Sunny Sunday afternoon.

On a small farm nestled in a verdant valley, near a little town that baked under the same hot sun that bakes all of Africa, stood a small cream coloured, red-roofed cottage. A deep and cool verandah at the front of the cottage faced the valley, and a few shady trees gently cosseted the red-painted corrugated tin roof from the worst of the African sun.
The valley was richly overgrown; tall green grass competed with invading lantana and towards the bottom of the valley, bluegum trees, giant bamboo and syringa trees groped for the sky. Birds called and insects hummed and buzzed. The air was stifling and uncommonly still.

Presently a small dark green VW Golf nosed its way through an opening in the hedge of bush that demarcated the edge of the farm from the sand road that ran past it. Small tendrils of pale brown dust followed its wheels as it slowly made its way along a track past the front of the little cottage and turned to park beneath a rudimentary, slightly ramshackled carport alongside.
The carport was made of fat bamboo columns slightly bent and bowed from the weight of the unpainted corrugated tin roof they supported, and as the electric cooling fan of the car switched on with an intrusive whirring whoosh, the engine stopped and the muffled clicking of the handbrake being engaged could be heard.

For another moment, everything was still.

The red roof of the small cottage ticked under the merciless sun.

Soon the insects resumed their humming and buzzing and the birds their chatter.

From the passenger side of the car emerged the silver haired head of an elderly woman. With apparent difficulty and only after a few lurching attempts did she manage to extricate her short, portly, dumpy body from the car.

"When we first got married you were such a gentleman", she grumbled as she slammed the car door shut. " You couldn't do enough for me, and you always opened a door for me. Now, it's as if I don't exist. I don't deserve that from you. I don't know how many times I've had to ask you to do things for me that you used to do without any prompting. I've told you before, I want to be treated like a lady, and I expect you to do just that. Now, I wonder where Sadie is? I miss her when she doesn't come to meet us at the car. She's probably down at the bottom chasing something, the stupid dog. Are you listening to me? Come and help me walk please?"

On the other side of the car a tall, thin, almost emaciated looking man closed his door gently, pushing it sharply shut from a few inches away. There was a latent force and aggression suggested in the movement, as if deep within the old man slept monstrous anger.
He muttered something inaudible to himself and moved around the car, offering his arm to the short woman and allowing her to lean against him slightly as they slowly walked from beneath the shadow of the carport.

Together they made an interesting picture.

He, with sparse silver hair atop his skull-like face, gaunt, hollow-cheeked, with scabs and small sores on his baldness from long hours unprotected under the African sun. She was barely the height of his armpit, square and chunky, and slowly they moved together.
She walked a little tentatively; the walk of a blind person in familiar surroundings.
He kept pace with her, apparently providing some sort of safety should she trip or stumble.
They reached the lowest of a series of deep, stone steps that lead from the paved walkway that led from the carport up to the verandah of the cottage.

"Step", the man muttered.

He wore a white collared shirt beneath a grey jacket, with matching grey trousers and black shoes. The suit was slightly loose and baggy on him, as if it had once fitted his thin frame better than now. His clothes had the appearance of being the best of a not-wealthy man. In his other hand he clutched two Bibles; one black, one burgundy.

The woman paused with the toes of both feet just touching the bottom step, and with something of an effort she stepped up the first step, first with her right foot and by keeping a slight hunch in her body until the left foot had joined the right on the bottom step. Then she straightened and shuffled a little, until again both feet were just touching the next step. She repeated the stepping process.
" I wonder where that damn dog is", she said.
"Mmm", grunted the man.
The old lady drew in a short but deep sip of breath and cast her unfocussed gaze towards the expanse of bush below the verandah.

"Sadie,Sadie,Sadie!", she screeched thinly, almost directly into the ear of the old man, who momentarily flinched and clenched his jaw.

She breathed another moment.
" SADIE!", she yelled.

The man seemed to press his lips together for a moment, they paled with the pressure and then as quickly returned to their natural colour as he concentrated his attention on helping his wife up the next step.

