At home, he contemplates the purpose of this quest. He is like a tourist doing the apartheid heritage route. What is the point of going from one ramshackle point of reference to the next? Perhaps it is true: our memories are chained to poverty, we cannot live without our apartheid roots. What is he really looking for? For evidence that he is indeed Silas's son, that Lydia is wrong, that her usually infallible maternal instincts had been undermined by bitterness, by her fear of the worst, when she proclaimed him to be Du Boise's bastard son? What will that evidence be? Physical resemblance, the unmistakable lineage to be found in the shape of a nose, the contour of a cheek, or, even more telling, the depth of an eye, the familiarity of a glance?

He dismisses this thought. Must every pursuit have a utilitarian purpose? Is it not enough to want to discover your roots simply for the sake of it? Yes, he can write his history and the history of a whole country, simply by tracing his family's nomadic movements from one ruined neighbourhood to the next, searching through photographs, deeds of sale, engineering reports (this area is predominantly Indian or coloured or African, it is filled with noise, loud music, people congregate in the street, it is squalid, it is a slum and therefore qualifies for clearance under the Slums Clearance Act), social workers' assessments (the children beam at you with dirty faces, unaware of their suffering).

Ouma Angel's house in Charlton Terrace was demolished a long time ago. It is now a parking lot for the Johannesburg Athletics Stadium. There is talk of an Olympic bid. Athletes pounding over the grave of Ouma Angel's last refuge. The house in Newclare was broken down to make way for ‘mass housing’ flats. How easily these meaningless terms come to us, how it deadens our understanding of things; still, what was once a beautiful valley is now a squalid slum, the grass squatted on by faceless concrete tenements.

No, Michael thinks, he needs more purpose. He plans: first, find his Uncle Amin, Silas's half-brother. Learn what can be learned from a potentially hostile relative. Uncle Amin will be the true Muslim, scornful of his bastard kin – why remind yourself that your father had a ‘nasara’ wife, that he, the Imam, did not have the courage of his convictions and insist that she become a Muslim, take on a Muslim name, that her child – thank God there was only one – be brought up Muslim?

Imagine having to call a brother ‘Silas’, a nephew ‘Michael’, how awkward on the tongue, how jarring to the mind. But Oupapa Ali had married Angelina Pelgron, and was that not a beautiful name? She was his third wife, and he accorded her the respect this demanded. He knew the dictates of his religion, Imam Ali. He even contributed materially to the child's upbringing, given the constraints of his own poverty.