The sky was clear and pale. The sea, a deep blue. It was quiet. The distant exchange of dogs barking and the roar of motorvehicles gently carried up with the wind, a rising and dropping cadence. A gentle susurration. Up there that morning, the breeze was a gentle Benguela waft, cool to the skin and complimenting the rising summer heat of the day. Lundadno beach was a distant sandy stretch, way below, almost underneath me, dotted with people who looked like tiny ants milling about in an indecipherable business. The mountains towering over the valleys, with steep cliffs and Fynbos bush at their slopes, connecting them to the valley floor. I am sitting on a rock on one of the mountains taking in the view. The intoxicating and addictive view. Too beautiful to to stop looking at. Surrounded by brutal beauty. No where to look without seeing it.
From that height, it seemed as if there was more mountain than land. The Hout Bay suburb looked like a narrow strip of greenery, swimming pools, car parks and houses leading towards the sea. The harbor, like a little village by the bay and the bay like a deep pond. Through the mountain pass to my left and over the land, I could see, level to my eye, the tops of the Hottentot mountain range beyond Stellenbosch, the next town. The mountain range appeared to be next door almost, though the whole expanse of the cape flats was in between. Just a strip of land almost out of view, certainly overlooked, literally. From the shoulder of that giant, nothing without height is noticed, except the sea. Flat land another country left behind, left below by 600 meters, and almost forgotten.
I had thought I had come a long way. Not just to the top of this mountain. Not just to the age of 20. But to content. To letting go.
I was waiting for Betty and Sandi. Betty had gone looking for Sandi down a path that went out of view behind rocks and foliage, towards the cliff. It was Sandi’s idea to come up here. To have a picnic on the mountain slope at 9am. But, by 9:30, Becky and I were still loitering about the car park at the bottom of the mountain waiting for her. Sandi was always late. Late, even though she lived in this valley at the foot of this very mountain, in Hout Bay. Late for lectures, late for the movies and even late for this Sunday morning hike that was her idea. I once, in an attempt to get her to wake her up for lectures on time, sent her over a dozen sms’s at the crack of dawn. She asked me never to do that again (to her I think the lectures were the problem, not getting up in the morning).
When we got to our agreed summit point that morning, where the steep slope, covered thick with Fynbos bush, meets the steep mountain face, Sandi was not satisfied. She wanted to get to the top. Above the mountain face and above the cliffs looking over us. I was a little apprehensive about this but, in line with my then new and less cautious approach to life, I agreed to climb the mountain with them, Sandi and Becky. It was easy in the end, just a long gently sloping circuitous walk along cliff edges with a little rock scrambling. To fall would have been fatal, but the ground we tread was steady.
Rashin
Ronnie and Rashin were not there that morning. Six months before, it would have been a little odd that I would be out some place with Sandi without the two of them. On the other hand, they were definitely not the out door type. And neither was I until recently before that day. Ronnie could never keep away from a PC for more than 12 hours at a time. Rashin, with a huge and fully round build, would not be caught dead on the side of a mountain (and he might have said as much too). He was fat (no one doubted that) but not flabby. And he was strong. Really strong. He once punched me square in the chest, knocking me a full meter back, winded. But, it was not his body that kept him away from the out doors, it was his character. His outspoken philosophy of “not giving a fuck” about anything was enough to put a hike of any sort way out the picture for him.
Rashin ever swore legion to ‘old school’ hip hop and rap. To Ice T and Biggy Smalls. To a time when rap was the bad boys creed. Before rap went pop. Before Snoop Doggy Dog and Dre took hip hop to Tokyo. He was a devout fan of Pulp Fiction and the God father series, with his DVD copies of each proof of his devotion. Rashin took pride in being a bad boy. He swore enough in to justify it. A son of a brilliant Indian heart surgeon and an assertive colored mother, Rashin had grown up, as all sons of an Indian parent, overly pampered and spoilt. He lived like a king in his home and was ever cushioned by his mothers cooking (oh how he would brag about his mothers sea food Bryani or her Piealla). He had gone to the newly mixed schools, that were formerly ‘model C’ schools, where he kept a mostly white delinquent heavy drinking crowd that were ever proud of their Port Elizabeth home town. Of his crowd, he was reckoned to be the smart one, for doing well at school with little effort while still getting up to nonsense with wrong crowd. For Rashin, to work hard and do well was pathetic where as success with little effort to be lauded. However, in that first year of study, Rashin only succeeded in the ‘little effort’ part.
