Earlier in the morning a young Somali was complaining about the parking meters.
— What do they think this is? In Footscray….
— Rich people. Sudanese, Somali…
At the coffee machine Abdou Razzak stirring the pot from the side, as usual. Cheeky boyishness etched; usually AR’s delivery was deadpan.
—…In Chapel Street they don’t have meters on the street. They should have them there. Not Footscray.
—…Sunshine. Braybrook. Too much money. Government know. Somalis pay…
Which revealed the young lad’s nation.
— They think we’re pirates, that’s why….
Unrestrained laugher from the tables here, regardless of nationality.
The local Liberal candidate, a regular at the shop, highlighted the parking meters on his advertising material.
The older men at d’Afrique don’t drive. Some of the younger able-bodied walked from Flemington & Maribyrnong to join their brothers at the café. It was a broad church. Christians from the Horn intermingled with the predominating Muslims. Somalis, Sudanese, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Lebanese and Egyptians gathering at adjacent tables. Some Vietnamese Buddhists and Koreans too patronised. One of the latter was killed a few years ago at an outdoor table by a Sudanese hitting the wrong pedal backing out of a parking spot across the road.
Today Mr. Mohammed No. 3 was encountered at the front window table, the prize viewing perch in the house. After being shut away in hospital couple of months following a fall, Mr. M. enjoyed the show out on the street.
Mohammed was the most popular and common name in Somalia, Mr. M. No. 3 informed.
Unlike many of his generation at the café, Mr. Mohammed No.3’s English was good. Almost certainly he had not been sighted before. An earlier sighting would have been recalled with the disability. In childhood Mr Mohammed contracted polio. Since diabetes had added to his afflictions, and then the fall in the shower resulted in a break in his good, straight leg.
Because his father was a rich cattle and livestock trader, Mr. Mohammed completed primary, intermediate & high school in Mogadishu.
Hearing that his countryman Mr. Mohammed No. 1, the shopkeeper around the corner (three shops now, selling cheap China products), had said that Somalis who declared they came from Mogadishu usually hailed from a goat track 40kms off, Mr. M. No. 3 barely raises a smile. In Mogadishu city, he confirms, he lived. There he was schooled and treated for his affliction.
Six languages Mr. Mohammed No. 3 spoke. In order of accomplishment: Somali, English, Arabic, Italian, Russian… and one other, possibly not a colonial language.
In an exchange of mobile numbers with Allen, a fellow Somali who hadn’t seen Mr. M. No. 3 for a long while, the usual English was used for the purpose. Asked why the Africans used English instead of Somali or Arabic for serial numbers, Allen replied with some pique.
— Because we are not Arabs.
In a recent news report, one of the Somali pirates when he was ridiculed for accepting a ransom of only a few thousand for some particularly rich booty, replied that he hadn’t known there was a number greater than ten thousand… (Or another large, round number.)
Ten years the Italians were in Somalia. The first and best buccaneers, the English, before and after them. (Mr. M. No. 3 was not alone at this café in his command of relevant history.) For a time the Russians supplanted the English. Many of the men there spoke a smattering of the various European languages.
Mr. Mohammed No. 3’s good English was explained by the fifteen years in Christchurch, before settlement across the ditch at the turn of the century. As an African, the weather here he found more congenial, he explained.
A sunny, good-natured, gap-toothed face. Late early or mid-sixties. (Too young for Mussolini. Italian was continued in the schools for some while after the failure of the new Roman dawn.)
Club and broken foot carefully co-ordinated with the walking frame got the man out the door and onto the pavement.
Before leaving Faisal told of Julian Assange’s interview on Al Jazeera, where he spoke with an insight Faisal found unexpected. A strikingly white white man, no doubt.
— They kill him? Faisal can’t help wondering.
December 2010
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