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).

Over breakfast, Lydia complained about Johnny's late-night comings and goings, saying that he was no example to young kids, especially those of an impressionable age like Mikey. Yes, he'll come to a bad end, Silas said in agreement, only to have her turn on him. ‘You should never wish bad endings on people!’ Somewhere inside her, a Catholic dread of what happens to people who die unsavoury deaths.

‘Does the street belong to Johnny Smith?’ Michael asked, when he was old enough to wonder what it was like to live in a street that bore your own name. Silas snorted, Lydia gave him an indulgent look, and Ouma Angel said it must be terrible to be named after a street.

Michael often wondered what kind of end Johnny Smith had come to. Years later, he heard Silas telling Lydia that Johnny was dead. ‘Ag, shame,’ she had answered, offhandedly. Michael was sure that Johnny must have gone to hell.