Chapter Seven

As I wake for the next time, I’m lying on some soft ground. I open my eyes and find myself in a light room. My waist is stripped so somebody has apparently pulled of my shirt. Some strange thick peace of cloth lies on my body. My eyes wander trough the room. The walls are painted in a light green. There are many objects that I do not know. I need to cough. A few seconds later, somebody knocks on the door and is in after seconds.
“So you are awake now?” The voice which I already remember from the last time says.
“You really need to drink something. Have a try to come up, I’ll help ya.” I do as he tells me. The boy leads a small bin of glass to my mouth. I drink timidly, my throat hurts.
“I also brought some bread. Soon you should have a try to eat a bit.”
“Why are you doing all that for me?”
“You are one of us! Martin Luther King told us to stand as one and to help each other!”
“You know that Mr. King?” I sink back to ground.
“Of course! Everybody knows him here. He is the most mentioned topic in the streets. Even the Whites are talking about him. He makes them angry. Did ya also hear about him in Africa?”
“My brother Rashid named him sometimes”. The sound of his name cords up my throat.
“He came with you?”
“He should. But I saw him in the port of Kapstadt for the last time.” As the boy sees my sad face he says:
“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” A deep silence falls.
“Are you hungry?” I shrug. The boy hands me a piece of bread.
“Sorry. What did you say was your name?”
“Nabil.” He outstretches his hand.
“Nice to meet you.”

I’m already able to leave that thing called “bed” now. Nabil says that I’m at his house since three weeks now. I feel better everyday. This house seems like paradise to me. Nabil says that they are not very rich but I cannot see what he means. I got to know his family; his mother and his two sisters. His father also died when Nabil was a child. Nabil’s mother Halina is great. She really cares about me and already treats me like a son.
“I hope you will soon be able to leave the house,” she said this morning.
“Of course you will,” added Nabil.
“In a few days Martin Luther King will come to Washington. Incredible, to WASHINGTON!”

It is August 28, 1963. Nabil told me that this would be a date which needed to be marked in the calendar. What ever that means! The whole yesterday Nabil ran through the house nervously. He told me much about King the last weeks and I’m waiting in suspense to see the person which made my brother come here. My brother whom I have lost.

“Come on Mali”, cries Nabil.
“We’re going by bus to the city centre”.
“By what?” Nabil smiles.
“Come on, I’ll show ya!” Nabil explains the meaning of “public transport. I did see cars in my life but I never went by one.
The bus is totally overcrowded by black people. They are all talking pell-mell. Half an hour later (Nabil explained the meaning of “clocks” to me) the bus stops and the mob takes off.
“Just follow the crowd and give me your hand so we are not loosing each other,” screams Nabil. I hesitate but as he is edged out further and further away I quickly grab the hand of my friend.
After some walk we finally reach a gigantic place which is all full of people. I’m so fascinated that I can’t speak a word. For infinite time I stand there and just watch the masses. Suddenly I have to rub my eyes. I think I’m dreaming cause this cannot be true. At the other end of the place there is Rashid through the crowd. As I stare at him our eyes meet. For a long moment we just stand there looking at each other. Then we both start to run. At this one moment I forget about the whole past: All the pain, all the fear, all the suffering. Rashid was not dead. The two of us were in America. Together. I make my way through the crowd and run as fast as possible. As I reach Rashid we are hugging each other as like we hadn’t seen for years. Then Rashid lets off and looks me in the eyes.
“Know what Malik? You are my real KING”.

Chapter Six

Against all expectations the last journey had not taken long. As I puke some gall, my jail had moved again which didn’t really made me feel better. But just a short period of time later, the box stood still and just now it becomes a little bit lighter inside of the box. I hear voices again. Somebody murmurs disgusted and apparently he converges to the box. Indeed there is somebody working on the boxes lid. My fear is unbearable. They will find me and then everything will be over!
The lid is pushed aside. The daylight blinds me and I’m holding an arm in front of my eyes. The person outside of the box starts screaming. I can’t see a thing but suddenly somebody grabs me at both arms and pulls me out of the box. The person is shouting at me and somebody kicks at my back. I can only groan silently. The person holding me suddenly unhands and with my head first I fall some feet down. I thud on a very hard ground and faint.

