The real chaos of that moment was not to be righted or mended or filled that easily. What do you do with broken sleep, or terror, or empty blankets or the despairing prospectof a tomorrow that means your turn to search for that person, that precious person who has been taken away and might never be seen again. If you are lucky, you will find him, but then you will have to find money to help him out of the strange labyrinth of the law.

‘And remember to take some food as well Sarah. Sometimes some come back after a long time and say they got no food. But where, Mama, where do I go? Try here, and there and that other place as well because Lucy Mtetwa found her man there. You will wait a long time and ask many questions and if they are feeling kind that day they will fetch the big book and open it but there will be trouble because you can’t spell his name and they must have the spelling of his name.’

And when they had sorted out a few things and a few thoughts, they went back to bed. No point in staying awake. Tomorrow is another day and someone else’s turn to be caught. ‘Why man? Why just like that, like out of the air, like lightning, any place any time? Don’t you know? It’s because we are defenceless. You saw them, how they came and took what they wanted and then went and we did nothing. Anything can get at us, fleas and flies in summer, rain through the roof in winter, and the cold too and things like policemen and death. It’s the siege of our life, man. So what do we do?’…Carry on. Carry on, Isaac Rabetla, Peter Madondo, Willie Sigcau, Tommy Dhlamini, you Nxumalo, Mabosos, Langas. Carry on. Tomorrow is near and your baby is crying.

He lay stiffly in bed, hardly daring to breathe, holding the edge of the blanket to his chin as if underneath it he was safe from rude hands and being hurt. This, he knew, is what he had to do. Time and again in the past his mother had unexpectedly called him, and kneeling down so that she could look straight into his eyes told him with a strange urgency in her voice what he had to do if ever it happened that she was taken away.

‘Don’t move, you hear. Stay in the room and wait for me there. Do you hear, David? Do you hear what I say?’

‘Yes Mother.’

‘What did I say?’

‘I must wait for you and not move from the room.’

‘Yes. Listen David. Listen carefully. Wait for me. I promise, I promise I will come back.’

He had never liked that talk but remembered it now, and so he waited. It had actually started the moment he awoke beside his mother as a total, terrible all-engulfing waiting for something to happen. When the door burst open and they came in and took her away, it became the waiting she had urged upon him, the waiting for her return. They had taken her outside, and he could hear loud voices and he wondered why they spoke to her like that and wanted to cry again but remembered her words and waited for her to come back. A little later the noise rose to a harsh, shattering climax with the vans driving away and a torrent of words from a hundred different voices, and then very quickly it subsided and most terrible of all was a deep silence with just occasionally a murmur of voices and no sound of his mother at all.