‘So it's a penis now, is it? Not a piel any more.’

‘Listen, broer, you've got to keep up with the times, be politically correct and all that,’ Alec said, and moved his chair closer to Silas. ‘You know, they've been phoning each other like mad.’

‘Who?’

‘Martha and Lydia, Lydia and Gracie, Gracie and Martha, who the fok do you think?’

‘About Michael?’

‘Christ, you too! When did Mikey lose his name?’

‘He wants us to call him by his real name, Michael, not Mikey, like a fucken lightie.’

Alec took the drinks from the waitress, gave her a generous tip, flashed a grin of tarnished teeth, knew that she was recording him in her mind: seedy, dangerous, wealthy (relatively speaking). He turned his back to her, earnest now in his conversation with Silas.

‘Listen, Silas, that lightie of yours is doing some strange things.’

Silas glared at Alec over his glass, ready to tell him to mind his own business.

Alec raised a hand in defence. ‘Hey, I'm only trying to help. He's been seeing people in Newclare…’

‘Our Newclare, Maklera?’

‘Yes, man, our kasie. Silas, he's been talking to some bad people, guys involved in crazy things.’

Silas breathed in, his vague anxieties about Michael finding shape, looming shadows becoming precise, harrowing forms.

‘Who is he seeing?’ he asked at last.

‘An Imam, Imam Ismail.’

‘You mean like a real Imam, someone in a mosque?’

‘Yes…’

‘You have a “but” – what is it?’

‘Well, first of all, he is the Imam at the mosque where your father used to be, Griffith Street. Secondly, he is kind of cuckoo, befok, if you ask me. He has these Slamse seances, you know, where they pray and go wild and all.’

‘They are Sufis, mystics.’

‘I hear they are also involved with those Muslim vigilantes.’

‘Pagad?’

‘And worse. We hear things about Afghanistan … Libya.’

‘Who's “we”?’

‘Come on, Silas, you know I do work for some of the people at NIS…’

‘Still helping out there?’

‘Legal stuff, but sometimes they tell you things…’

Silas sipped his whisky in silence. The National Intelligence Service wanted him to know what his son was up to, so they told Alec, who told him. He looked around at the clientele. What traumas were they going through, he wondered, apart from agonizing continually over how they weren't white enough in the past, and how they're not black enough now? The existential dilemma of every bastard in the world.

‘Listen, broer, that Imam calls himself Sheg Konya,’ Alec said.

‘What?’

‘Ja, shows you he's crazy. They've given Mikey a name as well. After some avenger, you know, a crazy Arab who tried to kill off all of Christendom.’

‘Well, Alec, you certainly know what's going on in the townships.’

‘My livelihood, bra. Those people are my bread-and-butter clients. How do you say? – my “core business”. If I depended on the government, Gracie wouldn't have the luxury of being ashamed of the townships.’