This true story belongs in the collection Nectar of the Ordinary. This piece will come after the “Note” which a few of you have read. This is my first finished piece for Nectar of the Ordinary which was intentional. The piece titled “Dawn & Anowar” was not originally meant for Nectar of the Ordinary but I decided it belonged there rightfully (minus some content editing).
Honestly, my only motivation for actually completing this is because I have lost the email address and phone number of the woman to whom this story belongs.
~a.q.s.
First Sap: “The End.”
It doesn’t take that long, about one and a half hour, for the breakfast crowd to clear out from Café Nescafé in Sunninghill, a suburb of Johannesburg, and then I am finally alone. This is followed by a small crowd for brunch or lunch. And then they too leave. The average Saturday or Sunday was always the right amount of busy. It served as a quiet space where I could write. Or attempt. It had just the adequate amount of bustle, which is to say, the least amount of distractions for me.
One such Saturday—I can’t recall now if it was a Sunday instead (I tried but was never disciplined enough to follow the ambition of writing at that location on consecutive afternoons)—I noted that there had been no new customer for…since I had been there in the morning. It was 4:00 p.m. and the staff was getting ready to close down earlier than usual. My waitress—yes, I pretended she or her substitute were designated exclusively for me given I was pretty much a regular on one day of the weekend and sat in the same spot—passed by me and asked if I needed any more tea. Almost as if one would ask a child. I shook my head no.
Words from my lap top stared back at me. Old words. From a story titled “Pink Flamingoes” which belongs in Augury. Some feelings are so big, she thought, that one dedicates a life-time burying them instead of following them. Written fifteen (it feels better to not see that number typed in digit format!) days prior to that Saturday.
Can you develop your full potential without sacrificing? Whatever those sacrifices might mean, involving whoever? That is what this man, let’s call him Orion (yes, that is my synonym for miscellaneous men), had asked me at a restaurant called Signature in Morningside, Johannesburg. (One of my favorite restaurants in Jo’burg by the way—the owner’s vision is palpable throughout—my slice of NYC in South Africa). Clearly, I was not thinking about “Pink Flamingoes” but developing Her Sizwe, the other…“writing project.” My love-hate relationship continues to grow with that work.
I wanted answers but redundant questions buzzed within me regarding what that man had inquired: potential and sacrifice. His query was the fruit of my blabbing about what Her Sizwe entailed. My mother was right, I thought. I should have stayed at home (California) to write. “You get distracted too easily.” I would retort, “I don’t get distracted easily—I just pay attention to every thing.” Um, that is her point.
My “friends”—the staff—at this café told me that I could stay until they were ready to lock out and I could leave with them. They were always so attentive and kind to me. I started packing my belongings. Slowly. Right then, walked in this teeny, tiny dark-brown skinned woman who wore a metallic, silver t-shirt which had a black peace symbol in the middle, on top of her black pants and bright white sneakers. Despite being a Lilliputian, she was not frail by any means.
The waitress informed her that they were closed. The tiny woman looked over at me: how is she still here? She didn’t have to ask out loud. I looked away and continued to put my paper clutter in the respective folders.
The miniature lady sat down and told the waitress, “I will sit here. Some water would be lovely.” The waitress looked over at the manager who shrugged. She sat down at a table diagonal to mine. When I lifted my eyes we held the same field of vision. A different staff person brought her a glass of water. The tiny woman politely requested for some ice for her water. The waiter couldn’t hide his shock at the audacity: they were closed! She looked my way and said, “To know what you want and not ask for it is stupid.” I nodded and smiled.
She asked me what I was working on.
I answered a long-winded response which essentially could have easily been summed up as: nothing. It had been an unproductive day.
She finished her glass of water in one swig.
I stared at “Pink Flamingoes” one last time before I closed my lap top. I hated every word. Only my friends Vuyo, Erica and my mother had read the first draft or its fragments. Only feedback: finish it already. That was eight months ago.
The tiny woman asked me, “What kind of endings do you like?”
I had never thought about that. Not as a reader (at least not in the specific sense) and definitely not when writing. I didn’t know what to answer then, but now I would say those endings which make me question, think, feel, even when they leave me uneasy and frustrated. Endings which contract and expand my comfort zone.
Instead, then I had replied, “Somewhere in the hills of Durban I once knew this guy named Pascal—back in 2006—who told me all beginnings come with their endings wrapped in them.” Then I added, “I don’t quite agree with him or all that it possibly means to agree or not agree with that statement.”
“Maybe,” she said, her eyes penetrated through every blink of mine, “But you cannot always decide that ending.”
“But when writing a story, I must…”
She cut me off.
Didn’t we decide endings? What constituted as an ending if endings lead to beginnings?
“When there is nothing left to say, there is nothing left to say. In a story or in life. Damn character dimensions and plot development. Let the damn reader connect the dots and develop whatever the hell he or she wants to develop. Or not develop. We develop what we can live with. Sometimes, we develop what’s not there so we can live.”
I wanted to splatter my thoughts like paint against the walls: “Pink Flamingoes” which belongs in Augury: unfinished. “Noor Baba” which belongs in Nectar of the Ordinary: unfinished. Her Sizwe which is going to be a what? Short story? Novella? Book? I could write an essay on ant colonies better than the attempts of proceeding further than page thirty-five. Unfinished. Why? Why—because I didn’t know how to end any of them, not to mention others. Oh yeah, many others. Oh my God—was I afraid of endings? When writing? Where else? Life? Stop self, stop now.
