"I was free, he was not. He was clearly upset. I had hurt his feelings and resisted his advances. I begged with him to stay for crayfish but he brushed my pleas aside and walked out of the door."
On a visit to visit to Mandela's Houghton home the next day, Amina revealed how Mandela sat opposite to her and wrote notes to her which said "beautiful, endearing things to me."
"The day before had evidently been forgotten and we were to make a fresh beginning. But I told him that we were playing with fire and I prepared to tear up the notes. He stopped me, assuring me that he would shred them once he had finished writing," Amina recalls.
Nelson was not a great romantic figure. Perhaps the years in prison had dampened that side of him. He would express his love or feelings in a rather matter-of-fact fashion. Perhaps the closest he got to expressing his feelings was when he wrote these notes to me in the garden of his Houghton home. But I could not return any of his rigid gestures of love. I was not in love with Nelson. I loved him dearly and yet I could not bring myself to want him as I did Yusuf, even in our old age," Amina concluded.
