In the name of Allah most
gracious most merciful
Just as you doze off to sleep, you hear a sound, the sound of
a glass bottle that has toppled over. You’re tired, after a full day of washing
and cleaning out spaces that has escaped your attention for a while. You toss
and you turn but alas sleep evades you. So you think about what to cook for
lunch and a special visitor. I contemplate cutting up a chicken and seasoning
it with garlic, ginger and a medley of freshly ground spices. I don’t know
about you but I love playing around with recipes, so I think of Faldela
Williams’ Rhus Bukhari recipe and decide to use chicken instead of mutton and
remind myself to include the curry leaves I pruned earlier and to buy an orange.
I also remind myself to make a fresh garden salad and some Dai (almost like
tatziki). But then I decide against it because I will wake up the entire
household.
So I get up pull on some socks and patter down the passage
way to on the kettle. I look out and the starry sky is beautiful, the sky is
light but I cannot see the moon. As I look over to the veg patch the rubbish is
strewn all over the place, courtesy of our neighbour’s dog. And I grind my
teeth! And in my mind I accuse the dog of sommer also sniffing out the chameleon.
I make some hot tea and raisin bread and as I come up the
passage the light is on and Abu is awake too. So we have a midnight picnic and
he grabs his book while I put my thoughts to paper. Surely I must feel sleepy
after that. So here I am sharing and some of my thoughts.
Today I thought to share a bit of a book I plan to publish,
one day InshaAllah, I’m not sure what it will be called yet but it’s about my
memories of District Six and our travels.
THE DRY DOCK OF MY MAGICAL CHILDHOOD
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| Pic Ian Huntley |
Very few coloured people
could attend that university you know. According to some, the Dry Dock got its
name because the workers of the Dry Dock were the first people to live there.
Some say it is because one could look out over the Dry Dock from where we
lived. No matter, some called it the Draai and some called it the Dry Dock of
District Six.
The first strands of grey
appeared in my mother’s hair when the bulldozers came. Everything she knew as
home would change forever. Everything we
knew would transform. Our home was a place filled with laughter and debates and
singing and praying and smells of Cobra polish and Brasso on Thursdays. On the eve of Eid, new paint and curtains and
linoleum competed with onions braising and the sweet smell of fragrant rice.
Those were the years when Muslims in the Cape celebrated Eid on the same day,
when the moon was sighted with the naked eye from Greenpoint and Signal Hill.
The humming of hairdryers and Columbus polishers filled the air and mustard
seeds and cumin danced in hot oil. The banging of dominoes on a blanketed table
while the radio blared Hey Jude in the background. Then the silence of
the dominoes and the radio when the [1]mu’athin
calls to prayer.
When I was 11 years old the
area was declared “a white area” and the colourful people of the Dry were
forcibly removed to The Cape Flats. To Hanover Park and Manenberg and Retreat
and Steenberg; to Lansdowne and Primrose Park and Surrey Estate and Bonteheuwel
and Heideveld. There where we walked with torches in rows like soldiers through
the bushes to the bus top, to the train station, to the city, to work, to
school, to everywhere and nowhere. Everyday back to the estranged city where we
grew up.
The day the truck came to
load our furniture and ourselves, I did not look back, much like the biblical
stories of destruction. Later as an adult I would come back time and again to
that barren, bulldozed graveyard. Driving past to the Zonnebloem where my kids
attend the art school, George Golding another primary school that I attended,
The Technikon and the Indian Plaza, the rows of new houses that are supposed to
look like the old. The new built on memories. Only the mosques, churches and
schools remained. The [2]Malaaieka
look after sacred places. And of course
there was the Silver Tree clubhouse. Where my brothers played rugby and my
sister and I went for ballet and piano lessons and swung on the swings and
monkey bars. The Silver Tree Clubhouse
was the hub of the area; in fact it was the hub of our world. We would play
there after coming home from slamseskool[3],
during the school vacation and every weekend.
Rugby and cricket and athletic events were weekend specials.
There, was a palm tree in
Boeta Jackie’s yard standing firm. Childrens’ voices chanting[4]Alif doewa dettis an, alif doewa bouwa in,
alif doewa dappan oen – an, in, oen of our soerat (Quranic Arabic) lessons
at the slamseskool at Boeta Moetjie. He taught us about Islam in the afternoon
and in the morning he held an ordinary job. We wore a pants under our dresses
and our scarves folded in the shape of a triangle. We walked up the path to De
Waal drive and down to the double-storeyed house of Boeta Moetjie. Mondays to
Wednesdays he would let us recite from the soerat and on Thursdays we had koples,
where he made us fall in love with the Prophet Muhamad (PUH) and all the other
prophets. He taught us about the seven kinds of pure waters we could use to
bath or take ablution with. And it was with him that we learnt about the
pillars of our Islam and our Emaan: Arkaanul
Islami khamsatun and Arkaanul Emaani Sittatoen
Lydia Preparatory School, was
where we went for our preparatory years. Lydia is actually the only school in
District Six that is named after a slave who was living in bondage at
Zonnebloem. It is said that when she was freed, she lived in a little cottage
that became the school most children of the Dry Dock attended.
When I went to the George
Golding Primary School the one ex pupil that our principal would mention at least
once a week was the ballerina Johaar Mosavel who as a child had
attended our school. He would always mention him as a role model to us, dancing
at the time as principal dancer with the Royal Ballet School.
It inspired me so that I
convinced my sister that we could be ballerinas and we joined the Silvertree
Ballet Club where UCT students would teach us before going to slamseskool. We
wore black leotards and pink Alice bands and soft kid leather ballet shoes that
white kids donated to the poor, learning to do our pliés and arabesques and learnt to curtsey. It all went well
until we had to dance in the concert. My father vehemently forbade us, “Muslim
girls to be dancing on the stage nogal!” “But I am a puppet with clothes on and
Tammy is a soldier.” I think it was pantomime of the Tin soldier. “NO! and
that’s that.”When I think about it I can’t help but giggle. My kids giggle now when at any given time I stand with one hand lightly on the bar (back of a chair) with my feet in the third position and to music no one’s hears but me, I do my demi pliés and my Grand pliés. Then I do my arabesques and my Pas de chats and I break into a curtsey and the applause is maddening.
Anyway, that’s
all folks, maybe some more writing later.
Plant food
and have midnight picnics.
Yasmine
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