1 

AHMED MH PATEL 

STUDENT NUMBER: 0305000M 

SCHOOL OF LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND MEDIA 

MASTER OF ARTS BY RESEARCH (CREATIVE WRITING) 

SUPERVISOR: PROF. BRONWYN LAW-VILJOEN 

CREATIVE PROJECT: NOVEL 

TITLE: THE STATE 

FINAL SUBMISSION DATE: 13 JUNE 2022   



 2 

 
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 

School of Literature, Language and Media 

  

SENATE PLAGIARISM POLICY  

Declaration by Student 

 

I, Ahmed MH Patel (Student number: 0305000M), am a student registered for an MA Creative Writing degree in the 
years 2020/21. I hereby declare the following: 

• I am aware that plagiarism (the use of someone else's work without their permission and/or 

without acknowledging the original source) is wrong. 

• I confirm that ALL the work submitted for assessment for the above course is my own unaided work 

except where I have explicitly indicated otherwise. 

• I have followed the required conventions in referencing the thoughts and ideas of others. 

• I understand that the University of the Witwatersrand may take disciplinary action against me if there 

is a belief that this is not my own unaided work or that I have failed to acknowledge the source of the 

ideas or words in my writing. 
 
 
 
 
 
    

               Signature:         Date: 13 June 2022 
  



 3 

The State 

(Novel) 

 

& 

 

Pop, Paranoia and a Pornographic Nexus: Reflecting on a Not-Nailed 

Production 

(Reflective Essay) 

 

 

 

Ahmed MH Patel 

  



 4 

Contents 

The State ...............................................................................................................................5 

Pop, paranoia and a pornographic nexus: Reflecting on a not-nailed production ............... 192 

 
  



 5 

The State  
 
  



 6 

1 

What she found most difficult about the fasting month was waking up before sunrise to eat. 

The smell of toast in the passage and the sight of her mother sitting stoically at the eating 

table – that permanent black headscarf, that resigned expression – made her uneasy.  

She scanned the table. Soft butter, grated cheddar, chunky cottage cheese, 

raspberry jam, slices of toast upright in their rack, a large pot of tea, a white sugar bowl, last 

night’s quiche. 

She poured tea and buttered a slice of toast. 

“You can’t go the whole day on that, Azra,” said her mother. 

Every morning the same inquisition. She bit off a corner of the toast. It was hard to 

chew and harder to swallow. She took an exploratory sip of tea. It had cooled down enough 

to take two large sips and be done with. 

“I’m going to my room.” She swallowed the last bit of tea. The toast, with its bite-

sized piece missing, stared up at her. 

According to her Ramadan calendar, she still had to wait a while for the exact time of 

first light. Then only could she pray, have a short nap and start getting ready for work. She 

lay on her bed in the darkness. The birds had already begun to chirp. What if they, like her, 

mostly rejected eating the worms they caught? 

She was neither disillusioned by the fast nor conflicted about its purpose. Usually, it 

was a good opportunity to strengthen her resolve and sharpen her focus. But this year 

things felt different. It seemed the very resolve she had acquired over the period so far had 

led her to notice odd feelings slithering within. Perhaps they had been there all along, but 

she had only just begun to feel their sharp, hollow pangs with increasing regularity. 

Maybe these feelings were symptomatic of an understanding that she was alone and 

was going to be for a long time, if not for the rest of her life. Alone with nowhere to go but 

to work and back home, to her mother. Alone with no one else to speak to but her mother. 

A lifetime of painfully insubstantial exchanges.  



 7 

2 

Why her firm insisted on closing for the festive season was beyond her. Now, with Eid set to 

coincide with Christmas for the first time in her life, she had run out of workdays to train her 

focus. She’d have to spend the final third of the fast in dead time. 

What she did like about mid to late December, though, was how the city’s 

inhabitants left in droves. Beach, bush, Bolivia. Anywhere but Joburg. She hardly left her 

apartment. Her trips were brief, and mainly involved moving from her bed to the bathroom 

and back, and to the lounge when it was time to break her fast. 

The bed was her horizontal home office, except instead of doing work on her laptop, 

she watched TV shows and googled things as they came to mind. She had also been reading. 

Luckily, during the Christmas rush prior to the city’s great emptying, she had managed to 

order and have delivered the full set of the Seven Sisters novels. Just a couple of days into 

dead time and she was already on The Shadow Sister, the third in the series. 

“Azra. Iftar time.” Her mother’s knock at the door came precisely 30 minutes before 

sunset. Breakfast in a truer sense, perhaps. She crept out of bed and headed to the lounge. 

There, she was pacified by the wingback in the corner. It was as if it knew which parts of her 

body to pad and prop. She curled deeper into it and stared through the large glass door, 

past the balcony, to a pink horizon dotted with treetops bobbing in the warm summer air. 

Her mother brought over a tray of dates when the signal came to break their fast. 

Some of them were rolled in toasted coconut flakes, some were stuffed with almonds and 

others were plain. She took an almond-stuffed one. “God! I fasted for You. I believe in You 

and put my trust in You. I break my fast with Your sustenance.”  

She bit on the date and watched the pink light fade. 

  



 8 

3 

The first workday of the new year had finally arrived, but her excitement was short-lived. 

Her access to the bottle of Voss in the fridge door had been obstructed by a jam jar her 

mother had crammed in front of it. When she yanked at the lid of the Voss, the jar became 

unstable. 

She watched the jam jar crash to the floor in slow motion. Her plan to leave home in 

one fluid movement was thwarted. “I told you not to leave this stuff in the fridge door!” She 

hoped that her mother, who was sitting and reading at the table, would hear the full fury in 

her voice. 

There were clumps of raspberry jam and shards of glass on the floor, and red specks 

on her shoes and pants. She made a fist and brought it down, hard, on to the kitchen 

counter. It was sore but worth it. 

She barged her way back to her bedroom and changed quickly into outfit B, which 

she’d luckily managed to arrange in her head before nodding off after breaking her fast. 

Thank God she didn’t wear the leather sandals she had initially planned for outfit A. Literal 

toe jam, imagine. 

When she left, she slammed the door as hard as she could and stomped across the 

linoleum passageway leading to the stairwell.  

She was calmer by the time she got down to the parking garage. She started the 

engine and selected R. The view screen displayed her rear view. All clear.  

Because she hadn’t driven in a while, her phone didn’t immediately sync with 

CarPlay, so the entertainment system defaulted to some talk-radio station. The voice of an 

assured-sounding man blared on the radio. ‘… the market took a dip towards the end of the 

day’s trading on the back of slow demand and weakening investor confidence …’  

Huh? 

Her Mercedes crawled through the parking garage until she came to a large 

rectangle of sunlight streaming in from the spaces between the garage gate and its frame. 

She moved the car towards the rectangle and pressed the button on the gate remote. The 

motor rumbled and the gate rolled open, gathering speed like an underground train. 

Sunlight flared into the dull garage. She pulled her sunglasses over her face and inched the 

car out. Traffic streamed steadily past. She nudged the car closer to the street until she 

spotted a gap. 



 9 

The route to work was so familiar she had become attuned to its many nuances – 

evasive manoeuvres around potholes, bumps and other obstacles; which beggars to give 

money to; which beggars to ignore; which robots to race to make the green light. 

Another news bulletin was about to start as she approached her office building. 

Lulled by the inanity of talk radio, she’d completely forgotten to connect her phone. She 

harpooned a finger at the on/off button on the centre console. She couldn’t bear the 

thought of having to hear that news presenter’s stupid voice again.  

*** 

David, whom she supposed considered himself a catch, tended to wear the same button-

down shirts as seen on faceless Thomas Pink mannequins. The curve of his paunch where 

his shirt tucked into his slim-fit suit pants betrayed any claim he might have had to youth. A 

dad bod. His hair was dirty blond and fell to ear length when not slicked back. He wore a 

fine platinum wedding band and sometimes mentioned his “boys”. She pictured David’s 

wife as tall, blonde, thin and tan – pretty even. 

They were about to start a big audit. It was just as well, and a welcome coincidence, 

that it was so soon after the fast and holidays ended. She felt fortunate to have that kind of 

continuity. No time to sit around and wallow in whatever grey feelings she might have 

developed over a month of fasting and relative solitude. 

She moved her eyes slowly from David’s crotch up to the projector screen. He’d 

pulled up a rudimentary pre-plan. Did he get one of his prepubescent offspring to do it as a 

holiday assignment? Her gaze drifted back to his crotch.  

“… there’s quite a large pool of clerks to draw from. I’ll draw up a roster of duties 

and senior staff present here can delegate where they deem fit.” A roster. There was some 

hope after all. 

David brought down his laptop screen and the meeting ended. She gathered up her 

printouts into a plastic folder and shot another glance at David, standing authoritatively at 

the front of the room. Most women probably found him attractive, but she was still to be 

convinced after many hours spent, cumulatively, staring at his crotch in boardrooms.  

“Hey, Azra.”  

Trapped.  

“David. Hi.” 



 10 

“How are you doing? Did you enjoy the break?” She smiled, nodded and avoided eye 

contact.  

He was hardly interested a response, let alone in pressing her for one. All he wanted 

was for her to stay where she was while he leaned against the doorframe and got his 

scrolling fix. He reeked of Coach Blue and something fruity, no, caramelly. Was vaping his 

new thing or had she just not noticed before? Men like David, tall and slightly bulky, 

conventionally handsome, had a particular stance. He looked up from his phone. 

“It was OK, relaxing.” 

“Oh yeah? How did you relax?”  

Some valuable scrolling seconds bought. 

 “I usually stay at home over the Christmas holidays.” How much longer would he 

need? 

“That sounds relaxing, I guess.”  

“How about you?” She gulped. 

“Oh, we took the boys to visit my brother in Paris. First time in years it snowed there 

over Christmas. It was great…” 

Was he playing it down to seem cool? To her? Finally, some hope punctured the sad 

reality of their exchange. Genevieve – all smiles, red lipstick and pumps. Being on the same 

level as David, they had to strike something up. It would be impolite not to. Then she could 

simply leave. Like an animal on the hunt, he picked up Genevieve’s scent. 

“Oh hey, Gen…” He said before his eyes left the screen.  

She shared a brief yet honest and knowing glance with Genevieve, whom she 

respected for her machine-like consistency at work. 

  



 11 

4 

She made a mental note to straighten the drawing, a self-portrait of the artist, hanging 

above her overflow desk. Once again, it made its presence known, staring back at her from 

The Vortex that was its mouth. She hated it as one would an unwanted pet or child, or 

parent. She fell into the high-backed chair and swivelled in semicircles. The tips of her toes 

touched and left the ground in short bounces along the arcs of each swing. She pictured her 

feet as puppets, dancing for a silent, unimpressed audience. 

