The Camel's Shadow Has Four Humps: African Myth, Urban Mystery

By Akmed Khalifa

In the midst of a struggling black community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, twenty-five-year old LeMar Early is handsome, intuitive, and well-liked by nearly everyone. Despite being orphaned at six and on his own since he was eighteen, LeMar still manages to have a positive outlook on lifeuntil his best friend, Chip, and his girlfriend, Venetia Waits, are kidnapped by a gang commissioned to snatch victims for a scientific experiment.

Drama quickly unfolds as LeMar sets out to find Venetia, but when a private eye with brains and an attitude to match enters the investigation, LeMar quickly becomes immersed in a mission to solve the mysterious disappearances. Little does he know that he, the gorgeous sleuth Prudence, and the neighborhood philosopher Widemouth are about to become embroiled in a web of deceit and corruption run by street gangs, greedy corporate investors, and technologically enhanced humans preparing to establish a new world order. To top it off, LeMar now realizes he is nurturing a growing attraction to Prudence.

Guided by myth and the musings of Widemouth, LeMar and his friends must employ everyone and everything to save Venetia and Chipbefore it is too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462060122

Akmed Khalifa

Akmed Khalifa has a Mini MBA, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Behavior, a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing. He studied for a year as an artist in residence at the Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center and he is a published poet and essayist. He has self-published two previous books.

Book preview

The Camel’s Shadow

Has Four Humps

African Myth, Urban Mystery

Akmed Khalifa

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

The Camel’s Shadow Has Four Humps

African Myth, Urban Mystery

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Akmed Khalifa

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-6010-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6012-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-6011-5 (dj)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011918939

iUniverse rev. date: 10/23/2012

Contents

Dedication

Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgements

DEDICATION

To Homewood, past, present, and future

Illustrations

Cover and Camel Scene, page 152

Jenna Tranum

Interior Illustrations:

Eye, page 48, Club, page 64 and Steps, page 65

Sam Orosz

Foreword

The first time I met Akmed Khalifa was on a sweltering summer Minnesota evening in early July, 2008.  I was teaching advanced writing, a class open to graduate students at Metropolitan State University.  I had taught this class before, but only during a regular 15-week semester.  However this summer session posed a challenge; it required the same writing/reading assignments and lecture material crunched into six weeks, lightning speed.  

Class met two evenings a week, each session lasting nearly four hours.  To be able to complete a full-fledged major project in this condensed term demanded unwavering dedication of the students.  The minimal guidelines for the project included a 15-20 page complete draft exhibiting no less than the blending of three genres.  The project also needed to display interweaving themes throughout, containing a clear beginning, middle and end, in respect of the reader.  Students who found something passionate to write about had no problem aspiring to the goals of the assignment.  Those who did not engage their muse had difficulty.  

As an active discussant, Akmed quickly revealed his enthusiastic engagement to the concept of blending genres by asking questions, and clarifying his definition of genres through examples from previous literature.  Akmed was a writer that was well read, solidifying by the end of our first class session that he would not and could not be stopped from delving into this assignment; he grasped the idea that each genre must convey a mood in and of itself.  As writers it is essential to generate the mood of each genre selection to propel plot, and to recognize that each genre works as a propellant to create mood.   The idea of telling a story through multiple portals allowed Akmed to work with words in unconventional ways.  Words themselves are alive and adaptable, and thrive in multiple locals.  It is up to the writer to discover his role in getting the message out, and when to surrender to the forces that are compelling the message.  This includes surrendering to genre transitions, and trusting that the writer knows enough about the various genre forms to identify what he is surrendering to.  For this to occur the writer must disengage from his own ego all the while remaining true to the idea, enough so to send it down the birthing canal confident that with that one last push it breathes on its own.  

Having said this it came as no great surprise to me when I received an email from Akmed fifteen months later asking me if I would have time to preview his novel before it went public.  His exact words were, I am finishing a novel that I’ve decided to make multigenre.  Each chapter begins with narrative poetry…one chapter takes place on a stage and is written entirely in playwriting format.  I said to myself, are you kidding?!  Bring it on!

I felt like a kid in a candy store.  When I talked to Akmed eleven days later he divulged the novel’s working title: The Camel’s Shadow Has Four Humps; I then was a kid running without restraint throughout a candy warehouse.  A provocative title, a multigenre novel, to include narrative poetry—my interest was set ablaze.  When I received Akmed’s novel via email I planted myself in a comfy chair on a weekend free of distraction and steadied my eyes to the text.  Within the first five pages I crash-landed in an urban mystery, and twelve hours later I sat staring at the novel’s final two words, The Middle, feeling a sugar rush I couldn’t contain.  I immediately emailed Akmed my thoughts.  I felt in mimicry of his displayed excitement back during our first four-hour class in early July.  What a writer wants to accomplish through a multigenre project is a sense of depth, and a weaving of themes fluidly appearing, yet not appearing repetitive.  What the reader wants from a multigenre work is a sense that each weave’s connection through a carefully selected genre drifts the reader along through seamless transitions, points of view and connecting themes, all the while unconsciously engaging and becoming one with the text.  

In summary The Camel’s Shadow Has Four Humps profits from poetic inclusions that blend seamlessly with the prose.  Each chapter sets the mood through narrative poetry, a genre so sparse, yet so dense, moves next into dialogue through playwriting format as well as direct narrative.   The author’s triumph resonates in his selected genre choices to include poetry, a blending of fiction/nonfiction prose, images/art and playwriting.  Recurring themes include the exchange of African-American sociological & economic systems, and the adaptations people entrust in socioeconomic success.  Characters struggle to survive, come face-to-face confronting forces of good and evil, are forced to make conscious decisions to seek justice, or its opponent—revenge, and to honor what they hold sacred.  

