MANTALK: The other side of the story

I had a dream that I was in a township somewhere in Africa. I was standing at the top of this dusty road, looking down at some boys assault another man. They were kids, those boys, maybe 17 years old, street-clothed, urban urchins. They had on canvas shoes. The three of them were going at this man in high noon.

I was completely terrified of those boys. Utterly so. It was terror like I have never imagined. Suddenly one of them turned and looked in my direction. Have you watched the Walking Dead series, when the zombies suddenly turn and stare at a human and they all start staggering towards him fast with their hands extended forward? That’s exactly what happened. The boys started running after me. I’m in a foreign land, deep in their shanties, and they are coming for me. If this was a primary school composition (40 marks) I would have written, “I ran as far as my legs could carry me.”

BAD BOYS CHASING ME

I legged it through kiosks and under decrepit bridges that smelled of stale urine, and through small spaces in hedges. Then I happened upon a church and ran into the compound where local boys were playing football. The bad boys who were chasing me promptly stopped at the gate because, well, I was now protected by the church. I ran to the back of this building where I found a very large man seated on a small stool.  I told him, “I have a problem,” and he said, “I hope it isn’t a money problem.” I said, “No, it’s about boys,” to which he said, “Well, I would have thought it’s about girls.” (I’m reporting this verbatim, by the way.) Here is how completely bananas dreams are: On Friday I had met my cousins for lunch: ugali and fish, and I after lunch I went too long without washing my hands.

When I finally made my way to the sink the ugali had dried on my palms so I had to scratch it off with my nails under running water. Now that’s the exact thing I was doing as I chatted with that huge man seated on a stool. I was scratching ugali off my palms under this running water. It’s completely unfathomable. Dreams are like very bad fiction. 

Anyway, as we spoke, one of the boys who were chasing me showed up and when he saw the monstrous man he stepped back into the shadows. Then more of them showed up and they gathered there in the shadow, staring at me like a pack of wolves waiting for a chance to pounce. Boy, was I scared!

FILTHY PAWS

I woke up immediately before those dirty boys could lay their filthy paws on me. My heart was beating furiously. I lay still in the darkness, feeling the sound of my heart hammering away like the drumming tap-tap of a tap dancer. When I told a friend of mine this story she said, “Maybe someone is trying to screw you over.” (Figuratively, not literally, I hope!)

This dream got me thinking about how a woman might feel when faced with a potential attacker. How completely harrowing that might feel, to be faced with these men, or man, bigger and stronger than you, and you are in this house with him and he has every intention of having his way with you. You can scream but the next house is 200 metres away and even if your scream gets there, the occupant in that house is an old woman with a hearing aid.

This man threatening you with assault likely doesn’t have a condom, and even if he had one he wouldn’t use it, because to do so would be to show you some sort of concern which is not what this attack is about.

You are at his mercy and you are completely scared, outgunned and outfoxed while he leers at you. You stare at his big, ugly hands and you don’t know how who you will be afterwards if he goes through with his plan. If assault of any kind is anything like my dream was, it’s the most macabre, gut-wrenching experience ever. This feeling of helplessness but even worse, of weakness. Weakness is not just disempowering. It’s demeaning. It undignifying. It’s dirty. It is a complete violation of your human right.

When you wake up from a nightmare you are afraid to go back to sleep lest you find those boys still waiting in the shadows. So you lie there in darkness and control your breathing. In real life, assault victims don’t have the courtesy of lying in darkness until the dream goes away. They walk around with it. They sleep with it. They wake up with it. Then maybe they overcome it with intervention. But I suspect it lingers. That powerlessness. And fear. And silent loathing.