The only break in the traffic is a zebra crossing that leads to the Masjid e Umar mosque. It used to be the Christian Congregational Church of Samoa; when the building was auctioned in 1996 it attracted bids from a Hindu temple and a fitness centre. It sold for one and a half million dollars to the Mt Roskill Islamic Trust. ‘Very good price,’ the trust’s secretary, Muhammad Moses, said. ‘They’d built it for three million.’
There was a sign at the mosque’s front door. It read SILENCE! THIS IS THE HOUSE OF ALLAH. Inside an office, Muhammad and his brother-in-law Hanif Patel chatted loudly, merrily. ‘Look at all these,’ Hanif said. He scattered wristwatches on the desk. ‘There must be 20 or thirty. Some of them expensive! This one’s a Rolex – maybe fifteen hundred dollars. The men take them off while they’re doing ablutions before prayer, you see. They wash their hands and then forget to pick up their watches. It doesn’t matter. No one ever steals them. That never happens.’
Hanif owned a downtown convenience store. Muhammad said, ‘I worked in a government department for twenty-eight years.’ What department? He lowered his eyes, and answered as though confessing a sin. ‘The Inland Revenue Department. I was an investigator.’ He took early retirement. He is fifty-three. His family arrived from India ‘a hundred and ten years ago’.
There are now an estimated 36,000 Muslims in New Zealand, the numbers boosted by waves of refugees from Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan. ‘We have 41 different nationalities who come to the mosque,’ Muhammad said. Hanif opened a cupboard to reveal stacks of the Koran. ‘So many languages! This one’s in Russian. This one’s Turkish I think…’
The largest population of Muslims in New Zealand is in Mt Roskill. Their road to Mecca is Stoddard Road: build a mosque and they will come, late. As the clock ticked towards one o’clock on a Friday afternoon in winter, the pavement on both sides of Stoddard Road suddenly filled with bearded men in long white knee-length shirts, op-shop checked suit jackets, and lace-up sports shoes. Friday is Jummah, the holy day, the Islamic sabbath. One in the afternoon is its rush hour, the most popular of the five daily prayers. How many people today? ‘Probably two thousand,’ Muhammad said. The car park was packed. A beat-up Mercedes C180 had the licence plate UAE EMIRATES. About a dozen taxis advertised as DISCOUNT, AFFORDABLE and CHEAP. As the clock ticked ever nearer, the men put on their skates, hurried but never ran. Downstairs at the washbasins, watches were torn off wrists.
Prayer was about fifteen minutes. Afterwards, the men slipped their feet back into shoes and relaxed in the bright winter sunshine. Two thousand pious souls, laughing, chatting: Africa and Arabia had come to Mt Roskill, the bible belt was now the Koran catchment. But how much had changed? The fine mist of faith and ecstasy, the fear of sex – it was all still there, wrapped up within itself, as Auckland’s heathen traffic hurried along Stoddard Road, heading east, heading west, dying to get Friday over and done with and enter the temples of home or bar.
The mosque publishes a newsletter. Its author keeps returning to a favourite theme. Sample: ‘Music incites one towards adultery. … The drum and tambourine are forbidden.’ And: ‘Abstain completely from cinema, television. … Do not read love poems or novels.’ Also: ‘Avoid holiday resorts and shopping malls. … They are choking in the toxic fumes of nudity.’ A pretend letter from a reader asks, ‘I have been promoted to a senior position and personally supervise 30 female workers. Most dress in a very immodest or provocative manner. I totally fear for myself. What should I do?’ Answer: ‘Never make eye contact.’
Newspapers are ‘very dangerous … A Muslim home should be free of such material.’ Marouf Ahmadzai, 19, was standing outside the mosque with friends. He said he arrived in New Zealand six years ago from Afghanistan. ‘When you went outside,’ he remembered, ‘you had no guarantee of whether you came back dead or alive.’ What media did he rely on for information about current events in Afghanistan? He was a big strong lad and his manner was confident, very nearly belligerent. He said, ‘I don’t like news. I don’t like bullshit. News is all false, all bullshit.’ What did he miss about Afghanistan? He said, ‘I miss the dogfighting.’
He wore the long white shirt, the tidy neat hat called a topai. Another teenager, Tariq Ahmadzai, looked glamorous with his luxuriant black hair and a purple shirt open at the neck. He was handsome, lithe, charming, ambitious. He said, ‘I’m on the crew at Wendy’s right now, but soon I’ll be shift supervisor.’ Friday night in Auckland beckoned. He talked about sharing a biryani dinner with friends. Nothing more exciting? Hanif Patel, the jovial owner of a downtown dairy, joined the conversation. He said on Tariq’s behalf, ‘He can look, but not touch.’
