The world temporarily closed

By QriquaS and Abbas QriquaS

The world was hit by coronavirus, an exceedingly small non-biological particle with only an outer membrane coat covering its genetic shell. Because of its rapid spread, the World Health Organisation declares the outbreak a public health emergency urging governments to take immediate steps to shield citizens from its ravaging effects. In accordance with this advice, the South African government declares a state of national disaster and promptly closes the country's borders, shutting down the economy and quarantines its people for thirty-one days. On the eve of a long-awaited trip to Amanzimtoti for reunion with his fiancé, the plans of a young doctor are put on hold for an indeterminate period. With four suitcases neatly packed in the boot of his old Honda sedan and no room to lay his head in, the doctor finds himself marooned. A brief telephonic conversation with his fiancé convinces him that crashing at a commune with her cousin in Kempton Park would not be a bad proposition, advice he accepts with nudging. Set against the backdrop of a small town east of Johannesburg, a town whose qualities– unrelenting and unquittable–many readers will recognise. Like the rest of the country, the young doctor waits for the lifting of the lockdown so things could get back to where they were before. Fate said there are some lessons and am the tutor. Things take a sudden and unexpected turn; a brief interlude pushes his stay beyond original plan. The promised relief: food parcels, emergency social relief distress grants, arrival of vaccines gets pushed out by weeks then months in the end nothing comes through. Resentment often eclipses goodwill. Broken promises aggravate the already grave situation precipitating a turn of events none could have predicted. Through the doctor's propulsive voice, a narrative that reveals xenophobia, exclusion, manifested lies in ways inimical to those on the margins of society. His voice gives insights into the ruination of a broken society. Narrated with great poignancy, a story that can move you. No story is perfect. The form does not permit perfection; it is complex, multi-layered, and close to the messiness of life. As well as it being a memoir to our survival, it is about resilience of humans making sense of the losses we have all suffered. I cannot imagine right now, but there will come a time when the pandemic is behind us. When that moment arrives, it will be apt to ask, 'what the world would be if eligibility to socialize, work, and travel were contingent on citizens producing proof of vaccination to gain access to public rendezvous?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abba QriquaS
• Release date: Jan 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224790043

QriquaS

Abba QriquaS is the author of several books on contemporary affairs and novels.

Book preview

THE WORLD TEMPORARILY CLOSED  my journey through hysteria hope and healing         

NOVEL BASED ON COVID-19 STORY

Abba

QriquaS

Copyright 2022 © Qriqua Sipho Mzolo

This is a work of fiction based on the true story of COVID-19 pandemic. Names, characters, places and events are fictional, if an actual place it is used fictitiously any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Abba QriquaS  has asserted his right to be identified as the author of the world temporarily closed my journey through hysteria, hope and healing. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

While I have made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of this publication, I assume no responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. I assume no responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

––––––––

In memory of the lives lost through COVID-19 disease from 2020 through 2022.

Saturday, 25th March  Bae, I am coming

For weeks now I have tossed and turned in this bed, with no television or radio to ease my insomniac sleep. Finally, the day and hour has come – I must leave town tomorrow to come to you, my honeybunch, Ayobami. Everything is packed. The empty room I leave behind reminds me that I should have been with you already.

I remember how you said you had never felt so comfortable around someone, after disentangling from my arms? That you felt like a nudist around me. How were you addicted to me? ‘It is easy to be with you,’ you said, and I laughed my signature laugh that your friends find quirky. Later that day, while walking through the park under the warm sunshine, my arm tight around your waist, I swear your legs could have fallen asleep at any moment. But you trusted I would carry you the rest of the way if they did.

Remember the night we spent together for the last time? The next morning waking up in a panic because you had slept through your alarm after our marathon of rolling in cotton sheets. You were running late for work and kissed me goodbye with your always almost too-wet lips on your way out. Then you stared at me with a look of someone satisfied and said you would come visit soon. It was disarming, but I believed you.

