To All The Books I’ve Loved Before – The full story

Lilongwe, Malawi

Being born to parents, who had never been to school; many wonder where I drew my love of books? The only books that I saw while growing up in our house were two of my father’s Arabic kitabs, which time and again he read on the veranda, sitting in his hammock. The language was foreign to me but I must admit powerful, because whenever I complained of a headache or stomachache he would place his right hand on my head and recite verses from his kitabs and immediately my headache would stop.

By the time I started school at Kawale Primary School, I immediately fell in love with words that our teacher taught us and could memories the alphabet at one go. I started scribbling the letters and joining them into words. I found it so thrilling in standard 3 when I started to write simple sentences in English. Moreover, the stories our English teacher, Mrs Gondwe read to us were so enthralling and entertaining, books became my focal point of pleasure.

In standard 5, it is where my love for books cranked up. There were many fascinating stories and poems in our English language subject – some of those poems and stories are still stuck in my memory. By the time I reached standard 8, I was swept away by the Pacesetters Novel that took African reading culture by storm. Pacesetters Novels spanned a wide array of visceral topics like, betrayal, lust, corruption and ambition. We call them African classic. No school-going teenager in the ‘80s and ‘90s would have left Paacesetters off their reading list.

The titles I read are still engraved on my mind: Evbu My Love – Helen Ovbiagele, Forgive Me Maryam – Mohamed Tukur Garba, Too Young to Die – Omondi Mak’oloo, Sweet Revenge – Victor Ulojofor, The Wages of Sin – Ibe Operandu, Cross Fire – Kalu Okpi, Christmas In The City – Afari Assan, Truth Will Out – Dede Kamkondo and many more. These titles still sit affectionately in my heart. As teenagers who had mastered the art of reading, we were smitten by our own stories written by our own African writers. Thus the African reading culture was inculcated in us and to this day those readers are still reading books and writing their stories. Pacesetters Novels are a collection of 130 titles of popular fiction written by notable African authors, published by Macmillan. The series started in 1977, the first book being Director! by Agbo Areo.

Luckily, for me our Lilongwe National Library stocked few of the titles and you had to request a title in advance; they were not always available on the shelves. They were always taken.

***

During summer holidays whilst in standard 8, I visited my half-sister in Nambuma – a village about 59 km from Lilongwe. My half-sister was married to a primary school teacher and to my surprise; he had a humble bookcase that stocked a few novels: Things Fall Apart, The River Between, No Easy Task, Of Chameleon and Gods, Son of the Soil, Crime and Punishment, David Copperfield, and three volumes of James Hadly Chase. When I asked my brother-in-law one day, where did he buy the books? His face cracked with a smirk. He said his innocent looking face made the school choose him as the in-charge of the school’s library. So every end of school term he would pilfer one or two books.

I spent every day in the study room guzzling the books and when the holiday ended, I asked my sister if I could come and write my primary school leaving certificate exams at Chimbalu Primary School where my brother-in-law taught. When I told my father that I wanted to go and live with my sister in the village, he was not happy.

‘But, you are a bright pupil, why the village?’

‘It is nice there, quiet and ideal for studying, Dad.’

‘I don’t think your headmaster will allow you to leave. Look, next term you’ll be writing you final primary school leaving certificate exams,’ said the father.

‘Please, dad I want to go to the village school.’

‘Ok, I will speak with the headmaster for a transfer letter.’

At last, my father fibbed to the headmaster and said that he had been retrenched at work and was going to live with his family at his village. However, Mr Kachidikhu, my headmaster pleaded with my father to allow me to stay with a relative till I wrote my final exams. My father made it clear to him that he did not have a relation living in the city.