She reeled herself back to her desk. The chair’s wheels rolled hesitantly along the 

dark, rigid carpet tiles. What if she were to have an office romance? What if it were to 

involve the petite, dark-haired articles clerk who joined the firm late last year? But how 

would she manage an office romance with her intense workload? Surely it would take great 

tenacity, especially if a scandal were to break out? The words “orchestrate” and “scandal” 

floated inside her head in crude neon, like an old PC screensaver. They melded into a yellow 

beam then materialised into a warm, tingling sensation that crept southwards. 

The screech of the fluorescent light above injected gravity back into her body. It 

entered through her ears, grey and heavy, and rolled through her veins. She looked ahead, 

through the glass door, and saw a few articles clerks huddled around a monitor, laughing at 

a meme. The hot clerk wasn’t part of the boy huddle. 

  



 12 

5 

There were a few dozen tabs going in her Chrome. She Ctrl-w’d with purpose, lingering only 

on pages that might have been worth bookmarking. Through all the crap, she was pleased 

to add only one more grave to the boundless cemetery that was her “To read” folder. The 

thought of one day having to sort through and organise that folder was deflating. 

Bookmarking made her feel like a comfort-seeking procrastinator. 

She Alt-tabbed back to Excel. The spreadsheet containing David’s workplan for the 

coming audit stared back at her. It still needed input from several colleagues. She wondered 

when they’d be back from leave and whether their absence would hold her up. 

Steeling herself, she placed a fingertip on the trackpad and opened Outlook. In no 

time, the programme spread itself across her screen. Although she wasn’t expecting 

anything important, she didn’t want to submit to email. A bold 34 in brackets next to 

“Inbox”. Not too bad, considering. She clicked the oldest unread message, dated December 

23, with the subject “NOTIFICATION – BUILDING MAINTENANCE”. A four-hour power outage 

in the area on Christmas Eve.  

She hit the up-arrow key and the bold unread became the plain read. She stopped at 

a “season’s greeting” from a small firm she took point on auditing back in Q2. Happy 

customer or auto send? It didn’t matter, her email address was on their spam list forever. 

She was sucked out of Outlook by a small, hunched silhouette stalking the doorway. 

The figure’s tentative movements suggested it was contemplating whether to knock on the 

glass door and, if so, how hard. She peered over the screen, taking care not to telegraph 

that she’d noticed the figure. 

She looked up fully from her screen. At last, as if having granted permission, a soft 

knock on the door, then another. Mei stooped and retracted her hand carefully from the 

door. She gestured for Mei to enter. Mei pressed down the door handle, in slow motion, as 

if sneaking into the room, and nudged open the door. 

“Hi. I saw you come in earlier.”  

“Yes, I went straight to a meeting. Just got back and had a look at my email.”  

Mei giggled into the palm of her hand and adjusted her thick-rimmed glasses, 

smudging the bridge closer to the point between her eyebrows. 



 13 

She scanned Mei. Always the oversized knits in varying weights, sleeves pulled up to 

the elbows. Today it was a powder-blue cardigan that looked like cashmere. The hip-side 

pockets would’ve been cute if Mei hadn’t stuffed them with stationery. 

By default, Mei’s gaze was fixed firmly to the floor. She swayed for a moment, 

looked up and adjusted her grip on the stack of plastic folders she cradled in one arm. “So… 

I suppose you’re on the team for the new audit?” 

“Yes, but most of the team’s not back yet.” Sometimes she felt bad for being terse 

with Mei. But it seemed that even the softest, most gentle treatment would be too harsh, or 

sudden, for her.  

Mei stared hard at her brown Birkenstock Mary Janes. She seemed perplexed, like 

she too couldn’t understand how and why people could still be on leave. “We’re wrapping 

up KBT. It’s been straightforward,” she muttered. 

A few seconds passed in silence. She bit her lip and Mei looked down and dug the 

toe of a Mary Jane into the floor.  

“Hey, let’s have lunch together.” She tried sounding enthusiastic. 

 “Yeah, later.” Mei nodded. 

  



 14 

6 

“It didn’t really matter, Mark wanted a beach holiday so we went to the beach. I didn’t want 

to tell him for the millionth time that I don’t like the beach.” Mei investigated her palms. 

Azra picked at a slice of avo peeking out from a thicket of various leaves. There was 

no work to rush back to. Besides, The Vortex had been staring her down all morning. She 

indulged her colleague. As expected, Mei’s complaints centred on her boyfriend, Mark. Mei 

and Mark. Mei-Mark-Mei-Mark-Mei-Mark. 

Her knowledge of Mark was limited to the few times she socialised with Mei outside 

of work. The first time they met, at a restaurant in Illovo, Mark was horrified when he 

discovered that she ordered water and would not have any of the wine he ordered for the 

table. 

“You can’t be serious … water on a Friday night!” He had said. She especially 

despised people who drank but felt so ashamed of it they alienated those who didn’t. As if 

the only means they had to legitimise their addiction, and in the process feel like it wasn’t 

such a big deal, was to surround themselves with other addicts. From then on, Mark 

became an object of her disdain. She relished Mei’s seemingly endless complaints about 

him (his flippancy, his narcissism, his disregard for her thoughts and opinions, his friends, his 

family). There was nothing better than a character so loathsome as Mark being betrayed by 

his own girlfriend. The one person he, Mark, the arsehole, believed was his loyal and 

obedient pet for whom he took the liberty to order wine. 

“…the place we stayed in was nice enough, a house on a secluded little beach on the 

North Coast. Very rocky, though. But then, like two days after we got there, his parents 

arrived with the news that they bought the house in November. That’s why Mark insisted 

we go to the beach, to check out his family’s new holiday house. Mark knew all along. 

Apparently, he did the transfer.” Mei remained impassive throughout her explanation of 

this ordeal.  

She feigned concern and looked ahead – a plate of salad and a bottle of Evian waited 

expectantly. She unravelled cutlery from the napkin tucked under the plate. She moved the 

point of the knife towards one of the three pieces of halloumi resting on a bed of tangled 

wild rocket. Dark-brown sear marks ran diagonally across the pieces of cheese. She targeted 

the middle piece, using its topmost diagonal sear line as a guide for her incision. She severed 

the tip and speared it with her fork, its tines easing into the rubbery flesh. That she was 



 15 

salivating was repulsive, but she was already too far into the action to abort it. She opened 

her maw and fed the cheese into it. She chewed a few times and swallowed.  

Mei had hardly touched her salad either. She had been staring at something directly 

ahead of her for some time. When she finally snapped out of it, she grabbed her takeaway 

coffee and took a sip. “I wonder if Mark ever sees how ridiculous his family is.” 

She chortled and patted her lips with the napkin. Mei’s complaints confirmed her 

suspicions about relationships with men. Beyond that, though, Mei’s whining bought her 

precious time. She smoothed out the serviette on the table and sat back into the 

uncomfortable cafeteria chair.  

“And if that wasn’t enough, on Christmas Eve, his friend Alistair arrived with his 

annoying new girlfriend, Claire…” 

Mei’s voice became softer and softer until it diminished to a distant muffle. She 

watched the movement of Mei’s lips going out of sync with the muffle. A fuzziness entered 

her brain, like she’d inhaled smoke laced with white noise. Gradually, in the tiniest of 

increments, she dissolved into the static. 

 “…shit, look at the time, I actually do have something to do before I leave. Azra…?” 

 “Oh. Yeah. OK.” 

The cafeteria was busier than when they had arrived. It seemed that everyone who 

was at work that day was in it. The tinselled Christmas decorations, green, red and yellow, 

were still draped across the walls and over the large square hanging lights at the salad bar. A 

banner that read “Merry Christmas” followed by a trail of reindeer and a sledge hung on the 

wall above the cashier’s desk. The atmosphere was cheerful. Most of the people there were, 

like her, taking an extended lunch. But unlike her, they seemed eager for the year ahead 

and were probably sharing their New Year’s resolutions. She had none. 

They had seated themselves at a small square metal table on the edge of the large, 

brightly lit indoor section. On hot days like this, the dining area, which was on the top floor 

of the building, opened on to a lawn terrace overlooking the bottom three levels. It was a 

pleasant enough view. Outside on the terrace, people sat at the concrete sets in groups of 

four or five. Blue and white umbrellas bearing the firm’s logo ballooned out of the tables on 

thin poles. The grass emitted a bold odour, something like a petrichor, as if it too were 

eager for the new year. 



 16 

“Last night I read an article about a family that finished the last can of beans their 

grandfather stockpiled before the 1994 elections.” She looked up. Mei had already left. The 

stack of folded glass doors about a metre away made her think of animal carcasses hanging 

on meat hooks. 

  



 17 

7 

She pushed the button and the down arrow lit up. The black display strip showed “G” in the 

same green. A few seconds passed. How much longer? Then, footsteps. “Great.” She 

scoffed. Even though it was clear that the down button had already been pressed, a slender 

finger poked through from behind her to press it again. She cocked her head to register who 

this insistent person was. It was the hot clerk. 

She wore a pair of heeled leather sandals, loose-fitting ankle-length slacks and a lace 

swing top, all black. Her toenails, painted black, revealed themselves neatly at the tops of 

her sandals. Her hair, fine and deeply black, was cropped just below her ears in a bob. All 

the black was offset by her pale complexion, but not in a way that seemed cold, rigid or 

jarring. Her clothing, especially the slacks, with their large pockets and flared legs, traced a 

playful, girlish silhouette. 

She and the clerk exchanged nervous smiles.  

“Floor 2, going down,” said the lift. 

She stepped into it and the clerk followed. She pressed “G”. The wait was longer 

than the ride, but it was worth it. She gestured for the clerk to get out before her. The short 

heels of the clerk’s sandals hit the marble of the building’s vast entrance hall in echoing clip-

clops. She slowed down to a creep behind the clerk, pretending to be busy on her phone. 

She was mesmerized by the clerk’s swaying hips. 

When she reached the security guard at the main turnstile, the clerk smiled and 

tapped her access card. An effortless exit. She caught the smile side-on from a distance. It 

injected in her a substance that slowed down time. She wondered if the clerk noticed her 

stalking, and if she did, whether it gave her a thrill. 

Her dose of slow motion wore off when she reached the security guard and a solid 

beam of sunlight, reflecting at sharp angles from the glass of the main entranceway to her 

far right, caught her square in the eyes. Things sped up and the light became unbearable. 

She laid her satchel and handbag on the guard’s small desk and rooted around the front 

compartment for her access card and sunglasses. No effortless exit for her. 

“How’re you, ma’am?” the guard asked. 

“Hi. Good. Busy.” 

“Ja. Busy, busy.” 



 18 

She tapped her card, the turnstile’s short metallic arm lifted and she descended the 

stairs to the parking. She heard the last few clip-clops of the clerk’s heels, then silence, then 

the dull report of car doors unlocking. She traced the sound and caught a flash of amber 

reflected on the concrete floor about 50m away. The clerk got into her small white student 

car. 

  



 19 

8 

“Hullo, darling.” He bugged his eyes and peekabooed from below her window.  

She drew it down a crack. “Bonga! You’re sweating.” 

He laughed and said something in Afrikaans. She reached for her purse, fished out a 

50 and fed it through the gap. He snatched the note as soon as it became available. 

