He shook his lethargic self alert, checked his belt for the firearm he always carried, and drove slowly toward the specified location. Green foliage, dust, and the tormented hum of the old patrol car enveloped him. From the other side of the street, workers on bakkies unleashed loud music, thick with drums and a lot of “ho hoy ho.” From inside a large compound to his right, a pack of dogs yelped and howled. In the car was a half-eaten sandwich he had forgotten to throw out. He felt tired and bored despite the invigorating smell of Cape Doctor, sweetened by the aroma of ripe cantaloupes.
Some two hundred meters away, facing a line of trees and bushes, a group of people stood intently, their gazes glued ahead. His car crawled to a quiet stop behind the gathered group and he jumped out of the car, which wasn’t as easy as it looked considering the extra weight he had carried into his fifties.
The crowd moved aside so he could properly investigate the crime scene. He loved such deference. In front of him, he saw a skinny young man, most probably in his early twenties, sitting on the ground with his back against a tree trunk, dead. There was not much hair on his face except a crescent-shaped goatee. His eyes were half open and directed downward. On his crotch was an oval object covered with something green and half burned. Delani could not immediately figure out what it was. To the right and left of him on a high fence, yellow clivia and black-eyed Susans shimmered. From behind the fence, he could hear loud voices boasting in Afrikaans. Delani stood in front of the man and studied him thoroughly. He had to analyze the evidence before he made any crazy assumptions. Despite the constant threat of a heart attack, he had no fear of death. To him, dead people were cool, because dead people couldn’t kill you.
Delani felt he had seen the dead guy someplace before, though he was not sure where. He had known a lot of doppelgängers in his line of work, yet this one seemed somehow more real. Delani walked around the body.
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pair of gloves, and put them on carefully. How do I know you? He turned back to the audience and said, “Anyone touched him?”
They all shook their heads.
He checked his gloves and stepped closer to the dead man, who wore an old Levi’s jacket and khaki pants the color of soil. His belt was still in place — no indication of any fight or skirmish, and no sign of a bullet hole. In the middle of his chest was a necklace with a strange type of cross-shaped pendant. There were lumps on both his left and right chest pockets. Delani carefully lifted the flap of one of the pockets and gently took out a harmonica, its silvery plates pimpled with rust, the holes stuffed with dust and lint. Delani studied the thing for few seconds and returned it back to its place. He then fumbled in the second pocket and pulled out a few torn papers and an ID. He was relieved. When he unfurled the papers, he found that they were blank. He put them back in the pocket and started on the ID, which was old and green, made of cheap paper, and frayed on all of its corners. He had never seen this type of ID before, even though he thought he had seen every type that came and left Durban. He couldn’t read the writing but could tell it was in Amharic. Since the photo matched the victim’s face, he knew the dead man was Ethiopian. He stood up and took two pictures of the ID, then walked to a shady spot and called an old friend, Olmaz.
Olmaz was a woman he had met at Max’s Lifestyle seven years earlier. She was a frail, quiet immigrant who had some serious ambition.
“Hello Olmaz, how are you? I was wondering if you could help me. I have a dead man from your country and I need to identify him, but his ID is in Amharic. Can you translate the card for me? I am sending you some image files. Please, beautiful woman? I’ll send you a close-up. But it is not good, okay?”
He ended the call and slowly walked back, his eyes fixed on the object resting on the dead man’s lap. He pulled out a pen from his shirt pocket and used the tip of it to cautiously lift the corner of a leaf to see what was underneath.
Without realizing it, he started whistling Thandiswa Mazwai’s “Nizalwa Ngobani,” a song he used to love. He felt old. Suddenly, an old white man with creamy blue eyes and the build of an aged boxer called out from behind. He turned.
“Officer, I saw that thing coming in.”
“What thing?”
“The thing on the man. I was heading down Citrus Drive, and I saw it coming from the north, flying. Yes, sir! Flying. I thought it was a big bird or a kite. But this thing had no tail or head or wings or string attached to it. I got closer, and it looked like a block of marble with leaves stuck to it. It turned to the right and slowly moved to the tree where the dead man was. This thing quietly hovered over the dead body. I was afraid and wanted to run away, but I was too curious. The thing landed on his lap so gently. Believe me, sir.”
“What?” Delani could not believe this delusional man.
Then the phone buzzed. It was a message from Olmaz. He read: The name is Geleta Fiqre Abdurahman. He put the phone back into his pocket and turned to the dead man. With some certainty, he pulled a Swiss Army knife, a Soldatenmesser 08, out of his pocket and stuck it into the oval object. The blade went through it easily. He pulled out the knife and smelled the blade. He was suddenly impatient, and stuck the knife back into the thing.
He cut a slice and brought the piece close to his nose and smelled it. He could not believe it. He sniffed several more times, just to be sure. In amazement, Delani turned back to the few remaining spectators, stood up, and uttered: “It is bread. Oven fresh.”
Suddenly, he saw the faces of the onlookers change. They were losing their composure. He turned to the dead man to see what was going on. To his surprise, there was red liquid dripping out from the center of the bun. An indescribable fear coursed through him. He tried to compose himself and knelt down, watching in wonder.
He was a policeman, so he had to do what he had to do. With the knife still in his hands, he dipped the tip in the oozing red liquid. Nothing supernatural or extraordinary happened. He wiped the drop on his glove and waited for some sort of surprise to occur. He then lowered his face and smelled the blob.
“What?” he whispered. Then he sniffed again. “What is blood doing inside a bun?” he asked, louder this time, staring at the group of people watching him in confusion.
Tabot Maderia Blues
(Seven people sit around a large table drinking beer in a bar. They listen attentively to a man by the name of Zerihun, called Zerish by his friends.)
“You see, it was Tuesday, the middle of Pagume, a few days left before the New Year. I think it was the only morning I was ever late to work because I could not find a taxi or a bus. I was walking behind this woman wearing white clothes, so white that it was strange. She was literally glowing. Why was her shemma so white? (Some shrug, disinterested.) She turned back and saw me. She stared at me as if to say something. Why did she turn back unless she intended to say something? Her eyes were golden like a Meskel daisy. Have you seen yellow eyes before? No, I was not drunk. (A few exchange glances, laughter caught in their throats.) I did not drink even a glass the night before. Okay, maybe I had a couple of glasses, but I was not drunk. Suddenly, I felt like I knew her, like she was a member of my family, like she was my mother.