This is how I found myself living in the village. Our school did not have desks or doors and windows panes. Our blackboard was cracked in the middle. We sat down on the dirt floor. It did not bother me much. The schoolteachers were very good and hardworking and the school produced bright students who were selected to various secondary schools in the country. Thus, it was not a bad move for me. I was well received and introduced at the school’s assembly as a new standard 8 pupil coming from Lilongwe city. Mock exams were in two weeks’ time, I studied hard and I made friends with the school’s best standard 8 students. I came first in the mock exams and the headmaster was very pleased with my grades. I enjoyed village life. I had so many friends; some of these friends brought me various food items from their farm – green maize, millet, sack of groundnuts, sugarcane stems, and cassava. These food items were expensive to buy in the city. We had masquerade dancers to watch during harvest times. Later, I was recruited into the Nambuma soccer team. I was having good times in the village.

***

Just a day before starting our final Primary School Leaving Certificate, our headmaster, Mr. Dzuwa told every student to bring a table and chair for writing the exams. The school had no desks, so I had to fetch a table and chair at home, forcing my brother-in-law to eat his food on a mat.

I did not leave for the city immediately after writing my PSLC exams, the delights of village life still ate me up. I only returned to the city a day before the results were announced. I assured my father that I would do well and should be prepared for my secondary school fees, clothes, and shoes.

That day on the 7 o’clock news bulletin, Veryson Idi, the MBC radio newsreader said that the Malawi National Examination Board had announced the results of Primary School Leaving Certificate exams. Moreover, the names of successful students who had made it to the country’s secondary schools would be announced on the radio the next day from 9 am. My heart went wild with expectation. But alas! Our radio’s batteries were flat; however, my father shoved his hand into deep his pocket and gave me money to buy the batteries. By 12 o’clock my name was read. I was selected to attend Lisimbwi Secondary School in Monkey Bay – a new boarding school opened that year. Everything at school was new. We were the primo of the school. My father was very happy, he walked with his head high in Kawale Township, and my mother killed a chicken, fried for me to eat alone. My siblings, with gloomy faces, ate my leftovers.

The day I was leaving for Monkey Bay, my father whispered into my ear, “Study very hard. I want you to be a doctor.’ I nodded my head in agreement but deep down in my heart I wanted to be a writer.

At a boarding secondary school my love for books grew quickly. I met a fellow bookworm, Gift Thakwalaka who was always reading a novel after school. We started borrowing each other’s novels. In form 2, our English teacher Mr. Salanjira always read a passage from a novel he had been reading during our English lesson. I liked Mr. Salanjira very much and always looked forward to his English lesson. Soon the school library opened and I gobbled the novels like a glutton. And sometimes during prep time, I could put away my school textbooks and guzzled the novels. One day, my teacher found me reading Anna Karenina in class; he snatched it away and threw it out through the window. I got up defiantly and walked out to collect my novel. That day I was given a punishment. Unfortunately, for me that day I was wearing shorts. The teacher made me kneel on the gravel parking lot at the office until the prep time was over.

In form 4, in English literature we were doing Macbeth and Scarlet Song, a novel by Mariama Ba. I was not a fun of Shakespeare, Macbeth story did not appeal to me but the Scarlet Song. In Scarlet Song, it was like being transported live to Senegal, watching the characters going about their daily lives.

In Scarlet Song, Ousmane the main character, who comes from a poor family, makes it to university where he falls in love with a white girl, Mireille, daughter of the French diplomat. Mireille’s father is a liberal in public but when he discovers that his daughter is going out with a black man, he is outraged and sends Mireille back to France. However, Ousmane Gueye and Mireille keep in touch through letters. As soon as Mireille comes of age, Ousmane travels to France to marry her. His father accepts the match, but his mother is displeased. She believes Mireille has entranced her son.

Overtime, Ousmane begins to reject Mireille’s upper middle class, bourgeois lifestyle in favour of his traditional Senegalese upbringing. At this time a childhood sweetheart, Ouleymaton, who previously rejected him enters his life. She is a traditional woman, the kind his mother Yaye might approve. By all means, Ouleymaton is determined to become Ousmane’s second wife. Ousmane leads a clandestine double life with a second wife and a second child at the same time Mireille becomes pregnant. By and by, Mireille suspects him of an affair and when she learns the truth, she is driven into insane and frenzied rages. She murders their own son with sleeping pills and attempts to kill Ousmane by stabbing him. Ousmane survives the attack, but Mireille remains insane and is deported.

