They leave the city, turn off towards Soweto. Michael peers ahead, looking for landmarks. He vaguely remembers New Canada station, and, when he sees the community clinic, much smaller than he remembered (and derelict, as he will discover when he gets off), he signals to the driver, who does not seem to acknowledge his request. Michael is afraid that the driver will ignore him, that he will be taken into ‘deep Soweto’. He is angry with himself for this instinctive sense of dread, the continuing, stereotypical quality of danger inherent in the term ‘deep Soweto’, but is relieved when the driver pulls up two blocks further, at a designated taxi stop.

‘This is not a stop-anywhere taxi, sonny,’ the driver says, as Michael gets out. The other passengers laugh good-humouredly. Michael feels foolish, he knows that all he had to do was speak in a firm voice: ‘Driver, stop, I want to get off,’ and the taxi would have slewed to the side of the road. An empty space is always welcome, it makes room for another fare.

He walks back to the clinic, stops before the derelict structure. Ouma Angel used to bring him here for check-ups. It was an opportunity for her to meet other people, to talk about things, rising prices, the erratic bus service (who says the taxis have brought no benefit to ordinary people?), how the consumer boycott was making life difficult, how neither the government nor the young activists cared about the struggles of older people.

‘Ja-nee, it's because they want victory or death,’ Michael says out loud, trying to capture Ouma Angel's weary last word on the subject. He remembers how her friends used to caution her about mocking ‘The Youth’ and their slogan, it could bring reprisals. He smiles at a passer-by, who stares curiously at this young man talking to himself.

Michael turns into Smith Street, which runs parallel to Main and ends in a cul-de-sac at the edge of the Soweto Highway. Number 14 is the third house in the circle at the end of the street. He remembers the number because he wrote it endlessly on the inside cover of his exercise books at junior school (you got caned if you wrote in the textbooks, because they were government property). The pride we take in our littlest universe.

Michael Ali, 14 Smith Street, Noordgesig, Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, The World.

That schoolteacher with the tinted specs, what was her name? – anonymous horror – told him: ‘You must stop putting “Soweto” on your books! This is a coloured school and Noordgesig is a coloured township!’

At night, the headlights of cars turning in the circular dead-end shone on his window, bright but gentle kaleidoscopes that lulled him to sleep. Except for the brutal sound of Johnny Smith, their neighbour's son (thin and sharp-eyed, he immediately came to mind when Michael first read Shakespeare and encountered Cassius with his ‘lean and hungry look’), coming home late at night: tyres crunching and doors slamming, making enough noise to achieve the rather unnerving miracle of ‘raising the dead’ (Ouma Angel's words).