The lady was dressed in a pale pink slack-suit. White sandals with a low heel covered her feet, and pearlescent earrings matched a string of pearls that lay across her large bosom.
A beige blouse, lacy at the neck, peeked slightly above the collar of the slack-suit jacket.

She was as neat as a new pin, though her hair was poorly and carelessly cut and styled. Her ears were larger than seemed to fit her head and stature, and they drooped a little long at the lobe.

The couple gave off the impression of living through lean times.

At the top of the steps, with only a few metres to the door of the cottage, she relaxed her grip on his arm and immediately he let her move ahead of him. She began to make her way up the wooden ramp that had been constructed and fitted to replace more steps to the front door.
"I suppose I have to open this door myself as well", she asked pointedly. " I suppose its too much to expect that you will be a gentleman and open it for me", she went on, as she momentarily felt for and then found the door handle.

With the air of a sulky teenager she opened the unlocked door, pushed the door inwards and stepped inside. The man was a few steps behind her and not yet through the door when the first blow fell.

The old woman never saw it coming, not just because she was blind but because it was delivered by a man who had been standing behind the door, and whose raised AK47 butt crashed against the back of the woman's head, sending her staggering face first against the edge of the small sideboard ahead of her and from there sideways to the floor in a small, tangled heap.

For a merest moment again all was still, then the old man yelled.

"Hey! Wha-?!"

His words were sucked backwards into his mouth, suddenly wide open in surprise, as the rifle-wielding man, a black African man, reached out and grabbed the front of the baggy grey jacket and violently pulled it, with the flailing old man inside it, into the house.

The door slammed shut, and after a few silent seconds, the insects resumed their humming and buzzing, and the birds their twittering chatter.

The sun blazed down on the purple-flowered bougainvillea that had climbed, over what must have been many years, the tall timber stand with a green plastic water tank atop, just behind the house. The red-painted roof ticked and clicked in the heat, and from somewhere near the bottom of the valley, amongst the gums and bamboo, a dog barked, then yelped, then whined, then went silent.


Inside the little house it was cool, and not as bright as outside. The air smelt of a curious and rancid mix of stale sweat, fear, woodsmoke, and something fermented.

It was the smell of home invasion, the smell of a farm attack in South Africa. It was the smell of burglary, the smell that lingers in a room long after the robbers have fled back to their shacks and townships carrying their loot; aluminium cooking pots and aging stereo systems, 35 mm film cameras and DVD players, old womens' underwear and Bing Crosby cassettes.

The old woman began almost immediately to stir on the floor, blood oozing from a cut above both eyebrows where her head had crashed against the edge of the sideboard on her way to the carpet.
Blood squeezed from another cut half buried beneath her thin silver hair, at the back of her head where the rifle butt had met the soft, paperthin old skin and split it.

The old man was violently shoved across the small sitting room. Stumbling, overbalancing, he fell headlong into the arms of another black African man standing across the room, who caught him before he fell and then turned him around.

The AK47 was brought into action again, again as a club, this time against the side of the head of the old man. He grunted as it struck, raised his arms feebly to protect himself, at which a third black man appeared from a dim corner and caught both the thin scrawny wrists in strong black hands.

The third man too carried an AK47, on a strap, across his back.

The second and third men, one behind dragging and one in front holding the skinny wrists, manhandled the old man across the sitting room, down the short corridor to the bedroom, around the double bed with floral duvet cover, and tossed him there to the floor.

As he lay there, unresisting, the old man had time to notice that one of his captors, the one with the AK47, wore a brown t-shirt of the kind that the old South African Army used to issue to conscripts, back in the days when conscription was the fate of every white South African boy.

The other man wore a smarter pale blue shirt with a collar, buttoned all the way to the top but without a tie, in the fashion of Nelson Mandela.

Blue shirt had patches of sweat under his arms, and he ripped the cord from a nightgown hanging on a hook behind the bedroom door.
Blue shirt and brown shirt worked together and soon the skinny wrists of the old man were bound behind his back with the strip of navy blue terrycloth.
A faded, pale yellow pillow case from the bed was placed roughly over his head.