Scarlet Song is notable for its depiction of gender rules, love and betrayal. When my fellow students were making fools of themselves by memorizing lines from Macbeth: If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not. I was enjoying my Scarlet Song and I did not bother myself even to watch Macbeth movie. I read Macbeth in order to pass the exams.

In our final year of secondary school, my friends had already chosen what to study at the university. I could not make up mind about what to study. Writing bug was eating my mettle. I did not see any career fit for me, other than being a writer. I assured myself that if Truman Capote at the age of 11 resolved to become a writer and spent his childhood learning the craft and in the end he penned the non-fiction blockbuster, In Cold Blood, I felt I could do the same. Maya Angelou did not go to college, but went on to write a famous autobiography – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. William Faulkner never earned a high school diploma. He published his poetry for the first time at the age of 27. He won a Nobel Prize for literature. H.G Wells educated himself in the hope of becoming a writer. He penned a famous science fiction novel, The Time Machine. In addition, Augusten Burroughs dropped out of school in sixth grade. He published his controversial first memoir, Running with Scissors.

Worse still, when the results of our final secondary school examination came out, I did not make it to the one and only University of Malawi even though I passed with one distinction and credits. That year 1995, the students who sat for the MSCE final secondary school exams were about 28000. Guess what, out of 28000, only 8000 passed. Something went wrong at the Malawi National Examination Board. It did not make sense that 20000 students could all fail the examination. I felt cheated and hated going to college. I knew the rich people had bought their children places at the university, denying the poor students who had worked tirelessly hard for their bright future. In writhing rage, I threw my schoolbooks away and embarked on a journey of teaching myself in public libraries the art of writing.

Pretoria, South Africa

It is December 1996. I have just arrived in Pretoria from Malawi a few days ago. I have come to this country with one sole mission – to become a writer. It is irrefutable that this country has produced some of the finest writers on the African continent: the likes of JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Eskia Mphahlele, Zakes Mda, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Herman Charles Bosman and many others. I am here to walk in their footsteps and I can feel in my bones that one day, though it might take some donkey’s years; my dream would be realised in this country.

However, I am ill equipped with just an O-Level certificate; I am prepared to undergo the agony of teaching myself writing through guzzling books and writing every day. I know I am on the right track. I have published two successful short stories back home. Though my command of the English language is not yet well polished, I have an invaluable English grammar book – Fowler’s King’s English at my disposal, a gift given to me by a Congolese friend, Mahoro Semege. This has become my valuable companion throughout my journey of learning the Queen’s language.

In the wretched circumstance, I find myself in, with no coin jingling in my pocket, I cannot dream of studying further. The only hope for a poor child like me is to get an education; in order to obliterate the ugly circle of poverty and misery. I have discovered that even if I do two odd jobs a day, it looks impossible to study with the money I would earn. The only way now is to carry on teaching myself to write by reading a lot and writing every single day.

I have started working at a fabric shop in Pretorius Street and my humble salary stands at six hundred and fifty rand. We work from 8 am to 6 pm every day – Sunday to Sunday, even on Christmas Day and Eid Mubarak. Worse still, for us immigrants we work sometimes up to 10 pm – cleaning and packing the shelves while our local brothers and sisters have gone home to their families, canoodling with their loved ones. As the world favours always the well off, the unfortunate ones have to be obsequiously subservient to their masters and endure all the hardships without complaining. Just like donkeys pulling the wagon. Even somewhere in the scriptures endorses the act.

 Yesterday, I went to Pretoria Book Exchange and I bought Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, widely regarded as his masterpiece. This is the book I have been looking forward to reading. My Congolese friend, Mahoro Semege had recommended the book. When I saw it on the shelf in the classic section, I was bowled over. I could not contain my excitement. I turned back and checked if someone was not stealthily aiming to snatch the book before me. I pulled out the book quickly, kissed it and savoured the faint aroma of the pages, and sat down to peruse the blurb. I found the blurb so enticing.