But this, the bad boy in him, had drawn me to him. Whenever a whole crowd goes one way, my instinct is to go the other way, and this alone was enough for me to feel comfortable next to Rashin, almost as if I was in his skin. Incidentally, our skin is remarkably comparable in complexion, something that worth taking notice of in the new South Africa. Having grown up as the odd one out in most situations (being the only colored boy in school for instance) had made me dependent on being different. On always going the other way. Hence, in an overly gentrified crowd, my tenacity to say the most politically and alarmingly incorrect thing, usually to some hopelessly nice and polite girl. This made me a subtle sort of bad boy for Rashin I think. At least he could see in me a deliberate attempt to be unlike everyone around us, whatever they were. However, I had other distinguishing features, such as a tendency to wear black clothes, black nail polish and tie my long curly hair into a pony tail (“you used to look bad ass” he would say to me after we got to know each other better).
Ronnie
Ronnie, who’s name was actually Tyron, but nicknamed Ronnie by myself, was ever a hopeless goodie. Well, at least Rashin and I thought as much, since Ronnie never asserted himself with us, or anybody really. He loved our company and, more crucially, went along with what ever we decided. This in itself, must have made Ronnie one of us. One of us because just Rashin and I were sufficiently arrogant and outspoken with such vitriol about everything, to make for a whole gang. Ronnie too went to a newly mixed school, however he went to boarding school. A boarding school in Bloemfontain, in perhaps the heart of the Afrikaner country, among a lot of what Rashin would call “dumb dutch men”. Though somehow Ronnie did not come out the belligerent Rugby happy camper, as one might expect. Instead he came out an overly sweet stocky boy, pimple faced, dimple happy with a curious dilection for the designs of women’s dresses. He did love his sport though, but instead of Rugby or Cricket, he played squash, fencing and Arching. Ronnie spent most of his free afternoons or evenings racing between the three sport activities. However, after Rashin and I each got a computer, complete with the graphics and sound to manage all the latest computer games, only then did we realize Ronnie’s ultimate weakness. Ronnie spent more time on both our computers than each of us ever did. We sometimes surrendered our hostel rooms to him for day after day for his ceaseless computer gaming. We all played computer games a hell of a lot, with Rashin often bragging (he could only talk about himself in brag really) about how he would play Civilization 2 from day to day without food, sleep or school without even noticing. Still, we would drag Ronnie off the machines now and then to the movies or some audacious adventure with Sandi. Other times we simply hang about the room listening to soft rock music, languid and spread over the bed talking rubbish, while Ronnie clicked away at the screen.
In all, the three of us were brought together for the first time, as with most friends that meet up at university, by where we decided to sit in maths lectures. In those early days of the first semester when most people went to lectures (later, Rashin, Sandi and Ronnie would make only rare visits). The three of us tended to sit square in the middle of the slanting lecture theatre. From here we had a panoptic view of the theatre and everyone in it. From here we would reddicule other students by dress code or character. Rashin would say who he “fucking hated” while Ronnie would relate how beautiful he thought this girl or that. My gimmick was to eat other peoples left overs, such as apple cores and orange peels, to everyones horror. There was not a head in the theatre Rashin could not hit with a projectile crumpled piece of paper. Most of our nonsense happened just before and between lectures.
Sandi
Sandi was the aloof short sighted (thick spectacles that made her eyes look tiny) girl who shared a digs [digs = home away from your parents home] with Ronnie. Ronnie and Sandi were the only two South Africans in a house, sharing with nine others, Americans. This was enough for Sandi and Ronnie to know each other as far as sharing a ride to campus (Sandi drove a red Fiat Uno) on a wet morning. I did not meet Sandi through Ronnie however. I met her the first time (as we all did) in maths lecture, in the first few days of the semester before I thought my place in the lecture hall was next to Rashin. One where a pigeon had wondered in flown through an ajar window and circled, over the crowded audience of students, unable to locate a suitable exit, not even the one it had entered by. Bird brains being as they are, this went on for quite a while, freaking out Sandi with her note pad over her head to shield from the inevitable droppings of a nervous bird. It was quite a spectacle and a refreshing relief from the introduction to functions being opined on the board.
