A South African Story
In Johannesburg, danger came out of nowhere. Then it came every day.
Claire built a life worth staying for: lifelong friends, a house full of animals, a marriage full of laughter. Out of Nowhere is the story of how fear moved in, how humour held on, and what it finally took to leave.
From Chapter 3
Living in a violent society had conditioned everybody like Pavlov’s dog, she surmised. When the violence had first started in Johannesburg, one would hear of an incident but not know the victim involved. As the violence had escalated, the stories would pertain to acquaintances that had fallen prey to robbers. One would be shocked, but somehow more prepared for it. By the time friends were being bumped off, one was so numbed by the violence that they were able to accept it as being the norm.
The book
Out of Nowhere follows Claire through a life in Johannesburg: the friends who became family, a household of dogs and cats with opinions of their own, a business restoring antique furniture with her friend Lucy, and a marriage to John that began with a wedding nobody would forget.
It is also the story of a city changing around them: of gunshots that became background noise, of phone calls nobody wanted to answer, and of the slow, unwilling arithmetic of deciding to leave.
Written, in Adelia Cook’s words, “as a series of non-fictional circumstances”, it is frightening, furious, tender and, again and again, laugh-out-loud funny.
The shape of the story
No single day changed everything. That was the problem.
01 · Normal life
Braais decided that afternoon. Coffee and antique furniture with Lucy. Dogs on the veranda, cats on every chair. Johannesburg is loud, warm and full of friends.
South Africans had become very spontaneous, Claire reflected. They didn’t plan things weeks in advance, but on the day.
02 · Unease
At first the shots in the night are shocking. Then they become ordinary, which is worse.
She had become accustomed to the sound of gunshots, which were a nightly and sometimes daily occurrence in the suburb where they resided.
03 · Danger
Danger arrives in broad daylight: in a car park, at a stop street, from the long grass beside the road.
…she couldn’t see potential car hijackers hiding in the long thick highveld grass that grew waist high beside the road.
04 · Adaptation
People adapt. They choose cars hijackers don’t want. They stop locking their car doors while driving. They add another lock, another alarm, another dog.
One literally felt like a prisoner in one’s own home, under house arrest.
05 · Fear
A client’s son. A shopkeeper she calls on. The man who frames her mother’s paintings. The news is no longer about strangers.
Claire and John had gone to eight funerals in fourteen days; not one of the deceased had died of natural causes.
06 · Decision
Portugal. San Francisco. Grand Cayman. They go looking for somewhere else to live, and come home each time to the same question.
The real reason was that they had gotten sick and tired of going to funerals.
07 · Departure
A house sold at a loss. Friends who envy them, pity them, or accuse them of letting the country down. A twenty-foot container. And Lucy, standing at the gate.
…she waved to Lucy standing watching the retreating motor vehicle as it pulled away.
See how it begins, in the book’s own words.
He had seen the ‘writing on the wall’ which Claire, being the eternal optimist, had imagined to be written in vanishing ink.
Claire’s world
Claire restores antique furniture, refuses to be a morning person, cannot cook (according to her houseguests) and shares her home with dogs and cats who run it far better than she does.
She is quick, sarcastic, loyal and stubbornly hopeful, determined to see the best in a city that keeps testing her. Through her eyes the book finds the comedy in chaos, and the courage in carrying on.
John
Her husband
The forward-thinking one. He saw the writing on the wall long before Claire was ready to read it.
Lucy
Friend and partner
Business partner in antique furniture restoration, fiercely loyal, and the funniest person in any room.
Dawn
Her dearest friend
Two decades of friendship, and not once, in all that time, an “I told you so.”
The menagerie
Dogs and cats
Muffin the Maltese, Spike the German Shepherd, Winston and Zingo the Ridgebacks, and Zea the tabby, who has opinions about everyone.
The city
26.2041° S · 28.0473° E
From the pavement bistros of Hillbrow to the industrial roads of Alrode, from a wedding at Gold Reef City to a frantic search after a weekend in Tembisa, Johannesburg moves through the book like another character: generous, exhausting, beautiful at dawn and dangerous after dark.