“Hullo? Hulloohoo?” Am I’m in heaven and this is the voice of God?
“Boy are you alive?” I blink but at once I close my eyes again.
“What happened to you my friend?” Maybe this is actually heaven. I can understand the words.
“Rashid?”
“No, it’s Nabil. Who are you?”
“Where am I?” I try to open my eyes again. Slowly I can loom the shades of some person.
“You are close to Washington, friend. So who are you?” Little by little my eyes get a bit used to the light.
“Mali”.
“So what happened to you?”
“Don’t know.”
“Ya come from far away?”
“Yah.”
“Afrika?”
“Yah.”
“I see. I already thought so as I found ya. I originally came from there, too.”
“Where from?”
“Kenia”.
“Never heard.”
“And you?”
“Close to Kapstadt.”
“When did ya arrive here?”
“Don’t know”.
“Long ago?”
“Nop. Tonight I thing or the last one.”
“I see. So it’s been a cop who mangled you like that?”
“Like what?”
“Boy you’re bleeding all over your face!” Just when he says so I recognize that my head is hurting like it would burst asunder this minute. I try to lift my hand up and touch my head. I feel something warm and fluid on my front. Everything blurs and it becomes dark.

Chapter Five

I don’t know for how long I’m lying here like that. It had taken hours in the port until my box was heavily shaken and pulled in the air. Some time later it was put down ungently somewhere.
I cannot imagine how many days passed by. I guess I’m somewhere in a depot which is totally dark. That’s why I cannot even see if it’s night or day. I can hardly move because I’m lying in between some small brown bullets which smell very heavily. I guess yesterday I lost consciousness. I cannot any longer feel the hunger but just feel totally sick. I managed to drink a bit of water every now and then which was hard enough in that density. I cannot bear the fug any longer that is in the box because of my excrements. Now I know what Rashid meant as he said that the travel would last very long. And now I can interpret his scary view as he said so. I know that everyday can be my last one now, I feel it. I’m too rooted to cry or to scream. It’s just that I’m happy all the time I wake up again and see I’m not dead.

The box starts shaking. I’m not quiet sure if I’m hallucinating after all but it seems like the box would move. I feel my heart beating faster so I know that I’m still alive. I recognize that there is something going on in real outside because I hear some voices. I cannot get what they say cause I don’t understand the words they are using. That can just mean one thing: We reached America!
Some wee bit of light shines trough a little chink so I see that it’s daytime. The light gets brighter, the movement heavier and there are more people talking. Some are screaming which sounds like orders while there are also other loud sounds. Suddenly the box starts to swing from left to right and back. It’s so heavy that I fear it will fall to the ground and then that would be the end of my American story. People are screaming hectically outside so I guess they fear the end of their brown balls story with which I share the box. But then the heavy rush stops as fast as it had come and the box dashes with a loud crash on the ground. I feel queasy. But instead of staying on the ground for a minute, the box starts moving again. Its not swinging but it’s going forwards. A penetrative siren shrills from outside. It takes a few minutes until the box stands still again. But just a few seconds later it moves upwards and then forwards for another time. At least I guess so because I cannot really coordinate the directions anymore. For a few minutes there is no movement. I still hear people talking outside but then I hear a loud bang and suddenly it’s completely quiet and dark. I’m locked-in somewhere.
“Rashid?” I cry with a cracked voice. Nothing but silence. I need to vomit.

Chapter Four

We walked for the whole day. My feet are already bleeding. Thank God that Rashid has a friend who had to do him a favour so that he gave us a bottle of water and two small scraps of bread. We arrived two hours ago at the port and now the bottle of water is one third emptied and one piece of bread is already eaten up.
The night just broke. Bobo told us goodbye an hour ago and waving for a last time he disappeared in the darkness. I’m sitting alone on the floor now, hiding behind some big container and waiting for Rashid. He’s looking for a possibility how to get on the freighter. I’m tired but it’s not the time to sleep and I’m hungry but I have to keep the last piece of bread for the travel. I start dreaming away to America. Fear and excitement mix up in my mind. Suddenly a loud noise ends my reverie. I jump and look back over my shoulder to the sea. A gigantic container ship lands in the port and honks loudly. The big monstrosity is painted in dark blue and there is a white writing on his front. Unfortunately I can’t read it. But I’m sure: this thing would be the start of our new life. For the first time since weeks I smiled.