Touching, though, is good; besides, it’s the Kiwi way. I made the comments in jest. Hanif said, ‘I tell you what sort of bird the kiwi is. It’s a bullshit bird. Can’t bloody fly, sleeps all through the bloody day. Kiwi way is bullshit!’
His heated satire reminded me of something I’d read in the mosque’s newsletter. Among various warnings against lust, temptation and shopping malls, it instructed readers: ‘We have been commanded to oppose the ways of the Jews and the Christians.’ Whose side were they on?
Muhammad introduced a vast bearded Māori. ‘I trust this person more than anyone I know.’ The trustworthy Māori said his name was Mohammed Aissa Hussein. He had converted to Islam in 1995. ‘My pastor discovered that Jesus wasn’t a god, he was a prophet,’ he said. ‘We had a fair idea the bible was more like a puzzle. He said for me to go to Australia to look for answers.
‘I went to Sydney. I took a notebook and a bible everywhere. I met someone. It was revealed that he was a Muslim. He says, “Sit down.” He showed me a couple of videos made by an Islamic scholar. One was Is Jesus God? The other was called Is the Bible God’s Word? I went quiet for two weeks because of what I discovered.’ What had he discovered? ‘I knew who God really was.’
But who was Mohammed Aissa Hussein? He was 53, born in Whakatane. He said he came from a family of thirty. ‘I was a very sickly person. I had a motor accident back home on the farm in 1969. People said I was a bit nutty. I was a mental outpatient. I was easily led; I didn’t know what I was doing. Prison, gangs…’
His arms were heavily tattooed. The graffiti on his flesh included two swastikas. He was devout, softly spoken; he talked about ‘how the Earth moves, what moves it’; he began to chant. He was in ecstasy. He could have it. The bright winter sun cast long shadows of bare trees. The traffic on Stoddard Road roared east, roared west. They were going to a better place.
Real estate listings for Stoddard Road and its avenues routinely advertise houses as CLOSE TO MOSQUE. The block of shops at the corner of Richardson Road includes the Khoobsurat Hair and Beauty Salon, which offers eyebrow threading, and Mohammed’s Halal Meats (‘The name you can trust!’), which offers tripe, beef soup bones, lamb testes, and $8.99 roosters. A poster on a shop selling Indian saris says: REMEMBERING EK YAAD RAFI KE BAAD. A TRIBUTE TO THE LEGEND AT AVONDALE COLLEGE.
Old Mt Roskill – the white, working-class suburb that gave the world Russell Crowe and Graeme Hart, New Zealand’s richest man – maintains a presence at the corner of Sandringham Road in the shape of Giles Carpets. Established in 1981 around the corner in White Swan Road, it moved to its Stoddard Road showroom nine years ago. Entering it was like entering a family home. The three middle-aged Giles brothers, Kevin, Alan and Philip, were horsing around with each other and ducking into the staff kitchen for a hot lunch. A wall was covered with newspaper coverage of Sir Edmund Hillary’s funeral.
They talked about carpets for a little while – the in-demand Feltex Classic range, the élite Axminsters – but they preferred to talk about sport. They had set up a bar, plasma TV and a competition pool table at their nearby warehouse. They played most nights after work, competed in tournaments. ‘We’re all serious about pool,’ said Alan. ‘I played the best in New Zealand recently.’ He meant he had played national champion Glen Coutts. How’d he get on? ‘He kicked my arse.’
/> Alan had his arm in a sling. ‘Sunday before last I made a tackle and ripped the muscle right off the bone. I just walked off the field but I knew I’d done some damage. I’ve been around league since I was five. I’ve dislocated both shoulders, my elbow, broken my cheekbone, my hand.’
In his prime he played loose forward for Ponsonby. ‘Pocket money really. There was a $1500 sign-on fee and you’d get between 40 and 80 dollars for a win.’ Since turning 35 he had played masters, or seniors. ‘And once you hit 50, you wear red shorts. That means you’re not allowed to dump them – you just hold on to them. But they can run fast, some of those old buggers. Especially the Island boys. One in particular, Joe, he’s a big solid boy. Perfect build. Six foot two. Lean and mean. Not an ounce of fat and runs like the wind.’
