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Showing posts from March, 2025

Claudia's Nokia

 It's a glorious Sunday morning at Annabel's café in the year 2002. Maxwell the waiter brings over Claudia and Vanessa's lattes. Claudia smiles at him, taps out the last of her SMS and drops her orange Nokia 3310 into her handbag on the floor next to her chair. Another pair of customers walk in and sit down at an adjacent table. They're a married couple from Khayelitsha. Not regular Annabel's clientele, but this is the New South Africa, and nobody pays them enough attention to notice the agitation behind their forced-calm demeanors. The man announces he is going to the bathroom, lifts his chair up and carefully places it down as he leaves the table. Chatting animatedly, neither Claudia nor Vanessa notice that one of the chair legs is hooked though one of Claudia's handbag handles. The woman pulls the chair back and the handbag with it. Her own phone rings (It's her husband, calling form the toilet). "What? Where are you now? Okay. I'm coming to get ...