“Dankie, my eerbarige dame,” he said with a deliberate English accent, curtseying. 

He crumpled the note and stuffed it in his pants.  

She enjoyed his performances because they were funny and brief. He moved on to 

his next drive-through audience and she looked ahead. The robots at this intersection took 

notoriously long to change. Some work people even started an email petition to get the firm 

to contact the relevant authority to have them adjust it. “We don’t want to be hijacked 

while waiting at this dangerous intersection,” was how it went. Did their concern have 

anything to do with Bonga? 

Even if she took it slow along the M9 and on Oxford, she’d still be home before 4pm. 

How drawn out these summer holiday-work transition days could be. This kind of heat 

turned boredom into even more of an effort. 

The public park across the road from her building was packed. Some people sat on 

benches and others languished on the grassy slope just off the pathway running through the 

centre. A group of children played on the roundabout, three of them sitting on it and two 

running beside it, spinning it vigorously. A couple, teenagers, occupied the swings, smoking 

and talking animatedly. 

She turned into the driveway and pressed the button on her garage remote. In her 

rear-view, she saw a young man on a bench at the edge of the park. Was he looking directly 

at her? Maybe. 

  



 20 

9 

“How refreshing to see such a beautiful young woman on such a beautiful day,” a man with 

thinning grey hair called out from one of the deckchairs. He turned around and looked 

towards her with a furrowed brow. He wore nothing but a faded Union Jack Speedo. The 

sun pounded his flesh.  

She looked up from her phone, adjusted her sunglasses and half-smiled, not 

expecting the old man to pursue anything further. 

“I hardly see you around the building. Do you live here?” 

 “Damnit!” she said to herself, regretting not having taken her earphones 

downstairs. 

The man looked at her expectantly. 

She cleared her throat and projected. “Yeah, I live here.” 

“Oh, which floor?” 

“Fourth.” She lied. 

“Ah, right. We’re on ground floor. I’m Neville. Neville Sonley.” 

“Azra.” 

“Lovely to meet you, Azra. Did I say it right?” 

She looked past Neville at the pool. A filter in one of the corners sucked in water 

greedily with a slurping sound. It turned her on. 

“Do you ever swim?” 

“Not really.”  

“You know, my husband sits on that bench most mornings with his coffee and 

newspaper.” 

She shrugged. Her gaze lingered on his crotch. The tip of his penis was at the exact 

point where the saints’ crosses intersect. “England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Inside, outside, 

inside, on.” The skipping game she and Nadia played as little girls was still so fresh in her 

memory. Why didn’t the Welsh dragon feature on the Union Jack? Had Neville ever referred 

to his penis as “The Dragon”?  



 21 

10 

When she got back up, her mother was still sitting at the table reading her thin prayer book. 

“Hey.” 

“Azra. How was the pool?” 

“I’m going to pray and hang out in my room until supper.” 

Her mother nodded and continued reading. 

On summer afternoons, she had to open her windows and balcony door for the 

room to be bearable. She removed her shoes and gathered them in line with the horizontal 

edge of a parquet tile at a right angle below the base of the bed. She put her feet down on 

the cool floor. 

In the bathroom, water hurried down the drain while she looked at herself in the 

mirror. Lifting her eyebrows and popping her eyes out like Bonga did earlier, she examined 

the depth of the lines that appeared on her forehead. She frowned to inspect the lines that 

formed between her eyebrows. She scrunched her eyes. Crow’s feet? Can’t be. Imitating 

Bonga’s crazy smile, she checked the laugh lines. She snarled and folds formed around her 

nostrils. 

She rinsed her hands and dabbed them on and around her head. Three times face-

splash. Pat down forearms, right then left. Rinse hands again, bend over and pat tops of 

feet, right then left. Rinse hands. “I bear witness that none has the right to be worshipped 

but God alone, who has no partner.” 

Pinching it at the corners, she flared out her scarf and gave it a shake. She draped 

the black silk over her head and bunched the loose ends against the soft of her throat. With 

her free hand, she reached for the rolled-up prayer mat and hiked it under her arm. At the 

dresser she plucked out a broach from the hamsa-shaped tray and placed the pin between 

her teeth.  

Standing on the mat looking ahead out the window, she saw the tops of mighty oaks 

hanging motionless in the thick summer air. She looked to the mat and raised her hands to 

either side of her face. Behind her, everything. 



 22 

11 

Vilakazi drops me off by the Riviera robots. His car is smoking a lot and he says he must take 

it to a mechanic in Yeoville. I tell him to ditch it and get a new car because the Metro will 

soon stop him in that fucken thing. He says it has sentimental value because the first time 

he fucked Gugu it was in that backseat. I ask him what’s sentimental and if it meant that 

Gugu is special and he says yes. I laugh. He gets upset and lifts one side of his top lip and 

flashes me his stupid gold tooth. 

He says the car will be fixed before the weekend, then we can go out to party. “Get 

your head out the ghetto, boy,” he tells me in an American accent as I step out. I hear his 

busted exhaust all the way down Riviera. Poes. 

The lines of cat I shot with him earlier are wearing off and my head is pounding. I 

cross the street and walk past the white flats on the corner. I head up to the park I found 

last week after I helped Nyoni fetch some goods from his girlfriend. Not sure what their plan 

was, but it seemed stupid. At least I got 200 just for taking the madam’s jewellery from her 

and giving it to Nyoni.  

I can feel the sweat between my toes. I get to the park and sit on a bench in the 

corner under a tree. There’s an old hobo sitting not too far away drinking a beer wrapped in 

a black plastic. I tell him to give me some and he tells me to fuck off. I laugh loudly and he 

mumbles something. 

I don’t feel like sitting but it’s too hot to walk. I see this pretty bitch pulling up to the 

block of flats across the road in a silver Mercedes. She scopes me in her rear view and drives 

quickly into the garage. Maybe two minutes later, I see the skinny bitch walking across on 

the third floor. She opens the fourth door and goes into the flat. 

KB’s uncle told us he and his boys used to work in this area in the 90s, before the 

buildings were so secure. “That’s how I got this tavern,” he told us proudly. I didn’t care 

much for the uncle. He was bragging, making up a lot of it, making it look like he was more 

important than he was back then. But what else can you do with the past if you can’t lie 

about what happened? 

I walk to a tree and unzip. An old bitch driving past hoots and shakes her fist at me. 

Would she let me use the bathroom in her flat? Back at the bench, the hobo is still 

mumbling. “Hey, who are you talking to, you old fool?” I say. He waves like there’s a fly 

buzzing around his head and taps the top of the brown bottle against his forehead. 



 23 

Maybe later, on my way home, I’ll stop at the shebeen for a beer. Vilakazi finally 

gave me some of the money he owes me. This afternoon in the car he played some rapper 

called Curren$y. It sounded shit. I’m restless and thirsty. I get up and walk back the way I 

came to the park. I’m going to have to take a taxi up Oxford and get off in Sandton. 

I dial Squash’s number from memory but that stupid bitch tells me I have no airtime. 

When I get to Sandton, I’ll walk to the BP where Squash works. Maybe he’s about to knock 

off. But lately he doesn’t want to drink. The last time I went to his house I asked his wife 

where he was and she said Rashid was not there. I asked her who the fuck is Rashid and she 

looked at me funny and told me to call Squash to find out. That stuck-up bitch, always 

judging. 

I catch a taxi on Oxford. There’s a young bitch next to me chewing gum so fucken 

loudly I want to bash her head against the window.  



 24 

12 

Vilakazi picks me up on the main road near Sindi’s place. She wanted to come with but I said 

no she must fucken stay in Alex. When I get in the car, Vilakazi passes me a zol that’s already 

lit and I can smell it’s not just dagga in the zol. I take a puff and the thick smoke burns my 

throat and warms me up. He makes a U-turn and drives back up the road. Everything is 

moving slow. 

The BM is working fine now but I don’t know for sure. I can’t read the orange letters 

on the radio display. Even though the bass is deep I can only hear like it’s coming from far 

away. From the side, Vilakazi looks like a demon from hell. 

The Gautrain station was just veld when I was a boy. The porn pictures I found there, 

torn out of a magazine, was the first time I saw naked white bitches. Looking at the pictures 

later that night, I skommelled for the first time and came into a stream of shit water running 

down the street. 

Vilakazi makes a wide right on Marlboro and glides on to highway. He passes the zol 

back. I sink into the seat and feel the BM’s engine in my bones, like I’m part of its chassis. 

Streetlights and billboards catch my eyes so I let them close. We’re still on the highway 

when I open them again, but I can’t make out anything. The music is loud and all the 

windows are open, so there’s poes wind rushing into the car. I look over the dash. The car is 

eating the white lines on the road. 

“Welcome back,” Vilakazi shouts, steering with one hand and holding down his 

spotty with the other. 

 “Where are we going?”  

He doesn’t hear. It’s dark and I can’t make out the street but I’m thinking maybe 

we’re heading on that long road through the east that eventually meets Louis Botha. After a 

while, the wind becomes less powerful and every now and then Vilakazi slows down, and 

sometimes stops. I can at least read the orange letters on the display now: “Untitled”. 

We pull up to a building called Morris Heights. “Ja, we’re outside,” Vilakazi says into his 

phone. He drives through the garage and parks next to an old Toyota on bricks. There’s no 

light in the garage except a flickering fluorescent. 

“The lift isn’t working, we must take the stairs.” He tells me. 

On the top floor, we stop at the second door down the passage. A tall guy opens, 

Vilakazi shakes his hand and they shoulder-bump. He introduces the tall guy as Lucky.  



 25 

“Jerry M.” I say. 

Lucky looks at me then at Vilakazi. “What does M stand for?” He asks.  

“I don’t think he even knows.” 

They laugh. 

There’s two guys sitting on a couch in the lounge. Next to them, there’s a small table 

with a heap of white powder. On the shelf above the fucked fireplace, there’s a bottle of 

Bell’s.  

“Take a seat.” Lucky points to a plastic chair in the passage. 

I bring the chair closer to the couch and eye the small table. One of the guys looks at 

me and nods. The cat goes straight to my head. I pick up a glass on the floor and take a sip – 

Bell’s. 

Vilakazi’s looking at CDs in a big cabinet close to the balcony door. Lucky joins him 

and they talk softly. I sit back in the plastic chair but stand up again quickly because there’s 

a leaking toilet down the passage. The drip echoes down and bounces around my head. I 

need a cigarette.  

I see Vilakazi across the way, reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a pack of 

Stuyvies. Lucky is tall and dark. Vilakazi nods and bumps to the music as he takes 

instructions from that Congo fuck. Finally, he lights his cigarette. The lighter’s spark cracks 

against the darkness of the night over the balcony. Vilakazi takes a puff. Now he starts 

talking. He is short and very thin. He uses the cigarette to point, like it’s part of his hand. 

  



 26 

13 

We pull up by the McDonald’s in Braamfontein. When I get out of the car, I almost knock 

into some bitch walking down the pavement.  