"Don't move", brown shirt commanded, " if you move we'll kill both of you ".

Brown shirt left the bedroom whilst blue shirt tied the ankles of the old man together with the belt from another nightgown, a pink satin one.
When he had done that he rose from the floor, and stood panting for a second or two surveying his handiwork.

With a smooth and practiced action he brought the AK-47 to the ready, before leaving the room, closing the bedroom door behind him.

The old woman on the floor had opened her eyes, but could see nothing.
She was blind, hurt, bewildered; but becoming indignant.

" What the hell did you do that for? Who the hell do you think you are? What was that? Who are you?"
Her tone changed.
"Owww, my head hurts," she wailed.
Blood trickled down her face.

Belligerent again, the old woman was began to sit up, and some fight began to rise in her.
"What the hell....!"

Her words were cut short by an overhand punch from the first robber, which landed on her cheek and flattened her to the carpet again.

"Shut up, lady, or we will hurt you," he hissed!
"We want guns."
"Where are the guns," he demanded?

"Oh my God!," she said, with her eyebrows suddenly raised in surprise.
"I thought you were Jacob! Where is Jacob, where is my husband?

"Who are you" , she asked?

Sitting legs spread on the floor, her brows then fell and creased as she tried to compute everything that had transpired in the past minute.
She turned her head this way and that, quizzically, blindly searching for some clues as to what was happening, who was in her home, where they were, where her husband was.


"Where is Jacob" she asked again?
"Where is my husband, what have you done with my husband?"
She had become a little demanding.

" Shut up, lady. Where are the guns? We want your guns", spat the black man.

"We don't have guns. We don't keep guns", replied the old lady.

Her blood was freely running down her face, and down the back of her head, and her pink slack suit jacket and beige lacy blouse were already pockmarked with dark patches and smears of red, especially down the front where her fat belly bloomed out in front of her.

"What would a blind lady want with guns? We don't have guns, we don't believe in them", she said.
"How do you protect yourself if you don't have guns", countered her assailant?

"The Lord looks after and protects us and right now I call on the name of Jesus and all his angels to come and protect us", said the bleeding woman, forcefully, from the floor.

" You do have guns, lady, you must have guns. Every white person has guns on a farm! Tell me where the guns are," he demanded!

Blue shirt was busy rummaging through desk drawers and the small liquor cabinet in the corner of the room, distastefully peering among the bottles.
Brown shirt had moved into the small open plan kitchen off the sitting room, and was scratching through the freezer above the refrigerator, tossing frozen leftovers in old plastic ice-cream containers onto the red and white squares of the lino tiled floor.

Small particles of ice scattered like so many diamonds.

Tiny kernels of cooked minced meat and sweet corn sprayed across the floor from a container that opened on impact, quickly becoming miniature mountains in an archipelago of miniature lagoons as the fallen ice rapidly melted into small puddles.

Number One, who wore a grubby white T-shirt with the words 'Youth with a Mission' emblazoned across the chest in bright blue, casually cuffed the woman across the cheek and a spray of blood flew from her nose across the bronze carpet.

Again she slumped to the floor.

"Guns and money, we want it. Where is the safe", he shouted, standing over the old woman.

The room, though still cooler than outside, was becoming stuffy and close, and sweat had begun to form on his brow.

Again, he slapped the old woman against the side of her head, again she sprawled to the carpet, again blood spurted onto the carpet.

" Where is Jacob? What have you done with my husband", she insisted.

"He is in the room, being quiet, as we told him. He is OK. We won't hurt you if you are quiet and tell us where are the money and the guns," said Blue shirt, from where he was now standing at the desk against the far wall of the sitting room.

He opened the three of the drawers of the small desk and rummaged around for a few minutes. Then he stopped riummaging, and drew from within the drawer a sheet of paper.

It had the words African Bank printed in red at the top.
He studied the paper for a moment, then dropped it to the floor.

The white surgical gloves he wore were a glorious match to the pale blue of his shirt.