I was definitely attracted to Sandi, from that vert first dat. She was a little tubby, with red brown hair just long enough to cover her ears and curl into her eyes. A round face and thin red lips that would wrinkle subtly under the stress of her cute smile, sometimes revealing her little teeth. She had a full palate of moles and brown spots (as white South African girls often do) all over her pale skin and I would tease her about this without end. I would also tease her about her short sight, her blue toes in the winter and her love of chocolate. She never grew tired of the teasing however, never failed to be irritated. In her cute way, she some times put on a performance of exasperation (shoulders raised and hands supplicant, smiling) at my incessant verbal jabs. It was a discourse for our mutual attraction, an elaborate dance that we could play for hours. My goading with teases the pursuit and her mock protests her way of flirting that was ostensibly a protest but really a signal, a beconing.
One afternoon, in the computer labs in the company of Ronnie, I demanded that Sandi allow me to her and Ronnie’s place to cook a chicken for dinner. Rashin, would automatically follow, because by then him and I did everything together and I could speak for his activities and he could speak for mine. On one level, it was a need in me to be in a kitchen again, cooking and socializing with friends over a counter and between a fridge and the sink. On another, it was any excuse to be in this girls company, even if it meant inventing an activity for my posse of three i.e. cooking for them and me.
Rashin and Sandi were a hit. Rashin played my game of teasing her without end, though not on her insecurity over her spots and moles but instead on her naiveté about the world in general, or rather about the world Rashin thought important. About which Samuel Jackson movies she had seen, if any, about knowing or not knowing of whole genres of music that were cool (drum’n base was the it thing then). In this game Rashin and I were partners, making a victim of Sandi while ever more addicted to her company. Sandi too, like us, was some sort of outsider. A third year student in a first year crowd after having changed from speech therapy to a Biochemical Sciences undergraduate degree. She had also spent two years a little too closely affiliated with the Christian students of the campus, those fawning insincere people that try hard everyday to only say nice things to each other and everyone (anethema to Rashin and I’s sensibility), as well as attend their bogus Sunday services lead by bigots for pastors. This had sheltered Sandi from the experiences that ought to be picked up by any middle class student newly exposed to the freedom of campus life. It was this resulting naiveté that Rashin seized upon to rile her without end, though ultimately (for all my cajoling to get her to do this or that with us) she must have chosen us as friends.
Us
We were inseparable. What had started out as a tacit agreement between Rashin and I to think everything else but our perspective fucked up, had grown into a four way friendship. We were having a little too much fun and games, for two people who had started out with a pugnacious disrespect for everything. There were pillow fights at 2am in the morning, to the consternation of the nine American house mates. Long sessions playing Soul Blade on Playstation, where Sandi’s best performance was always a result of random bashing of the control pad. Trips to the movies in Sandi’s red Fiat on Tuesday half price, where we discovered that blitong and chocolate a good combination. Debaucherous sorties into the city when Rashin would get us to drink way too much (Takila!) and we would not recall in full our dancing and vomiting (all in line with his PE days of course) of the night before. We met in lectures (when the three other than me bothered to turn up), for lunch and each others hostel rooms, which ever the hostel. We were an incandescent bond of adventure, laughter and fun.
Soon, however, this cabal began to pick up extra characters around the core and snow ball. Rashin was beginning to keep a separate retinue of his own, of mostly Indian engineering students like Tarun, Indi, Jason and Marlon with an unquestionable devotion to alternative rock music and very inept with girls. Less than assertive boys less willing to challenge Rashin’s arrogance. I had on my end Matthew and Diane, whom I sometimes threw into our activities at random, though they had their core groups too. Ronnie was starting to drag with him Divan and Rowan, both of whom went to school with Matthew but were much more of the computer gaming fabric. This whole constellation began to revolve around what I thought was the core, the sun of the solar system, the big black hole, holding the rotating galaxy together, of Rashin, Ronnie, Sandi and I. And just as gravity is the attraction that holds together the burning gases of a sun or creates a black whole, the attraction that held the four of us together was my attraction for Sandi. A fuel that motivated me not to get up stuff with Sandi alone, but instead to mobilize the whole troop of us. It might well be that Rashin and Ronnie suffered some attraction for Sandi as well, for they were certainly as protective over her as was I.
