Picture: ISTOCK
Picture: ISTOCK

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PRE-DINNER drinks: the social platform for testing status, wealth and most importantly, connections. The host leans close to my ear, "Don’t mention the president". He pauses for effect, rolling his eyes in the direction of a tall black man — "married to the president’s daughter", then moves swiftly along refilling a champagne glass, held by a minister. The minister: the connection, the access to state coffers. Laughter flitters across the patio, absorbed by lush flower beds, the mansion set deep and secluded, hidden from the man carting his collection of discarded plastic bottles, in the street.

A storm gathers. Heavy drops fall. The connected gather closer. The wealthy farmer dips his hand into the bowl of outsized olives imported from Turkey; large, glossy and firm. The scattered drops form a curtain of falling water; the man in the street drags the holed sheet over his head— he has so far to go. Fingering bread he saved in his pocket — the rain has soaked it, turning it to pulp. He eats it, soft and deformed.

The host’s wife gathers her shawl and waits patiently at the door. She does not hasten the invitees; time has no bearing on the connected. Black. Only black will do. Large, outsized, metallic, imported. Full house: pleated leather, heated seats, padded headrests. The luxury cars crunch their way over swept gravel through the guarded gate: the convoy crushing the storm’s debris under their weight, following the road to the luxury hotel, perched high above the canopy of trees, concrete clinging to steep slopes. The man drags the wheeled cart over the broken branch, then rests, his back against the wet tree trunk, his eyes blinded by the convoy of vehicles. The host’s wife catches a glimpse of a man, a man outside her vehicle, a dark man visible in the night only because the rainwater glistens off the light the connected casts: a bent man, a broken man, an irrelevant man.