The book is set in Sierra Leone during World War II. The Heart of the Matter comments on ambitious subjects of war, espionage, love, adultery, treachery, and betrayal. I found the classic section fully stocked with great writers: Thomas Hardy, W. Somerset Maugham, D H Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, Leon Tolstoy, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, George Eliot, and many more. Alas! When I shook my pocket there was a faint clinking of coins. I had not enough money to buy more than two books. Thereafter I made a pledge to myself that I would buy all the books on the classic section shelf.

With limited time to myself, I find my odd job a great hindrance to my reading and writing. I abhor it. I come back home from work every day at around 7 pm and sometimes 10 pm. By this time, I am dog-tired. I have to make supper and shower which takes me up to midnight and then four hours later I have to get up and read for two hours before I get ready for work. 

I am living with three other guys in one big room. One is an elder man in his late forties whilst the rest of us are whippersnappers, in our early twenties. We have demarcated our beds with curtains. When everyone has drawn up his curtain, we look like patients in a hospital ward. I cannot selfishly wake up at 4 am, and switch on the sole light hanging from the rafter and disturb my sleeping friends. Instead, I read in the toilet until 5 am, and at that time, my friends start one by one to get up and get ready for work. TV and music come to life and the new day has begun. I walk out from the toilet to my confinement this time. I leave at 7 am and run to my boss’s house to get a lift. The wages I get are slave wages; I cannot afford to take public transport to and from work. It is a very stressful life. I have to send two hundred rand to my mother every month and deduct another two hundred rands for the room I share with friends and one hundred rands for food and I remain with one hundred and fifty for myself. Buying books makes me more destitute and I cannot borrow books from the library without an ID.

Come weekend the room looks like a brothel, my friends bring in their girlfriends. To avoid the disturbance of beds shaking, augmented by feigning cries of the girls in full sexual jamboree to please their lovers; I spend most of my weekend at my friend, Davie’s place in Gezina.

As we are working near the park, I use my one-hour lunch break to read. Ausi Victoria whom I work with finds me in a cafe. She asks to have a look at the book I am reading. I am reading The Mayor of Casterbridge. She looks at the cover, flips a few pages, and gives it back to me.

‘Why you like reading?’ Ausi Victoria asks.

‘It opens my eyes to the world?’

‘My daughter also likes reading.’

‘That is good. What grade is she?’

‘She is at UNISA (University of South Africa.)’

‘What is she studying?’

‘She is studying Bachelor of Commerce, but likes to read novels.’

‘She must have good books.’

‘Do you want some books? I can ask her to borrow you some from the university’s library.’

‘Please, Ausi Victoria.’

We are now walking along the road trying to cross the busy road. Finally, we cross the road. Ausi Victoria joins her friends lunching outside the shop and I walk to Prince’s Park. I have thirty minutes left before lunch break is over. I hurry into the park and sit down under the shade of the tree. I lean against the tree whose bark cuts into my skin. I lean forward and start reading.

***

Three days later, before the shop opens for business, I see Ausi Victoria carrying something on her head and she calls to me. I run to relieve her of the burden. It is a huge book that a grade R child cannot carry – a handwritten manuscript bound into the book. It is Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. I cannot contain my excitement. I give Ausi Victoria a hug and thereafter we hurry into the shop as the doors open for business.

I am now well supplied with books and my modest bookcase is growing.  So far, I have bought fifteen books: The heart of The Matter, Mayor of Casterbridge, Of Human Bondage, David Copperfield, The Necklace and Other Tales, Pride and Prejudice, Dr Zhivago, Steppenwolf, Things Fall Apart, July’s People, Anna Karenina, The Bet, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Middlemarch and Heart of Darkness. 