Remember when I said I appreciate transparency in a relationship? Well, I know spectres are supposedly see-through and all, but ghosting me is not exactly what I had in mind. And like all good ghosts, you have tried to haunt me. But I have got sage.

Although sleep stays away, I force my eyes shut, and pieces of the life I am leaving behind flash in my memory. The batik pillowcases in my bedroom, which your mom bought for my graduation, and the bedside lamp you gave me for my thirtieth birthday that is now gone. What remains are a few belongings stuffed into suitcases.

I have since said my farewells, wandered the familiar one last time, and am conscious of memories built up over ten years beginning to recede to the back of my mind, like steam morphing into thin air. I leave nothing but good memories behind – the thing that matters the most is inside me. Locked up in my heart, a place of permanence that I will treasure forever. You.

However, there are unresolved fears related to attachment, knowing that one day everything must change. For once, I jostle with my attachments to this place. Things that gave me a sense of who I am are no longer the rejoinder to my story. Feelings of attachment are like that.

Despite the clarity and jovialness inside, my heart yearns for what once was. For the version of myself I once loved, for the potentiality of a particular life that would not be bad once I shake off the depressing attachment.

Do not get me wrong, I am not afraid of moving forward and forming new memories, familiarities, and intimacies. In fact, the feeling is restless and relentless, murmuring the need to fly on my wings to be with you right now. My angel Ayo. Absence is efficacious.

After being single for two years the loving feeling is strong. This relationship brings emotional intimacy into the present and opens my heart in ways I did not know were possible. My connection with friends makes me happy, gives me better health. It is our nature, and we cannot live our lives without. Ayo, you, the woman I choose to be with, impact my happiness.

Being with you, I can laugh, see my weakness through you and be fully myself without pretence. You are like a friend who shows up when life is hard, who sits there and listens without uttering a word. A friend I hold dear.

Amanzimtoti, the place you and I first met, awaits to embrace me with love. Your love. Sweetness, Ayo. Never has a hand touched love. Never has an eye spotted peace. Never has a nose sniffed dream. You have colonised my heart and I cannot wait to do life with you.

To have the privilege of a brain lighting up at the enjoyment of a field of tulips in my vision, the scent of sweet roses is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim of human existence. For a joyful life, I value my relationship and the freedom to fully express myself and to be who I truly am. My honey bunch, Ayo.

This is it, then. A chapter ending after ten years of studying medicine. I remember the freshman years of hard work and sweat. I remember especially one Professor McCulley, the head of the anatomy department, made me repeat modules that had nothing to do with anatomy or pathology. I thought it was funny had it not been stupid. I remember taking odd jobs at the BP filling station, being warehouse picker at the Pick n Pay hyperstore, trying to fill an otherwise dull and vacuous life.

Most of my belongings have been given to the Jerusalem Orphanage, and a few to friends. Two pieces of furniture – a small table and a stool – have been given to Ntate Moabi, my neighbour who for years kept me entertained with Bassboy stories from his days as an underground miner at Sibanye Gold. A memory of his youth, I suppose. I have taken the liberty of bringing with me a special piece of furniture I recently bought at the auction, anticipating delivery there upon arrival. I hope you will like it.

※※

Even for a seasoned driver, pushing an old sedan on a long stretch of the road to the coast can take its toll on the powers of concentration. I plan to drive at the first light, like wind, gone, never to be seen again and never to return.

The sky is still black. World is in sleep. In a few moments the day will arrive, roaring in its track. The stillness of dawn will be exchanged for the hustle and bustle of the day, the calm and solitude for the pounding pace of dailiness, the quiet of morning invaded by rapid decisions to be made. I am glad I made mine a long time ago, before the cares of this world could inhabit my mind.

Chichi, my friend, has been gracious and agreed to help me drive, flying back a day later. Chichi is standing ready outside, leaning against the car, hands inside his pockets. Not talking. The type less inclined to chit chat in the morning. I unlock the car doors with the remote key lying next to the charger, so that he can get in and warm its engine.

