He picked him out with his eyes during the inspection on that first morning. The officer. That was in the boma camp where they were taken to join the other recruits who had been rounded up earlier. On the march from the depot to the boma their escort hectored and mocked and hurried them on, ahead and behind them and sometimes beside them. You’re a bunch of washenzi, they said. Feeble fodder for the wild beasts. Don’t swing your hips like a shoga. We are not taking you to a brothel. Straighten your shoulders, you cocksuckers! The army will show you how to stiffen that backside.
The recruits were on the march with varying degrees of consent: some were volunteers, others were volunteered by their elders who themselves were under duress, some swept up or coerced by circumstances, some picked up on the road. The schutztruppe was expanding and was eager for fighting men. Some of them talked freely, already swaggering with anticipation, familiar with this kind of work, laughing at the bullying words of their escort, eager to be admitted into the language of scorn. Others were silent and anxious, perhaps even fearful, not sure yet of what lay ahead. Hamza was in the latter category, silently wretched about what he had done. No one had forced him, he had volunteered.
They started from the recruiting depot at first light. He knew no one but to begin with he strutted with the others, made bold by the strangeness of these circumstances, out at dawn marching to the training camp at the start of an adventure. The big muscular men took the lead, striding confidently and pulling the others along behind them. One of them broke into song, his voice deep and gloaming, and some others who knew his language took it up with him. Hamza thought it was Kinyamwezi because that was what the men looked like to him. Their escort, some of whom also looked to be Wanyamwezi, smiled and even joined in at times. In a lull someone began to sing another song in Kiswahili. It was not really a song, more like a sung conversation, delivered to a jaunty marching tempo with an explosive response at the end of every phrase:
Tumefanya fungo na Mjarumani, tayari.
Tayari!
Askari wa balozi wa Mdachi, tayari.
Tayari!
Tutampigania bila hofu.
Bila hofu!
Tutawatisha adui wajue hofu.
Wajue hofu!
They sang cheerfully, half-mocking themselves with their chest-thumping gestures:
We have joined the German,
We’re ready!
We’re soldiers of the governor of the Mdachi,
We’re ready!
We will fight for him without fear,
Without fear!
We will terrify our enemies and fill them with fear,
With fear!
Their escort laughed with them as they sang the blustering words and added obscene lyrics of their own.
Then as they marched out into the countryside and the heat rose and the sun clamped down on his neck and shoulders, and the sweat poured off his face and streamed down his back, Hamza’s anxiety returned. He had volunteered on impulse, fleeing what had seemed intolerable, but he was ignorant of what he had now sold himself to, and of whether he was up to what it would demand of him. He was not ignorant about the company he had chosen to keep. Everyone knew about the askari army, the schutztruppe, and their ferocity against the people. Everyone knew about their stone-hearted German officers. He had chosen to be one of their soldiers, to get away, and as he sweated and tired, and they marched along the dirt road in the heat of the day, his anxiety about what he had done surged so powerfully at times that he grew short of breath.
They stopped for a drink of water and some dried figs and dates. They passed many paths that led off the road to villages just behind the screen of foliage but did not see anyone. It seemed they were all keeping out of sight. At one roadside, in a small clearing under a large tamarind tree, there were bunches of bananas, a small pile of cassava, a basket of cucumbers and another of tomatoes. The market had been abandoned in a hurry. People must have been surprised at their approach and not been able to gather up all their merchandise in time, opting for a safe retreat. Everyone knew the recruiting squads were out in the countryside.
Their escort halted them there and called out for the owners of the goods to appear but no one did. In the meantime the escort distributed the bananas among the marchers, only the bananas, and shouted out to the concealed traders that they should present the bill to the Kaiser’s governor. The marchers were not once allowed out of sight of their escort. They were required to relieve themselves by the roadside in sight of everyone, six of them at a time, whether they needed to or not. It’s to teach you discipline, their escort laughed. Get that filthy stuff out of you before we march you into camp, and cover it up with soil afterwards.
They walked all day, most of them barefoot, some wearing leather sandals. The German built this road, their escort said, just so you don’t have to struggle through the jungle. Just so we can get you sister-fuckers there in comfort. By mid-afternoon Hamza’s legs and back ached so much that he walked by rote and instinct, without any choice but to keep moving. Later he could not remember the final stages of that march, but like animals nearing their pens, the recruits came to life when the escort told them they were nearly there.
