Book Corner August 2010

Black Mamba Boy
by Nadifa Mohamed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl    

The author of this work is Nadifa Mohamed, who was born in Somalia in 1981. She has created a powerful, smartly written first novel that is somewhere between prose and poetry.  Her descriptive powers evoke life in the 1930s in countries including Somalia, Egypt, Eritrea, the Sudan and Palestine.

Jama, the novel’s young male protagonist, lives primarily in his early years among relatives who do not want him and then finally on the streets following his mother’s death. His father remains a sought-after figure, who went north years ago to seek his fortune. It is Jama’s efforts to find his father that give impetus to his travels and the novel’s unfolding plot line. The novel’s odd title – one referring to a deadly African snake – offers a chilling and significant anecdote about its relationship to Jama’s life.

The reader is introduced to pre-World War II northern Africa and the difficult life lived by children in the streets of various towns who are orphaned, abandoned, disowned or have run away. We read of Jama competing with children and animals to find food and shelter, to earn a few coins and simply to stay alive.

One of the accurate and dismaying realities of this novel is the author’s deft ability to portray the various competing colonial powers of the time who struggled over the many territories and countries of north eastern Africa: Britain, Italy and France. The presence of these warring and occupying powers creates significant complications in the life of Jama and for all the local populations who encounter them as either enemies or masters, or perhaps both.

Jama is fortunate enough to be periodically befriended by people who admire him, wish to help him or who are reminded of their own lost children by him.  As he seeks his father, his journeys are intersected with shocking news. “.. Jama, forgive me, but I come with unfortunate news.  Guure’s life [his father’s] has ended....” (127).

In his father’s suitcase, which a stranger brings him, the remaining possession sum up his father’s life and his own destiny:  “Jama crouched down, bent over the suitcase….he found a threadbare mauve ma’awis, a few notes and coins, an amber tusbah, a worn-down toothstick, a stringed musical instrument, and a rusted toy car….One by one, the planets Jama’s life orbited around had spun away and he floated in starless obscurity.” (127-128).

It is obvious both from the novel itself and the concluding ‘Acknowledgments’ that the author spent a great deal of time researching her work in archives, novels of the pre-WW II era and interviews and visits with family members.  Her thank you to her father hints at his major autobiographical contributions to this work.

Even as a reader who knows Arabic and has read significantly in Arabic/African sources, I would note that the only thing the book lacks for readers new to the places and time of which the author writes, is a Glossary.