This was good for me. I had taken a step away from my other self. That self angry self. No longer moping and depressed over a first love that was lost to Russia to study medicine. No longer suckling on the sorrow of her life that involved parents and kid brother lost to AIDS and another brother who had committed murder. No longer writing her long emails and dreaming of an impossible day in the future when we might meet again. I made that important step of deciding to live today and not tomorrow. Of realizing that the best thing you have is the life right next to you.
The year ended with a big 21st birthday bash for Sandi, hosted by her wealthy parents at the restaurant Dunes, right on the Hout Bay beach, and included the whole constellation of friends. It was the first time I ever saw Hout Bay, my sense of direction about the cape beyond the campus still next to nothing. Her white family seemed a little uncomfortable with her second tier of racially mixed friends (over the first white Christian tier from the speech therapy days). It was where I met Becky for the first time (Sandi’s high school friend from that I had heard losts about). Most harrowing about this event was Sandi’s insistence that everyone make an attempt at kareokee, from her mum to Rashin. This left Diane and I scarred for life at our totally hopeless attempt at the classic I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. We did not survive. The night concluded with a summer night walk on the beach under the moonlight. Sandi and I held hands under the cover of night, hopelessly hoping the rest of the crowd would not notice.
Next Year Will be Better
A three month summer break seemed like eternity, in terms of the new friendships that had been forged. By the beginning of the new year, friend ships had been made and broken. Courses had been passed an failed. Friends that had been inseparable (like Rashin and his room mate before he began to hang out with me) no longer even saw each other. Others had paired off, like Diane and Matthew, who had really gotten to know each other through me. The constellation was breaking apart, quite naturally. We had been split by different lecture schedules and diverging science degrees and incompatible time tables. The ramifications had begun and would continue for years until we no longer recognized each other or spoke the same language. Some off into engineering courses, Sandi into biochemical sciences, Matthew and I into a long list of mathematics courses and so on. The arrogance between Rashin and I was finally beginning to push us apart. Perhaps that force was finally starting to dominate one of the forces that held us together, Sandi. The romance between Sandi and I ever more explicit (Rashin and Ronnie would some times zoom off in Ronnies newly aquired old peugot 505, leaving Sandi and I to chat until dawn), and Sandi’s eventual disgust for Rashin’s ceaseless disrespect for everything and perhaps even her, after all, was taking its toll on the bonds of friendship and the quality of the camaraderie.
I did not mind all this. I was in love. I was excited about being all worked up for a woman again. Sandi was in a new place and no longer living with Ronnie and the americans. I would visit her and we would have our time alone, though kissing and touching was still a little awkward and hesitant between us. Ever the hopeless romantic, I once bought a bouquet of roses and left them addressed to Sandi at her doorstep unsigned. She asked if I had left them and I denied it, trying to keep the mystery going. I never told her they were from me.
I was new. No longer self hating over failed love, having found it anew. No longer wearing black and listening to angry rock music. My hair was cut short and I did not care what I wore. I was willing to try out new things and try going with crowd every now and then. In this spirit I joined Diane and Matthew on a freshers hike in the Ceres, the fruit farming valleys and mountains 3 hours out of town. Hiking was a very mainstream past time among the white students and I had despised it for exactly that. But now in this new year I was embracing it all.
Becky, Sandi’s best friend from high school, with whom she had developed a love for the piano and singing, had moved to Cape Town with her family. It was clear that I had to befriend Becky in order to keep close to Sandi, given that the constellation was breaking apart. However, Becky and I did not really hit it off. Hence my enthusiasm for another, supposedly short and simple, hike in Hout Bay, just round the back of Table Mountain from campus and above Sandi’s parents home.
This is how I cam to be on top of a mountain, over looking the valley of Hout Bay on a late Sunday morning late in the summer but early in the year, waiting for Becky and Sandi. Sandi had gone looking for a new way back down the mountain, since our ascent seemed like a long overly circuitous way up. Taking long, Becky had gone to look for her and was gone a long time.
Becky is not attractive woman by my account. Her body is plump and her face with the snarl of a stocky dog bred by the British. But when she returned from behind the rocks up the steep slope her face was an ugly grimace of terror. She was shouting. “Sandi has fallen! I saw her. I saw her at the bottom.” She was retreating from the steep slope, from the cliff edge where she had been and seen Sandi. She rushed up in a clumsy way as if something was in pursuit of her. She was frantic, though not screaming. Seemingly out of breath. I made to go take a look for my self but Becky grabbed me and told me not to go. She said I might fall too. But I wanted to look. I had to look. It was the only way I would believe it. Sandi had left so calmly, though under protest from Becky and I for us to simply retreat down the mountain the way we had come. How could Sandi fall? There was no sound, no cry for help. Just the gentle mountain breeze. I had to see the cliff edge. I had to create for my self how this happened.