They arrived at the camp at dusk, walking through the outskirts of a large village where a crowd gathered to watch them trudge past. Friendly shouts and some laughter followed them until they passed through the gates into the walled boma. A long whitewashed building ran along the right-hand side of the camp. The upstairs rooms, some of which glowed with lamplight, had verandas facing the open parade ground. At ground-level beneath was a line of closed doors. There was another smaller building, which ran along the far side of the open ground facing the gate. It also had an upper storey lit against the gloom. Downstairs there was just one door and two windows, all of which were closed. To the left of the wide parade ground were two half-open sheds and some animal pens. In the corner nearest the gate there was a small two-storey building which, it turned out, was the lockup. That was where they were taken and shown into one large downstairs room with lamps hanging from the ceiling beams. The door to upstairs was shut but theirs was left open as was the main front door. The askari who had accompanied them on the march stayed, still keeping an eye on them, even though they themselves seemed worn out by the march. They were too tired for mockery and abuse, and sat by the door waiting for their relief.
There were eighteen new recruits in their group, weary and sweaty and silent now in the cramped cell. Hamza was numb with hunger and exhaustion, his heart racing with a distress he could not control. Three elderly women from the village brought a clay pot of bananas boiled with chopped tripe, which the marchers gathered round to eat as best they could, taking turns to reach in for a handful while the food lasted. When the relief guards came they took the recruits out into the dark one at a time to use the bucket latrine in an outhouse to one side of the lockup. Afterwards the guards selected two of the men to take the bucket to a cesspit outside the gate and dispose of the waste.
‘Boma la mzungu,’ one of the guards said. ‘Kila kitu safi. Hataki mavi yenu ndani ya boma lake. Hapana ruhusa kufanya mambo ya kishenzi hapa.’ This is the mzungu’s camp. Everything is clean here. He doesn’t want your shit inside his boma. It is not allowed to follow your savage ways here.
The boma gates were shut after that. By then it was fully night although Hamza could hear the murmur of the village outside the walls and then, to his surprise, the muadhin calling people for the isha prayer. Later, through the open door of the lockup, Hamza saw oil lamps moving in the dark across the parade ground but none of them approached. When he woke up during the night, he saw the whitewashed building glowing in the dark. The guards were nowhere in sight. It seemed there was no one there to watch over them. Perhaps they were outside, watching to see if they would get up to any mischief, or perhaps they knew there was nowhere safe for the new arrivals to go in the dead of night.
In the morning they were lined up for inspection facing the long white building. In daylight Hamza saw that it had a tin roof painted grey and a raised wooden deck, which ran all the way across the front of the building. He could also see that the closed doors he had seen at dusk were offices or stores. He counted seven doors and eight shuttered windows. The windows and doors in the middle of the block stood open. A flagpole was planted somewhere near the middle of the open ground, which he would later learn to call the Exerzierplatz.
The Nubi ombasha who had roused them and directed them to the parade ground strode in front of them and then behind, silently prodding with his sturdy bamboo cane to straighten the line. They were all barefoot, even those who had come in with sandals, and in their everyday clothes, while the ombasha was in military khaki, leather belt with ammunition pouches, studded boots and a tarbush with an eagle emblem at the front and a neck-shade. He was a man of mature years, clean-shaven, lean and hard despite his paunch. His teeth were stained the reddish-brown of a ghat-eater. His face was glistening, unsmiling, stern and scarred on both temples – the frightening deadpan face of the Nubi askari.
When the ombasha was satisfied that the line was straight and still, he turned towards the officer who had appeared outside the open doorway of the middle office in the building in front of which they were gathered. The ombasha stiffened his spine and shouted out that the swine were ready for inspection. Hawa schwein tayari. The officer, who was also in khaki and wearing a helmet, did not move immediately but raised his swagger stick to acknowledge the ombasha. After the momentary delay necessary for his dignity, he stepped down from the raised deck and walked towards the recruits. He started at one end of the line and proceeded slowly, pausing for a longer look at some of the men but not speaking. He tapped four in the line with his stick. The ombasha had instructed them to stand still and look straight ahead, and on no account – ever – to make eye contact with a German officer. Hamza knew he had already picked him out with his eyes. He had seen that even before the officer moved from the doorway – a slim clean-shaven man – and he could not prevent a shiver when he stopped in front of him. He was not as tall as he had looked on the deck but taller than Hamza. He only stood in front of him for a few seconds and then moved on but Hamza saw without looking that his eyes were hard and almost transparent. He left behind him an astringent medicinal smell.