“Watch it!” she says. 

“Voetsek!”  

“Learn some manners,” she clicks her tongue.  

“Voetsek!” 

One of her friends tells me to fuck off. 

 We walk on for a while then take a right towards Smit. There’s a queue outside one 

of the doors but we go straight to the front. The bouncer lets me and Vilakazi in.  

“Hey, we’re waiting in line…” some bitch behind us complains. 

 Inside, there are many more like Vilakazi. Some of them wear big stupid glasses.  

  The music playing isn’t bad – House. I go over to the bar and must wait behind a row 

of people before I can get to the front. On the wall behind the bar counter, there’s a big old 

painting of a man with a big moustache. Maybe he used to own this place. Maybe, like KB’s 

uncle, he was also a skebenga. 

There’s a tall guy with big hair standing next to me. He looks high and stupid, staring 

ahead at nothing. I see the outline of his phone in his jeans pocket. The top of the phone is 

sticking out. I take half a step closer to him and wait. A few seconds later, a drunk bitch 

stumbles into the gap and brushes up against me. I bump into him and pinch the phone out 

of his jeans. That tall poes doesn’t notice a thing.  

“You caught on quick.” Vilakazi laughs and sips his beer.  

“Don’t worry, I’m watching out for you.” He disappears into the crowd with some 

dreadlocked bitch. 

 I push through and find a small space where I can at least light a fucken cigarette. 

Two guys next to me are kissing and I want to throw up. I knock one of the moffies’ shoulder 

hard on my way to the dancefloor. 

The bodies move to the music in the dark. I remember the first time I went to church 

with my mother and her mother. I suppose the old bitch was trying to get my mother 

straight or something. I light another cigarette.  



 27 

It wasn’t much of a church, just a garage of one of the bigger houses in the area. It 

was packed, like this place, and the people also moved to the music. But the music here is 

better. I hated the church and never went back. 

Vilakazi has connections to sell the goods fast. What was he discussing with Lucky 

earlier? I move along to a small courtyard close to the bathrooms. There’s a group of drunk 

bitches standing against a wall, smoking and talking shit. I catch eyes with one of them and 

walk over. She looks at me and smiles. I look up and blow the smoke into the dark. When I 

look back, she’s talking with her friends again and I see the handles of her handbag looped 

around her forearm. The zip is wide open and in the handbag I see a wallet and a phone. I 

move in a bit closer but she doesn’t notice and carries on talking with her friends. I snatch 

the phone from her handbag. 

Vilakazi can’t do this kind of shit himself, he’s too pussy. All he wants is to party and 

have a good time with these Wits bitches. I walk through the courtyard into another bar 

area and lean against a wall. Look at them, talking and laughing, sipping their drinks. 

“It’s a good night, huh?”  

Vilakazi hands me a beer. I raise my bottle 

“How much do you come here?”  

No answer. He’s smiling stupidly and waving to a group of people who’ve just come 

in. “Hey that’s…” he says, but I stop listening. 

Now I’m staring out of a window, looking past the pavement, the cars on the street 

and the buildings. I see the darkness; I hear it, too.  

“Come here!” The cruel master calls. 

“Jerry…’ Vilakazi nudges me with his bony elbow. “… let’s bounce, man.” 

I push myself up from against the wall and follow him towards the entrance. He nods 

to the bouncer. The bouncer looks at me and I nod. There’s a drunk bitch falling over on the 

pavement. The friend who is trying to hold her up is struggling to keep her footing. 

Eventually they fall on top of each other and roll into the gutter. Their other friend points 

and laughs.  



 28 

14  

“Did you get my email?” 

David leaned against her doorframe and scrolled. It was if he’d been there all along. 

“Not yet, I just sat down.” She pointed to a clear-glass mug from which steam rose. A 

slice of lemon bobbed around inside. 

 “Their ARC sent some preliminary assessments. Maybe it’ll keep you busy until the 

rest of the team gets back.” 

 “How many juniors are we getting?” 

David looked at her for the first time. “It depends, we haven’t yet grasped the full 

scope of the audit. I’m sure it will become clearer in the next week.” 

 “OK, then. I’ll have a look at the prelim.” 

 “I’ll get in touch with their previous independents. It’s going to be rough one.” He 

tapped his phone on her door and walked off. 

Was he reminding her to prepare herself? Surely, he knew her better than that? She 

gripped the mug and brought it to her lips. It was still too hot to drink so she inhaled some 

steam. 

 She imagined receiving stacks of files and boxes, filled with reams of paper following 

no order, chronological or otherwise. Reams and reams, kept together in lever arch files, for 

the sake of it, with the lazy abandon that someone, somewhere, would one day make sense 

of it all. Then she imagined the client’s messy server, littered with zip files. Each zip file 

containing folders upon folders. Subfolders within those folders. Sorting through them 

would only be the beginning. What kind of shit would she have to deal with afterwards? 

She’d have to do a deep dive.  

“Deep dive,” she said. How and when exactly did the term slip into her head and 

stick enough to be used without irony? Did she pick it up from one of those know-it-all 

periodicals, or had it just become part of the office in-speak? All those tiresome meetings, 

hotbeds of cheap jargon. 

 When did deep diving begin happening on shore? “Deep dive.” Was there more to 

it? There had to be for it to be done in an office building in Johannesburg, way above sea 

level. She indulged the prospect of doing a deep dive between the hot clerk’s thighs. She 

looked up the clerk in Outlook. Helena Loukakis. Cell number included. Amazing how the 

firm made them so available. 



 29 

15 

“I’ll have to check.”  

 Her brother had a knack for calling at the wrong time.  

 “I’m pretty sure mum took them with her when she moved in with you.” 

“Why don’t you call and ask her yourself?” 

“I haven’t yet got a SIM, so I’m only on Wi-Fi. Can her phone even get WhatsApp?” 

“I don’t think so. I mean, no, it can’t. Wait, Aki, where…” 

“Look, Az, I can’t talk for too long, I’ve a train to catch soon. I’ll send you a postcard, 

OK?” 

“OK. Bye.” 

Akeel’s so-called postcards usually came as iMessages that contained snapshots of 

landmarks in whatever city he found himself. She liked these postcards for their lack of 

attention to detail – a carefreeness she envied in him – and their literal conformity to the 

postcard medium. “Wish you were here!” read every caption, no context given. The last 

recognisable postcard had him standing close to the Brandenburg Gate making a peace 

sign. Her little brother, playing reporter-reporter. Where would his next postcard come 

from? Minsk? She’d never been there and wouldn’t recognise its landmarks. Why did he 

need to know about those old photos? 

It was almost 7pm. The prelim shouldn’t have taken her that long to look through, 

but there was no urgency. The Vortex caught her eye just before she shut the door.  

The fluorescent lighting in the stairwell was anaemic and unpleasant. She could only 

look down. Was the hot clerk around this evening? Doubtful. 

“Good evening, ma’am.”  

It wasn’t Clement, the usual night guard. Puzzled, she searched the new guard’s face. 

He was brimming for some reason. “BRIGHT” was engraved on his shiny new nametag. 

“Hi,” she said. 

The light reflected sharply off his shaved head. Was that how he got his name? 

*** 

The Mercedes handled the M9 satisfactorily. She hit the accelerator and took the bend 

merging on to Oxford Road at about 110. Waterslide-like exhilaration. Warmbaths with 

family, Akeel too small to go on the big slide with her and Nadia. 



 30 

Red meant stop. A high perimeter wall stood her left. “Guess who don give a shit 

bout your afro” was spray-painted at the bottom corner of the wall. An image of a bust 

(Kafka?) was stencilled above the words. Was this a statement? 

  



 31 

16 

More than a year had passed since she had seen Akeel. They had met in Istanbul, she was 

on holiday and he was writing on northern Cyprus. He had already made friends – two 

slender men with scraggly beards and a brash woman with delicate features. They wore 

only black; they were serious. They had invited her to dinner at a terrace restaurant in 

Galata one night. The woman, who smoked and whose English was good, told her that the 

restaurant belonged to relatives of hers and that it was the only “authentic” place left in the 

area. “Not commercial chic shit.” 

Images from the night began to stream back as she lay roasting on her bed – the 

woman’s cherry lips around her cigarette; countless rooftops, minarets and spires; Bosporus 

Bay. Her brother’s words later that night in a steep and quiet walkway: “I feel like there’s a 

lot to say but no one is saying anything.” A trolley car rumbled by when they’d reached the 

bottom. The chintzy hotel lobby. The glint in Burak the concierge’s eye every time she 

walked across it to get to the lift. 

 

  



 32 

17 

“On your next inhale, raise your right leg and point your toes up to the ceiling.”  

Transitions from downward-facing dog to lunges had become routine for Haroun. 

But the thing that supposedly brought him back to the studio most days was to see beyond 

the routine. He inhaled, closed his eyes and pictured his leg lifting, slowly at first but picking 

up speed in increments until it was raised at what he imagined to be an acute angle from 

the ground. His thigh and calf muscles were fully stretched, and the tops of his feet curved 

outwards and faced the floor. 

To his left was another regular, a toned strawberry blonde with an angular face. 

Carla was her name, he gathered.  

“Nice, Carla …” the evening’s instructor, Meg, said as Carla nailed yet another 

transition from lizard to side plank to a one-legged low plank, then flowing seamlessly 

through upward facing and back to down dog. 

“Fluid movements. Breathe.” Meg patrolled the studio on soft feet, adjusting people 

as she went along. She stopped by him during triangle and put one hand on his hip and 

nudged his shoulder to correct a hunch with the other. Meg breathed softly, but not 

without intent, into the back of his neck. 

By the time Meg brought the class to final seated position, he was soaked in sweat. 

Hot Flow in summer, what did he expect? She invited them to place their hands either 

palms down on their knees, “for grounding”, or palms facing up, “to receive from the 

universe”.  

“May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all beings be free 

from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all beings rejoice in the wellbeing of others. 

May all beings live in peace, free from greed and hatred.” She had previously told him this 

was an articulation of the Four Immeasurables. 

He was still catching his breath while gathering his things on the bench outside the 

studio. She was at the reception area, still barefoot, saying well done and goodbye to 

students as they left. Her striped tights accentuated her long, slender legs. Her cropped 

tank-top revealed her toned abs, and even from distance he spotted the small, bright blue 

Cookie Monster tattoo just above her hipbone. 

“Great class today, thanks Meg.” 

“Haroun! Thanks, it’s good to see you again. How were the holidays?” 



 33 

He wiped some more sweat off his forehead. “Good. I went to Nature’s Valley.” 

“Wow! Nature’s Valley is amazing!” Meg nodded slowly, scanning him with keen 

interest. 

“‘Thanks for your New Year’s message,” he shuffled and fidgeted. “What did you get 

up to?” 

“Just chilled with a few friends.” She waved and smiled at someone on their way out, 

then looked around to see if there were any others left. All clear. “You know, I’ve been 

thinking a lot about you since the last time we hung out.” She bit her bottom lip. 

