Why Not Magoos?

On 14 June 1986, Durban nightlife and civilian society in South Africa were ripped through by a bomb outside a beachfront hotel. Today, echoes of the past remain — by Stephen Embleton

Standing on the red brick island on Durban’s O.R. Tambo Parade in the middle of the week, it is not the usual weekend buzz. It’s not Saturday the 14th of June or even Friday the 13th. The state of emergency declared on the Thursday has long past. Robert is not deciding where to park his blue 1978 Ford Cortina. No boot full of explosives. Why not? It is not 1986.

It’s a typical day on Durban’s Golden Mile: warm and sunny, with a gentle breeze and the occasional gust of ocean air from behind me. The sound of the waves rises over the beachfront’s shuttered Rachel Finlayson Swimming Pool and echoes against the shaded buildings on the other side of the road. Their late afternoon shadows grey out the usual postcard lustre and edge across the road as the sun recedes. Despite the warmth, I feel a chill.

And it’s gone.

The humidity creeps back into my clothing.

In comparison with the other hotels rising into Durban’s hazy blue skies, the Parade Hotel is a squat five stories. An almost square facade sidles up against the twenty-stories of the neighbouring Yarningdale apartments. The ground floor to the left of the Parade’s main entrance is home to a neat bar — dark awnings cover the patio doors leading out onto a seating area enclosed by a weathered wooden wall — and on the right side, a now separate estate agent business. There is no bustle of people crowding outside or spilling out onto the steps and entrance. The only visible movement the rustling palm trees adorning the pavement.

I’m not going around the corner to where the Garfunkel’s Restaurant entrance would’ve opened out onto Serridge Square. No clinking cutlery on porcelain and no saucy smells wafting through the night air. It’s probably still a restaurant of some sort.

Today I’m heading into the hotel itself.

I check for traffic. A car cruises by, perfectly intact.

I step into the road and cross the angled parking bays towards the hotel entrance. No Mazda 323 pulling into a parking. My car alone, alarm activated.

Onto the pavement and leading up to the foyer entrance, the paving and brickwork is neat, almost clean. A blast probably wouldn’t lift the square slabs of concrete. Maybe a brick, though.

The green and yellow canvas awning extending over the stairs, sheltering people from the night’s light drizzle, was torn down years ago. Just the three shallow balconies of the first, second and third floors — the bottom two with their distinctive curves, while the one above an uninspired rectangle. It isn’t 9:30 at night. And it’s not raining.

Up the four stairs and the automatic glass doors quietly slide open. The cool air-conditioning seeps out but quickly dissipates. Inside, the air isn’t thick with stuffy breath. It brings a welcome relief.

I don’t have to edge past anyone crowding the foyer. The door that opened up on to a packed bar to the right is gone. No standing-room-only. No chance of edging through the bodies to the bar to get a quick dop.

The doors close behind me and shut out the din of the beachfront. The only sounds come from a group of people seated on the black-brown leather settee running the length of the brightly wallpapered wall to the far left of the hotel lobby desk. The silver and greens of the birds and leaves a contrast to the ebony wooden floors and panelling.

I keep looking for an entrance to the right, or at least the bricked-up and uneven plastered hint of one. There’s no live band playing. No attraction to pack in the laities. No Riff-Raff or On the Brink playing on the stage in the corner. No smoke machine to match the mood. Cigarettes were still cool, but not today.

Seated on the single lime green chair near the entrance to the restaurant on my left, a woman in a bold black and white dress, and matching hat, gesticulates with her bangled arm and sends a torrent of isiZulu back at her companions. They barely stifle their delight and self-consciously eye out the hotel staff huddled behind their computers before returning their attention back to the conversation.

One of the staff peers over her screen at me with a smile.

I smile back, wondering what the preferred scripted greeting would be, but keep sharp left and pass through the open French doors into the bar, the dark wood bar-counter running down the length of the right of the room. The layout looks similar but there’s no doorway through to the Restaurant. I lean over one of the leather-backed stools and wait for the barman to finish on his cell phone.

The tone of the room would have been more muted than the bustle around the foyer, the conversations more intimate but still lively and loud enough. A hug hello here, a top-to-bottom appraisal there, the clink of a toast to start the night. No friends today, no conversations expected.

Who do you really notice around you? The smile of a passerby, a greeting or something more? You talk to your companions while you survey your surroundings. In the conversation but really flitting around the room. You cannot know this then but they will be people you will come to know. A shared history. A shared horror.