He dwelt again on his injury. ‘I hit the tackle low with my left shoulder; I don’t know why it was my right shoulder got hurt. I got put on morphine, had an operation. They drilled two holes through the bone to reattach the tendon, and stitched the muscles back.’ And then he said, ‘I’ve played my last game. Ever.’ He shrugged with his one good shoulder. The words echoed through the showroom, crept over the carpet samples in colours of Aquatess, Cheshire, Hemisphere, Cayenne and Montoza. It was the end of an era.
Allah was bigger than Jesus on Stoddard Road but a cross remained visible on the low skyline. The mosque and a desolate Assembly of God behind a high fence – the two of them were like contestants in a show called God Idol. They cast their eyes to heaven. At street level, a homeless man sat in a parked car opposite the mosque, packets of food and a sleeping bag at his feet. He sprawled on the front seat in a pair of underpants. He squawked, ‘Get away from my car!’
Stoddard Creek was in an even worse state. Black, sticky, odious, it looked as though it spent its days being mugged. It was the kind of sick, polluted Auckland waterway found throughout this city of harbours, bays and rivers, this city of water pouring in on the tide. One of my favourite passages about Auckland is by the historian and poet Keith Sinclair in an otherwise dull anthology Auckland at Full Stretch, published in 1977 by Auckland University’s board of urban studies. Sinclair writes: ‘Auckland is the gulf and the harbour and the mangroves and the mudflats. … The authentic Auckland experience is a summer’s day watching the yachts heading past Rangitoto. It is paddling a canoe up Meola Creek and landing on the reef and cooking fish on the rocks.’
Sinclair’s vision of bright watery Auckland also takes in the wonders of his garden, where he grows ‘guavas, feijoas, Chinese gooseberries, tamarillos, passionfruit, chokos, zucchinis, green peppers, aubergines, lemons, apples, cape gooseberries, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, apples, sweetcorn, not to mention radishes and ordinary salad vegetables’. Not to mention he is so carried away with his abundance that he lists apples twice. And thus: ‘This is the first thing about Auckland. Life here is lavish. Nature is kind.’
But the authentic Auckland experience is also semi-industrial Stoddard Road and black Stoddard Creek. Zeb Mohammed, the sombre Pakistani proprietor of Khyber Foods and Spices, strolled behind his Stoddard Road shop to feed the ducks. He threw slices of white bread into the creek. ‘Quack,’ said the wretched fowl. Just then the roller doors of his store clattered open, revealing an indignant African wearing a purple smock and holding a sharp halal knife. A cloud of thick toxic smoke rose from a business three doors down – a petrol and diesel importer. ‘That’s not right,’ the African said. Zeb looked at the smoke, and watched it die down. He said, ‘It’s under control now.’
The meat counter at Khyber offers ox tongue and lamb’s feet; the shelves offer Babaji milk toast, Tuc salted biscuits, Al-Rabih fava beans, Priya green chilli pickle, Thums Up cola, and CTC tea. You couldn’t get liquor anywhere on Stoddard Road but you could get anything else your pure body desired. Next door to Khyber, on the window of Khaled Sab’s barbershop, a poster advertised the services of Dr Wasfy Shahin: ‘Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to bring to your kind notice that I have recently opened my own clinic and I have been doing circumcision with a latest technique.’
Khaled the barber, 48, came from Syria. His Stoddard Road neighbour, Khaled Barakat, 47, came from Egypt and operated the King Tut takeaway bar. He had two plastic tables and matching seats out the front. It was a great pleasure to pull up a chair, eat his $2 samosas, drink his $1.50 cups of sweet black CTC tea from India, and listen to him talk and joke.
‘In Egypt, I was in the middle of everywhere. In New Zealand, I am in the middle of nowhere.’ An excellent host, full of restless energy, smart, chatty, gentle, lascivious, he was very likely the most hilarious man on Stoddard Road. He was just as likely its only Muslim socialist. ‘In the circle of production,’ he said, ‘you can take out capital, you can take out everything, except one thing: you can’t take out the workers.’
Back in Cairo he worked as an accountant. His qualifications are no use here. The rent for King Tut was $1700 a month; he charged an Indian sari maker $90 a week for a small bedroom at the top of the narrow stairs. The takeaway bar was about the size of a school satchel. He didn’t have a complaining bone in his body. ‘Sitting out here,’ he said happily, ‘I feel like I’m in a cafe in Cairo.’ He stood up, and reappeared a few minutes later with a water pipe. He took a blast and then he said, ‘I feel like I’m a Kiwi when I go to Pak’nSave.’
