Photographers are the reason I am here early this morning. Their pictures of suns rising from so many and varying horizons have been my inspiration for years. I’ve decided to come and record my emotions as the sun rises from behind the dark blue seas.

The sea looks agitated. The waves appear to be rushing to the shore at an anxious speed, one I have not seen in the few days since our arrival on this island. But then we have only come to the beach in the afternoon. Maybe this is the pre-sunrise rhythm. Amazing how much light there is already without the sun being up yet. Its rays open up like a gigantic deep-red fan above the sea and find a home in the sky. No wonder photographers are so obsessed with sunrise. It’s one of nature’s free theatrical performances.

It was a relief to finally findaworking title formymission: “Feeling Sunrise”. People say the sea holds mysteries and secrets and wonders and many other indescribable things that mortals will never understand. So I’ve decided I will handle sunrise and the sea in my own way, a way that I understand well – emotions. They speak to me better than most people I have known, particularly Baba, the most emotionally inarticulate person I know. In part, my mission is to show Baba that emotions are not to be analysed. They are not to be seen as a source of embarrassment either.

They are to be felt, acknowledged, publicly if needs be, but most of all, they are to be embraced.

After five years of learning to live with Baba in his country, I think am finally beginning to understand him, learning how to communicate with him. His indirect zigzagging way of speaking no longer frustrates me as much as it did when Mama and I first arrived in South Africa. I am learning to find a straight path in the midst of his misty conversations.

“Luntu, my daughter, your father is a man learning how to be a father for the first time in his life. And he is old.” I can hear Mama’s voice, her standard response to my complaints. And Baba: “Ntombizoluntu, my child, rivers never decide for themselves which way to flow. The turns and twists they take are decided elsewhere, an elsewhere that’s completely unknown to them. And when they do connect somewhere, where they could not have predicted, they rejoice at this congregation and proceed with their journey.”

But Baba, you and I are not rivers.

Why am I thinking about all this now when I should be watching the sun? I can even see the smile that always decorates Baba’s lean long face. His glossy teeth create a blooming flower of a smile. To think that there were so many, many times when I was not even sure that Baba and I were talking about the same thing. Then Mama would say, in typical style: “Luntu my daughter, be grateful you are now like other children, you have a father. Just imagine how our lives, your life, would have turned out if we had continued to believe that he had died in the camps?”

Ntombizoluntu positions herself comfortably on the rock before tugging her bag from behind her back and putting it under her head to work as a pillow. A rock against which to lean and another one on which to sit comfortably; what a perfect find. She feels a sense of tranquility as she imagines what colours the sea will turn as the sun rises. Her parents are still sleeping back in the holiday bungalow. She slipped a note under their door informing them she was going out to watch the sunrise. She is tempted to take off her Adidas running shoes, but the water might still be dreadfully cold.

A mad rush of water promptly washes over her shoes and wets her demin pants up to her calves before she can even jump to stand on top of the rock.

The sea is so close, it looks as if someone or something has pushed it from behind, from the horizon. She searches for the sand. It is gone. She looks up for signs of the emerging sun. Gone! Clouds of a whitish-greyish hue have covered the horizon. She turns, abandoning her notebook and flask behind, grabs her bag and jumps, amidst this confusion, onto rocks that march farther and farther away from the shore.

She turns to look again at the sand, and notices that the water has risen. She cannot even see the rock she was sitting on a few minutes ago. She begins to walk, looking for another rock to sit on. And she sees a rush of water from her right, approaching at a speed she had not imagined possible. She starts running, the water rushing behind. She runs faster and faster until she reaches a clump of shrubs. She recognises this; she had followed the path through these bushes on her way to the beach earlier. She tries to find the path again. It’s hard work forging through these shrubs and sand. She is grateful she is wearing her tough demin pants. She decides to walk on, and fast. For the first time, she tunes in to the sound of the sea. Having been so focused on how it looked and the sun that was to emerge from behind it, she is surprised that her senses are capable of such adaptability. The sea roars. She thinks her hearing has lost its accuracy. She feels her heart missing a beat. She begins to run again. She wishes the path would appear in front of her.

