LITMIR.BIZ

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It oozed out as sticky sweat that pooled in my armpits and trickled down the sides of my body. I was unable to escape its dripping stench as it took control of me.

      The horrors in my mind were awakened. I was trapped in them, forced to confront all that I dreaded. I slumped onto the mattress, petrified, waiting for the turning of the key. Waiting for my torturers to come. I tried desperately to control the fear. I needed to survive for three days. What was going to be was going to be. I had to accept the inevitability of torture. I was terrified that I would not be strong enough to survive.

      I had no idea of what was to come. We had been too optimistic and confident in our assessment. We overestimated our abilities to survive. We underestimated the enemy’s capacity. The sacrificial pawns exacted a much greater price than I had expected. A price that my family also had to pay. And although they paid it willingly, the experience was to mark them forever.

      Yet detention brought me into contact with the man who would become the Nightingale. And my interactions with him changed the direction of my life. We became players in an exciting but dangerous game. He was a Security Branch officer in the belly of the beast. I was a comrade in the underground. Meeting him was opportune. Carpe diem. I seized the moment.

      2

      I was born in the time of apartheid, 1959, a few years before South Africa became a republic. This piece of history stands out for me, not because of the event itself, but because it was the year my mother left us. I was two years old.

      I was the fifth son in a noisy brood of boys, in a family with a complicated past. My biological mother was of mixed descent. Her half-white genes mingled with my father’s Indian ones creating in her offspring an interesting blend. We looked different, a shade somewhere in the middle of apartheid’s categories. Because we looked different, we were treated differently. We inhabited the uncomfortable spaces in between races in a country obsessed with classification.

      I was a highly sensitive child. I felt – and still ‘feel’ – too much. I hurt too easily and often life simply overwhelms me. I used to be in terror of my sensitivity. Tears came easily and were a constant source of embarrassment both for me and my brothers. To survive in a household of boys, I learnt to hide my sensitive side. Boys can be harsh with one another even in their playful games.

      Rabia, my mother, and Lambie, my father, met and married in Johannesburg. She had a son, Selim, from a previous marriage, and her sons with Lambie came in quick succession: Faizal (1954), Schabir (1956), Yunis (1957) then me, and in 1960, Shamim.

      Apart from having so many children Rabia and Lambie did not have much of a relationship. A year after Rabia left, she was killed in a motor vehicle accident, so I never knew her and I have no memory of her. Nor did Lambie ever speak about why she left, no matter how often I asked him. He kept that door tightly shut.

      I came to accept that Rabia gave birth to us and then simply left. Whatever her reasons for doing so, all I know is that her absence left in me a debilitating fear of abandonment. Her leaving was a secret whispered only among those who knew and evoked in me an insatiable curiosity. From an early age I developed an obsession with unravelling secrets.

      My father’s silence about her was impenetrable and because of this she intrigued me to no end. His silence and the distance Rabia’s family kept from us compounded the mystery of my mother. Some of Rabia’s sisters chose to live a ‘white life’ in apartheid South Africa. Perhaps our blended hues reminded them of everything they wanted to deny.

      Much to our good fortune, our neighbour in Springfield took pity on my father and his boisterous brood. Kaye Maharaj looked after us during the day, and at night she enjoyed my father’s company. They soon fell in love and married. She accepted us as her own and later, in 1966, gave birth to my sister, Rehana. It remains a testimony to Kaye’s good nature that she never used the terms ‘stepmother’ or ‘stepchildren’. Rehana was a wonderful addition to a family of boys and crept into our hearts. Because of her, we could, for a while, stop being boys.

      The circumstances of our lives created a strong bond among my siblings. We learnt to take care of and look out for one another. Faizal, being the eldest, was put in charge. He washed us, fed us and played with us. This burdensome responsibility meant Faizal didn’t have much of a childhood, but he looked after us with the single-minded dedication of a loving parent.

      Because I was terrified of the dark, it fell to Yunis to comfort me at night and to accompany me on those scary night calls to the toilet. He always acted as a gracious guardian to both Shamim and me, and this was why, in that moment with Ebrahim, I trusted him implicitly. He would look out for me. He was my brother who was afraid of nothing, who possessed the remarkable ability to endure hardships. Life had endowed him with an inner resilience.

      A house full of boys is a complicated and messy place. From a young age my sensitive nature demanded order and tidiness. The disorder and clutter of my brothers disturbed my equilibrium. Over time this desire for order became another of my obsessions.

      Raising children was not easy for my parents. They worked hard to overcome the trapping economics of the working class. We were well fed, but nothing went to waste. Our needs were taken care of but our wants were subjected to the balance between expenditure and income. Clothing was bought, darned when necessary and became hand-me-downs worn with pride and swagger. Our way of life was happy, and this cemented the bond between us.

      Yunis, Shamim and I hung out together. We became a ‘gang’ in a rough neighbourhood full of gangs. We had to fight to win the respect of the street. We took care of one another and became adept at navigating street life, mastering the ability to detect trouble and danger.

      I don’t know when it started but I became addicted to the art of observation. I sought answers through observation and became a keen surveyor of people and the unspoken communication between them. I enjoyed the ‘thrill’ that came from decoding non-verbal communications. My life as a spy began early.

      My parents enveloped us in a family life that had an aura of openness with lots of fun, a fair share of trauma, heated debates and numerous political discussions. We came to embrace our ‘otherness’ as giving substance and meaning to our mixed identity.

      My father was a worldly political animal who encouraged in us a consciousness of change. He had a passion for reading and insisted we do the same. Through endless discussions in a smoke-filled house he infected us, especially Yunis and me, with the dreams of revolution.

      Yunis and I went to the University of Durban-Westville, a segregated one for Indians, in the immediate aftermath of the Soweto Uprising in 1976 when African school children revolted against apartheid education policies. The politics of that time were dominated by the Black Consciousness Movement led by the charismatic Steve Biko.

      The uprisings awoke political voices across the country’s universities. These were exciting times of student mass meetings, of protest songs, marches, class boycotts, defiance and resistance. This was when we broke free from the forced complacency of our parents’ generation. This was the time that fuelled the dreams of a better future and the realisation that the apartheid state could be defeated. It was the calling of our generation.

      If there was a watershed year in that time it was 1980. This was the year that ‘Indian’ and ‘Coloured’ students rose against apartheid in the way that ‘African’ students had done a few years earlier. Our segregated universities became the centre of the struggle against apartheid. From the universities the uprising spread to the schools and soon entire communities were involved.

      Joining the ANC was a natural progression. In this Yunis travelled to Swaziland and made contact with ANC representatives. He returned as the head of a newly established underground unit called MJK, named after the affable ANC leader, Mandla Judson Khuzwayo. Yunis’s first act as leader of this unit was to recruit me. It was a moment I cannot forget.

      I had completed my studies at university, graduating with degrees in science and optometry. In 1984, I opened an optometry practice. As it turned out, this was a perfect cover for our underground activities.

      The ANC was a banned organisation and to be accepted

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