I finally order an Irish coffee and walk over to the open patio doors and wait for the drink to arrive.

It gives me a moment to take in the view of the road, palm trees and the occasional passing traffic. On a perfect Durban evening they would open the windows, now floor to ceiling aluminium and glass doors, and you could have a conversation with a mate in a parked car a few feet away.

But on a cool June evening, and with the rain, the windows would’ve been closed — the sheets of glass a transparent protective layer keeping the outside out.

A slender woman, with her jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail, black leggings rising up under a barely necessary miniskirt, pulls at the collar of her faded black jacket as she gazes down the road to the south. A few quick movements of her head and she’s looking at me, but a moment of self-consciousness snaps her head and eyes down on the pavement and she walks away from the corner, hands rammed into her jacket pockets. As she nears my parked car I notice the pockmarks on her dark and drawn cheeks. After a few more metres she scans for traffic and heads to the opposite side of the road into the darkness provided by the thicker trees.

Footsteps approach and the barman places my neatly made drink on a coaster on a low coffee-table, paper serviette triangled and placed under the foot of the glass. Deep brown liquid at the bottom, topped with half an inch of cream and a rough dusting of nutmeg. I say thanks and sit on one of the lounge chairs alongside.

There’s no post-game chatter about the earlier Natal versus Orange Free State rugby match on any television or part of any conversation. Why not? It is not 1986. The two flatscreen TVs above the bar and two on either side of the room play the previous weekend’s football matches, sound on mute but accompanied by a generic pop song I cannot identify playing over the discreetly mounted sound-system speakers dotted around the cornices of the ceiling. There are no drums thumping from the other side of the foyer. Sledgehammer may have been playing in this room, but maybe not the right mood.

I pick up the still hot glass by its stem, serviette held underneath by my pinky, and place it on my armrest. The coffee smell is strong — the whiskey hinting it’s there.

My shoes squeak as I settle in and cross my legs. There’s no plush carpeting underfoot to muffle footsteps and make the room more intimate. This isn’t some yuppy jol anymore, my china. It’s a veneer of class discreetly wallpapered over the past.

As I wait for the drink to cool, I check the hotel’s web page on my phone. Clean and simple. No mention of the past. Just the distant past. The 1930s. The not-so-distant-past relegated to other people’s memories not a hotel’s website. No frills, no thrills.

I lift my glass and breath in the creamy coffee scents. Not yet.

I peer over the rim, still only my car is in the parking area.

There’s no young guy fumbling at a Cortina boot, vloeking some oke to get off the bonnet. There’s no Mazda 323 screeching away north, trailed by the guy now looking back over his shoulder at the Ford.

How long is a fuse? How long his timer? One Mississippi? Two pulls on a beer. Three cackles at a mate’s joke? A song fading out? Was a pin pulled, never again to be put back? Was a clock set to run out of time?

There’s no sense of dread. No calm before the storm.

I hesitate, then take a sip of my warming Irish coffee.

A gust of wind dusts up the doorways and shivers the doors, no menus or napkins scatter. Nothing is sent fluttering through the room. Someone’s laugh doesn’t distract you from the evening view outside. Nothing is spilt.

#

From Wentworth to Natal Command, you would’ve felt the force.

Obliteration comes in a pulse of light followed by darkness, sound then quiet, pain then numbness and deafening quiet.

Sheets become shards. Wood becomes splinters.

Arteries are severed. Glass is embedded. The only sound is the blood beating in your ears.

Traumatic stress will follow — a book being dropped can trigger it. A power failure can trigger it. The slam of a door at the other end of a house can trigger it.

Inside, the quiet after the storm. The dust hasn’t settled. All is black, or blackened or blacked out.

A second explosion would’ve been the car’s petrol tank.

I’m not sure how I feel today, but it’s weird. It’s like I can hear things that aren’t here. Too many movies or an active imagination? Or something else.

There’s no smoking in here. There’s no smoke in here. There’s no confusion about whether the smoke was from the live band that were playing moments before or the smoke coming in through the shattered windows and doors. Or was it dust from the fractured walls as plaster tumbled out the cracks?

I take a longer sip of my drink, but too quickly I try catching my breath and splutter on the liquid. I put the glass on the table and take a moment to stop the reflexive coughing. My eyes water, tearing down my cheeks.

I glance over to the barman to let him know not to worry. He’s not.

No one has been blown over the bar. No one is staggering to their feet. No one’s legs give way.