Becky and I sat on that rock terrified. I must have seemed calm but I was shocked. Pinned to my place desperately trying to believe that some how Sandi must have survived the fall. She must have. I wanted desperately to see how far she had fallen so I could begin to guess whether or not she had survived. I could see some trees below from where I sat but they were far below. I could see only their tree tops. Trees so tall, simply falling the height of the tree would kill you. But I knew that the slope came up to the cliff face with its Fynbos bush. Maybe it was not so far to fall. Maybe the bushes cushioned or broke her fall. I asked Becky over and over if Sandi was moving when she saw her, if there were trees down there, if she was among bushes. Becky was frantic and grappling with the same anguish.
We saw people far below, walking through the foot paths we had come up, and spent maybe an hour yelling at them for help. They could hear us but not make out our shouts. Our desperate pleas screaming over the shrill of the fear of death. Becky phoned her mother on her cell phone. “Sandi has fallen off the mountain” in a terrified voice that went a long way into helping us believe our friend was gone. There were more calls for clarification. Each time Becky related the events they became more real to me. Sandi must be dead. Becky’s parents were in touch with Sandi’s parents. Help was coming. A helicopter had been sent. We soon heard it somewhere beyond our view. It approached us from below beyond the cliff, coming up as if it popped out the ground with its deafening thud-thud din from its engine and propeller. We pointed down and it descended. After what seemed like an eternity, when I can’t done very much breathing, the helicopter returned to us and landed further up the slope. We were escorted onto the helicopter by a rescue worker dressed in red and white, the colors of the rescue chopper. He said he was “with” Sandi, and this gave me great relief, to hear her spoken of as a person still. Our descent from the mountain brought us to a nearby lodge, outside which we hard parked just three hours earlier. A descent of maybe 3 minutes compared to our one and a half hour ascent. We were sat in an ambulance and told that Sandi was dead.
Both Becky and Sandi’s parents were there and a lot other people including police and on lookers, already beggining to mill around as if the main event had passed. Becky lay back in the ambulance as instructed by her mother and seemed to feign a panic attack. The Fogalls (Becky’s parents) found space in their shock and grief to try and sooth me. I was quiet and still. I was trying to figure what Sandi was thinking, or thought, when it happened. Did she cling on to the cliff edge? Did she call for help and we did not hear? Did it hurt to impact the ground? Did branches break some of her fall? Did she fall once or did she fall many times in stages? I could not stop these questions from popping up in my head and would continue to do so for weeks to come. I was trying to think the mechanics of it through. I was hoping to find a mistake. Something overlooked maybe that would make me come to the conclusion that she was still alive. Sandi was dead.
The Fogalls took me in immediately. They drove me to their home, with Becky, from the mountain. We ran out of petrol on the way. Becky and I were in Marion’s (Becky’s mum) car and had to be rescued by Glen (Becky’s dad). We stopped at a service station after (a Shell station on the M3) where I got out the car and forced grief. I had decided that for my own sake I ought to start crying. How could I have killed her – yes killed her – without crying. I had killed her, hadn’t I? How could I have been so foolish as to let us go to the top of that mountain and let Sandi, ever so short sighted, wonder off over the cliff edge. I should have been cautious. We should never have been up there. It shouldn’t have happened. I had to cry. At the Foggall’s I did break down. I broke down in the presence of Glen, only. Becky was with her mum in her room and given sleeping pills. I was mumbling jargon, through tears and snot, about Sandi not having a good enough life because I did not treat her right, like the Fogalls had. To this day, the smell of that living room tells of the day I let Sandi die. For full effect, the room has a half dozen framed photos of Sandi. She was like a daughter to the Fogalls.