I was done throwing my internal tantrum, disgusted with the self-deprecating monologue in my head (which is usually a long text message to a trusted friend).
I didn’t say any of the above, instead I asked, “Do you write?”
She said she had never even written as much as a single journal entry. She had only written one love letter. Yet, what she had to share somehow made sense when it came to my writing.
“I want an ending, you see…” I began explaining to her, talking with my hands like I do.
She cut me off, “Aaha!” None of us were sure if she had said that loudly or it seemed loud because she was so small. She continued, “You are the problem, Ms.-?”
“Syed. S.y.e.d.”
“You are the problem, Ms. Syed. You are the problem, not your stories.”
How dare she walk in here while my “friends” were closing the café and not approve of her un-iced water and strike up a conversation about writing with me and dare to tell ME that I am the problem when she had probably never even written an essay! The nerve.
Instead I told her that once I had shared a story with a writer friend of mine. Five years ago. Don’t even know where that story is now. And he had said, “What is this? I want more! I don’t want this! Where is this? Where is that?”
“Tell him to go look for it or create what he is looking for—that is all there was to be said and hence that is all there is,” she said, putting her tiny fist down on the table.
I smiled. Her long fingers wrapped in an itsy bitsy, fierce fist.
“Want to see my love letter?”
Did I?! Was she kidding! I thought she would never ask.
She took out a weathered piece of paper, which had been opened and refolded many times over, from her wallet which was buried somewhere in her ancient bag.
Dear Ulwazi,
It has been 5,475 days. I am still waiting for you.
I love you.
Lilly.
The 5,475 was written over 5,474, which was written over 5,473 and so on.
“Do you know how many years that is?” she asked me, grinning.
“No.”
Of course I didn’t know.
“I am sure you will figure that out.”
“So you never married? You have just been waiting for some idiot who left you?”
“Oh I married. Twice. The first man liked the bottle more than me so I left him to drown. Left him and took our son along. The second man died in a car accident. I have three kids total. And six grandchildren.”
“You are a grandmother!”
She smiled.
I couldn’t even formulate questions fast enough in my head.
I recall sitting there that day, the staff ready to leave, pretty much waiting on us. I can recall not wanting to leave.
“Why don’t you send this?”
“Oh I do. This is my copy,” she giggled.
Was she crazy? Because I do have a tendency to attract individuals that society would deem a bit loony—like the homeless bum around the subway stop near my block in Harlem who shouts: “I knew there was no prince!” every time he sees me. Don’t ask.
She told me that she used to copy the letter every day and send it to different p.o. boxes through out the various zip codes and different addresses in the phone books. “Sooner or later he is going to find me.”
We walked out together. I remember feeling so frustrated at my “friends” from the café who were curious about our conversation. I was annoyed at their good-byes and the usual “are you coming next weekend?” I was unable to multi-chat when I only wanted to listen to one tiny woman.
Out in the parking lot I told Lily that there was such a thing as “google” now and maybe we could find him. She said she had tried without any luck—at least no such luck yet.
I didn’t hold back: “What if he is dead?”
She wasn’t alarmed, “He isn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“What if he is happily married?”
“He’s not. At least not happily. He made a mistake. I left him.”
“Why don’t you pick up the phone and call instead of snail mail?”
“I do; originally it was more mailing than calling. That wasn’t possible before.”
“How long after you left him did you start…this love letter business?”
She replied, “You are looking for an ending when there isn’t one. Finding dots to connect is not going to make the ending any clearer for you.”
We parted and I turned around and called her name but didn’t know what to ask.
She smiled and said, “I don’t write. But I do read. Anything and everything under the sun.”
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Wow…a story all on its own…with an ending that is actually a beginning.
Its not about the end….or the beginning…its about all the fuzzy stuff we are compelled to work through in between.
For Orion: Sacrifice
I love it when you make me expand my perceptions…
It’s been fifteen years – FIFTEEN! That’s a long time. Fifteen-day-old “old words.” I guess writers feel time differently than readers.
Lilly,
I also don’t write. I read what others write about how they read the world. And you are absolutely correct when you said, “To know what you want and not ask for it is stupid.” Thoughts of the numerous times I’ve been stupid suddenly enveloped me in a tailored suit of sadness.
Ms. S.y.e.d.,
I just dived into your Planet and didn’t come up for breath; I simply didn’t need it. While swimming through, I felt heat at the bottom of my feet. No flames. Just energy. It propelled me, and I felt happy. I became anxious when I knew I was reaching the end. But then I sat here, at work, unfulfilling work, and the end of the story metamorphosed into a renewing consciousness, exposing how much I love those who share, through art, the angels and demons within them – people who I cannot afford to live without and art that I refuse to breathe without.
@Cathy – only someone who thinks in ‘writing’ would conjure up the phrase: “tailored suit of sadness.” Sometimes living–just living–even through those nights when demons get a free-pass and angels have to wait–is art.
@Cathy – 15.
You do attract the looniest of the loonies, but most for a certain purpose — Look at Lilly? Gotta love Lilly? Humpfh