Windows of Cape Town

There were always strange foreign men going in an out of the eccentric old man's house who lived next door. They would come overly confident with their nonchalant attitudes, barging in and showing off their wealth. They were dressed head to toe in fine knitted fabrics and designer suits with shiny jewelry ostentatiously placed around their bodies. Some would even march in with their entourage in a domineering fashion wearing camouflaged uniforms or dressed in bright robes. They'd demand to be seen aggressively knocking on his front gate if he left them waiting. Though they would always leave the house a similar way, disappointed or infuriated.

I often wondered what this frail old man had to offer these powerful men that traveled from so far away to see him and why they sought his approval. He never smiled or greeted anyone in the neighborhood when he'd step outside to his yard the brief moments he did. When he did, he could be seen watering his bushes and many plants in his collection. He would often look unhappy shuffling away on his front yard tending to his vases with an uninterrupted focus. He'd shuffle away with his walking stick tending to each one, trimming the bushes and dead leaves and sometimes planting new ones. He clearly placed a lot of importance on his magnificent house which was a sight to behold.

It was a large house with thick sandstone walls, the kind of house most people in the neighborhood would only dream of owning in their lifetime. It stood two stories high with high arched windows, a large cobblestone front yard with beautifully trimmed bushes surrounding the large stone fountain in the center. The craftsmanship was remarkable which mesmerized the tourists that passed by heading towards the tourist beaches nearby. They'd stop and snap photos on their cameras and pose in front of the house.

Surely it wasn't the house those men were after, given the neighborhood we lived in, a small area crumbling slowly into poverty. While most of my family drifted away closer to the big city in search for better opportunities, me and my brother Sakhile lived in a small house with our umama. The woman who raised us all with a strong sense of morality and ethics, we learned her good intentions and she taught us to cherish people and never fall into a cycle of hate. 

"You can learn wisdom at your grandfather's feet, or at the end of a stick" She would say when reciting her favorite proverbs.

She would snap at us as she handed out life lessons when my brother and I would get into trouble.

"Magebe, listen to me" she says.

"You don't want to end up like your ubaba".

"He drinks away all his troubles" she scolds.

My dad lived a few blocks away, its true he would drown his frustrations and anxieties in through the end of a glass bottle, but he had a rough life. He raised all six boys with my mother simultaneously working a demanding job that required him to travel allover the country setting up utility poles. He was always there when we needed him however, so I never liked when umama talked about him negatively. Ubaba was also the reason I enjoyed traveling so much, he had taken me to Johannesburg and down the coast from Durban to Cape town during work trips. I accompanied him along with my younger brother, we enjoyed recording videos on our phones and pretending we were professional photographers and film makers. Sakhile was my camera man as held my phone most of the time a shaky blurred mess. Our crowning achievement was recording a family of Cape penguins waddling around at the beach while Sakhile fed me lines to recite and pretended they were memorized.

One day me and Sakhile woke up very early to venture into the beach wearing our sandals and beach attire. We noticed our neighbors exiting his house, he wore his dashiki shirt as he regularly did and carried his walking staff around. The old man entered a car with tinted windows and glanced towards us before the car departed. I took the chance to walk over to the front gate which was left open and to stare and admire the architecture of his home and the well kept garden he grew. The windows appeared very dark inside so it was difficult to make out the interiors. The aura of the house was very eerie and disarming given the quietness, a discomfort that Sakhile also recognized as he froze staring towards the dark windows.

"Magebe, did you see that?" he whispered in a sort of breathless way like he saw a ghost. He looked around anxiously towards the ground.

"Brother you are not funny trying to scare me like that", I shook my head.

"No listen, I just saw like a white rat run by" he said.

"Ok, you are being an Isiwula" I tell him, pushing him gently towards a nearby bush. He was unamused while he kept looking around for the animal.

Suddenly a small white rabbit hops by from the bushes and we both jump. It runs towards the porch of the house as we chase him down to try and catch him. Finally it stops in front of a large door so big it could accompany a family of giraffe. The rabbit waits there staring up towards the door and thumps his back foot down.

"What's he doing Magebe?"

"I have no clue..."

I decide to try and help him enter his house twisting the door knob to see if it would open. It turns to my surprise and the rabbit runs between my legs instantly. It runs through a long hallway disappearing into the pitch darkness of the house. I walk down to see where it went, before not too long, I find myself deeper into the end of the house.

"Magebe, where are you going!" my brother yells.