His manner was a fraction more refined than his accomplices, slightly urbane and cultured.
He sighed.
"Put her here," he said softly, indicating with a gloved hand the low, round, coffee table in the centre of the room.

Number one, the man who had stood behind the door, put his AK47 on the sideboard and called Brown shirt from the kitchen area.
Together they roughly grabbed the old lady under her arms and lifted, dragged and heaved her the short distance across the small room to the table. She sat slumped on the table, her feet apart, her elbows on her knees, her head lowered as her blood dripped from her face and plopped quietly on the carpet.

She was wheezing and as she breathed in and out, blood bubbled at her nostrils.

"Where is the safe? Where do you keep the money? There is not much in your bank, so the rest must be here as cash. Where is it?"

"I don't have a lot of money. This is what we have, this place, and what's in it", said the woman.
She raised her head, and unseeingly looked around the room, still wheezing for breath.

Blood dribbled from the point of her chin.
Her complexion beneath was grey.

Blue shirt was now seated on an armchair in front of her, his legs folded one knee over the other.
Number one and Brown shirt were together to her left, but she didn't know that.

She had no idea who was in her house beyond that they smelt and sounded like black Africans.

She didn't know how many of them there were. She didn't know what she herself nor what they looked like, nor if her husband were alive, nor that the men who were hurting her were armed with automatic weapons.

She pulled herself up a little and, looking straight ahead, said in a wavering voice " We have no money, we have no guns so you can go now and leave us alone!"
She was no longer wheezing but was still breathing heavily and had begun to shake slightly.

Blue shirt sat back and looked at her, this obstinate, battered and bleeding old white lady before him, with blood all over her clothes, all over her face, and a deep gash across her forehead. She looked frail, her wide eyes looked everywhere around her but the light only reflected off them, she didn't seem to register any recognition or connection to anything she was looking at.

He reached forward and waved his gloved hand in front of her face.
She neither blinked nor flinched.
He sat back again and just looked at her for a long moment.
He looked at his accomplices, one in an old Army T-shirt that was part of the prize from a housebreaking a few weeks ago.

Blue shirt then looked more attentively at his immediate surroundings, he looked around the small sitting room within this little house, baking in the sun in this quiet little valley.

It was small, and nothing in terms of fixture or furnishing indicated wealth, by the normal standards of white people.

The television was old, huge and boxy.
There was no DVD player, no home theatre system.

The old fashioned stereo system featured a cassette deck and a record player, with mismatched speakers mounted up on the wall above it.
There was a shiny silver portable radio and CD combination system on the low table beneath the main window of the room, a window that would look out onto the verandah and over the valley if the cream coloured curtains weren't drawn.

The carpet was brown and worn in places, the open plan kitchen was equipped with older, very average appliances.
The electric stove looked old.

He looked again at the woman in front of him. She wore gold rings on her one hand, he reached out and grabbed the hand where it rested between her legs.
The woman yelped and pulled her hand back. Blue shirt stood up and calmly raised his right arm, his hand balled into a fist, and crashed a blow against the jaw of the woman.

She collapsed sideways to the floor again, screamed, and then began wailing.

Blue shirt calmly bent, captured her left hand in his and set about removing her rings.

She began moaning "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" over and over again, rocking her head from side to side where she lay on the carpet,her tears and spit and snot mixing with her blood and smudging and smearing all over her face and the carpet.

"Shut up, woman" yelled brown shirt. "Shut up, old woman, be quiet!"

"Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus", mumbled the woman, " Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" she went on, wailing, rocking her head, "Oh Jesus protect us, Jesus protect us, please, please, please Jesus protect us....."

Brown shirt lunged across the room wide-eyed and planted his gum-booted foot against the wailing woman's head, trapping her head between his foot and the floor. He leaned some of his weight onto it, and watched as the woman's face squeezed and squashed and contorted with pain, and then he smiled to himself as she stopped wailing the name of Jesus and began instead to howl and scream.

"We want the MONEY", he hissed, emphasising the word money by pressing even harder with his black, dirty, coarse gumboot onto the reddening face of the woman.

