“The first thing he ever said to me was: ‘€˜I was so lucky to come into this room and see this lovely lady’€™. I pretended I never heard anything although this was exactly the moment I had been waiting for.”

Bongekile Zulu’€™s face softens; the hint of a dreamy smile plays on her mouth as she remembers the 27-year-old man she met 13 years ago when she was only 19.

“He came to me and held me by the arms and asked if he could have a moment with me. His brother was so excited because he said Elliot was usually shy, and told the others to leave the room. When we were alone, Elliot said to me he loved me and wanted to see me again.”

Bongi was swept off her feet by this young man who had so suddenly appeared in her life.

“I had never met a guy like him. I just had feelings of love as soon as I saw him. I told him that, as a Capricorn, I am very jealous and also very proud of the person I love. He said he loved the way I expressed myself to him, telling him what I liked from the start,” she recalls.

Today Bongi tries to hang onto memories like these, memories before HI virus invaded their lives.

“It was a good moment. I try to remember these moments; how he was before AIDS when he became very rude,” she says softly, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“After we parted that first day, I kept making soliloquies, thinking out loud about him, how he made my heart beat. It kept me awake until I don’€™t know when, and I wished it could just be that time tomorrow when we had agreed to meet again.”

Their second meeting was even sweeter.

“I was scared to talk to you,” Elliot had told her adding that it was the overwhelming feelings that had directed him to her.

“I don’€™t just want you to be my girlfriend. I want you to be my wife and the mother of my kids. Will you please take me into your life and trust me for your life?” Elliot had told Bongi.

Elliot’€™s respectful treatment of her and his direct way of expressing himself won Bongi’€™s heart. He also had a steady job as a quality controller in a factory and could take care of her.

Their love blossomed and the two lovers spun between Bongi’€™s mother’€™s home in KwaMashu home and Elliot’€™s parents’€™ home in Umlazi. Month-end, there were outings to restaurants and Addington Beach.

Two years after they met, Bongi gave birth to their first son, Siboniso, now 11.

“It was hard to live with Elliot then because he was living with his parents and his step-mother didn’€™t like me then. So he hired a room for me in Umlazi and we spent time together there. After I fell pregnant with our second child, Scelile, in 1997, we were so in love that we couldn’€™t go a day without seeing each other and Elliot came to live with us in the room.

“Everything was so good that Elliot decided to go to my home and start paying the first lobola. When he was finished, we decided to marry. We made the wedding the date for 27 October 2000. But that’€™s when AIDS came in.”

The memory of the kind and considerate Elliot she first knew is jostled aside by the more recent Elliot, who was violent and abusive and went to his grave without a kind word or an apology.

By 1999, both Elliot and Bongi were sickly. He had rough, itchy shingles on his torso and was losing weight. She had persistent vaginal infections. He had also started to drink heavily and come home late every night.

“I was pregnant again, and I went to the KwaMashu Clinic,” says Bongi. “They talked to me about AIDS and offered me the HIV test. I decided, because of the infections that I was having almost every week, to go for the test. Then I found that I was positive.”

AIDS entered their lives like an intruder, tearing into their already fragile marriage and turning Elliot into a hostile stranger.

“It took me about two weeks before I told him. I started to talk, asking if he knew anything about AIDS.”

Elliot’€™s response was aggressive: “Don’€™t talk to me about AIDS. Do I look like a person with AIDS? As from today, you must never talk about AIDS in my house,” he threatened.

“When he said this he looked like a man who was about to slap me, so I kept quiet. But this thing was eating me inside, making me thinner and thinner. I knew I had to tell him, so after a while I just said to him ‘€˜I know you don’€™t want me to talk about AIDS. Well, I don’€™t want to talk about AIDS but I need to talk about myself. I am HIV positive’€™.”

Elliot remained silent. Then he got up, left the room, returning with a glass of water. “All this time I thought you were my wife,” he told Bongi coldly. “But now I see you just look like all the other bitches. If I had known I would have had this problem, I would never have looked at you.”

Then he set out his ground rules. “You must never tell anyone about this. You must not visit anyone and no one must visit you.”

Soon after her revelation, both Bongi and Elliot became very ill. They lay alongside one another in single beds, she coughing and coughing as tuberculosis plagued her lungs, he scratching at his shingles, vomiting and shaking.

“There was no one do a thing for my kids,” says Bongi. “For three months we lay sick like that. I prayed to God not to let me die because I didn’€™t want to leave my kids. Then, in the first week in July, I found I could stand and walk a little bit. Maybe God made me wake up. I could now help Elliot but still he was rude to me.”

By then, Elliot had thick white-ish thrush coating his mouth and throat and chronic diarrhoea. His once stocky body and was now bony. He hadn’€™t worked for four months and the couple depended on handouts from friends. Their children had to go to Elliot’€™s parents.

Living in isolation with a man who despised her was unbearable for Bongi. She finally went to visit a friend, and was relieved to be able to unburden her troubles to someone who cared. But when she came back, Elliot was in enraged.

“He said he had tried to find me everywhere but no one knew where I was. So this meant I was having an affair. I was about three months pregnant then. I tried to explain, but he carried on shouting. Then I started to iron a maternity dress, making the iron hot on the paraffin stove.”

By then, Elliot was too weak to go to the toilet alone. But somehow he summoned the strength to grab the stove and throw it at her head.

“I just looked at him, the paraffin pouring on me and the flames already on my clothes. I just kept my mouth shut and looked at him.”

A neighbour came into the house at that moment and Elliot then called for help. But Bongi believes he wanted to kill them both.

“The fire destroyed the place, which was my grandfather’€™s house. I don’€™t know why I did not burn. If I showed you the clothes I was wearing you would not believe it. They are totally burnt. I went to the clinic and they told me I was going to lose the baby.”

Neighbours took the couple in, but Elliot could go no further. He called for his children, hugged them and told them it was time for him to go. Although tears spilled from his eyes when he looked at Bongi, he still could not apologise. Three days after the fire, he died.

Battling with her health, Bongi was hospitalised for four months during which time, the baby inside her hung tenaciously on. Mzo was finally born two months’€™ premature. He and his mother were given the anti-retroviral nevirapine. So far he seems well, although Bongi is afraid to have him tested.

Another crushing set-back awaited Bongi. When she finally went back to the Umlazi room she and Elliot had been living in before moving to her grandfather’€™s place, she started to pack up. Under the carpet, she found a slip of paper. It was the results of an HIV test Elliot had taken some months before hers. It was positive.

“This is something that I can’€™t take. I can’€™t take it that he acted like such a coward, when he was supposed to be a man to me. His uncle told me that Elliot had an affair with a woman who had died of AIDS. But I did not believe him. I trusted Elliot so much. All this time he knew his status but he tried to say I was the one who brought this thing into the house.”

Trust thrust roughly aside by betrayal, Bongi doubts whether she can ever love again. Unemployment has forced her to send her children to live with Elliot’€™s parents. She coughs constantly from the TB.

The voluntary HIV/AIDS educational work Bongi does for the Treatment Action Campaign brings a little meaning to her life, displacing some of the misery caused by losing the man she loved and witnessing the death of the cruel stranger he became.

“It is hard to go on. I have lost so much. I can be sitting with friends, I can be anywhere, and then I can remember how Elliot was and how he became. It is like a film playing in my mind over and over.

“But there is someone out there who has a story like mine and who needs help. I must try to reach that person”.