I spent the next year in grief. I gave a funny short tribute at the packed funeral about Sandi’s love of music and chocolate. I broke down at the very end of the speach. I had hardly much written material from Sandi, but what little I had I kept. Only two photos of Sandi with me that I was included in. One with much of the whole constellation at a picnic in Kerstenbosch, where I am at the side and cut off slightly. The other of the four of us, the core. Rashin, Ronnie, Sandi and I. Smilling. Rashin’s huge frame in an arm chair like a king in the middle and us other three around him. I would spend many nights going over those two photos, crying. Clinging onto every little memory, hoping they would not fade. But they did fade. And I did heal. But the friendship never healed and the core was gone.
On My Knees
February 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Daniel came over for dinner. We were in the same house share before I moved to Stratford. We met at the tube station. I wanted to show him my new place. We bought groceries and beer and then made our way to my place, over the foot bridge that crosses one of the many railways near here. It was raining all the while and we had to hurry while laden with the plastic bags of shopping.
As usual, diced chicken, onions, spring onion, zukini and rice (we have perfected how to cook rice that is not soggy). Daniel loves to put Soy sauce over the rice (he calls it Japanese sauce strangely). Oh how we laugh when we are together. Everything is funny. We make a joke about everything. We introduce subjects, just because we know we can make a joke about it. We have running gags too. About how the Jubilee underground line is never late and close to godliness. About how Stratford is “totally different” to Canada Waters (where we used to live). We say “totally different” in every second sentence now. I showed him my new room and how big it is. I some times wonder if laugh with him so much to compensate for the times when I am down. This morning was one such time. We watched flash animation videos from the internet on my slow computer. I escorted Daniel back to the tube station in the rain.
My coat jacket was buttoned up and my hands were stuffed into my pockets as I dashed through the rain back home. I hopped over puddles and made haste for the flat. I went over the foot bridge again and through the grassy recreation area where I saw three young hooded men also walking in the rain. They started towards me but, I took little notice in the rain and I was anxious to get home and be dry.
One of them grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and demanded “Give me your money.” His skin was smooth and a dark brown under his hood. He had a straight nose and thin lips. His accent had no ethnic slant. He shouted with the rage and eloquence of the black London youth. Before I could think what to do, I was on my hands and knees. The blows to my face were swift and I did not know if I was receiving kicks or punches. I could not believe it, I was being mugged. I tried to resist but they kept on hitting me.
I wanted to run away or push them but I could see it was hopeless. I was in a panic as they pushed and hit me. I scrambled to my feet and was hit again in the face. I was trying to say “I will give you the money” but their blows would not let me. I did manage to say it, shifting on my feet to get some space between me and them and they stopped. I pulled out my wallet and threw it to the ground. “And your phone” he demanded. I was so frightened I did not hesitate to reach for it. “I left it in the house” I pleaded, not finding it in my pocket. But the phone was actually in my breast pocket
As soon as they picked up the wallet they took off. I chased after them. I could not yet feel the pain in my face. I was shouting “give me back my fucking wallet. Take the cash, please, just give me back the wallet.” Over and over I yelled as I chased them down an alley onto a street. They hoped into a dark small car that seemed to be waiting for them and sped off. They did not leave my wallet. However, I did get a good look at the number plate as I chased after the car. “L 256 RMG” I chanted in my head as I ran back to the tube station to look for the police.
In the hospital there was a long wait. I thought about the shame of being made to kneel in front of three men 10 years my junior outside my own home. The disgrace of begging for my own property. I was quickly seen by a nurse who suggested I get my head looked at in the Accident and Emergency (“A and E” she said like I ought to know). However, it had been a busy night and the GP’s were busy with “resuscitations”. I waited from 11pm until 4:30 am. The police inspectors (Matt Russell and Paul) arrived just before the GP could see me. After hours of sitting and dozing in the waiting room, I was suddenly at the center of two GP’s and two Inspectors attention, asking me mostly the same questions. It was such a joy to be touched though, as the GP gave a broad check up. To feel the gentle touch of another human beings fingers on my face. Not the first fingers on my face that night though. Just the gentle physical contact was soothing. They took an x-ray too. No bones were broken, but one side of my face is double the size of the other and I have a black eye
The police caught three suspects within an hour of my assault, with the help of the number plate I gave them. The inspectors took a detailed statement from me in the hospital.
I could not see out the Ambulance when it took me, so I did not know how to get home or know how far it was. I had to beg the bus driver to trust my 1 week travel ticket receipt, since my wallet was gone. It was still raining when I got home, as it was when I was assaulted 8 hours before.
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