Something is going on. Something is going wrong. She turns. It’s much darker behind her now than it is in front. But something else has happened. Water is now seeping through the shrubs and flowing in her direction. She lets out a scream that shocks her. She silences herself with  her right hand over her mouth. She does not know how to silence her heart: it is beating so loudly she thinks she may go deaf from it. Then something really goes wrong, the water floods her already wet shoes, and she falls, more from the shock than for any other reason.

She crawls for a few steps. Senseless as this feels, it comes naturally, as if to prepare her body for the run she knows she has to make if she is to be safe from the sea that has lost its mind. Then she rises, her hands dripping with grains of sand. She has scratches, two of which are bleeding like paper cuts. The water begins to sound like a hundred snakes hissing. She dares not look back. And she runs, awkwardly. In a surprisingly short while, she is on dry land.

With relief, she turns, slowly. It is now darker than when she last looked. This is a sea storm flowing over the land, she thinks. She wonders what happened to the fishermen she thought she saw from a distance when she first arrived. And what about the people out at sea? She notices the wind. It feels so heavy, it is blowing her inland. She turns around to walk with the aid of the wind, trying all the time to see the houses she knows need to start appearing. She walks faster, but no houses take shape. I must have come in the wrong direction, she thinks. Yes, I could not find the path. But keep walking and running, there’s bound to be more land. It is getting darker and darker. She tucks her bag more firmly over her shoulder and begins to run. She trips over something and falls, again.

When her hands land on the ground or what ought to be the ground, she feels a body. She looks, with disbelief turning to panic, as she realises that she has tripped over the boot of a body. She picks herself up with lightning speed. What is a body doing lying here? It looks like a man’s body. The clothes suggest he is a soldier. The ubiquitous military attire that young people and fashionistas have turned into hip gear. But this body is dressed in the real thing, the boots and the cap and … and the gun. This is the AK47 she has seen on TV countless times. She is tempted to bend over and touch it but, her eyes lead her to another body and another and another.

Drops of rain pour over her body with a suddenness that makes her reach for her bag. This is no ordinary rain, she thinks. It’s as if the sky has just opened up and let out a flood onto the earth. She fumbles through her bag for her cell phone. She panics. How does she keep safe standing between dead bodies at the start of a storm? Maybe they are not dead. What if they are not dead? She fumbles for her cell phone. She turns her bag inside out to allow the phone to fall out. Even if it falls onto a dead body, I have to find my cell phone. Nothing falls from her bag.

The rain is falling harder now, the kinds of drops that feel like an assault on the skin. She is grateful for the long-sleeved jacket she threw over her T-shirt at the last minute. Her head, recently shaven, takes the full force of the storm. But she can feel her body beginning to soak from the inside. She realises she has just been standing while looking for her cell phone. The best thing is to keep walking.

But how does one walk through dead bodies, or almost dead bodies? No, bodies on the ground. Men’s bodies. How can she be sure they are all men’s bodies? Does she wish to know? Dead bodies are dead bodies. None are moving, although she cannot be sure even of this, because she dares not check each one. Now she carefully looks for spaces between the bodies where she can place each foot. The right one. Then the left one. This forces her to walk in a zigzag fashion that even her father’s speech pattern could not match. Keep walking, she thinks. The bodies seem to be packed closer and closer as she looks for room for her shoes.

The best thing to do is to think about something else, she tells herself. She just needs to do this mechanically, find space for a shoe, and move on. It’s not so bad. None of the bodies have moved. As long as she chooses spaces carefully, she can just focus on that while her mind stays blank. That way it will be easier, and it will soon be over.

“What do you think, Luntu? Your father says we can longer plan surprises for you; you are truly a young woman now, and so you should choose where we go this holiday.”

“Ma, Baba will not come, just like last year and the previous year, something will come up at work and he will cancel.”

“Well, ask him yourself. He promised me that this holiday would be a special one. We are celebrating your ‘BA with distinction!’” She said this last bit imitating me.

“What’s the budget? How far can we go? For how long?”

“He has promised me a maximum of ten days. And the other condition is that we go to a holiday place in South Africa, because he wants to see and learn more about his own country.” Baba never stops reminding us that he is never leaving South Africa ever again.

“Ma, you know exactly where I would like to go this time if Baba is coming.”

“I’m a really committed mother, child, a good mother should always make it her duty to understand her child, particularly as there’s only one.”

