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”.