Chichi, in one easy step, gently eases himself inside. I drank in the familiar sight of him settling on the driver’s seat adjusting the mirror, height, and distance for the comfort of his long legs. I carry my suitcases to the boot, taking extra care that each one is secured in place inside. He watches me climb into the front passenger seat, disinclined to engage with me on the little pleasantries I make.

Set up, he shrugs forward to turn the key in the ignition hole, drapes his arm casually across the back of my seat and looks over his shoulder, ready to reverse the car. He stops himself halfway through the manoeuvre, as if immobilised by stiffness in the abdomen.

He powers up the radio and lands on TalkRadio702, my default station. At once, we pick up a repeat announcement broadcasting Government’s declaration of the state of national disaster, in which we are asked to stay home for thirty-one days, starting midnight last night. I ask him if he knew about this – he nods his head three times, acknowledging that the news broke on the eNCA channel last night. He could not reach me, owing to my mobile being off, and apologises for the tardiness.

Naturally, avoiding disturbances that could potentially steal my sleep, there was no TV in my room and my phone was off. This is indeed news to me. Chichi proceeds to update me that in terms of this proclamation we are not permitted to travel across provinces without police permission. Permission which would be a mission to obtain because they would demand several ‘proofs’, or some bullshit like that, to support our reasons for our emergency travel. ‘It is better to delay the trip to a later day when things would have settled down.’ The admonishment sounds less friendly than an instruction. With the resignation in my heart, Chichi can sense my distress.

‘I know how much you’ve been preparing for this day; it must be disconcerting that on the last hour you are forced to postpone this trip. I am really sorry Bro. Tomorrow is yet another day, okay.’

He puts his arms around my neck and rubs his forehead against mine three times – our solidarity Bro code. He is quiet for a minute and then guides me to the boot of the car where he helps me retrieve the four suitcases back to the room.

The room is bare, its sparseness a reminder of what my life has become. The echo inside distorts the sound – crude and grating. I can hear myself breathing. I cannot believe that I must spend a day, and another one after that, and plenty more thereafter holed up in this dungeon. But what choice under the circumstances do I have? Life is a piss.

Chichi leaves, promising to check on me later in the day. Standing against the wall at the back is a lone matras. I pull it down and lay my head while I collect my thoughts about what to do next.

I drift into half-sleep; my mind feels weighed down by an invincible mass. Something startles me. With a fright I wake up for a second time. With the morning light sneaking through the sheet, which I had made a curtain, something is disturbed that up till now I had succeeded in putting at the back of my mind. The light was grey, the sun’s brightness tempered by the low-slung clouds. The air smells of rubber and dirt after the soft rainfall.

‘Baked in’ is how some choose to describe this grim arithmetic. Even as the lockdown takes effect, for a time, things may get worse. How ironic it is that I am advised to step back to avoid death. My training had conditioned me never to retreat from its presence but to look death in the face. Here, I find myself taking counsel from a regular dude to tarry a little longer here in Thembisa, so that I may avoid the certainty of death.

Waiting is hard, often difficult, because it feels as if I am not doing anything – precisely the point of waiting – to do nothing. I bear wait with less equanimity if I think it avoidable.

My lingering here may look like skulking or loitering, and then I would experience myself being an object of suspicion because I no longer have business to transact at the place I no longer regard as my own. For fear that others will suspect me a thief, I have become a hermit entirely by accident.

The country has been instructed that waiting at home to flatten the curve of the infection rate is caring for oneself, others, and for the public hospital network. I do not know which is which; the sacrifice demanded of me – purportedly to shield the vulnerable elderly – or enduring the strictures of the waiting. Time will tell. I must use this moment as a time of reflection.

※※

My mobile rings from where it sits plugged. The screen fills with a photo of a brown-eyed shiksa goddess sticking her tongue sideways at the camera. I imagine her stretching on some seaside terrace, silk kimono pooling around her. She, my best friend, usually only wakes at noon if she has been working the night before. I did not expect her call so soon. I touch the icon and see that she is responding to my earlier VN. I leap with joy.