Yesterday, I went to CNA to buy a ream of paper. I would like to start writing a novel. The title has been ringing in my head and ears for a time – Of Inscrutable Providence. It is a weird title though, but I love the ring of it on my tongue. It would be a semi-autobiographical novel. An experimental novel. My learning canvas. Since I cannot afford to buy a typewriter, I have started writing in longhand.

My probationary period has ended. And I go to my boss to remind him. He promised he would increase my wages after my probationary period is over. However, he refuses to increase my wages citing the company is still in its infancy. I realise that even if I work for yonks, I would achieve nothing tangible working at this fabric shop. It is better to quit and look for work somewhere. If something is not working, we must be quick to notice it and try something new. “Time lost is never recovered” as the saying goes. So many people today are trapped in ineluctable, deplorable circumstances because of failing to listen to the voice of reason.

A few months later, my boss fires me for being an instigator of failed workers’ uprising against poor working conditions. As an individual without a voice in a foreign country, I bear my cross with grace; otherwise, I could have taken the company to CCMA for unfair dismissal. However, I do not regret it, I move on with my life. My friend Davie is accommodating and invites me to stay with him in Gezina. The next day Davie comes at night with his uncle’s Toyota Cressida, I pack my books in a box and pull out my bag from under the bed and we hit the road to Gezina. Davie is working in Marabastad at a fabric shop. It is difficult for him to ask his boss to employ me as his boss is related to my previous boss.

I am now free like a bird. I have free time to read and write and think. We live in a two-bedroom flat. Davie and I have our own room to ourselves. His uncle and his wife sleep in the master bedroom. Two days ago, I bought a small bookshelf at a secondhand shop. I pack my books on the shelf and the room looks splendid with the books, a small table, and a desk. Luckily, his uncle has given us his reading light. I am not working now so I write now in the morning when everyone is gone to work. After lunch, in the afternoon I go to the park to read.

Presently, I am at the park reading Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. I read until sunset and Davie comes straight from work to pick me up. Davie is learning to drive. He is getting better and better with his driving lessons. His ambition is to learn to drive a truck. He is mad about truck driving. He finds me writing notes in my journal.

‘Are you done?’

‘Oh Yeah.’

‘Are you ready for a spin?’

‘You’re still an amateur.’

‘Will show you.’

We jump into the Toyota Cressida (MX62) GL sedan. The car has a starting problem. As instructed by his uncle, Davie takes a small hammer from under the seat. He gets out and opens the bonnet. He gives the starter a few raps and goes inside to start. The car starts. We cruise through the white neighbourhood under hostile looks from the balconies, their eyes shouting: Go back where you belong you two bobbejane! At a T-junction, the car switches off. Davie tries the magic of hitting the starter with a hammer but yields to nothing. We try to push start, to no avail. Soon we see a police van rumble to a stop before us. Two white policemen jump out.

‘What are you doing with the car?’ asks the fat policeman whose big belly threatens to spill over his belt.

‘The car cannot start?’ says Davie.

‘Are you trying to steal the car?’

‘This is my uncle’s car.’

‘People are complaining that you’re trying to steal the car.’

‘Let me phone my uncle.’

‘We’re giving you thirty minutes to make sure you leave this area,’ says the fat policeman as they get into the van and rumble away.

Davie taps once more with his small hammer on the starter. Luckily, as our thirty-minute grace period ends, the car comes to life. We leave the area and disappear immediately.

***

A week later, I find a job in Marabastad at the supermarket facing the taxi rank. Every morning we walk from Gezina to Marabastad and take a taxi to Gezina in the evening. My job is to watch the customers. I just watch them and do not stop them if I happen to see someone hiding something in the pocket or under the dress. Thieves know well that if they catch them, I am the one who would tip off the boss. One guy with crossed eyes and a knife scar that run from the forehead to the tip of his nose warned me one day at a taxi rank that he would kill me if I report him stealing to my boss. It is a dangerous job. I don’t understand why they cannot hire a security guard from a reputable security company; after all, the shop is busy all time and is making money.

