Black Mamba Boy A Novel [Paperback]

Yemen, 1935. Jama is a market boy, a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his motheralternately raging and lovingdies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach.

In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness,Black Mamba Boyis debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.

Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somalia, in 1981 to a merchant marine father and a mother from a politically active family, and was trapped in exile when civil war erupted. She studied history and politics at Oxford, and has worked as a film researcher and scriptwriter.

1. Jama often suffers from being an outsider : first as a market boy , later as an orphan. But what advantages does he gain from being an outsider during his journey?

2. Jama's mother tells him he is destined to be lucky because of her encounter with a Black Mamba snake during her pregnancy. In what ways does this prediction prove to be true?

3. Jama and his friends Abdi and Shidane are witness to and victims of horrific acts of violó5