Ayo regards my voice as velvety and is the reason that she insists I only send her voice notes instead of texts or video calls. I, on the other hand, prefer she sends only video calls. God, she is pretty! I like the things she does with her face when we talk. I notice her scrunching up her small nose as if she has just smelled something unsavoury.

‘How thrilling,’ she deadpans.

‘My neighbourhood is in full bloom. Beautiful. I had the expectation that you would be waltzing in here at any minute now. And now this?’

‘Listen Hon, I miss you too. Lots. Have the courage to accept what you cannot change; stop fussing about this lockdown. I will be there when the country opens cross-province travel, however long that may take.’

My bae is mercurial more than magical. It is not just me; everywhere she goes, people fall at her feet. She is the easiest to love and gives love freely and abundantly. She could make even quarantined lives feel expansive and lovely. But I also know she is fragile too.

I cannot work out exactly who is upset the most by the announcement. Ayo or me. Ayo will never be silent when she thinks I am hurting. Inside, I am a miserable wretch, a guileless little man. In my thirties, all I have managed to grow is a sense of self akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab. Loneliness will pierce my thin hide and reduce it into smithereens.

I still have to think about her suggestion and decide whether lodging in Kempton Park with a bunch of random guys is good advice or not. Part of me says I should stay put here in Thembisa and battle it out on my own. Another part counsels the overtures of our friendship. When a man is alone, he loses a sense of who he is, because he does not have an image of himself reflected in how others react to him. I take the plunge.

––––––––

I have tossed and turned in this bed with no television or radio to ease my insomniac sleep for weeks. The day and hour has come at last, I must live town tomorrow to come to you, my honey bunch, Ayobami. Everything is packed the empty room I leave behind reminds me I should have been with you already. I will not miss the friends I live behind not even the girl who asked me to be her husband a fortnight ago.

Do you remember how you said you have never felt so comfortable around someone after disentangling from my arms? That you felt like a nudist around me. How were you addicted to me? ‘It is easy to be with you.’ You said, and I laughed my signature laugh your friends find quirky. Later that day, while walking through the park under the warm sunshine, arm tight around your waist, I swear your legs could have fallen asleep at any moment. But you trusted I would carry you the rest of the way if they did.

Remember the night we spent together for the last time? The next morning waking up in a panic because you had slept through your alarm after our marathon of rolling in cotton sheets. You were running late for work and on your way out kissed me goodbye with your always almost too-wet lips. Then you stared at me with a look of someone satisfied and said you would come visit soon. It was disarming but I believed you.

Remember when I said I appreciate transparency in a relationship? Well, I know spectres are supposedly see-through and all, but ghosting me is not exactly what I had in mind. And like all good ghosts, you have tried to haunt me. But I have got sage.

Although sleep stays away, I force shutting my eyes and pieces of the life I am leaving behind flashed in rapid succession. The batik pillowcases in my bedroom your mom bought for my graduation, the bedside lamp you gave me for my 30th birthday. That is now gone what remains are few belongings stuffed in the suitcase.

I have since said my farewells, wandered the familiar one last time, and am conscious of memories build up over ten-years like a steam morphing into thin air began to recede to the back of my mind. Nothing but good memories I leave behind, the thing that matter the most though is inside me, locked up in my heart, a place of permanence that I will treasure forever. You.

There remain however unresolved fears relating to attachment, knowing that one day everything must change. For once I jostled with an attachment to a place, I once called my own, things that gave me a sense of who I am are no longer the rejoinder to my story.

Despite the clarity and jovialness inside my heart still yearns for what once was. Feelings of attachment take time to die. To the version of myself I once loved, to the potentiality of a life that would not be bad once I have shaken this depressing attachment, I release myself to you.

