Sreddy

“I love Johannesburg – like one loves and protects a fragile puppy, like one removes weeds from beds of blossoming tulips and roses. I am drawn to its formless danger, the lurking disquiets of a big city, by how minute and faceless I have become in the vast frontiers of its palaces and dungeons, how my stargazing crawls by unnoticed by my countrymen. There are other stargazers too, there must be, real stargazers who camp and live and thrive in the wild: lantern carriers and owners of books and celestial maps about the history and unknown charms in the world of stars. There must be true worshippers and disciples of these heavenly fires, these celestial corpses that have long died, exploded into trillions of graveyards that adorn the night skies. There seems, if I concentrate long enough, to be a certain secret that draws me to the stars: their ancient silence, their insistence on commanding attention without shouting from rooftops, unlike the shamelessness of thunder and rain, unaffected by their distance or determination. Stars are quiet – arrogant, maybe – but also of a particular crispness that takes refuge in every pore, every fragment of every hair that covers every slope and plane of the body. It is possible that Michael K is peering from behind the night clouds, content not to be bothered. He has seen the zealots and charlatans coming from miles away, preserved his soul in the most elementary of ways: the ways of silence.”
― Nthikeng Mohlele, Michael K

“But in the end, there will still be a morning like this one, full of new beginning and a distant voice will be heard like a memory of before you became people. And the tones of the song will well up, the gentle lull of the first mother. This song yes, indeed will be ours. The memory of a deeper root that they were unable to wretch out of us. All this will happen if we are able to rid ourselves of this time that has made animals out of us. Let us strive to die like the people we no longer are. Let the animal die that this world has turned us into.”
― Mia Couto, Sleepwalking Land

“[I]t is not ideal to be completely lost in the world of books, for it is not possible to be whole in the refuge of art, of ideas; there is living to be done, living that can be abundant and bittersweet, that can be foggy and unkind, that can be searing and bruising, that can maim and impale, be both meagre and profound.”
― Nthikeng Mohlele, Michael K

“For this war was not made to take you away from your country, but to take your country away from within you.”
― Mia Couto, Sleepwalking Land