Four of them were sent to the carrier corps office to be recruited as stretcher-bearers or porters, the ones the officer had tapped with his stick as he walked past. Perhaps they were too old or looked slow, or simply did not please the officer’s eye. He left the rest to the direction of the ombasha. Hamza was confused and terrified and wondered if he might have preferred the carrier corps despite its degraded status. He knew that was his cowardice speaking. The porters were not spared the hardships of askari life, and in addition walked about in rags and sometimes barefoot, derided by everyone. The new recruits were marched a few feet away and made to sit down on the ground in front of the smaller building, whose central downstairs door was now standing open. The other door at one end of the building was padlocked top and bottom.
There were no trees anywhere near the perimeter wall, and no shade on the parade ground. It was early morning but because he had to sit still, the sun was already unbearably hot on Hamza’s neck and head. After many minutes another German officer came out of the building, followed by a man in uniform who stood a pace or two behind him. The German officer was plump, dressed in knee-length trousers and a tunic with several pockets. On his left upper arm he wore a white band with a red cross on it. He had a florid complexion and a very large brassy moustache and pale thin receding hair, and the shorts, his girth and that big moustache gave him a slightly comical air. After regarding them for a long moment, he ordered them on to their feet, then he told them to sit and then ordered them on to their feet again. He smiled, said something to the man behind him and went back inside. The assistant, also wearing a white band with a red cross on it, nodded to the ombasha and went back into the infirmary. They were then sent in there one at a time for examination.
When it was Hamza’s turn he went into an airy, well-lit room with six empty beds neatly made up. To one end was a small sectioned-off consulting room with a folding table set up to one side and an examination bed to the other. The assistant, who was slim and short and weather-beaten and had a look of experience and cynicism, smiled at him and in Kiswahili asked his name, his age, his home, his religion. He spoke to the officer in German, his tone somehow sceptical about the information he was conveying. The officer too considered these details as he received them and glanced at Hamza as if to check before he wrote them down on a card. Hamza had lied about his age, claiming to be older than he was.
‘Suruwali,’ the assistant said, indicating his trousers, which Hamza reluctantly removed. ‘Haya schnell,’ the officer said because Hamza was taking too long. He leaned forward with some difficulty and took a good look at Hamza’s genitals, then with a sudden upward movement slapped him lightly on the testicles. He chuckled when Hamza jumped with surprise, and shared a smile with his assistant. Then he reached forward again, and gently and repeatedly squeezed Hamza’s penis in his hand until it began to stiffen. ‘Inafanya kazi,’ he said to the assistant – in good working order – but the words came out clumsily, as if they were awkward on his tongue or he had a speech impediment. He let go of the penis, it seemed with some reluctance. The officer then looked into Hamza’s eyes, made him open his mouth and gripped him by the wrist for a short while. Then he took a needle out of a metal tray, unstoppered a small ampoule and dipped the needle in the thick fluid. He briskly scratched Hamza’s upper arm with the needle and put it in another dish, which held a clear translucent liquid. The assistant then gave a Hamza a pill to swallow down with a glass of water. He smiled when Hamza flinched at its bitterness. In the meantime the officer wrote some more on his card, looked at Hamza for a long considering moment and then waved him out, smiling slightly. That was his first encounter with the medical officer.
They were given a uniform, a belt, boots and a fez. The Nubi ombasha told them: ‘My name is Gefreiter Haidar al-Hamad and I am the ombasha to train you bil-askari. You will always behave with manners and you will obey me. I have fought in the north and the south and in the east and the west, for the English, for the Khedive and now for the Kaiser. I am a man of honour and experience. You are swine until I teach you bil-askari. You are washenzi like all civilians until I teach you bil-askari. You will remember every day that you are fortunate to be askari. Respect and obey or wallahi – you will see. Unafahamu? Everybody say this together: Ndio bwana. Now, this uniform, these boots, this belt, this fez … they are most important. You wear them well na keep them clean. Clean every day, this is your first duty, bil-askari. Every day you have to check your uniform, boots, belt, and everything else is check. If is not clean you will suffer kiboko na matusi in front of everyone, hamsa ishirin. You know what this is? Twenty-five strokes of the cane on your fat buttocks. When you reach askari khasa, you will wear a tarbush like me. I will teach you and you will keep clean or wallahi – you will know. Keep your equipment clean. Unafahamu?’