I am not afraid of moving forward forming new memories, familiarities, and intimacies. In fact, the feeling is restless and relentless, murmuring the need to fly on my wings to be with you right this moment. My angel Ayo. I am looking forward to an emotional intimacy into the present to open my heart in ways I have never done before. Absence is efficacious.

I have known you for a short while but the feeling you evoke in me is strong. This relationship makes me happy, gives me better health. You the woman I choose to be with impacts my happiness.

Being with you, I can laugh, see my weakness through you and be fully me without shame or pretence. You are like a friend that shows up when life is hard and sit there and listen without uttering a word. A friend I hold dear.

Amanzimtoti the place you and I first met awaits to embrace me with love. Your love. Sweetness. Never have a hand touched love. Never has an eye spotted peace. Never has a nose sniffed dream. You are beginning to colonise my heart in a way submission is welcome. I cannot wait to do life with you.

To have the privilege of a brain lighting up at the enjoyment of a field of tulips in my vision, the scent of sweet roses is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim of human existence. I value my relationship and the freedom to fully express myself and be who I truly am for a joyful life. My honey bunch.

This is it then. A chapter ending after ten years of studying medicine. I remember the freshman years of hard work and sweat, I remember especially one Professor McCulley, the Anatomy Head of Department made me repeat modules that had nothing to do with anatomy or pathology. I thought it was funny had it not been daft. I remember taking odd jobs at the BP filling station, warehouse picker at the Pick ’n Pay hyperstore trying to fill an otherwise dull and vacuous life.

Most of my belongings have been given to the Orphanage, few to friends and two pieces of furniture - a small table and stool - given to Ntate Moabi, my neighbour who for years kept me entertained with dumb stories from his days as underground miner at Sibanye Gold. A memory of his youth I suppose. I have taken liberty to bring with me a special piece of furniture I recently bought at the auction, anticipating speedy delivery upon arrival at your home – our home. I hope you will like it.

Sunday, 26th March  The state of disaster

For days on end the nation had been intently glued on television watching convulsing Wuhan snowed under the weight of snow and a virus. The drama was concentrated no less by the ‘unseen enemy.’ Scared witless.

On the 23rd January 2020 China had locked down Wuhan. From then the world was under lock and key, proof we are inseparably part of a world in which microbes and the animals that transmit them don’t respect geographic borders.

On the 10th of March, the World Health Organization announced, ‘we have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.’ For me, I conjured an image of WHO with a banner spread across the sky, ‘the world is temporarily closed.’

Weeks leading to the announcement, South Africa had been told to prepare for the arrival of the ‘big storm.’ Trepidation set in. Anxiety increased. The jittery nation looked to someone, anyone courageous enough to stand up and offer solace and comfort to a nation facing a calamity. The darkest hour came. Hours turned into days, days frozen in time. None emerged. And so, as fate would have it the president became that figure, albeit less reassuring.

My social feed has been buzzing all day long. Speculation is rife as to what the big man of politics is going to tell the nation. Rumour has it the president is going to make a big announcement tonight. I switch TV ten minutes ahead of the expected announcement browsing the eNCA timeline to see what speculative buzz was about. Shortly after 8:30 pm on Friday March 2020, the president took to the podium to talk to the nation. Duduzile Ramala and Sandile Nqose the news anchor announces, ‘We now switch live to Pretoria for the President’s address.’

‘Fellow South Africans, I am addressing you this evening on a matter of grave national importance. The world is facing a medical emergency far graver than what we have experienced in over a century. Given the scale and the speed at which the virus is spreading, it is now clear that no country is immune from the disease or will be spared its severe impact.’

‘...Never in the history of our democracy has our country been confronted with such a severe situation. This situation calls for an extraordinary response; there can be no half-measures. Cabinet held a special meeting earlier today, we have taken urgent and drastic measures to manage the disease, protect the people of our country and reduce the impact of the virus on our society and on our economy... Accordingly, I announce that in terms of Section 12 of the National Disaster Management Act, Cabinet has decided on a national lockdown effective from midnight Tuesday the 26th instant.’

