Black Mamba Boy. Nadifa Mohamed

your signs, even Venus appeared the night you were born.’

      Jama rested his head on his arm and sighed loudy; 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 amongst the other hungry children. 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 hid all of his abattoir money in 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 neighbourhood looking for signs of the magic 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 amongst 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 had been cut up and the flesh put in a basket outside his family’s hut. His mother collapsed when she peered into the basket and realised where the plentiful meat had come from, his head was at the bottom, broken and grey. No blood money could be demanded by them, his father went to work in the town 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 labouring 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 ostracised 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.