He picked at the strap of his black duffel. His gaze moved from her eyes to her lips 

and down her slender, milky neck to the tops of her breasts. 

“Are you busy this evening?” He looked back up. 

“Not really, just planning on making dinner. Maybe I’ll read.” 

“I must eat too,” he cleared his throat “and I don’t feel like doing it by myself. Would 

you like to have dinner with me?” 

“OK!” She replied instantly. “But I need to go home first. Where shall we meet?” 

He gave the adrenaline a few seconds to settle. “Oh, I know! There’s a new dim sum 

place a block away from me. Apparently it’s good. How do you feel about dim sum?” 

“I feel very open to dim sum.” 

 She leaned slightly forward on the ball of one bare foot, twirling a finger around a 

lock of hair running down the side of her face. 

“Great stuff!” He was in Grade 7 again, in the square, asking Cara Wilkinson to be his 

girlfriend. The thrill never died down, even in early middle age. 

“I can’t remember the name of the restaurant.” He scratched his head. “I’ll have to 

check and text it to you. Are you going to drive?” 

“I think I’ll order a ride. Text me the address soon, OK?” 

  



 34 

18 

He took a left on to Oxford and headed towards Bompas. All the windows were fully open. 

Beyond the fumes and dust, he picked up an essential odour, Joburg’s summer scent, as it 

were, of thunderstorms long passed and of those fast approaching. With their spring show 

now over, the jacarandas had settled in for a season of lush languor. 

He thought about the Four Immeasurables. Although he could relate to them only 

very vaguely, like Meg, they could be fun to fool around with – as a thought experiment. It 

was difficult to choose which of them resonated the most. Could “the universe” be reduced 

to just four statements? Given the fortunate turn of events with Meg, it had to be the one 

about wellbeing. “May all beings rejoice inside the wellbeing of others,” he said out loud. 

*** 

“I don’t want to be a full-time yoga teacher forever, I’m only 23. Besides, like, forever, what 

does that even mean?” Meg wielded a chopstick in one hand as she spoke. 

“That’s a great age to be, I think.” A bit of Stella spilled from the bottle as he landed 

it on to the table. She had locks of thick hair tucked behind her elf-like ears, which in the 

warm lighting of the restaurant accentuated her cheekbones. Her blue eyes seemed bigger 

and brighter this evening. 

“What do you mean, ‘you think’?” 

“I’m turning 40 soon.” 

“You’re old.” She giggled deliberately and took a sip of wine, a blush the restaurant 

sold by the glass. 

He was already nearing the end of his second beer. Getting the waiter’s attention 

had now become urgent. 

“Do you ever do private classes?” he asked, peering over her shoulder to make eye 

contact with the waiter serving the table next door. 

“Now and then. They’re mainly rich women who can’t bear the thought of sharing 

space. They also have no idea who Adriene is.” She LOLed. 

He had no idea who Adriene was. 

“What’s the weirdest private class you’ve had to do?” 

“Let’s see...” she ran a fingertip along the rim of her glass. 

“You must promise not to tell a soul, OK?” 

“I promise.” He raised his beer. 



 35 

“OK, so, this lady who’s a regular at one of the studios I teach booked me for a 

private class. I didn’t think much of it because, I supposed, maybe she was a bit tired of the 

studio and needed something different, or maybe she wanted to work on a particular part 

of her practice. You get students like that. Diligent, you know.” 

He nodded and leaned in closer. 

“So I arrive at her house, which is just down the road from here, quite plush. It 

reminded me a bit of Cameron Diaz’s house in The Holiday. Have you seen that movie?” 

The point at which alcohol began taking effect on people was always one to cherish, 

he thought to himself. Things became warmer, fuzzier, infinitely easier to deal with.  

“I have not seen that particular Cameron Diaz film.”  

She continued nonetheless, “So she sets the whole thing up on email, which I 

thought was strange to begin with, but I just went with it.” 

His thoughts lingered on Cameron Diaz as Meg spoke. That opening scene of A Life 

Less Ordinary. Cameron emerges from a swimming pool in a striking black one-piece. Her 

cropped honey-blonde hair is slicked back. She flings an apple to the butler and removes an 

immaculate Colt Python from its case. She loads a single silver bullet into the cylinder.  

“Haroun, hey,” she snapped her fingers. 

“Yes, sorry, please go on.” 

“Anyway, so she lets me in wearing nothing but a linen robe. And I think, OK, she’ll 

get changed while I wait. But then, as I enter the house, I meet her husband, who’s also 

wearing just a linen robe. They had matching robes, can you imagine?” She took a sip of 

wine. “So, suddenly the lady becomes super flirty and the husband tells me to come in. The 

house is all glass and screed and open plan and, you know, like, floaty.” 

“Floaty?” 

“You know, a floating staircase leading to a mezzanine that looks like it’s floating. A 

large island between the kitchen and the rest of the living space, with the lights not really 

hanging from the exposed beams but floating around. I don’t know, floaty.” 

He pictured a house designed by StudioMAS. “So, what happened in this floaty 

house after they invited you in?” 

“Here’s the weird part. They seat me on this long sofa and sit next to me on either 

side. The woman shimmies a bit and lets the robe fall off her shoulders. While she does this, 

the husband has a grin on his face. Although his hands were folded in his lap, I could sense 



 36 

he wanted to move them on to my thighs. But, you know, they’re a ‘sophisticated’ couple, 

they waited for me to take the hint.” She rolled her eyes. 

“Not very subtle. So, what did you do?” He leaned in even closer, almost knocking 

over his beer.  

“To be honest, there was a moment I thought to just go with it. They were an 

attractive couple; it could have been fun. But that part of my brain, the part I guess where 

professional Meg lives, said no. It just wouldn’t have been right.”  

“Why?” 

“Because it would be awkward if I saw the woman again in class. She’s a client and 

I’m a professional, at least that’s what I told myself.” 

“Yet, here we are,” he laughed for the first time. She seemed either unperturbed or 

unaware, but he didn’t really care. “What did you do once you said no?” 

“I stood up and said I was there to teach a yoga class. They understood, of course. 

The woman very coolly, as if nothing had happened, got up, adjusted her robe and walked 

over to the kitchen to get her purse. She even counted out the cash and handed it to me!” 

She smacked the table.  

“They’d clearly done this kind of thing before.” He fell back into his chair and 

signalled with a drunken exaggeration that his mind had just been blown. Cradling his beer, 

he rubbed his thumb on the rim of the bottle’s mouth. He felt the excitement of a boy 

getting his first bike. 

  



 37 

19 

Sunlight striped the side of her face and ran down her bare back. He wondered what she 

had planned for the day, if she had any classes. She wasn’t scheduled to take the class he’d 

booked for later that evening. He left her to sleep. The coffee grinder would jolt her out of 

his bed soon enough. 

*** 

“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”  

She emerged from the bedroom wearing what she’d worn to dinner, trying to 

conceal an immense yawn. He half expected her in the shirt he’d worn to dinner. He was 

glad she didn’t take that liberty. 

“I haven’t been up for that long.” He waved her over to the kitchen island. “Coffee?” 

He stopped scrolling on his iPad and looked up. She was cute in the morning. Her 

eyes, usually wide like metallic blue flying saucers, drooped at the corners. 

“You have a nice flat. You know, good energy.” She continued her scan. “A guitar!” 

She pointed to the Fender in its stand beside a sturdy bucket chair. It was still plugged in, 

the thick black cable running to a cream amp, which stood a few feet from the chair.  

He looked up from the iPad again. “Yeah, an old habit that hasn’t yet died out. These 

days I’ve got to keep the volume low.” He mouthed “low” in an exaggerated whisper. He felt 

like a cool dad, reading the Business Day of all things. It was an odd but no less pleasant 

feeling.  

“What are your plans for the day, Meg Ryan?” He was unsure she’d know the 

actress, let alone her stellar romcom work in the 90s. 

“Well…”  

His mind drifted further into the possibility of fatherhood, something that had been 

occupying his thoughts with increasing regularity. How would this morning be different with 

a young child to see to? Surely, he wouldn’t be sitting in the kitchen so calmly, making 

references to irrelevant actors. He’d be in the throes of getting the child (a boy?) ready for 

school. He’d be reaching for his cup of coffee standing at the counter’s edge, sipping hastily 

at any fraction of a free moment. He’d be looking for his car keys, then his flat keys, then 

the kid’s little school bag. Just when they’d be finally ready to leave, the kid would stop in 

the entranceway and begin to cry. His favourite toy was missing; it wasn’t in his backpack. 

“… and then, I’m not sure, I might have dinner with my friend Carol.” 



 38 

The name Carol caught his ear. At least Meg wasn’t named Carol. “That sounds like 

quite a day. I hope you manage to get the most out of it.” 

“You didn’t hear a word I just said!” she teased. 

“Of course I heard. You said you were having dinner with your friend Carol.” 

“And the middle part? I saw you staring blankly. What were you thinking about?” 

“Not much.” 

“[…]” 

“If you don’t mind waiting for me to get ready, I can lift you before I head to the 

train station.” 

“Thanks, but I’ll just order a ride.”  

She shook her phone a few times with an expression that said “technology, duh”. 

Now more than ever, the prospect of untethering himself from the tedium of 

adulthood sans children excited him. 

  



 39 

20 

The Gautrain was a calm commuter line, even during peak hours. Nonetheless, his eye for 

vacant seats on trains was still New York sharp. He found one starboard and pounced on it. 

His headphones were already playing by the time the train left Rosebank. 

“You need a good pair of NC headphones in this city. All this fuckin’ noise, huh?” He 

recalled the Hassidic salesman at B&H in Midtown saying to him when he got the pair of 

Bose. He had been in New York for just a few months and the city’s charm had worn off via, 

among many other sound-related things: the intrusive echoes of buskers’ instruments in the 

subway, the constant jabber of passers-by into their phones on sidewalks, the drone of cars 

and buses, automated voice prompts. “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” The NC 

worked well to block out the flat Joburg-accented voice prompts on the Gautrain, too. Was 

there any union or guild that brought voice actors together, he wondered. Their recorded 

presence, however annoying, was crucial in the urban voice automation supply chain: lift 

companies, grocery stores, public transport authorities. “Next customer, please. Teller 5.” 

But no matter how good the NC, sound was always there. Complete silence, he had 

come to understand, simply did not exist for the living. Beyond any deafening device, or 

deafness itself, sound was a feeling. All other senses were immersed in it, but not the other 

way around. 

The train was already leaving Centurion, that little part of the world with a distinct 

khaki tinge. Blink once and you miss it; blink twice and you forget the place even exists. He 

checked the time on his phone. The title song off a four-track EP by Wildfire rang 

expansively through the headphones. The synthesised vocals, drums, clicks and reverbs 

bounced crisply around his head and created an uplifting soundscape. He wondered if the 

Canadian bedroom DJ/producer, no older than Meg, would release anything more 

substantial than this EP, so casually titled Daydream. Blink once and you miss an entire 

microgenre of Balearic beat; blink twice and you’re 40. 