Three days later, I am fired because I could not catch a thief stealing. My boss’ son nabbed a fat woman hiding a packet of 2kg frozen chicken in her long skirt. Immediately the boss called me to his office and fired me on the spot. He said I was doing nothing and I could be in cahoots with the thieves.

If a respectable-looking woman relinquishes her rationality and pilfers in a shop; there must be something wrong with our society. No vice so touches the common heart of humanity as does seeing a woman stealing.

I am now at the park reading but I cannot concentrate. My mind is befuddled with apprehension. I am starting to lose faith in this life. I try to find if there is meaning in this life. What is life? My father died three years ago leaving his five children and wife destitute. Death is so cruel that it has broken many homes and made many children orphans, yet the scriptures say those who feed the orphans would be rewarded in the hereafter. Yet people of this world look the other way.

I have lost faith in this city. It is making my life so miserable. I have to try my luck somewhere.

Cape Town rings in my head like a gong.

Why Cape Town?

I am in Cape Town now. It is late in the morning. Back in Pretoria, I have heard about the glitz and glittering V & A Waterfront. It is named after Prince Alfred, who was the first member of the royal family to visit the Cape Colony in 1860, and his mother Queen Victoria. Situated in the oldest working harbour in the southern hemisphere, the backdrop is the iconic Table Mountain with extensive views of the ocean, city bowl and surrounding mountain peaks.

Today, I decide to visit the place and see for myself. I walk from the Central Station on Adderley Street, admiring the buildings, whilst inhaling the salty breeze from the sea. It is 25 minutes easy stroll. On the way, I have seen the unfinished freeway bridge – The Foreshore Freeway Bridge – that was intended to be the Eastern Boulevard Highway that rims the city bowl. They started building it in the 1970s. Some people speculate that the funds ran out. Underneath, it has become the beehive of hobos.

Arriving at V & A Waterfront, I see a huge crowd of people – mostly white people – at the arena watching a man teetering on tight rope without a balancing stick. There are too many white people at one place, making us few blacks stand out and look like we’re profaning their amusement. But the man in the arena is our own. My curiosity pulls me like magnet to the arena. For me, I feel like the man is ridiculing himself and our race. The white people are enjoying his performance.  White people do not really like real things. They like fantasy and speculation. In real life, no man can walk on a slack rope, dance, and sway. He seems like he is walking on a wash line. Money is flashing into his bowler hat like raindrops. Now, the man picks up a heavy steel chair with his mouth and balances it in the air. There are oohs and aahs from the audience. He is dark, tall and well built like young Muhammad Ali. He wears a bandana around his head, and is shirtless. After watching him for a while, I find it too extraordinary and surreal. I weave my way out and start window-shopping until I see the seals basking in the sun. I watch them for a while. Then an idea crosses my mind that I must take a long journey by train. Sight-seeing. A train to read and think. Somewhere far from the madding crowd.

I am walking back to the train station. I decide to take a train to Fish Hoek. I will take 01 train that leaves in the next fifteen minutes. I hurry to buy a Metro Plus ticket. I have a book I am reading. I cannot concentrate reading if I travel on an economy class coach. Too much noise in economy class coaches and I have never seen a white person in an economy class coach.

White people do not like noise. They like silence and are quiet, and speak through their noises. Unlike us, we are loud and garrulous. They like silence to think deep thoughts while the opposite is true for us. We readily, with open hands accept what nature has bestowed on us; unlike the whites, when wind blows off the roof of his house, he asks why, who, how and tries to find the answer. And they say no wind shall blow off our roof next time – they make plans. For us, we just stand bewildered, our hands behind our heads and utter solemnly: Only God Knows.

White folks like to do everything by the book. They raise children by Google. Unlike us, we raise each other’s children and some of our mothers raise their children as their housemaids; the children find comfort sleeping peacefully on their backs unlike in the prams.  And they like to live far away from hustle and bustle of the city, in the mountains, enjoying the fresh air and feeling at peace, while we live behind the airport crammed in tin shacks and proudly proclaim to the world that; This is our beautiful country!

