had his own room. Through the closed door we heard him loudly crying out. The nurse looked at the shock in my eyes.
‘He wants a painkiller. That’s how the addicts are. Especially the wunga boys. They’re so desensitised to drugs that they need four times the required dose of painkillers. They also like the opiates in it – makes the detox bearable.’
‘Those drops please. I’m dying of pain. Please, nurse, I’m dying here,’ Dumisani moaned in a mumbly, thick voice as we entered.
Both his legs had multiple breaks with a network of wires and screws running lengthwise along them. His left arm was in a cast, his other arm had stitches running down from shoulder to wrist. He was severely disfigured – his head grotesquely swollen, a stitched gash on his forehead. The upper front teeth were missing. A big chunk of his left ear was also severed. I had never seen anything like it before.
‘Please, nurse. Please!’ Dumisani pleaded.
‘I’m fetching it now, don’t worry,’ she said.
I asked Dumisani for his side of the story after she left.
‘I only remember the ride from Umlazi to Claremont and absolutely nothing after that. I did not believe it when they told me what happened. I thought I’d been in a car accident. Those idiots got me good. I was told that rocks broke my legs, a panga sliced my face, a knife my ear, and a hammer broke my fingers.’
His voice got softer as if talking was tiring him out and I scraped the visitor’s chair closer. I could barely look – that close to him the injuries were nastier, bruises everywhere, every inch of exposed skin was black and blue.
The nurse returned and injected something into the IV drip in Dumisani’s arm. Dumisani winced and adjusted back to a comfortable position. That grimace revealed that he had lost most of his bottom teeth as well.
‘They tell me Simphiwe disappeared into thin air,’ he said. ‘That boy has my respect because he has never been in jail, but he plays the part of a crook well. He knows that the number doesn’t shift backwards, it only moves forwards.’
Dumisani went on rambling. Over and above the pain he suffered there seemed to be a sense of pride in the events that led him to that hospital bed. According to the warped crook mentality he picked up in juvenile jail, it was probably a step up. It was just as well that the painkiller took over quickly, because the drivel he was speaking made me want to shut him up. He fell asleep and even then that same careless, proud smirk prevailed. I had to physically restrain my right hand with the left, because the right wanted to strangle the life out of him.
For the next two days we scoured hospitals and drug dens with my Uncle Clive. I hardly slept, surviving on ten-minute naps while we drove around searching. What woke me up each time was what I saw during those naps: Simphiwe with his back to me, then disappearing.
On the afternoon of the second day, I woke from one of those naps to see Uncle Clive looking straight at me. We were at a red traffic light. He kept his eyes on me until the light turned green and we drove off.
‘Khulekani, we must try other means. There are people with gifts out there; we must try traditional healers as well. There is one in Port Shepstone. I hear he is good at finding the lost. I know my sister doesn’t believe in that world, but in the situation we are in we have to try everything. Saved or not saved, we are still African,’ he said.
‘I have been dreaming of him since he disappeared, but more so in the last two days. He has his back to me and disappears when I focus. If the healer can help us find him, we should visit him,’ I said.
‘We have to wake up early tomorrow because Port Shepstone is far. We must be on the road by half past three at the latest.’
After a long silence he added, ‘We have to start searching morgues as well. Better sooner than later.’
That night I switched my cellphone off and cried. I tried to sleep, hoping to find Simphiwe in my dreams. But sleep was elusive, so I stared into the dimness of our room, faintly lit by the streetlight outside. I could see Simphiwe’s drawing, the one of a shimmering lake, come to life. I turned away from his art to the blank wall on my side of the room, shell-shocked that it had finally come to traditional healers and morgues.
I switched my phone on around two in the morning. There were several voice messages from Detective Shange, and one text message from Anele. She was just checking on me. Asked why I had missed the latest test; said working on test papers was no fun without me.
Detective Shange was serious in the voice messages. ‘Call me when you get this,’ all his messages said. I didn’t bother to return his calls. I was in no mood to talk about bribes. I opened the curtain and saw Uncle Clive parked at the gate. I had one of Simphiwe’s T-shirts with me. An item of clothing was necessary in aiding the traditional healer to find him.
While we were driving to Port Shepstone, Detective Shange called repeatedly – first from his cell number, then from his office number. So finally I answered.
‘There is someone at the station you need to see immediately.’ My heart filled my chest with one loud thump as I mistook what he said to mean they had found and arrested Simphiwe. Before I could speak, he proceeded: ‘He says he knows where your brother is.’
‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Keep him there,’ I said.
Uncle Clive changed route and stepped on it.
In Shange’s office there was a man in his late fifties. Introductions were made. This serene man was a traditional healer from Eshowe, north of the coast. He was the opposite of the traditional healer stereotype, being clean-shaven, with no beads, no traditional garb, swank trousers and shirt, and his shoes were definitely imported Italian Mauri. Manqele was his name.
I learned later that he was something of a rock star in the world of traditional healing. He made his name during the floods of 1987 when he recovered over thirty drowned bodies. He knew the location, date and time when a corpse would wash up on shore, or resurface bloated and face-down in rivers and lakes. Over the years his gift of finding grew, and he started to find the living. Locating runaways, missing children, and young professionals no longer calling home since they moved to Gauteng made him a mountain of money. He looked at Uncle Clive and spoke softly and slowly.
‘Two days ago I was in Pinetown blessing a new house for a client. While I was doing my work, I was overpowered by a vision. Visions come to me when people approach me to find their lost ones, but this time it came to me before I was approached. I went back to Eshowe but what I was seeing grew stronger; it gained detail. Yesterday a voice started to partner the vision. It told me to come here and ask about a beating. I am seeing him now as we speak. He is wearing a blue T-shirt and black jeans, black-and-red shoes. He looks like this boy you are with, but darker.’
‘Is he alive there, the place where he is?’ I quizzed.
‘His eyes are open. There are a lot of trees. Take me to where it all happened, and I’ll find him.’
Detective Shange drove us to the scene. When we got there, Manqele stood in the centre of the road and looked around for a while. He stood still in the darkness and right then I recalled that my new sneakers, the ones Simphiwe was wearing without my permission, were black and red.
‘He was here, then he kicked his way out of many hands and ran that way,’ Manqele pronounced, proceeding down the street.
We