He stared out the window again, trying to decide whether he’d get off at Pretoria or 

Hatfield. The latter seemed the better option, if only to ogle the university girls getting off 

and on there. 

 

  



 40 

21 

He was lucky to be based at 40 Church, the better of the two Treasury buildings. From his 

desk on the third floor, he had a partial view of the square and the Paul Kruger statue. More 

of a monument, really, with a proud Kruger on the plinth and his unnamed boer soldiers 

crouched at the corners, way beneath him. 

“I saw your little friend this morning …” a text appeared on his lock screen. 

He was surprised that Percy was awake at 10, let alone at 7, to have spotted Meg 

leaving. He pictured his neighbour now, sitting in the lounge, curtains still drawn, smoking 

and texting a million people at once in the raggedy brown bathrobe that he seemed to be 

living in the past few weeks.  

 “Did you say hi?” 

 “I did. We chatted …” 

 “Never one to resist a chat.”  

 “Want to get a beer later …’ 

 “Absolutely! Where?” 

“Do you think yours will still be smelling like sex later …” 

“I left the bedroom window open this morning.” 

“Let me know when you’re back home and ready for some company …” 

Always the nosy ellipses. At least they weren’t emoji. Small blessings. 

  



 41 

22 

His thoughts went back to fatherhood and parenting. He’d seen it being done – by his sister 

and her husband, and a few friends, but he couldn’t imagine what it must feel like. Was it as 

“infinitely rewarding” as they said? The only way for him to find out would be by getting a 

child of his own. But it wasn’t that simple. In his way stood many unforgiving and 

complicated social obstacles, the first and main one being finding someone to have a child 

with. 

His sister often told him to “settle down”, for his own sake. But who would he do 

this with? How would he find that one person? It wasn’t impossible, his own parents had 

settled down together and seemed happy while doing so for as long as he could remember. 

His sister, too. For him, though, it seemed too far out of reach. Besides, his parents, his 

sister, somewhere along the line they must have surrendered something of themselves. 

Like, their essential selves. Economically, that would count as a steady decline in the 

personal growth sector. 

Plus, there’s an implication that marriage isn’t the only thing happening in the 

settling down framework. Divorce had to be factored in, given the relatively high rate 

among married couples in his demographic. Marriage, a settlement of odds; divorce, a 

settlement of regret. A grave toll on personal growth either way. If the framework was the 

scaffolding on which to build a new life, it was also a sinkhole in which to destroy one. It 

was, as far as he could tell, an arbitrary framework and not entirely necessary for parenting.  

Besides that, surely he had missed the settling down window. Most married people 

his age, having adopted the framework, were already either heading for divorce or 

remarrying. 

He continued scrolling down his inbox, an endless stream of emails that bore no 

relevance to his wants and that he would never get around to reading.  

  



 42 

23 

He and Percy sat on the balcony of his apartment, overlooking the building’s English garden 

as the sun set. Soon their view would be completely swallowed by the night. 

 “Do you know who Adriene is?” He asked. 

“I think I might know one. But she just goes by Adi. I doubt you’d know her.” 

 “No, I mean Adriene, like on the internet.” 

 “Fuck, Harry, there must be a zillion Adrienes on, like, the internet.” 

 He stared ahead, hoping to return to their previous silence. He was impressed by his 

recollection of such detail in his conversation with Meg at dinner. Since when did Percy start 

calling him Harry? Only old friends called him that. 

 Smoke emerged from Percy’s cigarette. “What’s so interesting in that far-off 

horizon?” he asked. 

 “Not much. Just winding down. What’s going on in your world, Mr Moloto?” 

 “Ah, man! I’m excited for my new project. Do you want to hear about it?” 

 Percy had arrived high; he was always high. “If something has you this excited, then 

yes, please, tell me.” He prepared himself.  

“I’ve started sketching out a translation machine. This machine, once designed, or at 

least once I somehow figure out how to articulate its design, will be a custom-made 

translator of the paintings I include in my next show.” 

 “I don’t understand.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. 

“So, painting on the one side.” Percy held out an imaginary tennis ball. “And 

translation of painting next to it.” 

He stared at Percy’s invisible balls. He couldn’t immediately respond. 

 His neighbour continued: “You know how, like, through the ‘ages’, abstract-

expressionist painting has been this thing where meaning is deferred to the viewer? Not 

because artists themselves don’t see or find meaning in their creations, but more like it’s 

easier to put that on the viewer (or consumer, or whatever you want to call them) than 

have to sit and explain it.” 

 He nodded but felt completely caught off guard by Percy’s stoner theory. “I suppose 

so, but I don’t know much about abstract-expressionist painting, or any kind of painting for 

that matter, so I’m not sure how it’s been regarded through the ages. The most I’ve seen in 



 43 

real life are some Pollocks and Rothkos, whatever they have at the big New York museums. 

And yours, of course.” 

 Percy waved away his plea of ignorance.  

“It doesn’t matter, that’s a minor point. Think about it in musical terms. Have you 

ever wished you could ask your favourite musician what a particular song meant? I mean, 

like, really meant?” 

 “There are tons of songs I’d like to know the ‘true’ meanings of.” 

 “This machine will produce literal written translations of my paintings. Viewers will 

get the exact meaning instead of having to guess; or, even worse, make up their own.” 

 “OK, but –” 

 Percy stuck out a palm in front of his face.  

“Obviously I’m not going to build a damn machine and put the paintings through it, 

like, physically. Basically, I’m going to sketch out this machine and explain what it does. So 

there’s going to be some background info, and it will state that I built this machine and here 

are the machine’s specifications and this is what it does, and that I ran my paintings through 

the machine, and what you see alongside each painting is the direct translation of that 

painting.” Percy gave him time to process the concept.  

The idea seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t immediately pin down where he’d 

come across it. Was it in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which he watched 

religiously as a teenager? Maybe he’d read it in a Vonnegut novel, read religiously as a 

teenager? He was almost certain that Percy’s idea had been conceived and done in some 

creative form, if not TV or books, then in art, photography or whatever. But that didn’t point 

to a lack of originality. Borrowed ideas were at the core of cultural production, weren’t 

they? 

“So does this mean you’re going to be writing now as well?” 

“I’ve already started!” 

“Interesting. If you care to share before your show.” Was this the beginning of 

Percy’s hyphenated life, he wondered. The painter-writer. 

“I’ll mail them to you in due course.” 

“Would you need feedback?” 

“Not really. What, are you all of a sudden a fucking English professor?” 



 44 

Percy laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. He laughed, too, more relieved than 

in appreciation of the joke. Although he had a strong sense that whatever Percy wrote 

would be deliberately obscure nonsense, with a three-beer buzz on, he found himself 

genuinely intrigued. 

“Speaking of email, I need some advice.” 

“I’m a repository of good advice, you know that.” 

He cracked the cap of his fourth. He should’ve been thinking of it as his last of the 

evening. “I’ve been thinking about an old ex. My relationship with her was by far the best 

I’ve ever had. That’s not counting, of course, the on and off –” 

“Wait, the on-and-off thing you had with the fine young woman who went on to 

become the director of the you-know-what just a few blocks away? Talk about a missed 

opportunity. Nevertheless, continue.” 

“Yes, but I don’t count that. I mean, we were so young. She was more of a groupie.” 

“That ‘groupie’ was in love with you. Everyone saw it.” 

“I wish I knew you back then, when you were, as you claim, just one of the faces in 

the crowd who came to watch us play.” 

“Trust me, I came to most of your gigs. I was smitten by your singer. What was his 

name?” 

“Dane.” 

“Dane! He was perfect. The hair, those bedroom eyes. And the show he put on! 

Those hips!”  

Percy’s face bore a wide-eyed grin that was at once innocent and lascivious.  

“We would have been great together, Dane and I.” 

“Dane is now an engineer with a wife and, last I checked, three young children. They 

live in a gated estate somewhere beyond the boundary of what you and I consider Joburg.” 

“I could have converted him, we could have had a great life together. Can you 

imagine? Surely with that stage presence, that charisma, he could have found another band 

once you and the rest of those knob-twiddling geeks finished your commerce degrees or 

whatever.” 

“Somehow I can imagine it. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out the way you wanted with 

Dane. Hey, also, I’ll have you know that our drummer, Marcel, studied drama, not 

commerce.” 



 45 

“The Stargasms. Who came up with that name?” asked Percy. 

He observed his neighbour’s nostalgia with a scepticism that rested on the 

borderline between indulgence and outright annoyance. “Drew,” he replied. 

“Drew, the bassist! He was the only one of you I kind of got to know. By that I mean 

we partied together maybe twice. Then there was you and the other guitarist – tall and 

skinny, hunched over, insecure, boring.” 

He got up and exited the balcony midway through whatever the hell Percy was 

saying. A song by Destroyer rattled through the floor-standing Celestions in the lounge. He 

recognised the song immediately, “The State”. He’d listened to Trouble in Dreams countless 

times. Each listen confirmed his dislike for the song. It stuck out like a sore thumb on an 

otherwise solid record. He stood at the exact centre point between the speakers and bathed 

in the sonic substance they produced. 

The third verse started: “Loose lips sink the lives of disgusting women/So The State 

rolled me up into a ball,” he couldn’t take any more of the song so he went back to Percy. 

He had become the tennis ball. 

“Anyway, back to the point.” He noticed a heap of cigarette butts in the ashtray on 

the floor beside Percy’s chair. How disgusting. 

“Yes, yes, your ex,” Percy said, exaggerating a yawn. 

“Justine. We were together for about two years when I lived in New York.” 

“You’ve told me about her. I can picture her. Was she a goddess?”  

“I’m thinking of emailing her, you know, just to find out how she is. What do you 

think?”  

“You are aware that exes see random emails or texts as desperate reach-outs?” 

 “What do you mean?” 

 “What I mean, Harry, is that she’s going to think you’re sad and lonely.” 

 “I don’t care if she thinks that. Besides, wouldn’t thinking that be kind of immature?” 

 “Trust me, the first thing she’s going to think when she sees your email will be, 

‘What does this loser want?’” 

 “I do want something, I guess. I want to know things, like how she is and what she’s 

been up to. Has she settled down?” 

 “And what makes you think you deserve to know all these things? From what I 

gather, you just dropped her in the middle of something good. I’m not judging you for that, 



 46 

it’s what you wanted at the time, but I think you hurt her. I know I’d be hurt if someone I 

loved and lived with just upped and left for no good reason.” 

 “It was a long time ago. She must be over it by now.” He fidgeted with a bottle cap 

he’d picked up off the floor. 

 “OK, I tell you what, send her your email. Ask her things about herself that you want 

to know. Let’s see if she replies. I’d be surprised if she does. But hey, I love being wrong.” He 

stubbed out his cigarette. “Also, if you were on social media, you’d know these things 

without having to ask. Who emails socially, anyway?” 

