I finally finished the quiet violence of dreams after so long. I bought it when I visit Cape Town, two years ago.

It’s a six hundreds pages book, and I read it on and off for about 6 months. Some part of the story is heartbreaking, and a lot of them are just a sentimental narrative about a story without much drama.

It’s about race, gender, sex, homosexuality and many other things in Cape Town. They came from people’s conversations.

Sentimental but not sad, those are not open wounds which people can see, they bleed internally and hard to heal. Many things happen unavoidably. At the beginning, I thought Tshepo and Mmabatho are going to be there for each other, but till the end, they never tell the any of their own pain to each other. And they may not see each other again. It’s not easy to open up even to your close friend. It’s not because they don’t want to call for help, it is just hard to get start. How would they cut up their own skin to show an internal wound that may never heal?

I thought that was going to be a beautiful start of a relationship for Tshepo when he fell in love with Christ after his suffocating time in hospital. Then it turns out to be betrayal and a horrible agonizing disaster.

I thought Mmabatho could live happily with her child and the child’s father when her German boyfriend comes back and tells her he loves her, but it is just another false hope which becomes another frustrating disappointment.

Everyone’s alone, as a black person, as a gay, as a woman, as a poor person, as a orphan. And everyone is too fragile to admit he’s/she’s lonely.

Tshepo left Cape Town in the end, left the place which hurts him with sharp sparking vanity and the loneliness among the hustle and bustle in the city. He grows up with scars all over him and became the son of the god of sun. Like a tree, taking carves deeply and quietly, he lives under the sun finally with some peace.

The warmth sunshine for Tshepo doesn’t ease the woeful ending for the author, K. Sello Duiker left this world five years later with his invisible wounds and ended the quiet violence of his dreams. May he continue his form of existence with the sun and less sorrow.