Ornate gates, door stoppers and pastry wheels

In the name of Allah most gracious most merciful.

from www.123rf.com

18 July 2014.

As we got busy turning out house for the last ten days of Ramadhan, I could not help but notice the door stopper (a brick with fabric around it) needed a bit of a face lift. So I rummaged around for pieces of fabric that was kind of durable but pleasing to the eye. And I started thinking why not look around for an unusual doorstopper, a piece of driftwood or an unusual piece of rock like when I was a child. I took particular notice of the kinds of door stoppers that people had at their front doors. The Cape wind can be hectic and no one likes a door banging, particularly a glass door, so it was always something heavy that could really solidly keep the door in check.  I thought that it would give me an idea of what the particular family was about.

One house that we visited had a shoe mould another a tall coal iron; an unusual squarish piece of wood, a metal object of sorts, huge rock and so on and so forth. We had something at our door that was fairly interesting – arty, smooth with some ridges and texture. You’ll probably never guess – a piece of melted nylon, a loved monstrosity- so much for what our family was about. But that got me thinking of other things that have just vanished over time.

Brass pastry wheels with the wheel on the one side and a tablespoon measure on the other (can’t remember when mine disappeared). No one wears aprons any longer. I lie, I don’t wear aprons and those housecoats, hate them! I think I learnt the art of "cooking from afar" coming from work poised with spoon stirring pot and my feet planted a metre away, leaning over – not a spot on my clothes. I must confess though that I love giving them as gifts and my daughter loves to wear one in case of splatter, those no-fuss striped ones.

And where did those candles holders go? The ones with the curled little handle, I go crazy when the saucers are full of wax. And what about those durable wooden chopping boards – everything is made with bamboo of late. And ja, I like the marble ones but they’re so heavy on the wrist and plastic ones are probably OK but I’d  give anything for a teak chopping board and don’t mind to spend my time scrubbing it with vinegar every few days and out into the sun.

buttons in haberdashery drawer

My daughter started a button collection and for the life of me I could not find much buttons around (she cuts off all the extra ones on our clothes). So I miss those little haberdashery shops with the drawers of interesting buttons and I love to scrimmage around to find some of the same. Which makes me remember the other day my son went through my writing bureau looking for needles and cotton and I realised that I used to have a very ornate box of sewing supplies with pins (on a pin cushion), needles, threads of all colours and different thickness, zips and you know the interesting things that’s usually in a sewing kit. I suppose then Tupperware came along with its neat little compartmentalised box.

So as I am in such an artsy fixy mood, maybe I should paint our gate and make it a bit ornate like the gates in North Africa, each one exquisite and unique.  Maybe I should paint it the colour of azure stones or terracotta, just maybe.




 

OK enough already with the maybe’s, let’s have another small excerpt of the book that I hope to publish one day, a section on my childhood in District Six.

 

Saturdays arrived with much anticipation as we could - for 5 cents go to the bioscope at the Silver Tree Clubhouse to see Charlie Chaplin, The Three Stooges, Gé Korsten or a western. We would stand for hours in a queue that snaked all around the clubhouse, sit in neat rows of chairs waiting for the movie operator to start. When the rows were filled up, we would opt to sit on the floor in front of the screen or stand on the balcony looking down. It was a real treat when we could go to a real movie house like the Avalon Bioscope or the Gem. We would scream with anticipation for the movies of Dracula and Werewolf. Our stomachs would ache of laughter at the antics of Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers and we would cry with Mother India and for Boot Polish.

Sundays one would wake up to warmly sugared koeksisters; churchbells ringing in the distance; the aroma of cumin and coriander and the pounding of the mortar and pestle filled every home. Sundays were special. Lunch was special. Sundays were for dressing up and hair curled in brown paper strips and polishing school shoes. My Tietie (honour name for eldest sister) would bath us and curl our hair and make all kinds of styles that she saw in magazines. A walk to the Company Gardens and watching the goldfish and squirrels, the cherry on top.

We had a lounge area that housed a round oak table.  On the walls of most homes in District Six, one would find Rakams with Arabic Calligraphy of the names of Allah and the Prophet Muhamad (peace and blessings upon him) and pictures of the Ka’aba. But I am sure that I am correct when I say that there were many homes too with paintings or copies of the Dying Swan by Trechikov the Tahitian Girl or the Lily lying the steps. We had a beautiful print of lemons and limes that also graced out wall.

One day my father decided that he would build my Mom a fireplace. So painstakingly, he would gather slate from the mountain quarry with the help of my brothers and built her this beautiful black slate fireplace. The fireplace became the mantelpiece of our home where my Mom placed her most valued brass and ornaments and her best plants: fancy leafs and hen and chicken. Only many years later did I realise it was an ornamental fireplace, we lived on the second floor and there was no chimney. The remnants of it lay buried under the byways of District Six.

Our first car was a Peugeot 303, a green one. How we all managed to fit into it still amazes me. Our street wound up a very steep hill, cars would labour up slowly in first or second gear to arrive at the top. My brothers would sometimes borrow the car until my father discovered that if he took out the rotor arm, the car would sleep peacefully for the night.

My father was a builder and worked for a company called Glazier or Glaciers. Every night my sister and I would run up the hill to De Waal drive where we would fight over carrying his satchel. What was in his satchel? A trough, a yellow level, a hantoch and a plumb line. When he got home we would fight once again to be the first to loosen his laces and take off his cement-caked boots. The early evening would end off by much tickling and him sitting on an arm chair with his cup of tea and his newspaper.

Wednesday nights were sherbet nights, different sherbets and Smarties. Sometimes we would get the sherbet in a packet with a lolly pop to dip or it would be in miniature plastic baby bottles. My cousin’s husband Boeta Kaa (Abubakr shortened ??) worked at Stuttafords as an alteration tailor and on Thursday nights when he got paid, he would bring sweetie pies and spearmint gums for all the children. 

Every two weeks my father would visit the barber, Boeta Balla, at the Castlebridge for a haircut and a good dose of current events in the community and in the country. My father always came home at exactly the same time every night. One could set your clock by it. So when he was late we knew that he was at the barber. In fact, my Mom also sent us to the barber to have our hair cut.

Once Boeta Balla got carried away chatting and cut my hair too short. He quickly made up a story of how fashionable women in Europe wore their hair and for good measure made a moesie with kohl on our chins in case anyone thought we were not girls. So when the neighbourhood kids teased us, my sister and I would lift up our chins and say that we had Italian Boy haircuts. After that I was no longer called Yasmine but “Italian Boy haircut”.

Plant food and make interesting door stoppers or maybe an ornate gate or have an Italian boy haircut?

Yasmine