After some hours Rashid appears out of the darkness. With rapid steps he comes close.
“Hurry up, we have to leave,” he whispers and pushes me forward.
“Where to go?”
“Shhh! Be quiet!” Rashid stops at the end of the container.
“Ya see that wooden box over there?” He points at a place around 100 feet away. I nod.
“When I give you a sign, we will both run over there, hid behind it and you will go in there soonest possible.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t care about me! I’ll find something else! There is no place in that box for the two of us! It will even become tight for you.”
“How long will it take to America?”
“Long. Very long.” I guess I saw fear in his eyes as he said so.
“Have a look Mali. It is absolutely necessary that you keep quiet all the time at all costs. Maybe one cough will be enough to bust. So give me half of the bread and I take a bit of water in the bottle I found in the garbage over there. Take the rest with you.”
“When will we meet again?”
“When it’s the time to. No more questions now Mali, we have to concentrate.” Rashid stares through the dark.
“See that man with the cap? He’s a cop. If he’s away we’ll have a try”. I peer to follow the man’s steps in the dark. Suddenly my brother pulls my arm and starts to run. I try to follow. I can feel my blood pulsing in my temples as I run after Rashid. I just have to pass 20 feet to get to our new hideaway but suddenly there is a bright beam of light behind me. The policeman is coming back! I up the tempo for another time and just in time I reach the box and the light sheers off. I breathe heavily. I want to say something but Rashid quickly puts his hand over my mouth with a warningly look.
As the beam of light is totally gone, Rashid starts to potter around the lid of the wooden box. He is very well coordinated so he copes to open the box within seconds.
“Go in”, he whispers energetically. Still paralyzed with fear I try to move. Rashid helps me to climb in the box.
“Take care”, he says in front of shutting the box over my head. I hear some noises at the other side of the wood and then footsteps which are diverging.

Chapter Three

That night Rashid lionized from Martin Luther King until he fall asleep by effeteness. I could not sleep because I was all churned up inside. I was torn between admiration and disbelief. A black man fighting for equality of blacks and whites, was he joking? A black man wanting to enforce rules that also whites should follow. That was impossible. No black man will ever speak over whites. Never! In the anthill there are no rules at all! There are not even blacks telling other blacks what to do. But the more Rashid was talking about King, the more he was step by step making a decision. He wanted to get to America at all costs. But I had my doubts. It had always been a dream to go away but for me it had always been a dream for dreaming away and not a dream for coming true. It had nothing to do with reality but with thinking of something better when I was sad. But when Rashid woke the next morning, he was totally clear: “We leave that night”. He would never have left me back here so the decision he had taken had been a decision for the two of us. All my live I had done what Rashid had asked me to do without thinking about it. But this time it was different.
“I don’t wanna come”.
“It’s not a question of what ya want anymore! Animal or human, hunger or food, life or death, that’s it!” I thought for a minute.
“Who tells us that it will be better in America?”
“Mr. King does!”
“You don’t know that man. What if he’s lying? In the anthill I have at least some friends, in America there might be nothing!” Rashid looked down.
“You will have me.”

At this moment it had been decided. There was no choice for me. I knew that Rashid would loose all hopes in his life if I would not come.
“But how do we get there?” I asked him.
“My friend Bobo worked at the port for the last two years. He said sometimes he could do a good deal with some crew members of the big freighters. But working in the port is more dangerous cause ya have to care extremely about the harbour police.”
“So ya wanna go by ship?”
“Well, do ya wanna swim over the ocean?” I said nothing.
“Of course by ship. Once in two weeks there is a big freighter going from Kapstadt to Washington. The next one will be tomorrow night so we have to hurry up.” Silence was my answer.

We left in the morning. If we had been able to write, maybe we would have left a note for our siblings (which will possibly never return to our flat again) but first of all we cannot write and second they wouldn’t be able to read it.
Rashid forbade me to tell somebody personally about our plans. He said maybe my friends would disclose us faster than we could have a try to leave.
I did not sleep all night long. We left silently shortly after sunrise and now we are on our long way to the port. We are lucky cause Bobo came home two days ago to bring some of his earnings to his family. He always does this only once a month cause the distance from the port to the Anthill is too long to visit more often. That’s why Bobo is going back to the port today and he’ll shows us the way.
“Do ya come with us to America?” I look at Bobo.
“Naw, that’s impossible peewee! Our common way ends at the port. I have to care for my family in the anthill and my mother is too old and sick for doing adventures!” While he said ‘adventure’, my heart suddenly started pounding.

Chapter Two

Two weeks ago, my dream suddenly started to take a definite outline. It was when Rashid came home from Kapstadt with a shiner and a bloody lip. A white shop owner found out that Rashid was not only selling tobacco in front of his shop. He was like “ya fucking black monkey go away and never show up here again or I bet I’ll kill ya”. He gave Rashid a shove and was back again in the shop. Of course Rashid began to run away as far as he could. But when he was on the dusty path from Kapstadt to the anthill he was suddenly brought to the floor by a few men. They were screaming at him, telling him he was a black piece of shit and all that. They were kicking him in the face and in the stomach until he laid still.