 He appreciated Percy’s frankness. He also found it funny how, in that moment, Percy 

seemed like a character on a Real Housewives-type reality show. All the sass; all the ready 

answers. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if she replies. Either way, it’s not a big deal.” 

 “‘Whatever you do, just don’t start the email with ‘Dear Justine’, OK?”  

Their laughter echoed in the English garden below. 

  



 47 

24 

“Dear Justine.” Fuck, he couldn’t think of another way to start the email. Percy had primed 

him. It was just after one, that would be, what, 7pm in New York? Maybe not the best time, 

but not the worst time either. 

  “I hope you are doing well and that this message finds you healthy and happy.” He 

thought for a second how he himself would receive an email that began this way but he 

pushed on regardless. “I know it’s been a while and I’ve been really bad at keeping in touch. 

For that I must apologise, but I hope you understand. I’ve been thinking about you and 

thought I’d send this just to find out how you’re doing(?)” 

Enough to warrant a reply, right? Maybe not. The draft stared back at him from 

Gmail. How much more compelling should it be? He tossed the iPad on to the coffee table; 

it almost slid off the other end. He laughed an empty laugh. It was late and he knew better 

than to send emails on a waning beer buzz. He’d get back to it on the train to work. He got 

up to go to bed. 

It hadn’t yet locked; its glow was irresistible. He grabbed the iPad from the edge of 

the table and tapped send on the draft. The option to unsend remained for a few seconds 

then disappeared. He tossed the iPad again, this time on to the sofa. 

  



 48 

25 

I sit on the bench and watch for that pretty bitch to leave her flat. A while later, I see her 

drive out. She looks out the windscreen like a scared little bird, moving her head left and 

right, left and right, with those goggles on her face. 

 My watch says 07:06 when I open my Daily Sun. I take the same one with me every 

day. The main story is about some bitch who’s complaining that in her dreams she’s being 

raped by 2Pac and some other men. She believes that one of her husband’s other bitches 

put a spell on her. She complains about waking up feeling sore by her poes. “How can I be 

raped in my dreams?” she says. The date on the newspaper is 22 December. 

 I need something; it’s not cigarettes or beer. I feel like even though I’ve been coming 

early to the park every day to watch this bitch, it’s like everything is cloudy. I need power. I 

need to see straight. Last week I smoked something with KB that made things right. I asked 

him what it was but he just laughed at me. My vision and thoughts became clear. It was like 

magic. I need more cash. 

*** 

My watch says 06:59. I set it exact using airtime to call the number where that bitch tells 

you the time in English and Afrikaans. 

 At 07:00, the skinny bitch opens the door. She doesn’t have a gate like the other flats 

in the building. She doesn’t lock when she closes the door. She just walks quickly down the 

passage and takes the stairs down. 

 At 07:03, I see the Merc pointing out of the garage. Less than a minute after, she’s 

driving down the street towards the mall. There’s probably a sensor because the gate closes 

fast after she pulls out. I roll up my Daily Sun. I must find another way into the building. 

The building’s main entrance is lit up and there’s a security guard sitting behind a 

desk inside. There’s a metal gate then a glass door, both strong. Next to the outside gate, 

there’s a long keypad that’s in a burglar-proof casing. After the guard’s desk, there’s a 

passage that leads to the lift and a staircase next to it. All I need is to get through the gate 

and glass door, and past that guard. 

There must be maids going in and out during the day to do their madams’ shopping. 

I can check how the guard deals with deliveries. I have time. I’ll stay in the park for longer 

every day. I know that if there’s a way to get in, I’ll get in. Soon I’ll have my magic and things 

will be clear again.  



 49 

26 

Even the digits at the corner of her screen looked tired. It was late enough to go home and 

avoid her mother, and any fuss that might be made over food. She had sufficiently killed off 

whatever appetite she might have had with strong coffee in the late afternoon. She thought 

about texting Mei but hesitated when she pictured her colleague in Mark’s arms, dozing off 

in front of the TV watching Mexico Life, or whatever. Did they ever just chat, she wondered, 

or was the TV central to their cohabitation? 

Mei might have complained about Mark, but at the end of the day, she went back to 

him. Why? He had something that Mei couldn’t give herself. What? Comfort? Maybe. 

Strange how people clung to essential comforts in the face of other discomforts that could 

be conveniently de-rationalised as minor annoyances. Such was the hypocrisy of human 

needs. 

She had two constants in life: her mother and work. She found a degree of comfort 

only in the latter. That she thought of her mother as a burden made her feel guilty and 

angry. The source of her guilt was obvious – an ingrained belief that one’s ultimate service 

in life was to God and their parents. The source of her anger, though, was less clear. Was 

she angry at being driven to guilt by the position she’d been put in against her will? Maybe it 

was caused by something deeper that she couldn’t quite grasp. Not yet, at least.  

 Although her job was an anchor of sorts, it was hardly fulfilling. It failed to alleviate 

the tensions gnawing inside her. And it seemed she was equipped to understand those 

tensions only as being inherently spiritual, brought on by the immense gravity of belief, 

which attracted and regulated every form of pleasure and pain, joy and disease.  

What did it create, this gravitational force? Balance? More like chaos. 

Maybe the source of her anger was her faith, which she had inherited rather than 

discovered. No room for open exploration there. She had been unable to fully accept this 

imposed limitation for most of her life, but she went with it anyway. Why? 

She stepped into the frigid basement, whose overhead vents exposed it to the 

elements outside. She’d felt the chill, subtle as it was, creeping into the night air for the few 

days that had passed since the beginning of March. That creep would develop over the 

coming weeks into a gradual, less subtle winter stalk. By mid-April, autumn would be all but 

confirmed. 



 50 

On St Andrews, she wondered about Bonga and where he might have been taking 

refuge for the night. Would he, like Mei, be in the arms of another? She imagined his bony 

arms wrapped around her own body. Would she find comfort in his embrace? Probably not. 

He wouldn’t either, not in the arms of a woman.  

A woman – was that all she was, stripped of affection, without an available warm 

body to affirm her mammalian desire? “A woman, alone!” her father had sneered before 

she went to New York. A woman alone: the most detestable thing he could have imagined. 

At the time, she felt liberated by the idea, but it was only because the rope he had placed 

around her neck was slack. It had since tightened. Now she was a woman completely alone. 

  



 51 

27 

As a rule, she didn’t turn on any lights when nights limped on like this. It was a way of 

accepting the darkness and living with it; a way of learning to feel around and attune her 

eyes to make sense of the sleepless space she was forced to occupy. Also, it was a 

statement to the cruel, sleepless night, reminding it that it, too, would eventually be forced 

by the dawn into nonexistence. 

The darkness obscured her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked spectral, 

but she could make out the jagged edges of her ruffled fringe against the pallor of her brow. 

The image gave her a sudden jolt as if she herself had become the kind of demonic 

tormentor she imagined would feature in a horror movie about some dead little girl with 

“unfinished business”. What would hers be? 

Maybe she’d be the unloved, untouched maid, returning from the dead to scare the 

shit out of the great-grandchildren of those who had been cruel to her. Or maybe she’d be 

the murdered spouse, avenging her death at the hands of her abusive husband and his new 

lover. How they had enjoyed stabbing her, simultaneously sensual and deeply calculated, as 

an act of their new-found love. 

But her ghost had absorbed their fleeting, lustful pleasure and transformed it into a 

source of hateful power. She’d stare into their petrified eyes, poised to exact torturous 

revenge. The implement they had used to fatally violate her would be obsolete. They’d have 

no protection. She’d claw into those petrified eyes and pick them out, then dig into the eye 

sockets, feeling gratified as the warm fluid from their punctured eyeballs oozed over her 

fingers. 

She’d reach further, fingering the raw flesh and sinew. She’d pick out bits of tissue. 

She’d scratch deeper until she hit bone. She’d scrape the bone and delight in her victims’ 

screeches. She’d push further still, wanting to pierce through spongy grey matter, taking 

care to maximise her pleasure through their pain. 

Would she simply disappear when her business was finished? If so, then didn’t the 

ultimate revenge always belong to nature, the keeper of nonexistence? 

 She rubbed her eyes and sighed as she walked out of the bathroom. There was no 

use in trying to find fantastical versions of herself when she knew the truth, cold and hard as 

it was. 



 52 

Instead of getting back into bed, she paced briskly beside it. She grabbed her phone 

off the bedside table and stared into the screen. No new messages. No new posts on any 

feed. Nothing.  

She texted Nadia, who seemed always to be working nights. “Hi, can you chat?” 

  



 53 

28 

“Hey! I can chat. Surprisingly slow night.” 

“I can’t sleep.” 

“Did you try take something?” 

“That stuff you gave me made me feel like crap the next morning.” 

Nadia planted a thinking face emoji. 

“How’s it going with you?” she pushed on. 

“I’m seeing someone. An orthopaedic surgeon.” 

“A bone doctor?” 

“A boner doctor, more like it. Hey, my parents were asking about you last weekend. 

Why didn’t you come for lunch?” 

“Big audit.” 

“Let’s meet up soon, babe. I need to see you.”  

It was uncommon for people to go out of their way to italicise words in texts. The 

gesture comforted her. 

“I’m not sure when I’ll be able to, Nads, you know I hate going out on weekends.” 

“I know, my angel, but just try. Hey, here’s a funny one … one night some idiot came 

in with his index finger superglued to his eyeball.” 

“Idiot. Did he survive?” 

“Of course, with very little damage to the eye.” 

“That’s a shame.” 

“It’s my job to keep people alive!” 

Now she planted an emoji – a shrug. 

“Guess what? I’m not on the roster this weekend, so…” 

“I’ll think about it. Will you bring your boyfriend?” 

“Yaseen? Hardly my boyfriend. It’ll just be us.” 

“Thanks for the chat.” An appropriate emoji seemed just out of reach. 

“Take care. See you this weekend. GN.” Fingers crossed. 

What drove her friend to care about others so much that she laboured away in the 

trauma unit of a public facility? She could’ve been in private practice earning, like, stacks 

more. What she admired about Nadia was that her care seemed somehow unsentimental 

and tactfully detached. 



 54 

She felt calmer after the chat. As she slid under the covers, her satin night shorts 

rode up and gathered between her legs. She liked the sensation of the fabric rubbing up 

against her as she squirmed. It had been a long time since she touched herself, let alone 

since she’d been touched. Was still even able to get wet? Porn never did it. She consumed it 

merely “to see”, like Erika in the book The Piano Teacher – her involvement only as a 

distant, dispassionate observer. 

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine something that might turn her on. An image 

of Helena flashed by. If there was anything to be glad about, it was Helena’s assignment to 

her team. Working in close proximity had given her time to memorise the clerk’s features. 

An image of Helena began to appear, vague at first, but gradually becoming clearer 

against a black backdrop. She reached a hand out to Helena. The clerk moved in closer and 

guided the hand towards her buttocks. But when She gripped tighter, Helena pulled back. 

The distance between them began to increase, as if they were on trains going in opposite 

directions, slowly at first, then rapidly until Helena was completely out of sight and 

everything around her went back to black. 