Themes are conveyed through the interchange of mood encapsulating contemporary/sci-fi predictive measures.  The novel presents itself linearly with organically conceived chapter breaks, yet is thoughtful and measured.  Each 20-page chapter funnels further into mystery to include personal revelations about Venetia.  What’s at stake for Prudence and LeMar?  What about Lenny, Chip?  These characters offer a cathartic entanglement; we loathe and love them at the same time.  As a character driven writer, what more could a reader ask for?  

And what more could a reader ask for when closing words escape The End, and instead alert the reader the end is yet to come. These characters are mid-term, congregating in the head of the writer, and blathering in his ear where they intend to go next. We have not been abandoned, but, dear reader, we must patiently await the next installment of brewing genres blending and bleeding to tell us more.

Recently it seemed inevitable I should ask Akmed why he chose to write his first novel layered in multigenre.  He briefly reflected, then stated he thought of this novel as a written mosaic, a collective and unified truth.  There is no such thing as disunity; all multigenre writing is unified, Akmed announced.  Wow, did I teach him that, or is he now teaching me?  That’s the process of teaching; it is always a give and take exchange.  For those daring enough to blend genre know that there is no return to a one-size-fits-all way of writing and learning; it is through multiple portals that we find our way in, out and back in again.  

I guess it’s back to the keyboard for me, as I remember Akmed’s motto: practice is what gets us to Carnegie Hall.  The teacher in me must ask one last question: How can Akmed Khalifa get to Carnegie Hall?  The answer is easy; carry a copy of The Camel’s Shadow Has Four Humps directly through those enrapturing front doors.  You’ll be welcomed with open arms.

Suzanne Nielsen

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all who made this work possible

Janet Reed-Caldwell

Metropolitan State University

Suzanne Nielsen

Barbara Haselbeck

Skyscrapers

and other tall buildings

awkwardly stick the sky

in a jagged assault on an otherwise peaceful canopy

angry young clouds

sling rain at the city and its appendaged ghettos

streets glistening and wet

flank

gathering puddles of shallow water

pumps and wingtips

slosh

pat

stomp

stand waiting

various hair blows

in rain washed air

tree tops like thick afros

wave to and fro

the undeterred

hunch at the shoulders

faces wet in warm rain

scurry like

tightly wound playthings

a crawly metallic caterpillar on wheels coughing up thick black smoke

pauses

up

on

and

in

it

LeMar Early finds a sitting space

between the last thought and the next

his eyes wander

half seeing, and fix upon another roving pair. Surprised at meeting his, they dart quickly upward pretending to hang onto words above his head. Shifting his focus, LeMar’s eyes settle on a kind old face that genuinely smiles at him. For a quick second the many things that make them different from and strange to each other disappear as they exchange a first and last,

Hello.

Lumbering through the hood, between final drops of rain, the laboring bus stops where LeMar’s nights often meet his days. He jumps off and into the streets. The hard, blank cornering pavement meets the harder, more blank air there as he pounds the sidewalk and heads home.

The avenue is alive.

Cool fools,

pants creased, hats ace deuce, court leather-clad honeys in storied stilettos and fluorescent lipstick. LeMar passes the masses and rounds the corner toward his crib. Leaning in the doorway of his apartment building is Widemouth, with one shoe on and a paper bag on the other foot held there by a rubber band. Widemouth grips a bottle of wine in one hand and the door frame in the other.

Hey man, where’s your other shoe? LeMar asks.

If I knew would I have this damn bag on my foot? Widemouth replies. I may be drunk but I ain’t stupid.

LeMar laughs as he wishes Widemouth luck finding his other shoe and climbs the stairs toward his flat. Even though prone to episodic drunkenness, Widemouth has earned LeMar’s respect. He is known to just about everyone as the resident street philosopher, always ready with a story or an opinion about everything. Widemouth is experienced enough for three or four lifetimes and like the old African proverb, has seen the elephant and heard the owl.

Twenty-five-year-old LeMar, orphaned at six years of age by the death of his parents in a car accident, and on his own since he was eighteen, has also seen and experienced life beyond what his years on the planet might indicate and still manages to have a positive outlook on life. He hustled and schemed his way through three years of college with no visible means of support. Somehow LeMar has managed to use every advantage and seize every opportunity available to him since leaving the foster care system immediately after his eighteenth birthday. His good looks and persuasive talents lend much to his ability to survive, but he’s also intuitive, smart, and well liked by most people he meets, especially women, young, and old alike.

It is late and now in his apartment sitting on the couch, LeMar lays his head down on a cushion and drifts off to sleep listening to John Coltrane’s Giant Steps walking out of the huge speaker against the wall. He sleeps every night to a chorus of jazz riffs and chords streaming from his computer that is wired into the sound system he has rigged to play all over the apartment. Morning arrives unannounced and soon out of the shower and out of the front door of his apartment, LeMar greets the new day and Widemouth, who is sitting on the building steps sipping a steaming cup of coffee.

What’s up man, did you find your shoe last night? LeMar asks.

I woke up and it was in my back pocket, Widemouth replies. That explains why I was so tired this mornin’. I walked my ass off last night. You should try it. Sleep with your shoe in your back pocket and see how far you get.

You know you’re out of your damn mind don’t you? LeMar says.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Speakin’ of shadows I got a story for you straight from the mother land. You ever heard of the camel whose shadow had four humps?

I can’t say I have man, but I don’t have time for it now.

"Hold on now, hold on, you need to catch me when the thought is fresh or it might not come back around for years.