beaded up in the corner of his eyes but he drew them back, afraid of embarrassing them both. Jinnow took his hand and led him away, Jama floating from her hand like a string cut loose from its kite.

Hargeisa appeared all of a sudden in a valley scattered with trees. On the outskirts of town Jama and Jinnow passed the Yibro settlement, their tents hardly distinguishable from the brush, and Jinnow picked up her step as they neared it. Jama looked over his shoulder at the children drawing shapes in the sand and felt Jinnow tugging his hand. “Don’t go near them, Jama,” she whispered, “they hate Eidegalles and all other Ajis, be careful or they will use their sorcery against you.”

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 Jinnow pushed past her, still holding Jama solidly by the arm.

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 Jinnow, her big eye constantly peering back at Jama.

Jinnow reached her room. “Go now, Ayan, go help your mother,” she said, shooing away the girl, and pulled Jama in after her. A large nomad’s aqal filled the room, an igloo made of branches and hides. She caught Jama’s look of surprise and patted his cheek. “I’m a true bedu, could never get used to sleeping under stones, felt like a tomb. Come lie down and rest, son,” she said.

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,” Jinnow chattered.

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 Jinnow as she fussed around, tidying up her old-lady paraphernalia. She had the same high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and low-toned, grainy way of speaking as Ambaro, and Jama’s heart sank as he realized his mother would never be old like Jinnow.

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, Jinnow, come and get this boy of yours, such a vile mouth, you would think he was a Midgaan, not an Aji. No wonder he was thrown into the streets,” said a long-faced woman.

Jinnow, startled and ashamed, charged over to Jama and dragged him down. “Don’t do that, Jama! Don’t drag down your mother’s name.” She pointed toward her room and Jama slunk away.

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.

Jinnow spent her days tending her date palms, selling fruit in the market near the dry riverbed that bisected the town, or weaving endless mats, while Jama appeared and disappeared throughout the day. With the men away grazing the camels, Jama spent his days on the streets to avoid the harsh chatter of the compound women who treated him like a fly buzzing around the room, swatting him away when they wanted to talk dirty. Their faces a bright cruel yellow from beauty masks of powdered turmeric, they dragged one another into corners, hands cupped around mouths, and in loud whispers languidly assassinated reputations. They drew shoes in fights as quickly as cowboys drew pistols.

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 Jinnow. Jama would stone her every time she approached him, so now she just satisfied herself with staring at him from a distance, crossing and uncrossing her eyes, flapping her upturned eyelids at him. As a girl she was rarely allowed out, and Jama’s bad reputation within the compound and filthy mouth had slowly begun to win her admiration. She hoped to stare him into friendship but he had too long a memory for that and was still planning a revenge for the time she dared call him bastard. Jama slyly observed her daily routine of housework, child-minding, and standing around, one leg scratching the back of the other, and plotted her downfall. Ayan’s mother was a tall, shrewish woman with a missing front tooth, a neglected third wife who beat her children down with words and blows. In front of her mother, Ayan was a well-behaved, hardworking child but in private she was a gang leader and vicious fighter. Her troupe of scraggly infants would gather behind her after lunchtime and prowl around the compound, catching lizards by the tail, spying on older children and going through their belongings. If challenged, the younger children would take flight while Ayan fought the angry object of their snooping. Scratches and cuts formed patterns on her skin like the tattoos on a Maori warrior, her young face knocked into a jagged adult shape by the fists of her mother and cousins. Jama had no possessions to filch or secrets to hide, but to Ayan he presented an enigma, a strange, silent boy who had returned from a foreign land.

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,” Jinnow would sigh. All the storytellers claimed to have seen shape-shifters, nomads who at night turned into animals and looked for human prey in town, disappearing before daybreak and the first call to prayer. Ayan’s eyes would form frightened wide circles in the orange light, and Jama could see her trying to nestle next to her mother and getting pushed irritably away. Jama hoped that one of these shape-shifters would snatch Ayan away and take her out into the pitch-black night where shadows slipped in and out of alleys in which hyenas stalked alongside packs of wild dogs, hunting lone men together, ripping out the tendons from their fleeing ankles as they tried to run for their lives, their helpless screams piercing the cloistered night.