She opened her eyes and the darkness was still there, in every corner and between 

every object in her room. She sat up again and looked over to her phone, contemplating 

whether to pick it up. Frustrated, she ripped off the covers and stomped over to the 

bathroom, adjusting the satin shorts as she made her way. 

  



 55 

29 

“Is there a reason I received four invites to the same meeting you scheduled for tomorrow?” 

 David was annoyed, she could tell. The demands of the quarter had begun to take its 

toll on him too. He was still conventionally cute. 

 “There’s no reason. You should have received only one invite.” 

 “So which do I accept?” 

 “The most recent one, I guess.” 

 “Has this been happening with the client?” 

 “Not that I’m aware of. Should I get hold of IT to investigate?” 

 “No. It’ll take them forever to figure it out. Just make sure you hit send just once, 

OK?” 

 “OK.” 

 It was possible that she had amended the agenda after the meeting request had 

been sent, but it seemed petty for David to confront her in the staff kitchen. It made her 

anxious. She stared at the stainless-steel urn and made out her contorted reflection on the 

curve beside the black plastic spigot. Her forehead was oblong and protruded as if her 

temples were being squeezed. Her nose appeared as a growth on one of her cheeks. Was 

that how David saw her, was she a walking grotesquery for him to regard with such disdain?  

 She placed her mug under the spigot and moved a hand closer to it. 

 “What’s this all about?” 

 Had Mei been standing in the doorway the entire time? She had a way of creeping 

around unnoticed.  

 She stood at attention. “Oh, he’s clearly letting the job get to him.”  

 “Who? No, I mean, why were you hunched over the urn like that?” 

 “It’s been a long day.” 

 “You look super tired.”  

Mei flipped a pencil between the fingers of one hand and carried a ridiculously 

oversized mug by its handle in the other. 

 “Do I? I don’t feel tired.” 

 “What time have you been leaving here?” 



 56 

 “I’m not sure.” she shrugged. She couldn’t help but look down at Mei’s hand. She 

wanted to ask her to stop flipping the pencil, but she also wanted to watch the pencil as it 

went round and around and between Mei’s delicate yet poorly manicured fingers. 

 “Let’s do lunch one of these days, huh? It feels like we haven’t spoken in ages. Let’s 

catch up.”  

Mei sounded more confident than usual. A good fuck was all people needed 

sometimes. Go Mei! 

 “Yeah, just message me.” She forced a playful smile and turned to face the urn again. 

She saw a reflection of herself in it, but this time her face was stretched along the broader 

contour of the stainless steel. What if she was now stuck inside the urn, desperately trying 

to get someone’s attention to get her out while the water burned through her flesh? She 

could feel her skin blistering. The fluorescent tubes overhead weren’t helpful. Their sick, 

pinkish light aided the urn in its mission to provide a broiled version her. Was this the hell 

that one had to endure for updating a meeting request? Why did everyone have to be 

notified about slight changes to the agenda? She should have followed protocol by drafting 

and editing it offline before sending. Her blood boiled and rose to her head. A needless 

error. 

The vibe in her office had suddenly become cold and uninviting. The Vortex swirled 

and pulled her in. The only way to make amends was to continue hammering away. There 

was no shortage of work to get through. She’d work despite the so-called law of diminishing 

returns. 

Eventually, without ceremony, the anxiety would dissipate and she’d be left with a 

sense of bewilderment and mild anguish – she was simply not good enough. She knew that 

all of this was part of a larger pattern, but she didn’t know how to change it. It probably had 

something to do with her anger, source not yet entirely known, and her insomnia. 

All these interrelated things, she thought as she tapped her fingertips on her desk, 

looking down towards her phone, all tangled in a web of shit. Was there any way of 

unravelling it? She looked at her phone more intently, waiting for it to vibrate and the 

screen to light up. Eventually, she grabbed the phone off the desk and unlocked it. She 

opened her contacts and quickly scrolled to Helena’s number. As protocol would have it, all 

numbers of audit team members must be saved. Helena’s was one she didn’t hesitate to 

save. 



 57 

30 

“Hi. Azra here.” She typed quickly and hit send. Her heart pounded in her chest and she 

couldn’t focus on anything but the message screen. In less than a minute, she saw that 

Helena had read the message, was online and typing a response. 

“Hi Azra. How are you doing? What have I done wrong?”  

Helena followed her message with a nervous grin emoji. She was amused. 

“I’m well, thanks. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just checking in to see how 

you are. We hardly get to speak.” 

She scrolled through the seemingly endless pages of yellow-faced emoji but could 

not find an appropriate one. If she were to be entirely true to what she felt at the time, she 

figured the peach would probably be the most expressive. It took a while for the clerk to 

respond. She figured she must have been trying to word the message as carefully as she 

could, having to message her direct superior. 

“Thanks for asking! This is my first audit, so I think I mentally prepared myself to 

expect the worst. Based on that, I think that I’m doing OK, surprisingly. But what really 

matters is what you think. Am I doing OK?” 

“You’re doing more than OK. You’re an asset to the team.” She settled for a broad 

smiley emoji. Suddenly, she was giddy. Before Helena could reply, she sent another 

message. “Lunch tomorrow?” 

“That’ll be great!” 

She was encouraged by Helena’s immediate response. The clerk must have been 

young to be using exclamation marks so frequently.  

An otherwise dreary week had suddenly come to life. She had never pursued 

someone before and had always wondered what was meant by the term “the thrill of the 

chase”. But now she began to feel it and she liked the feeling; it wasn’t at all as complicated 

as she had thought. She had become the central character in a nature documentary, a big 

cat hunting prey. 

Were those other little clerk wimps, Helena’s peers, also fancying their chances? She 

had no reason to doubt that they were. She scoffed at the thought. Helena was hers. 

  



 58 

31 

I step to the security guard at the main entrance while he’s taking a delivery. Before I can 

say anything, he makes with his hand like I must move along, like I’m a piece of shit. When I 

get back to the bench, I can see that he’s following me with his eyes, like he knows I’m up to 

something.  

I need to find another way to get into the building. I pick up my Daily Sun and walk 

around the park. It’s not 09:00 yet but I’m already itching. I need to hit that shit again.  

Last night, me and Plaz crossed Marlboro into Kelvin and went looking for houses to 

knock. After walking around for some time, we found one without electric fencing. We 

scaled the wall so easy, we laughed when we got into the garden. We walked up the 

driveway to the house and found a room on the side that only had a glass sliding door. It 

was unlocked. We went into the room quietly but no one was inside. It was just a TV room 

with a snooker table. 

I passed the TV over the wall and Plaz carried it by himself to the corner and cracked 

the screen just there under the streetlight. He told me to take out the cracked pieces from 

the plastic frame and stamp on them until they became power, then to take the powder 

with my fingers and put it into the small plastic bags he gave me earlier. 

He told me that that’s how he got his name, Plazma, because he showed all those 

fucks on the Far East Bank how to crush the LCD screen into your smoke and the kind of 

high it gave. 

I’m not so sure I believe Plaz because he mostly talks shit, but he wasn’t wrong 

about the high. He crushed some dagga and mixed in a bit of white powder from a small bag 

he took out of his pocket. Before he licked the Rizla to close the zol, he sprinkled some of 

the LCD that I crushed on top. He said it was the LCD powder that gave it that extra kick. 

We left Kelvin feeling good. I had like 15 small bags of crush in my pocket. Walking as 

if nothing could touch us, we crossed back over Marlboro. I bought loose cigarettes off 

some stupid petrol attendant at the Sasol and Plaz said he knew a yard we could find quarts 

at and chill. 

I left the yard only this morning. Plaz was hanging over my shoulder. I had to lift his 

head and straighten it against the wall. I saw some white snot running down his nose and 

from the sides of his mouth. I wanted to slap him awake but stopped myself because then 

he’d want to hang around with me the whole day.  



 59 

I round the corner and look across the park. I don’t think the guard is still following 

me with his eyes or even thinking about me. 

There’s a maid walking out of another building. I say hello as she passes me on the 

pavement. Without even looking at me, she clicks her tongue and walks past. I turn and 

watch her big arse bouncing as she moves along.  

I haven’t had a fuck since the last time I saw Sindi, which was when I last saw 

Vilakazi. That poes still hasn’t paid what he owes me. I reach for my phone and dial his 

number but the bitch on the other end tells me I have no airtime. 

  



 60 

32  

Person/spirit in the bush who sees Jerry M through a drug portal – I 

I hear a baboon barking from across the valley. Ahead of me, there are thick vines and 

thornbushes, but it’s pitch dark and I can see fuck all, so I can’t be sure. I feel around for my 

headlamp – forehead, neck, pockets – but there’s nothing, I must have dropped it 

somewhere. I see nagapie eyes glowing orange in the distance, blinking on and off, on and 

off, some higher than others. Always in pairs, big and round. 

They’re scary when you need to take a shit at night. Not because nagapies 

themselves are scary, but because it’s fucked up, thinking that so many eyes are on you, so 

interested, while you’re squatting there, vulnerable like, with your pants around your 

ankles, a lighter in one hand and bog roll in the other. 

I look for a flat surface between what I imagine are thickets about 100m from the 

campsite, feeling around for thorns. I might as well be blind. I can’t trust my eyes in any 

case, I’ve just come off a second changa hit and the ketamine floating around my system 

has clung to some residual DMT from the changa, suspending me in a drowsy trip. 

Some neon geometric shapes linger in my peripheral vision, but straight ahead 

there’s nothing, just darkness. Finally, I find what seems like a good place, relatively flat and 

seemingly unobscured. I pull my shorts down, feeling confident. 

I’m wide-eyed. All I see are the lingering neon shapes every now and then, and those 

nagapie eyes. I squat down low and push. The vein on the side of my head starts throbbing. I 

haven’t shat in a while so I have great expectations for this one. 

I bear down and push harder. Still nothing.  

Maybe some finesse is what’s needed; maybe I need to coax rather than force. I 

relax my body. The throbbing on the side of my head settles. I ease my frown and my vision 

merges with the darkness. There’s nothing to do but surrender to the darkness, I tell myself. 

After some time, I see the outline of a man in the distance, tall and dark, very thin. 

He’s walking slowly towards me. He doesn’t seem threatening so I remain still and watch as 

he approaches, only half aware that I’m still sitting bare arsed in the middle of this fucking 

bush. So it’s him, this tall and dark man, very thin, and I; and, of course, the nagapies, whose 

flying saucer eyes still make for a menacing backdrop. 

I feel so relaxed now, squatting here, it would be a pain to do anything else. Besides, 

if I move, I could frighten the man and who knows what he might do. He approaches at a 



 61 

steady pace, neither too eagerly nor languidly, ghostlike. If it wasn’t for the ketamine, I 

would’ve been scared shitless.  

I am shitless, come to think of it. At least I’m not scared. At least. I wait, pants still 

around ankles and sphincter wholly exposed to the terrain and whatever might be growing 

or crawling on it or burrowing inside it. (Imagine some crea