They say silence is gold and noise is silver. While we like noise – natural sounds. We find solace in it – so therapeutic to our sufferings. A day a mother finds her rowdy baby silent; she worries that he may be sick. Therefore, people who are very silent and withdrawn are somehow sick and dangerous; they conceal their emotions like a stammering man who cannot argue at length and resort to blows. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. White people live behind high walls in silence, unlike us the poor, who cannot afford high walls; hence we live crammed together like fingers of a hand, scratching each other’s backs. When one hand is hurt, the whole body (community) is hurt too; unlike living behind high fences, you can never know when your neighbour is hurting.

I step into the Metro Plus coach. Heads of white people turn at once and gawk at me as I take a seat. The seat is too fluffy and comfy unlike a train to Khayelitsha whose seat covers are ripped, windows forced out, and people sit on hard skeleton of seats and endure free rides. People swarm all over the train: on top, in front and others dangling their legs out of windows. I am a disturbance to their silence in this coach. However, there are glints of geniality in some, but I can still feel stabs of incivility projected at me by some. I swallow my brevity under the whim of free country and rainbow nation. I do not blame them because I know that they are still learning that black people are human too, like them with same blood cruising through their veins. When I take out my book, I am about to read, my seatmate, a white middle-aged man with shining crown of bald gazes at my book. I quickly put my palm over the title. His face grimaces in annoyance. He seems to be angry with me. He wants to read the title of my book while I cannot see the title of the book he is reading. I am reading O. Henry’s collection of short stories. Then suddenly the train jogs off into action.

Somewhere between Observatory and Mowbray station, I hear a huge bang as the door of our carriage is forced open. A tsunami of black people – men and women – stampede into our carriage. White people give a howl of shock and surprise. Ambushed in their comfort zone. The people are running away from ticket inspectors. They do not have tickets. When the train stops at a station, they all sprint out back to the last carriage and hop in, outwitting the inspectors. It is like watching the hide and seek game. They carry on like this until they have reached their destination and get off. They like free rides.

I have just finished writing my first draft of my manuscript – Of Inscrutable Providence, on A4 paper.  There are about three hundred and twenty pages, almost ninety thousand words. It looks like it would be a huge book. When finally, it lands in the hands of the surgeon (editor); he will dissect, mutilate and maim it and by the time it is returned to me – it would be unrecognisable, unpleasant writing, like food eaten and puked out. Like a solder riddled with bullets, yet fighting for his life, just to live again. And if it were a man whom the surgeon has worked on, he would come back home with only his feet. The only person to recognise the feet would be either his wife or his mother.

I am thinking of taking my manuscript to Kwela Books but I am a bit scared to face the editor. I feel he or she might spit on my manuscript as the work of an amateur. However, I am contented with it. It must go and test the knife like a troublesome bull.

Davie has joined me in Cape Town. He too got tired of mundane life in Pretoria. He says he missed me a lot. Davie is like a brother to me. He is three years younger than me. We are looking for a room to rent in Grassy Park. There are very few blacks in Grassy Park and we can count ourselves on the fingers of one man. There are no backyard rooms to rent here. Davie and I decide to take a chance around and ask for a room to rent. In Fourth Avenue, we see an elderly woman struggling to push out the wheelie bin. I run to give her a hand. She thanks us and asks us where we are living. I tell her we are temporarily hiding at the mosque and we are looking for a room to rent.

‘Come inside,’ she says.

Davie and I follow her into the yard. There is an old van rusting; its tyres sink into the ground. I have never seen a van like this one. It looks like an archaeologist has excavated it. We walk past it.

‘Do one of you know how to drive?’

There is a white Ford Escort XR3 standing in front of the garage door.

‘Yes, I can,’ says Davie.

The old woman, whom later we will learn her name to be Aunt Yusrah toddled into the house to fetch the keys. In a moment, she comes with the car keys and hand them to Davie to move the car. Davie reverses the car and perfectly parks it alongside the old van. She points her index finger at the garage door.

