sea.
Shidane led his gang through the streets of the Arab part of Aden, Ma’alla, filling-in his little uncle and Jama on the local goings on, passing on the information he had gleaned from his errand work. Men and women moved behind curtains like jerky Indian puppets, their lives framed by windows and back-lit by lamps as the boys watched them from the twilight street.
‘The woman in that house is really a eunuch, I have seen him take off his sharshuf and underneath he has a gigantic club sticking out, hair all over his arms and feet, oof! He looked like a wrestler, wallaahi, I swear.’
Jama looked incredulously at Shidane and pushed him away. Extravagantly-red roses the size of Jama’s face flopped over the exterior walls of the houses, filling the air with their molasses-sweet scent. Jama picked one off its stem, stroking the petals that felt like the down on a butterfly’s wing, he waved it in a circle in the dusk breeze, trailing a ballet of insects that urgently followed the arcing fragrance.
‘And that man, see him up there? In the turban? He is always in and out of jail, all of his teeth are gold, he’s a diamond smuggler, he can take out his teeth and hide diamonds inside, I’ve seen him do it at night through the window.’
Abdi with a rapt expression exclaimed, ‘Inshallah I will be a diamond smuggler when I’m older, that’s even better than being a pearl smuggler. I would buy sparkling black pointy shoes like rich men wear and buy hooyo a house and more gold than she could ever wear.’ Silently the three boys looked at their naked feet shod only in sand and dirt.
‘Do you know what I would buy?’ asked Jama.
‘A car?’ replied Shidane.
‘No, I would buy an aeroplane, so I could fly through the clouds and come down to earth whenever I wanted to see a new place, Mecca, China, I would go even further to Damascus and Ardiwaliya and just come and go as I wanted.’
‘Allah! They are the work of the Shayddaan! You wouldn’t get me in one of those things,’ Shidane harrumphed. ‘My mum says they’re haram, it’s only angels, insects and birds that God intended to fly, it’s no surprise that they burst into flames. Then when you die your body is turned into ash so you can’t even have a proper burial and you go straight to hell. Serves the Ferengis right though.’
The rose torn from its bush wilted in the stifling heat and Jama tore it apart petal by petal. ‘Hey, do you remember that flower merchant that we worked for last Ramadaan?’
‘That shithead, how could we forget him? We are still waiting for our pay. We can’t all flutter our eyelashes at the women like you, Jama. The old hags would open the door, see me, and slam the door back in my face. He still owes me for the few flowers I did sell,’ said Shidane.
Jama held his finger to his mouth. ‘Be quiet and listen Shidane, I heard that he is now a seaman and earned enough on one voyage to take two wives and buy a large house in Sana’a.’
‘Two wives!’ said Shidane with a whistle. ‘That ugly sinner! I would be surprised if he managed to trick one blind old baboon into marrying him.’
Abdi creased up at his nephew’s cruel tongue. Abdi’s face was usually set in a grave, contemplative expression but then with a flicker of light in his eyes, a smile would crack it open, revealing teeth that tumbled over one another. A crooked smile made up of a hundred broken pearly whites.
Jama had enjoyed carrying the big baskets laden with jasmine, frangipani and hibiscus door to door in the cool quiet twilight, smiling at the pretty wives and daughters of wealthy men in the rich neighbourhoods. By nightfall his skin and sarong would be infused with an intoxicating smell of life and beauty. He would return home and decorate his mother’s black hair with pink, red and purple flowers.
As the three boys padded down the street, a racket broke the silence of the neighbourhood. A woman’s screams rose above the general shouts and Jama nervously looked at the boys. A small, middle-aged woman came around a corner, running barefoot past them with the front of her gown ripped open revealing an old grey brassiere, her face contorted in unseeing terror.
Behind her chased a group of older men, one of them bearing a knife, another a thick cane. They hollered after her, ‘Ya sharmuta! Whore! Adulteress! You have brought shame on our street, by God we will catch you.’
Behind them a rag tag of children came, some crying, some cheering and laughing. This human storm engulfed Jama and then flew away just as quickly. Jama stood stock still, bewildered by what he had seen, his head still turned in the direction of the lynch mob.
‘Let’s chase them!’ shouted Shidane, and they pelted after the crowd. ‘Which way did they go?’ Jama asked, trying to pinpoint where all the commotion had gone.
The screams were piercing when they reached the dirty alley where the woman had been cornered. Her children clung to her, a howling, shaking little girl holding her mother around the waist, and a teenage boy desperately trying to put his slight body between his mother and the man holding the knife. Shidane pushed through the crowd to the woman, the knife frozen in the air above their heads.
‘Let go of her!’ he screamed. ‘Let go of her you son of a bitch.’ Jama saw the man with the cane slap Shidane around the back with it, the other thug held him back as the old man cursed and lunged at Shidane. ‘Get away from here! Ya abid, slave,’ he raged.
The crowd of excited children shifted around Jama, their eyes wide with terror and joy at what they were seeing, one boy kept climbing Jama’s back for a better look but he threw him to the ground. Abdi was hanging from the arm of the man with the cane. Jama, worried that Abdi would be beaten, crept up to the knifeman, grabbed hold of his arm and sunk his teeth in. Jama bit harder and harder until the knife dropped to the ground. Shidane picked up the knife and dragged Jama and Abdi away. They fled into the night, the dagger tucked into Shidane’s ma’awis.
The next day, the boys stalked the outdoor restaurant of Cowasjee Dinshaw and Sons like a pack of hungry hyenas. They placed themselves to the left, right and front of the seated, cosmopolitan diners, who ordered heaped plates of rice with chicken, spaghetti with lamb mince, stew with huge hunks of bread. The clinking of full glasses and chatter drifted up into the air along with faint arabesques of cigarette smoke. Jama wiped his salivating mouth, and made eye contact with Shidane, who was standing behind the table of a suited Banyali merchant and his elegantly sari’d companion, her juicy flesh peeking out from underneath her fuchsia choli. The boys had barely eaten or drunk anything for days and they had to restrain their desire to knock the waiters down and snatch the steaming plates from their hands. The waiter took the white towel hanging over his forearm and flicked Abdi roughly around the back of his legs with it, ‘Yallah! Yallah abid! Leave our customers in peace,’ he shouted. The boys pulled back from the restaurant and regrouped at the palm trees lining the road. Hunger was the motivating principle in their lives, whether they were searching together or alone. Abdi gestured towards the Indian couple who were settling their bill. Jama and Shidane sprinted to the table and in one desperate movement tipped two plates of leftover spaghetti into their sarongs, which they had pulled out into makeshift bowls. Abdi collected all the bread and then ran after Jama and Shidane as they scrambled up the road. They stopped the instant they realised they were not being pursued and dropped down by the side of the road with their backs against a wall. They pulled the food to their mouths as if they would never eat again, silently and with a fixed attention to the meagre meal in their laps. Abdi tried to pick spaghetti from Jama’s and Shidane’s laps but had to dodge their frenetically moving fingers. They in turn grabbed at the bread in his hands and it was only after he shouted in despair that they slowed down and allowed him his share of the booty. Jama and Shidane wiped their greasy fingers on the sand beneath them and watched as Abdi lethargically finished off the scattered breadcrumbs. Jama’s eyes scanned over the little boy’s protruding ribs and matchstick-thin ankles and wrists. ‘Abdi, why do you eat like a chicken? You’re always getting left with the crumbs, you have to be fast!’
‘Well I would eat more if you two pigs didn’t swallow everything before I can even sit down,’ Abdi replied sullenly.
Abashed, Jama and Shidane