I use the serviette to dab at my eyes and wipe my cream-covered mouth and nose. I take a moment and breathe, get my bearings in the room.

The obliterated drywall that exposed Garfunkel’s behind is replaced with a solid wall, rows of neatly displayed bottles and cocktail glasses on the undisturbed mirrored shelves.

Deciding to stay in saved your life. The delay picking up your friend saved your life. Standing behind a pillar saved your life. A trip to the bathroom saved your life. Two girls behind you saved your life. But not theirs.

Living in fear is not living your life.

Still flustered, I stand up and stretch my legs, taking as deep a breath as I can muster and head back towards the foyer. There’s no glass crunching under my feet here, I’m not slipping on any blood and there isn’t a girl’s body to step around, just the cool floorboards keeping Durban’s humidity at bay. Was she badly burned or was she Indian?

The group of people have left the now quiet foyer. Angelique, Julie and Marchelle aren’t here. There’s no moaning, screaming or crying. It’s not pitch black and the ceilings haven’t been blown out. Above me, they are clean and white with discreet down-lighting hidden away at the edges while a set of round glistening chandeliers seem to brighten the foyer as the outside light fades.

Victims and Perpetrators. The two types of people that walk into an establishment and see a mirror and a window, a picture frame and a door as potential ravagers. Slicing, piercing, severing weapons. 60kgs makes everything deadly.

A phone rings behind me, followed by a click and a polite mumble. Who do you call? Who do you tell you are okay? Okay is relative.

Where do you find a phone?

Finding the words to describe this moment, where do you start? Where is the beginning and when does it end?

There once was terror in this place. There is no terror here today. Only terror in memories. Terror in the walls and the floors and the earth. Annihilation leaves blood smears, whether you still see them or not.

A tingle is felt as I exit the doors onto Marine Parade, O.R. Tambo Parade. ‘May the force be with you’ rings in my head as I prepare to take my leave.

There’s no frayed green and yellow canvas awning protecting me. No threat of debris falling from above. There’s still no awning, just the cool sea air and the dimming blue sky reflected in the windows five stories up. No curtains or blinds flapping limply out in the night air with no glass to calm them.

There’s no twisted wreckage that once was a blue Ford Cortina. There is no blast hole. There is no carnage. No flashing lights. No helping hands. Mystified, confused and terror-filled faces don’t stare at nothing. Unfocused. There are no sutures. No victims.

No top-to-bottom appraisal, for injuries this time. Was the face of a passerby a friend? No surveying the surroundings, flitting around the carnage.

There are no police, or military or security branch. Just faulty intelligence, villains and state witnesses.

Recollections may change, new details remembered. Reporting may vary. But the outcome the same. What a difference a few decades make. What a difference a bomb makes. A child with no mother, a mother with no child.

You want it all wiped clean, erased and obliterated. But to never forget. You want to run out into the street and ask a passerby, ‘Do you know what happened here?’. Would their answer disappoint? They didn’t see the carnage. Would you want them to?

I look back at the stairs and closed glass doors. Someone’s fight made it onto this doorstep. Someone’s fight made it into a bar. Someone’s fight ripped through here. Someone’s fight hasn’t left a mark on this establishment. But it has left a mark. Marks. Your fight for freedom. Someone else’s fight from terror.

Orders were given. Reluctance or not, the orders were initiated. The orders were fulfilled. Success is also relative.

The dead can’t forgive. That’s for the living.

It’s not 1986. Why Not? I’m here now, not there then.

I can’t recall what the signage looked like, but it was “Magoo’s” Bar on the right and “Why Not?” Bar on the left. I would be surprised if he didn’t, but I’ve wondered if Robert ever uttered the words, “Magoo’s. Why not?”

Stephen Embleton was born and lives in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His background is Graphic Design, Creative Direction and Film. He completed the first draft of a Science Fiction novel in 2011 and his first short story published in 2016 in the ‘Imagine Africa 500’ speculative fiction anthology (and nominated in the inaugural 2017 Nommo Awards), followed by the “Beneath This Skin” 2016 Edition of Aké Review, “The Short Story is Dead, Long Live the Short Story! Vol.2”, the debut edition of Enkare Review 2017 and more in 2018. He is a charter member of the African Speculative Fiction Society and its Nommo Awards initiative. He was featured in Part 11 of the 100 African Writers of SFF on Strange Horizons. He has also previously published the story him “The Girl With Two Bodies.” here on the Kalahari Review. You can find him on Twitter @spembleton.