‘Open it,’ she says.

I struggle to lift up the heavy wooden door. Davie helps me to open. It squeaks on its dry hinges. The door has not been opened for some time. There is an old Mercedes Benz 280 inside standing on full pumped tyres. She asks us to move it out and make ourselves a room to stay. The car is caked with dust accumulated over years. We wipe off the dust with old newspapers littered around. The dust chokes us, I cough, and Davie coughs too. Luckily, there is a window, I open it, and the dust whooshes out. Davie shoves his hand through the window and grapples with the steering wheel as I push at the back. Surprisingly, the tyres are still hard and the car races smoothly out. We park it next to the old van. We clean the room until noon and Aunt Yusrah offers us biriyani rice and Double O cold drink for lunch.

After everything, we leave to fetch our stuff at the mosque. We do not have many possessions. I haul out my box of books and a Shangani bag. Davie has one bag too and a few utensils, which he parks in the cardboard box.  We carry our Shangani bags on our heads to a new place. Our friends at the mosque envy us. It is very distressing hiding at the mosque.

As we do not have a bed, Aunt Yusrah offers us an old rope bed and a mattress. She says the mattress belonged to her deceased brother. The ropes of the bed are so slack from overuse and weight of the previous slumberer. When two of us lay on it, it drops down in the middle and we look like we are sleeping on a hammock. It is difficult to get up, you have to lever up yourself by grabbing the edge of the bed and then lift up yourself. The rent is generously very low. We pay her three hundred rand a month.

Davie is working at a take-way fast food shop. He does not fail to bring me a packet of warm chips every night. I am working at Eezy Fitment Centre. I have nothing to bring him. Now I am doing a bit of mechanical work: suspension repairs, tyre fitting and exhaust fitting. I am getting four hundred and fifty rand a week, working Sunday to Sunday. Not that bad though, although it sounds unjust to magnanimous eyes. But I am a foreigner, I cannot complain.

One Wednesday morning I am off and I decide to go to a second-hand bookshop in Mowbray. The bookshop is in the second floor. I have to trek a flight of steps before landing in the world of books. The shelves are tightly packed with books. Books are everywhere, on the floor, tables and stools. The classical music is sizzling in the background. There is an old lady with big reading glasses perched on her nose. She sits behind the counter drinking coffee with a tome opened before her. Her head tilts to the left as if the weight of the words from the books were putting a strain on her neck. She flashes a smile at me. I head to the classic section, my work boots thumping the wooden floor. There is wide selection of books from great classic writers. I rush to the counter to get a shopping basket. I haul out Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky and drop it into the basket. Understanding Poetry Third Edition by Cleanth Brooks & Robert Warren, Confession by Jean Jacques Rousseau, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Time Machine by H.G. Wells and Voss by Patrick White follows.

I get off the taxi in Claremont, opposite the Arderne Gardens, cross the Main Road and walk in. I walk deep into the garden and find an empty bench under a leafy bough. I deposit my bag of books on the bench and sit down facing a pond. I get up to look into the pond. There are fish and ducks playing around. Two women dressed in mini-skirts and white T-shirts; their faces heavily groomed ogle me as they pass by. I go back to the bench and pick up a book that I started reading in the taxi.

I am reading Confession. The very first page has hooked me with these words from Narcissus. “Let the last trump sound when it will, I shall come forward with this work in my hand, to present myself before my Sovereign judge, and proclaim aloud: “Here is what I have done, and if by chance I have used some immaterial embellishment it has been only to fill a void due to a defect of memory.”

The two women distract me. They stop nearby. One pulls up her mini-skirt and reveals her tightly packed pudenda in red panties. I look away. Even though it has been three years now since I kissed a boob of a woman; I am not tempted.

‘Just fifty rand, quick, quick,’ says the other, making an obscene letter O with her left index finger and thumb, and repeatedly thrusting her right index finger into the O sign.

I pick up my books and trudge out of the park and at the bus stop; hop onto the Wynberg bound taxi.