Waking in the early hours of the morning as day was breaking one would be presented by the heavy blanket of smog that shrouded the valleys and clung possessively to the hilltops or ‘koppies’. The surrealistic, or was it almost impressionistic vision of the hazy grey clad green and brown landscape gave a warm but false feeling of peace and security.
Approximate positions of places named in the book.
The human cost
Out of Nowhere is not a catalogue of crimes. It is about what violence does to the people who live alongside it: the friends who don’t come home, the ones who carry on, and the nightmares that follow you across an ocean.
A gentle giant, famous for stopping fights rather than starting them.
A friend from Zimbabwe who arrived with gifts for every nurse on the ward.
A panel beater whose broad grin could put a whole room in stitches.
A picture framer whose caring nature charmed even the most difficult clients.
The dedication
For Alex, Paul, Cowboy, and Roger, may they rest in peace.
Alongside the loss, the book keeps faith with the people who carried on: friends who stayed loyal, strangers who opened their doors, and a sense of humour that refused to die.
A journey through memory
The book moves back and forth through the years, the way memory does. Follow the markers.
A lonely practice wall, a mother with very firm opinions and a father who raced pigeons. Claire’s childhood is funnier than it has any right to be.
Chapter 17
A birthday party full of strangers, a date her mother disapproves of, and a decision made in a single evening: Claire leaves home.
Chapter 18
Selling door to door in the Johannesburg city centre, Claire can still wander the streets without fear. It will not last.
Chapter 20
Three years later, near Fordsburg, a well-dressed stranger blocks her path and asks for the watch on her wrist.
Chapter 20
Hot, dusty and out of luck on a sales call, Claire meets a man who refuses to buy anything, then invites her for a drink instead.
Chapter 14
A horse-drawn carriage, an uninvited confetti girl and a veil that catches fire. A wedding nobody would forget.
Chapter 23
In the space of two weeks the violence stops happening to strangers. That same year, a trip to Portugal offers a first glimpse of another life.
Chapters 3, 4 & 10
The country votes. Some South Africans leave before the elections and some come home afterwards. Claire and John stay, for now.
Chapter 2
San Francisco, Grand Cayman, New Orleans: a long journey in search of somewhere they could permanently call home.
Chapters 11 & 12
A house sold at a loss, friends divided between envy and disapproval, and a goodbye at the gate.
Chapter 6: 1996
Blue skies, a canal glittering at sunrise, and a houseguest from Johannesburg who brings the old chaos with him.
Chapter 1
A decision from an immigration official in Brisbane is six months coming, while the news from home only gets harder to hear.
Chapters 22 & 25
The decision
There is no single reason to leave. Until, suddenly, there is one too many.
Leaving means selling a home in a falling market, hearing friends call you lucky, foolish or disloyal, and packing a life into a twenty-foot container. It means a quiet warning from a friend, a long wait for permission to begin again on the other side of the Indian Ocean, and discovering what cannot be packed.
Once you had lived in Africa it was part of you forever.
Read an excerpt
It was a bitterly cold night in May and Claire had all the animals indoors. John was working late so Claire had chosen a CD that he disliked intensely to listen to in his absence. The sound of a key in the front door lock drew her attention. She then noticed that the door handle was being tried. Winston was going berserk but he was barking at the inter-leading door to their garage.
“The poor dog’s deaf or confused,” went through her head until she noticed that that door handle was also being tried. Sounds from the back door alerted Muffin and making her way over Claire realized that there were three men trying to enter her home at each respective entrance, one at each door.
“I’ll give you two minutes to leave my property or I’ll set the dogs on you,” she yelled. As an afterthought she added, “I also have a gun.”
The fellow at the back door tried to peer through the window. Claire repeated her threat and watched him retreat from the door. A short while later the three were to be seen walking casually down the road away from Claire’s abode.
Own the book
A South African Story
Adelia Cook
A story of friendship, fear, humour and the courage it takes to leave, told from inside a city that was changing faster than anyone could bear.
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