Khaled stood and smiled in the doorway; Zeb, the Pakistani spice merchant, returned from the creek. A radio was tuned to The Breeze. The Eagles sang, ‘I guess every point of refuge has its price.’ Another man appeared – refugee Loia Mouhmod, 43. He made the delicious semolina squares sold at King Tut. ‘I am a Palestinian from Iraq,’ he said. He put it another way: ‘I am two problems.’ He had arrived earlier in the year on a refugee programme with his family of 25 – his wife and children, his parents, his brothers and their wives and children. Back in Iraq he sold men’s clothes. The shop was bombed. He lost everything. Now he wants to study English ‘and then I can get idea for a job’.
He stood with his two daughters, Rana, ten, and Shatha, seven. They were lovely quiet little girls. He said, ‘Everything is fine for my kids. They go to school, they learn English. We are safe, thanks to God.’ He talked about the day he arrived in New Zealand. ‘I come to the airport. I see my case worker waiting for me. You know what she said to me? She said, “Welcome to your new home.” I am so happy I want to cry. I feel this is my country.’
He opened his arms. He embraced Stoddard Road.
Wanganui, Whanganui
In Absentia
You asked people about the virtues of living in Wanganui and they said, ‘It’s close to Wellington.’ Even, incredibly, ‘It’s close to Palmerston North.’ Wanganui, the littlest and furthest city in the west, keen to affirm it was within reach of the apparent civilisation of Palmerston North. Wanganui, population 42,600 and disappearing – down 10.5 percent in six to nine year olds since the last census, down 12.3 percent in 20 to 29 year olds, 9.9 percent in 30 to 39 year olds. Wanganui, with its numerous empty and abandoned downtown buildings and lights out early in the suburbs, not at all a ghost town but ghostly, tenuous, desolate, very clean, touched by phobias – it felt like a city that wasn’t sure what to do with itself. Famously, it was a city that wasn’t sure what to call itself, Wanganui or Whanganui.
On a weekend in spring the argument was running hot. Four teenage bogan chumps had formed a protest on the main street, Victoria Avenue, to register their disgust at the National Geographic Board’s decision that Wanganui should respect Māori spelling and be renamed Whanganui. A passerby, Spencer Hall, languid, longhaired, 33, mocked their protest. ‘You’re a homo,’ said one of the chumps and spat in Hall’s face.
It was a city in transition, a new city about to be brought to you by the letter h, but it would always be the river city, clinging to the banks of all that amazing water, that central reason for its existence. In bright sunshine, with the river running high and wide, Wanganui is one of the most obviously bea
utiful cities in New Zealand, sitting prettily on the edge of a fertile emerald plain. There is the smooth white dome of the neo-classical Sarjeant Art Gallery shining on a soft green hill. There is the long empty coast, car tyres carving spirals into the hard black sand. There are all the attractive Spanish-style stucco houses low to the ground. Higher, and even more Mediterranean, there is the good cheer of hundreds of palm trees. And, always, there is the river with mud on its boots, running in a kind of ring around the city, disappearing into the mysteries and silences of native bush.
‘I can’t wait to leave,’ said Ollie Shand.
‘Yeah, I second that motion,’ said his friend and fellow student at Wanganui High School, Sam Hicks.
Wanganui or Whanganui, the city will always be boring. Boredom is the New Zealand condition. Teenagers are most at risk. A front-page story in the Wanganui Chronicle itemised the evidence of lout rampage in Victoria Avenue on Friday and Saturday nights: ‘Scuffles, fights, abusive language, vandalism, urinating in shop doorways, broken bottles, piles of vomit…’
Sitting around doing nothing on Saturday morning in Majestic Square, three 16-year-olds shrugged at the newspaper report and said, ‘That’s ’cos Wanganui’s a shit-hole.’ They looked away when asked their names. They preferred to go by nicknames, but it was hard to interpret their grunts – one sounded like Egg, the other like Nog.
Egg said, ‘You always get two or three drunken dickheads come up to you and try to start something.’ Where? ‘On the street,’ Nog said. ‘Anywhere. It used to be outside the Red but that got shut down ’cos this girl there got killed. She got killed by this guy. My mum used to teach her.’ Egg said, ‘My brother chucked someone out the window there once.’
Were they planning on staying in Wanganui when they left school? Small freckled Nog, sitting on his hands, said, ‘Fuckin’ hope not.’ Muscular mullet-haired Egg, who had folded his arms high against his chest, said, ‘I go to Wellington sometimes.’
Civilisation Page 12