"This is trespassing!".

Without realizing what I had done, I started to walk down towards the front door. As I pass by, I feel a cold chilly breeze that crawled through my skin under my clothing. It came through an open window in a bed room. I look through the window and see a stream of a black street paved road instead of the outside of the house I walked into. There is a guzzling wind breeze spiraling through. I reach over towards the window and into the vortex that takes me through. The temperature instantly changes through the world inside. from the humidity to a coldness I never experienced before. There was a large metal structure towering over the entire city from a distance. People moving in an alarming pace from every direction. I took notice of an old woman who stood in the intersection pressing down at her cane trying to balance herself, she looked around for someone to take notice. We made eye contact as she noticed me approaching her closer.

"Bonjour jeune homme" she smiled, I stood besides her and extended my arm to her. She clutched my arm tightly and we crossed the busy intersection together whilst others in the crowd pushed each other aside and cars zoomed by. We reached the end and I waved her goodbye.

"Merci beaucoup" she whispered, walking down the street disappearing into the sea of people. I walked back towards the house in the corner where I came from and opened the curtains in the window. A man sitting at the steps of the apartment quickly notices me and gestures me to stop.

"Excusez moi" he says eyeballing me up and down, "You live here little boy?" he says in his thick accent.

"Yes" I tell him.

"Is there a reason you try to go in through this window?" he asks still glaring at me suspiciously.

"I am just going home" I tell him.

He gestures me to go away before he calls the security and I start getting nervous and scared hesitating but walking away to his demands. I understood it looked bizarre trying to climb in through a window, but didn't have a choice. His eyes lock into my every move while I am still pacing slowly away and loitering close by. Maybe I shouldn't have been so bold into walking in through the window. He notices I was still in sight. My heart is now throbbing faster as he walks towards me with another man in a black uniform. All I could do was run from pure adrenaline towards him in a last resorting move, his arms extend to try to catch me but only manage to tug onto my shirt. I squirm away and jump in through the window diving head first like a daredevil while the curtains are blinding me.

I am now laying on the ground and Sakhile is looking down towards me more frightened than me.

"Magebe, where were you?" he yells while I try to catch my breath.

"I think I was in Paris" I tell him still skeptical of what just happened.

"Magebe, we need to turn back right now..." he warns me.

"I'm sorry brother but I need to see what else is in those windows, I might never get the chance again to travel this far again" I tell him.

"Come with me this time, brother". He looks at me as if I was recovering from a head injury.

"Remember that thing umama use to say when we hesitated getting our new phones, after working so many jobs around at grandpa's farm to save up for them?"

"No?" Sakhile says staring up from the corner of his eye trying to remember.

"Even the beautiful flowers..." I pause to give him a chance to make my point.

"Withers in time" he finishes.

"Great!" I exclaim pulling onto his hand running towards another of the many doors in the large hallway hoping this wasn't a one time adventure.

We stop in front of another window at the opposite side of the hallway. There is a faint sound of cattle and deep stench of manure in the air. I pull in my brother and enter through the window with him. We land on a large patch of grass ruffled up with mud and hay. My brother few steps in lands on a pile of feces. He gives off a deep sigh. The clouds begins to sprinkle lightly.

"What in the sam hill!" yells a blonde girl coming out from a red farm house in the middle of a large open field and wooden picket fences around. She's carrying a rake which she lays besides the wooden fence while she talks to us.

"Who the heck are y'all?" she says, eyebrows raised as far up as she could muster. She's chewing aggressively on a bubble gum and looks us up and down.

We shrug and just stare at her back, we had only seen a few tourists with blonde hair in our small town, but mostly we were mesmerized by the rough stench and dust that overwhelmed our sinuses. Sakhile started to sneeze uncontrollably. Nearby a woman in a large cowboy hat carries her double barreled shotgun and points it at an old horse standing calmly by the fence.

"Don't you struggle now old girl" she says patting the side of the brown mare, the horse begins to neigh loudly when the long cold barrel touches her forehead.

"Mama, we have some lost boys out here" yells the blonde girl.

"Oh hail Mary, full of grace, Billy, these boys ain't got shoes on, they're just asking to catch a cold" she storms into the house.

We realized we left our sandals by the window to avoid getting them more covered in feces. Me and Sakhile stare at each other not knowing what to do, fixating and staring at the horse who seems stressed out through the fence.

"She thinks y'all my friends" she says still staring at me hanging by the fence and playing with her hair.