Blue shirt casually waved his hand at Brown shirt, and the pressure was lifted off her head.
Brown shirt picked up his rifle, slung it over his back, and sauntered back into the kitchen. He opened the fridge with a gloved hand and took from it a half full bottle of roswine. He unscrewed the cap, and as he emptied the bottle in one drink, Youth with a Mission abruptly stood and muttered something in an African language.

Crossing the room in two strides he cocked his weapon, and pointed its menacing tip at the woman's head.
" I will kill you, old woman! Tell us where is the guns and cash, where is the safe?"
He was almost screaming, his face twisted with rage and hatred.
"I've told you, we have no guns, no safe, no cash", pleaded the old woman. " Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, please please please Jesus, Jesus." She began wailing again. "We have no guns," she repeated.

"Don't LIE!"
YWAM was enraged.
"I will kill you! I will shoot you!", he screamed, repeatedly jabbing the sharp foresight on the end of the rifle barrel through the thin, grey hair of the babbling woman, making little graze-marks against the pale pink skin of her scalp.

"Then you must shoot me, " said the bloodied woman, shaking her head again. "I can't give you what we don't have. Take whatever you want, God always replaces what is stolen from us, but we have no guns and no money. If you don't like to hear that then you must shoot me," she said.
She seemed to steady herself and something inside her seemed to stiffen.

YWAM looked as if he just might pull the trigger, he was aiming down the length of his weapon at the frail old woman laying on the floor in a mess of her own blood, his bloodshot eyes bugging slightly from his face.

Just then Blue shirt casually waved his hand again towards YWAM, and YWAM relaxed, slowly, and stepped back first one step, the a second, then a third.
He lowered his rifle, and breathed out audibly.

Blue shirt turned his head and spoke something to Brown shirt who had been watching from the kitchen. Brown shirt turned around, and began opening cupboards rummaging around, as of looking for something.

Moments later he returned to the the sitting room carrying an electric iron, its cord wrapped around its handle. He made as if to hand it to Blue shirt but a desultory wave of the hand from Blue shirt made him stop, unwrap and shake the cord out. He looked around the small room until he found a wall outlet, then he plugged the iron in.
And turned it on.

The room was silent besides the sound of the ragged, open mouthed breathing of the old woman.
At one point the iron ticked a few times as it heated. The old woman caught and held her breath, her head curiously turned, a quizzical expression on her face, before recognition and realisation arrived. She began praying again.

A minute or two passed and Blue shirt beckoned with his fingers. Brown shirt unplugged the iron and brought it over to his partner in the armchair.
Gingerly, Blue shirt took the hot iron and then sat forward. The old woman sniffed, her unseeing eyes wide with fear for what she thought she knew was coming.

Softly, almost at a whisper, Blue shirt asked again, " We want guns and money, where are the guns? Where is the safe with your money? We want your guns and your cash?"

The old lady, now blankly staring forward, shook her head and bit her lip, before calmly repeating "We have no guns. How many times do I have to repeat myself? We don't keep any guns! We don't need them because God looks after us and he looks after this place. There are no guns and no money here!"

Blue shirt motioned to his accomplices,who came forward until one stood on each side of the seated old lady, and then simultaneously they each grabbed hold of her arms. YWAM roughly grabbed a handful of her bloodied silver hair and tugged her head sideways against his thigh, exposing her cheek, and held it there.

Casually Blue shirt brought the iron up and then pressed it against her cheek.

The old lady screamed thinly and winced and bucked and fought as the hiss of hot metal on skin filled the room, but she was old and weak and hardly troubled the strong arms that restrained her. Her screams continued a moment or two after the interminably long seconds of contact were broken.

Blue shirt wrinkled his nose with distaste as the scent of burned blood and flesh reached his nose, and as the thin screams were gradually replaced by sobs and moans he motioned to his men who immediately released the quivering wreck they had been holding.

He passed the iron to YWAM, who too wrinkled his nose as he carried it to the kitchen, where he opened the rear kitchen door that led outside, and tossed the iron to the ground.

