Anne R Lewis in Cape Town

“Daddy, why don’t you walk around with your hand up all the time, Zaana told me when she was young, because I am always waving to people,” Mr. Fisher tells me as the “bucky” (buggy) curves around mountains, and roadside signs warn of rock falls. Fuad sits between us in the front of the truck, fiddling with a sea-shell he found in the compartment beneath the radio, pressing it into his skin, showing me the shell in his hand, the shell on his arm.

“This is where they catch the crayfish.” Mr. Fisher points to the tangles of rocks and kelp near the shoreline, glinting like steel wool cause there are only a couple clouds out.

We hop out of the “bucky” at Komijke, white sand, white wave tops, white surfers. Fuad runs away from an ocean-soaked dog. I feel the gaze of surfers, spectators. The silent imperatives. Look! A coloured man, his coloured son who is retarded, a white girl with a camera . . .

We park toward the fishing boats. Men sling snoek into a truck, silver scales smacking against scales like lips. Mr. Fisher spots his uncle, walks over to the boat on the bubbling brink between swimming and standing and returns with a snoek dangling from his hand and nearly brushing against his ankles. A man in a striped sweater grabs the fish, slaps it down on a slab of rock and slashes away the gils and guts.

“It’s a sensitive fish,” Mr. Fisher informs me, crumbling scaly residue between his fingertips like Elmer’s Glue. He asks if I want to hold the emptied out fish and I politely refuse. He lays it on a newspaper in the back of the roofed buggy with the cracked windshield.

To Be Continued . . .