“There you go again.”

We laughed. I was excited. I suspected that Baba’s brush with death three months earlier was the real reason he did not intend to miss this holiday. Doctor’s orders. Why do politicians need doctors to instruct them on such simple things?

Her head turns with a jolt, she heard something, someone; a human voice on her right. But the thunder swallows all other sound. She calls out: HELP! HELP!

He is far away. The mist is not helping, but Ntombizoluntu is almost sure she can see a man, a tall man. He is walking as slowly as she is, as if he too is having to find room for his shoes amidst the corpses. His face is also bent downwards, his arms flailing at his sides, clearly to help him balance. Ntombizoluntu cannot believe that these motionless bodies stretch that far.

HELP! HELP! HELP!

Her voice echoes weirdly. She feels like a ventriloquist, another voice echoing in her throat. This man is not going to hear her, she thinks. One shoe between a man’s legs and the other in a space between this man and the curve of his neighbour’s stomach. For the second stupid moment she thinks: my lost cell phone.

Then a thought crosses her mind. She quickly takes off her jacket and begins to wave her hand above her head in circular motions, fan-like. That should attract his attention. She is terrified of shouting again. She stands there, legs astride, waving her navy-blue corduroy jacket. This feels stranger than walking among corpses. The man doesn’t look up. He just walks. He seems to have a better rhythm than Ntombizoluntu. As if his corpses are not so close to one other. But he has corpses there for sure, she thinks, or he wouldn’t be facing down.

She abandons the idea and decides to keep walking. But this finding space for her shoes is not walking. Just as she is thinking that, she notices the next face facing upwards. It’s a woman’s face. No mistaking that. Her eyes and mouth are open. Blood trickles down her left cheek.

Ntombizoluntu realises the sun must have come up because even though the rain drops are no longer that big, its lighter everywhere. No! She panics. It was better when she could not see their faces, or any details, for that matter. She can see more clearly now. Almost every body has blood somewhere, on the combat clothes each one is wearing. How could they be fighting so close to the beach? She throws her sight further and further, and as far as she can see, there are mounds and mounds of bodies in as many contorted positions. And still no one moves. Guns and what looks like grenades are strewn amidst the bodies. And bags, in military green, like the clothes. She finds room for her shoes and walks on, beginning to cry. Her tears block her view. She does not bother wiping them away. She just allows herself to weep and walk. Weep and walk.

And then a better idea hits Ntombizoluntu. She puts her jacket around her neck, ties it loosely and begins to clap her hands as loudly as she can. HELP! Clap. HELP! Clap. HELP! Clap, clap. Her voice echoes and she notices that the rain has stopped. She is now sobbing aloud in between the claps and the shouts. The horizon lightens up now and again as if the storm is moving far ahead, but when she looks down, there are just bodies.

Then she hears an unmistakable sound: a baby crying, as if in response to her clapping. It seems close by, maybe ten more steps in the direction right ahead. Her heart misses a beat. A live baby among so many motionless bodies! Maybe when she holds it in her arms she will stop crying and stop being so afraid. Her chest is pounding harder than she has ever felt. Nothing in her whole life has prepared her for this. She decides to speed up to where the sound is coming from. She lifts her left foot, hooks through an arm and falls face first on top of three bodies. “Why on earth would you give up your comfortable holiday bed for these rocks?”

The sun is out and a woman, possibly her age, is standing in front of Ntombizoluntu, holding a large transparent bag full of sea shells.

She clutches her bag, smiles, and scrambles to her feet. “Oh sorry, I did not see you come.”

“How could you, with your eyes closed?”

Ntombizoluntu smiles shyly, excuses herself and starts walking briskly back to their holiday bungalow. I have to tell my parents about this dream.

When she finishes talking, she takes a deep breath. Her parents are staring at her. Her mother reaches out, put her hand on her daughter’s right thigh. “Relax Luntu, it was just a dream.”

“How many times have I told you to  stop  reading that TRC report? It’s not good for your soul.” As Baba spoke, he rose from his garden chair, and gave his wife and daughter his back as he strolled into the lounge. “It’s news time.”

Baba has never spoken to me like that, ever. Not only was he direct, he had a reprimanding tone in his voice. Ntombizoluntu thought about this many times that day.