‘Ndio bwana.’
He explained in detail how each item was to be worn and cared for. He spoke harshly in different languages, Kiswahili, Arabic and some German, his utterances broken and incomplete. He added to them with signs and gestures that were impossible to misunderstand and repeated himself until they all nodded to show they understood. Ndio bwana. ‘Shabash. This is the language of the camp, unafahamu,’ the ombasha said, waving his cane in the air at them. ‘If you don’t understand something, this will explain.’
They were housed in a barracks block in the village just outside the walls of the boma. After that first morning their lives were taken over by exhausting daily training, which began with a bugle call at first light and went on until noon. The sessions were held inside the boma and were led by the Nubi ombasha at first, the Gefreiter Haidar al-Hamad then taken over by the shaush, Unteroffizier Ali Nguru Hassan, also a Nubi, a frowning ascetic-looking man who was hard to please. Only later, after they had been training for several days, did they come to meet the German subaltern Feldwebel Walther.
The Feldwebel was tall and solidly built, with a loud booming voice. He was dark-haired with a large moustache and brown eyes that bulged and swelled when he was irate or displeased. His lips twisted scornfully with almost every utterance he made. His training sessions were energetic and exacting, and he found much in their performance to irritate him. He kept them hard at work when he was in charge, hands cocked on his hips as he rebuked them in foul and abusive language, which poured out of him like sewage down a gutter. Even when he was silent, he struggled to contain his exasperation. He was everything Hamza had expected in a German officer. He carried a swagger stick all the time, which he tapped against his right leg impatiently, sometimes quite hard. Otherwise he only used the stick to point with or to swish through the air with great violence when his anger grew too intense to control. It was beneath the dignity of a German officer to strike an askari, and he expected the ombasha, who was present at all the sessions, to step in with blows when his words needed emphasising.
The day began with a dose of quinine followed by marching drills for several hours. It was important for the schutztruppe to make a good display, the Feldwebel bellowed at them, and marching precision was essential to that. They learned how to hold their bodies military fashion, and later how to march as individuals in front of each other and then as a group while the ombasha or the shaush or the Feldwebel shouted orders and abuse. After that they learned to hold and to use their weapons, how to lie on the ground while taking aim, how to shoot and hit the target, how to move at speed and reload. Schutztruppe askari did not retreat unless ordered to, did not panic under attack and were steadfast above all else. Unafahamu? Every order was shouted and accompanied by abuse. Ndio bwana. Every error was punished by violence or hard labour, according to its severity. Punishment was constant and public, and every few days the whole troop, recruits and veteran askari alike, were marched into the boma to witness the hamsa ishirin, the twenty-five lashes, a public flogging for one misdemeanour or another, which often did not seem deserving of such humiliation. It was to make them obedient and fearless, the ombasha told them. The flogging was always carried out by an African askari, never a German.
In the afternoons they tidied the boma and their barrack building, and performed other duties as instructed. They cleaned their weapons, their shoes and leggings, their uniforms. There were many inspections and every blemish was punished, either individually or sometimes as a whole group. They performed physical exercises to strengthen their bodies, running, forced marches and body-building drills. Most of the recruits in Hamza’s group were from the local area and understood each other, but other languages were spoken in the troop: Arabic, Kinyamwezi and German mostly. Words from all these languages were churned up together with Kiswahili, some form of which was the main language of the troops.
Hamza lost himself in the exhausting routine. In the first rush of panic after joining up he had feared that he would be scorned and bullied by men who were used to violence and held only strength and toughness in high esteem. An order soon became evident in his group, and strength and agility was part of that. The enthusiasm and power of two among them, Komba and Fulani, marked them out as natural leaders and no one contested that right. Fulani had some military experience already although not of the schutztruppe calibre. He was a Mnyamwezi who had worked as a guard in a merchant’s private army, and it was the merchant who named him Fulani, which means So-and-so, because he could never remember his Kinyamwezi name. Fulani liked the dash of this name and embraced it. Komba was very strong-looking and confident, a natural athlete. These two led in all the drills, chatted up the women who brought their food, traded innuendos with them and promised to visit them later in the evening. They were always served first and served plentifully. They were the ones the ombasha always praised and the Feldwebel fawned over and then reserved his worst abuse for. Komba laughed at the Feldwebel behind his back and called him Jogoo, the Cockerel. He strutted like one whenever the women were around. They all understood that the Feldwebel’s assault on the two men, and Komba in particular, was a recognition of their primacy in the troop. He had to overpower them to establish his own authority without diminishing them. Hamza shuffled to defer to that order and find his own place in it, as did the rest of the troop.