...Much is being asked of you, far more than I should ever ask. But we know that this is a matter of survival, and we dare not fail. We shall recover. We shall overcome.... I have faith in the strength and resilience of ordinary South Africans, who have proven time and time again - throughout our history - that they can rise to the challenge. We shall recover. We shall overcome. We shall prosper.

...It is true that we are facing a grave emergency. But if we act together, if we act now, and if we act decisively, we will overcome it...It is these attributes of our national character [resilience and solidarity] that won us our democracy and it is what will ensure our victory over this pandemic... Let us never despair. For we are a nation at one, and we will surely prevail... If we work together, if we keep to the path, we know we must take, we will beat this disease. I have no doubt that we shall overcome. I thank you.’ The lockdown was immediate but the law that mandated it - The Disaster Management Act - terminated only on 4th April 2022.

The president had appeared measured and considered in his address to the nation exhorting the nation to be courageous, patient, and to show compassion to one another. The president stood still for three maybe four seconds without even as much as betting an eyelid. Then, in a twinkling of an eye led away by his aides leaving me transfixed to a vacant podium as though he was about to return swinging a magic wand and make the thing vanished at once. I remember seeing television screen change to the OUTsurance colours and a by-line, ‘You are never alone.’

BOOM! The much-anticipated lockdown arrived. In the hearts of many fears grew palpably. Panic set in as South Africa was commanded to go into forced hibernation. In the days following his announcement, the president ordered soldiers to keep vigilant watch over a fretting nation. One by one they rushed to protecting what they could salvaging what they must.

The president’s crew - junior ministers who in the aftermath came across as brash, blustery, bombastic, utterly self-serving buffoons in moments where compassion and restraint would have better served a troubled nation. Their bad behaviour did not help.

It was Obama who said, ‘the moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and handicapped. Fear is not a reason to decide who gets to live one way, who gets to live another. Surviving is not the goal, thriving and flourish is.’ We will not come through the coronavirus pandemic successfully unless every South African does. This is self-evident not just as an ideal but as a north star I live by and by which I am going to measure the moral worth of the Ramaphosa-led administration.

On each subsequent appearance, the president appeared less assured and nervous than the people he stood to comfort. South Africans read his body language, sensed his inward fear concluding they were between the devil and the deep blue sea with nowhere to hide. Some felt, however, this was another opportunity for the system to fuck them one last time. Hard.

In his first address the president appears to be speaking to two types of audiences. Both receiving and interpreting his message variably. The first group consisted of the adults including the elderly, moms, and dads. This group regarded president’s instruction as good and thought themselves fortunate to be so instructed. They are able to sense death when its paws are drawn. They know death all too well. They took the president at his word. Literally. Shielding as much as they could, cooperating with the police and soldiers in whatever manner asked of them.

Makhathide a granny in my neighbourhood told me she regarded the president’s instruction as direct speaking of God. Makhathide never ceased to pray for the president and wished him and his family a long life. Shaping Makhathide’s attitude and many like her was the thought of perishing alone at a government hospital such as Thembisa, Livingstone, Dora Nginza or Mamelodi where none of her children would be allowed to hold a vigil by her side in her final hour.

What Makhathide feared most was if death took her, her children would be dependent on an uncaring state she had witnessed in her living years. The thought alone was enough to heightening her hypertensive condition.

Another group that also watched and digested the president’s address rose to offer their interpretation to his speech. Young and naïve this audience scoffed at the idea they were going to die from a lousy pathogen.

‘Ayi, uyahlanya uCup Cake. Majita, ayinajive nathi ikhovivi. Eintlik thina vele as’fly, sibloma la emakasi wethu waya waya. Siyizinja ze game. Ngek istune fokolo le shandies.’

Gung ho. Thoroughly dismissive. This group promptly downgraded level five protocols to level one, disregarding every guideline in the book. For them life must continue as before. And it did. The young people were