Me and Sakhile are clearly worried about the old horse, we walk over to the fence and release the locks on the door. The horse appears old and worn out, she had brown fur and faded black hair, freckles of white splatter designs on her back. She calms down as soon as I grab the rope tied around her and the wooden fence.

"She will throw a hissy fit if y'all are gonna do what I think y'all are gonna do" the blonde girl says.

"So, I wouldn't do that if I were you". she continues.

We release the horse into the wild acres of open space and she runs off galloping. 

"Mama!" she yells over.

Me and Sakhile start to run as fast as we can not knowing what type of danger we would be in. Her mom comes out in two pairs of shoes, which she drops down to chase the old horse still running away. We grab our sandals covered in horse feces and dive in through the window once more, breathing heavily our clothes drenched in sweat and water droplets. We are now back in the old house. I held my nose as I notice Sakhile's sandals have painted the canvas of the ground like an abstract painting.

Sakhile is still breathing heavily but forms a smile on his face.

"You loved that, didn't you brother?"

"It was incredible" he yells.

"One more" he begs.

We both without hesitating turn to another area of the house with a bedroom, there we listen to a soft soothing song with an rhythmic African drum beat and percussion, and the soothing voice of a female singing in a foreign language. We enter through carefully.

"Posso te dar um sanduíche?" a man dressed in a tuxedo startles us with a platter of different delicacies assembled on a plate. Me and Sakhile eagerly take a few of the small squares of sandwiches with different meats. The server moves on to the next person. We are in a crowd of hundreds of people and there is live music on a stage and families sitting on circular tables conversing. People are enjoying their meals and some of them are dancing to the tranquilizing that serenaded the crowd of people.

"Olá" the families smile as we pass by. We walk around exploring the large celebration and stumble through a metal gate at the front of the mansion, across are some kids in tattered clothing that look to be our age kicking a football side to side to one another. Their faces are dirty and they quickly take notice of us and walk closer to where we stood.

"Cheira bem aqui" one of the kids says looking at the people sitting down at their tables and their plates of food and the trays of sweets and drinks. Me and Sakhile offer them some of the squares of sandwiches in our pockets. They grab them and devour them right away.

"Obrigada!" they smile. They gesture their ball at us and ask for us to come out through the gates to play with them. One of the guests at the party notices us and calls to one of the waiters. The waiter walk over to us and scold the children to go away from the gate.

"Onde estão seus pais?" he says in a way that elicited a response. We shrug and decide to turn back without saying a word towards the window which is now further away hidden through the crowd. The waiter grabs Sakhile by his arm and Sakhile responds by kicking his sandals to the waiter's feet. It leaves a brown stain on the bottom of his pants. He is now furious and gestures with his thumb towards the outside of the gate. My brother and I are nervous and at a desperate attempt to dissuade we were outsiders, I remembered the greeting from the old woman in Paris.

"Bonjour" I tell him. Sakhile like a parrot repeats after me.

"Bonjour" Sakhile says confidently smiling up to the waiter whose still angry.

"Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour"

The waiter stares at both of us for a moment.

"Desculpe" he says walking away muttering something under his breath. My brother and I walk to find the window once more. We smile and look back at the beautiful scenery again. Sakhile takes out his phone and snaps a photo. When we both enter through the window we find the old man is standing in front of us and smiling. Sakhile is shaking nervously besides me, my hands reaches back to grab the nearest inanimate object, a lamp in case things go sour.

"Don't need to fear me, children" he says. He is smiling at us and places his hand on our shoulders.

"Today you will become my protégé, you have both displayed all of the communal virtues that we proud tagati seek" he says. 

Me and Sakhile stare at each in utter bewilderment.

"I have met many men who were not worthy of my teachings" he says.

"One last thing" he says jumping in excitement.

"You like penguins, yes?"

He leads us to another bed room with another window in the center, this one is much colder than the first window I went through. A piercing coldness so strong. The old man hands us two of his oversized jackets, which we put on and enter together.

A beautiful sunset is displayed in front of us in beautiful mixtures of vivid colors that emanate from the bright gleaming sun. We are standing on a large balcony towering over thick layers of snow covered floors. Behind us a research station sitting on pillars in bizarre shapes. Ladders around the buildings and international flags prodded in the snow. Several feet away a couple of emperors penguins playing.

"Get inside boys, I don't want you to lose the feeling in your toes", the old man says.