The ascendancy of Fulani and Komba did not seem important or a problem to Hamza because it was the intensity of the training and the general fear of punishment that mostly preoccupied the group. No one had any answer to the scorn and violence of the Gefreiter or the Unteroffizier, and especially not to that of Feldwebel Walther. None of the instructors was addressed by name or addressed at all, just obeyed with as much alacrity as possible. Only Komba managed to get away with anything because he was an insolent dandy who made it seem that he was not conscious of causing offence or was far from intending disrespect.
Nevertheless, despite the harsh regime, Hamza found unexpected satisfaction in his own growing strength and skills, and after a while he no longer winced at the shouts of schwein and washenzi or the German words he did not yet understand, which their trainers spat at them constantly. Unexpectedly, he began to feel pride at being part of the group, not rejected and mocked as he had feared, but there to share in the punishing routines and the exhaustion and the grumbling, to feel his body becoming stronger and responding skilfully to commands, to march with the precision his instructors demanded. It took him longer to get used to the rank smell of exhausted sleeping bodies and the gases they expelled. The banter was brutal but everyone suffered from it and Hamza learned to take his share and keep his head down. When they started going out on manoeuvres he saw the terror of the villagers when the askari arrived and could not suppress a thrill of pleasure at their fright.
The officer remained a distant figure after that first morning. Their morning training was often conducted on the boma parade ground, the Exerzierplatz, and the officer sometimes came out to watch them. He did not step down from the raised wooden deck or stay watching for long. More often he was away from the boma on field manoeuvres with the regular units. They learned from the other askari that these were called shauri missions, consultation meetings to explain government policy or to hand out judgements on disputes or to carry out punishments on villages and chiefs who had offended. When their unit joined a shauri mission for training, Hamza realised there was not much consultation involved. The manoeuvres were to discipline and terrify the stupid washenzi villagers and make them obey government instructions without questioning them.
After they had been training for several weeks, the officer stepped down from the deck one morning and approached them. The moment seemed prearranged as all three of their training officers were in attendance, the Gefreiter Haidar al-Hamad, the Unteroffizier Ali Nguru Hassan and Feldwebel Walther. They were in full regalia as was the officer in his gleaming white garrison uniform. The ombasha had explained that those among their group who were scheduled for special training in the signals detachment or the band would be selected during this parade. One of their number played the trumpet, although none of them had heard him, and he intended to apply to join the musikkapelle. He asked the ombasha’s permission to put himself forward. Selection for the signals detachment required the ability to read, but although Hamza could read he had not put himself forward for that. He had chosen not to do so, concerned not to draw any attention to himself, but Haidar the ombasha had seen him reading aloud to the others from the government Kiswahili newspaper Kiongozi during one of their rest periods. When he was explaining to them the selection process that would take place during the parade, the ombasha glanced towards Hamza as he mentioned the signals detachment.
The officer walked along the line as he had done that first morning, only this time he stopped in front of each of them in turn for a detailed inspection. At the end of this he stood a few feet in front of the troop, which stood to attention. The Feldwebel called out the trumpeter’s name, which was Abudu, and he stood forward two steps as instructed. Then he called out Hamza’s name and he did the same. The officer saluted and walked back to his office. The troop marched off, leaving Abudu and Hamza standing in the Exerzierplatz. They stood to attention as ordered while the late-morning sun beat on them. They both knew this was another punishing test and that if they moved or spoke there would be an unpleasant punishment to follow and the end of any further training. To Hamza it seemed a cruel caprice to no purpose but it was too late for such wisdom and there was nothing else to do but endure.
It was difficult to tell how long they stood to attention in the late-morning sun, a quarter of an hour maybe, but after some time ombasha Haidar returned and instructed Abudu to follow him while Hamza remained standing in the Exerzierplatz. Then it was his turn, and he marched ahead of the ombasha as instructed up to the open door of the office where he was momentarily blinded by the deep shade. Herein, a voice spoke from within. It was the first time he had heard the officer’s voice, and Hamza felt its severity through his sinews. He stepped into a large office with two windows at the front and a desk at the end facing the door. There was a chair in front of the desk and another small table set against the wall on which stood a draughtsman’s board. The officer was sitting behind the desk, leaning back in his chair. His face was leaner without his helmet and there was a wrinkle of the skin on his left upper cheek and temple below the hairline. His eyes were a piercing blue.