Rashid came home at nighttimes. As he told me he must have laid there for some hours unconscious. Then he came home not only with broken ribs but also with a broken heart. It had not been for the first time that he was staved. I recognized that every time he had been treated that violently, he broke a little bit more inside.
The following week we had nearly nothing to eat or drink. Rashid had to cure his blessings in our cottage and he did not want me to do his job. So I was searching in the entire anthill to get at least a bottle of water and a small piece of bannock from some friends. I didn’t eat a thing at that week and gave all the food to Rashid. When I sat down near his tattered sleeping mat, he said “Mali, this it no live. We are treated like sucking vermin and if you don’t look sharp, you will sooner be dead than you guess. We’ve to leave the anthill and leave all that behind us.” Rashid had this gleaming in his eyes.
“Did ya ever hear of Martin Luther King?” he looked at me expectant.
“Nop”, I answered what was not surprising because the only unknown people I hear of are new born babies in the anthill or some whites from Kapstadt who become well known in our midst very soon when they are extremely violent and we have to take special care.
“He is fighting for the rights of blacks in America”.
“Where do ya know that from?”
“The radio in that white man’s shop.” Rashid had told me about these “radios” a few times before. I never saw one and was absolutely fascinated when Rashid told me about stories from the radio.
“You’d been in that white man’s shop?” I asked unbelievingly.
“Of course not! He’d turned the radio on as far as it will go to attract customers. I stood in front of his shop and listened carefully. I guess the white man did not like my eavesdropping that much.“
“So thanks to that Mr. King you got your blessings, right?”
“Don’t be that ironic but listen to what I have to tell you about that Mr. King”.

Chapter One

I’m Malik but people just call me Mali. My brother Rashid started calling me like that cause he said “Malik means king. You are too small to be a king so you are Mali – a little prince”. Rashid is roughly five years older than me and he had always been like a father to me. In reality he is just my half brother.

I never got to know my real father. He visited Kapstadt for some “business dealings”. His business included a little trip outside of Kapstadt to our small ghetto called “anthill” (it got its name because we’re living on a small hill that is very overpopulated and people have no real goal so they are wandering around). I don’t know if my sire had a soft spot for animals but above all he treated people here like that. When he walked around at the anthill and saw my mother outside of our ramshackle hut he violently grabbed her and tore her into the flat. My mum landed on the floor next to my oldest brother Kimotho who was quickly pulled out. The door was shut from inside and my brother had to bear my mums screams as the douchebag were doing his “business”. Afterwards nobody saw him at the anthill again. It was Kimotho telling me that story as I asked for my father but he just told me once and we never talked about it again.

Mum died when I was five years old. I don’t know what she suffered from but I recognize that she lost all her hair in front of the death. My memories of her are fading increasingly. Rashid told me that she was a silent woman but she always tried the best to keep her family alive.

All in all I have five brothers and three sisters. At least these eights are the ones I know. I’m the youngest one and most of my siblings left the anthill long time ago. Rashid was different from them. He always felt responsible for me. When I was hungry he started a thoughts- excursion with me. In our thoughts we ate the most sumptuous food and that made me feel better for a short moment of time. When I was sad, Rashid told me stories about far away countries where everybody has food and where all the people were nice to each other.

Every day, Rashid goes to the city centre of Kapstadt and tries to sell drugs or normal tobacco. Rashid just once used drugs himself but he nearly died afterwards because Lord knows what mixture Rashid had consumed. Afterwards he never took drugs again and he always tried to keep me away from it. “It makes you weird” he told me and because I also did what he told me, I never had a try.

Rashid knows what kind of black business he is doing but somehow we need to get some food. I contribute to our income by ransacking the garbage hills for butts which have still a bit tobacco left. I collect them all, scribe the paper and roll the tobacco into new papers to new cigarettes. Some years ago I got also used to prepare the drugs. I don’t know where Rashid gets the basic stuff from but we have to punch it to get more out of it.

It was about three years ago, when Rashid came back from Kapstadt that he began talking about the big America. America, the land of freedom where everybody can live in peace without drugs, without violence. The stories about America were the best stories Rashid ever told. I began to believe in that dream world and every time I was blue, I dreamed me away to America. That’s how everything started: America was a dream.