“Did he say how long I have to be in here?” Jama called after them.
The crocodile catcher turned back to him. “I don’t know, son, but he is a very strange man, his soul stinks. Don’t worry, we will look out for you. I will bring you food later.”
The crocodile catcher kept his promise, he brought Jama food and water and even grass for the tortoise, and kept Jama company as the sun set and the hyenas laughed their way into town. Jama was frightened and tried to stop the crocodile catcher departing by telling story after story, but in the end the man stretched with a loud yawn and went home. Jama was left alone with the wild animals, ghosts, and mosquitoes, wondering what the repercussions would be if he went home for the night. Askaris were known to report on one another to earn rewards from the Italians. Jama stayed awake all night, shivering with cold and jumping at every rustle and crack in the darkness surrounding him. He had images of a lion leaping over the fence and carrying him away by the throat. He had just fallen asleep when the first askaris began to arrive at the office. The next day he was still not pardoned and he spent it turning the tortoise over and studying its head, limbs, and shell. It was a beautiful thing, one of the most perfect of God’s creations. It moved around ruminatively, picking at stray weeds without a care in the world. Its hard shell was a source of envy to Jama with his fragile, damaged flesh.
Only on the third day, with his skin bitten to death, did the Italian call Jama out of the pen. He stood humiliated and furious in front of his tormenter; the Italian chuckled at the sight of Jama covered in dust, then cleared his throat for the satisfaction of a lecture.
“Alfredo, you have been a nightmare for me. I sometimes felt that you were not all bad and had a few brains, but you have disappointed me at every turn. You have been a total, total disaster as an office boy. I don’t know what that communist Jew-boy was talking about when he praised you, maybe he had needs that you satisfied, but I am made of better stock and I have seen your worthlessness. Get out and don’t come back.”
Jama walked out with huge relief, but the Italian yelled after him. “Hey! Hey! Come back here; never turn your back to your superior, boy! Come here and salute me now!”
Jama ignored him and ran back to the tent, picked up his aday and little savings, put them in his father’s suitcase and left Omhajer.
KEREN, ERITREA, JANUARY 1941
Jama met a group of white-robed and turbaned traders on the road out of Omhajer. A young Sudanese man among them saw the poor state Jama was in and offered him ful medames wrapped in flatbread. They rode a lorry together toward Abyssinia, and before long the trader had agreed to employ Jama as a tea boy in his stalls in K’eftya and Adi Remoz, towns in the vast highlands of the Gondar region. They traveled for five days in the back of the lorry, marveling at the paradise they passed through; the landscape was a juicy emerald green, beside the dirt track were wild mango trees full of frolicking, singing birds, herds of giraffe and zebra gathered around blue watering holes. Jama would have been happy to jump off the lorry and stay in this small heaven but shiftas and patriots lurked among the trees and long grass. It was unsettling to see a place so lush, so full of promise, without one tukul or any kind of human dwelling. They did not see a soul until they reached the outskirts of K’eftya, where Jama and the Sudanese trader jumped off. Jama spent listless days walking around K’eftya, selling tea to the few people who could afford it; loneliness and boredom filled his days. He didn’t want to even remember his mother or father, a new bitterness was infecting the way he thought about them; their mistakes had left him in this destitute state. When it rained he waited under a tree, when the sun returned he would walk, he rarely talked to anyone, just eavesdropped on conversations and stared at the women under their colorful umbrellas. The months crawled past. Far away beyond the mountains, someone else’s bad decisions were about to throw his life into a deeper maelstrom. To crowds of millions, by radio and by special appearances, Benito Mussolini — hands clasping his belt and chin pushed into the air — declared tribal war on Britain and France with proclamations of “Vincere! Vincere! Vincere!”
Jama and the other tea boys gathered in the market to hear the digested and translated version.
“Should I plant more tomatoes? Will the Ferengis be buying from here or Adi Remoz?” one woman asked.
“Will we get a railway station now?” asked another.
All the young men were hushed; some wondered whether this war would be as ruinous as the invasion of their country, while others wondered if it would be more profitable to become askaris now or later. Five years after they had conquered a country they could not afford to govern, the Fascists wanted the heady glory of another conquest. In Rome, Mussolini the opportunist, the failed elementary school teacher, the syphilitic seller of ideas fallen from the back of a lorry, calculated how many hundreds or even thousands he would need to claim dead before Hitler would deign to cut him a slice of the victory cake. A few thousand, he told his aides, that’s all. Fascist officers toured Italian East Africa touting for the upcoming attraction, and young Somalis, Abyssinians, and Eritreans were tricked, cajoled, and forced into signing up.
Two enlistment officers finally arrived in K’eftya and set up a table outside the new redbrick police station. A long line of men and boys waited to enlist; Jama passed bright-faced twelve-year-olds running away from home, starving rheumy-eyed farmers, shiftas who had betrayed their fellow thieves, strong village men who could not afford dowries. Jama waited in the midday sun until his turn came. The Italians behind the wooden table laughed at the battered cardboard suitcase clenched in his hand, but they also seemed amused by most of the Africans. They asked his name and age, and told him to give them a twirl. Jama was exactly the kind of indigent boy they were looking for, and he put his thumbprint where they told him, for once neither knowing nor caring where they sent him. They issued him a rifle, a shirt, a pair of shorts, a blanket, a kit bag with all kinds of toys, a knife, tin bowls, field dressing, a water flask, more possessions than he had ever owned — and in exchange all they wanted was for him to join something called 4th Company. They even gave him a flour ration and an adult wage of fifty lira a month. With this he was meant to buy sandals, he had long outgrown the pair Amina had given him, and the Italians thought shoes were an optional extra for their askaris. At his tender age he could not imagine grown men sending him to his death; neither could he imagine the kind of mechanized, faceless slaughter the Italians would bring to Africa.
Jama had never seen war; the only battles he could imagine were the sporadic feuds that nomadic Somalis engaged in, played according to a strict set of courtly rules that forbade the killing of women, children, old men, preachers, and poets. He could feel the money being thrown into this conflict and it thrilled him, it felt like a festival was being prepared. Everywhere he looked, lorries filled to bursting zoomed past. More and more Italians appeared in the highlands and then disappeared back to the safety of Eritrea. Tanks and all sorts of strange vehicles trundled along roads feverishly built ahead of them by tired African laborers. Installed in his company with a quiet, well-behaved commander by the name of Matteo Ginelli, Jama awaited orders. The Italian war machine decided that Jama “Goode” Guure Mohamed Naaleyeh Gatteh Eddoy Sahel Beneen Samatar Rooble Mattan would be most useful as a signaler. He crossed the little Eden in between K’eftya and Omhajer once again, this time in a military convoy, and began his training. He fell in love with his first task: he was to write out messages on the ground to planes flying overhead. With huge strips of white cotton Jama spelled out words, memorizing the squiggles and lines of the Roman alphabet by giving them nicknames. A was the house, B was the backside, C was the crescent moon, D was the bow; his favorite was M, which looked like two boys holding hands. Commander Ginelli called Jama “Al Furbo,” the witty one, for his quick grasp of Italian, and the other askaris adopted this as his nickname. While the other boys asked to see the card again and again to replicate the strange symbols written on it, one look and Jama could copy out perfect messages. Even though planes never flew overhead to read these messages, working in the sun, running about, wrangling with the huge sheets in the breeze with other boys shouting for his help made Jama feel capable for the first time in his life. He practiced writing letters in the sand, mastering “Jama,” “ciao,” and his mother’s and father’s names.