Walking back towards Regina Mundi, Lindi replayed the shopkeeper’s words in her mind: ‘send them back to Maputo’. How many times, in how many different countries and in how many different languages had those words, ‘send them back’, been used? And how many people around the world had heard them and been terrified by what they meant? Those three words robbed them of their identities as individuals, as families and neighbours, even as friends. Them, not us. Them over there. Search them. Catch them. Arrest them. Deport them. Kill them. That was all it took: shift a people from the column marked ‘us’ to the one marked ‘them’ and everything became possible, justifiable. She found those words, spoken by the avuncular figure of the smiling, seemingly gentle shopkeeper, as chilling as anything she had read in Anton’s frenetic messages or the tickertape headlines on the news channels.

11

Word went round that the Motlantshes were down the road but had been forced to wait because the presidential cavalcade was late. The hearse and several other cars had been seen parked down a side-street. Someone in the congregation leaned forward and whispered into the ear of a friend that the president had probably thought there was time for ‘a quick one’ before leaving the official mansion – and he wasn’t talking about the leader’s drinking habits. They were still sniggering when there was a collective rustle of starched fabric as, starting from the back of the church, each row of the congregation rose to its feet.

The president looked from side to side as he moved forward, acknowledging those he recognised. Those accorded the honour of a presidential nod visibly glowed in the aftermath, like disciples touched by the Holy Spirit. They looked down their row just to make sure that others had noticed their favoured status. The first lady, her hold on the title only as secure as the libidinous exploits of her husband would allow, was so heavily made-up that she seemed to be wearing a mask. Rumour had it that a bottle of gin a day left her with a morning-after puffiness to rival that of a journeyman boxer emerging from the ring – though there were some who said her husband was not averse to handing out his own face-changing pugilistic jabs from time to time. The country was divided between those who felt sorry, even embarrassed, for her, and those who said she was so addicted to status that she would put up with almost anything to cling to the privilege bestowed on her because she had once caught the wandering eye of a man on his way to the top.