After a long deliberate silence the officer spoke in German and the ombasha translated. ‘The Oberleutnant asks if you want to be signalman.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hamza said loudly, addressing the air above the officer’s head and speaking with as much conviction as he could. He did not know if being a signalman was any safer than being an askari but it was not the moment to quibble.
The officer spoke again briefly. ‘Why?’ the ombasha translated.
Hamza had not thought of an answer to this question although he should have done. After a moment’s thought he said, ‘To learn a new skill and to serve the schutztruppe as well as I can.’
He glanced quickly at the officer and saw that he smiled. It was Hamza’s first sight of the sneer he would come to know well. ‘Can you read?’ the ombasha translated again.
‘I can read a little.’
The officer made an interrogative face, asking him to clarify. Hamza did not know how to add to that. He knew all the letters and with patience could make out words if they were in Kiswahili. He was not sure if that was what the officer wanted to know so he stared above his head and said nothing. The officer spoke in German, speaking slowly and looking at the ombasha who waited until he had finished and then translated. The words came out in the Nubi’s usual mangled style and because Hamza stood facing the officer, he saw on the edge of his vision that he winced slightly at times at the ombasha’s excesses. It was said that the officer spoke the best Kiswahili of all the Germans.
‘The Oberleutnant say why you don’t learn more to read? Why you don’t read everything like he can? Everything he put in front of you, kelb, and you don’t learn. You have no civilisation, that is why you savage. He say you must learn. What word he say …messatik … something like that. You don’t know that.’
‘Mathematics,’ the officer said.
‘Yes, mesthamatik, you don’t know that, you kelb, you savage dog,’ the ombasha said.
‘Nini jina la mathematics kwa lugha yako?’ the officer asked, doing without the ombasha after all. What is the word for mathematics in your language? ‘Do you know what mathematics is? You can’t understand anything of the world’s learning without mathematics, not music or philosophy, let alone the mechanics of signalling. Unafahamu?’
‘Ndio bwana,’ Hamza said loudly.
‘You don’t even know what mathematics is, do you? We have come here to bring you this, mathematics and many other clever things that you would not have without us. This is our Zivilisierungmission,’ the officer said, and then gestured with his left arm towards the window at the boma outside, his lean face and thin lips creased in a sardonic smile. ‘This is our cunning plot, which only a child could misunderstand. We have come here to civilise you. Unafahamu?’
‘Ndio bwana.’
The officer spoke Kiswahili carefully, searching for the right vocabulary, but it was as if he was performing a language he had no control over, as if he had the words but not their emotion, wanting them to speak in a way they were not suited to. His eyes had a watchful light, which wavered between curiosity and scorn, constantly looking to see the effect his words had on Hamza. He in turn studied the officer as best he could without making eye contact. At other times, as he was to learn later, those eyes held the bright glitter of a man capable of violence.
‘Only I don’t think you will ever learn mathematics. It requires a mental discipline you people are not capable of. That’s enough for now,’ the officer said abruptly, and waved them out of his office.
Hamza found out later that day that he had been assigned as the officer’s personal servant, his batman, and was required to report to his residence first thing in the morning to be instructed in his duties by the outgoing batman. His request for a posting to the signals detachment was refused. He was not told why. Komba led the mockery when the assignment became known.
‘You are a shoga,’ he said, ‘that’s why he picked you. He wants someone sweet and pretty to massage his back and serve his dinner for him. It gets cold up there in the mountains, and he will need someone to keep him warm at night, just like a little wife. What are you doing here? Anyone can see you are too pretty to be a soldier.’
‘These Germans, they like playing with pretty young men, especially ones with such nice manners as you have. Kwa hisani yako,’ Fulani said, waving his hand and softening his voice. If you please.
‘Yes, what a dreamy little beauty you are,’ Komba said, reaching out as if to stroke Hamza’s cheek.
Others joined in, pretending to be him, walking with extravagant effeminacy as they play-acted serving food and massaging a back. ‘When the German tires of you, you can always come back and stroke my back,’ someone said. It was a long time before they tired of the game and left him alone. By then Hamza was silently cringing with humiliation and fearful that their predictions of what was to befall him would turn out to be true. He had felt himself one of them, had shared their privations and punishments, and no one among them had spoken to him in such a slighting way before. It was as if they were forcibly expelling him from their midst.