"Oh Jesus, JesusJesusJesus" wailed the woman, her tears mingling and mixing with the blood and sweat and snot that streaked her face.

Blue shirt stood, stepped forward and slapped the old woman hard, then firmly placed his hand over her mouth. She went instantly silent, and in the silence, Blue shirt listened.

Outside a dove could be heard cooing, other birds warbled and chattered, the roof ticked again, then nothing else.

And so it continued for the afternoon, whilst the birds chattered and the insects buzzed and hummed, whilst the sun arced the sky and the shadows grew longer, for three hours that felt like forever, the old lady was punched and slapped, tortured, burned and beaten, all the while denying the existence of any guns or cash, all the while calling out the name, not of her husband, but of her god.

Then, their rifles put aside for the sweaty work of beating, they briefly paused for a conference.
In somewhat argumentative tones they debated in their language, and then YWAM stepped over to where the woman now lay on the floor.

" Now we are going to rape you,"he said, stooping to roughly turn the woman onto her back. She was unresisting, covered in blood, her eyes swollen shut. Her lips were bloody puffy appendages to her face, her pearls scattered across the carpet.

"Jesus jesusjesusjesus" she moaned quietly.

Roughly and with the help of Brown shirt, her slacks were loosened and pulled from her, her camel shaded support underwear tugged to her ankles.

"I'm eighty five years old, what on Earth would you want to rape me for", she mumbled through broken teeth and split lips?
"What is wrong with you that you want to rape me? You won't rape me, in Jesus name, you aren't going to rape me," she went on.

YWAM and Brown shirt were tired, hot, exhausted from the effort of trying to get this tiny old woman to give up the location of any guns or cash, from the effort of making her submit and give up struggling.
The medicine they had taken before entering the house, bought at considerable expense from a traditional African herbalist to make them feel mighty and powerful and keep them from getting caught, was wearing off.
They were exhausted.
But they had to find guns and cash - they had been sent to terrorise, murder and wound, but guns and cash were supposed to be the reasons for doing it.
They weren't ready to leave this place empty handed.

Blue shirt had reached the conclusion that there were neither money, nor safe, nor weapons in the house, and though sickened by the sight of the pale, wide, flabby ass now revealed on the floor, he wasn't going to interfere if YWAM and Brown shirt wanted to commit rape today.
They had raped many women together, white women, brown women, black women, young women, old women...rape was like a tool in their toolbox.

Blue shirt briefly remembered the occasion they had attacked a farm not too far from here, and had each raped the farmers youngest daughter, a child really, several times, quite a while after the farmer had given up and surrendered his guns and money.
Sometimes their work would go like that.

One time Brown shirt removed a child's eyes with a teaspoon, just because nobody in the house was able to stop him. The farmer was dead, his wife unconscious, there were only kids left to terrorise.
Today, the three robbers had punched and slapped and beaten the whole afternoon. It was inconceivable that this little old woman would not have given up the location of any money or guns already, but just to make sure, Blue shirt left YWAM and Brown shirt to their pleasure.

It was much later in the afternoon when the three men with their rifles, plus two mobile phones, a set of car keys and ten dollars in cash, slipped from the little cottage and quickly disappeared into the thick bush at the bottom of the valley on foot.

Inside the house all was quiet but for the laboured breathing of the unconscious woman.
The refrigerator clicked on and hummed quietly.

Semi naked she lay on the floor, in her own bloody filth, her features one mess of blood and gore, her clothes in shreds and dignity in ruins.

The room smelled putrid and rancid, sweat and fear and feces combined with the lingering odour of seared flesh and still the indefinable scent of something fermenting.

Outside, a hadeda raucously announced its passage across some area of sky, on the verandah a swallow made a scheduled return with yet another pellet of mud for its nest under the eaves, and everywhere was still the sound of insects buzzing and humming.

The sun drifted slowly across the blue sky and the shadows twirled and began to fall and lengthen, stretching out on the hot, baking Earth.

The roof ticked as began to cool.