by Z. P. Dala
It sounded disgusting.
Afroze recognized her. She was a model, who had once dated a South African rugby fly-half—a prominent player—and then had rapidly replaced him with a cricket captain—the fly-half was too top heavy and crushed her when he was on top. Despite her best efforts at looking like a vagabond, she still looked as sexy as hell. She had now replaced the cricketer with a German businessman, whom she knew for certain she would marry. She chewed at her mouth in a sloppy, slurpy in-and-out motion, as the Bergie women with no front teeth did. The movement was nothing short of orgasmic. Filthy, with dirt on her face and a stink to high heaven, she was grabbed and groped by men and women alike.
The party had ended badly. Someone suggested, long after the old year had been au revoired, that they go down to where the real Bergies hung out, maybe try to score some fun and games there. They had all taken a minibus taxi, something as alien to them as irregular facial appointments, to a bridge near the Cape Flats. The beggars huddled around paint drums of fire, blissfully unaware and uncaring about old years and new, saw them coming, and soon enough a fight broke out. It seemed that real beggars didn’t particularly like being parodied by rich kids. Who knew?
As the revelers poured out of the minibus, one tall, muscled beggar with a scar that ravined across his head, so deep that it looked like his head was two large protuberances instead of one skull, grabbed at the young model.
“Yah pussy, jou want to see what-what a real man can fok, neh, come suck this,” he said, pushing her hand to his crotch. The cocaine suddenly wearing off, the young model panicked and looked around wildly for her German soon-to-be fiancé. Seeing his blond flower being picked, the German had gone mad and ran like the fly-half the bombshell had left behind, careening into the thick body of the beggar.
Both fell forward into a pile of dust, and suddenly it became a free-for-all. Even the model tried her hand at a bitch slap. Fake dirt was replaced with real dirt. Clothing that had been ripped for costume effect got ripped even more, and one very hip, young peacock who owned a French restaurant in the waterfront had his two front teeth really knocked out. Bloodied and grappling with his cheap white T-shirt that said “I heart CT” he held the broken teeth in front of him in disbelief, and the Bergie who had kicked them out laughed hysterically.
“Come now, jou ma se poes, come fight this. See what a real man got,” the maniacal Bergie howled and began to open the already broken zipper on his smelly trousers.
The now front-toothless restaurant owner, who always prided himself on his perfect appearance for his rich guests, scrabbled about in the dust and made off at full speed, leaving his teeth behind.
Everywhere she looked, Afroze saw ghoulish figures, a scene out of an apocalypse, a Dante’s inferno melding movie images from a cheap projector with visions of the mayhem before her, bleeding into one another, and strangely thinking of a painting she had seen on a trip she had taken as a visiting architecture scholar at University College Dublin.
The volcanic black and orange landscape of The Opening of the Sixth Seal by Francis Danby rose in front of her, and in the haze of fear and the wearing off of drugs, she couldn’t exactly make out what was real and what was a painting of souls in the midst of the apocalypse. The Earth opened its maw and souls were sucked into the abyss and swallowed and swallowed and swallowed.
“Kom, I do you good, my gorgeous, better than anyone do you ever.”
When Afroze began to feel as if she was being grabbed by the ankles and pulled toward the angry volcano, where Faustus stood in a rose garden and toasted her rapid rise to success with a goblet made from a skull, she backed away from all her friends, who were being beaten to a pulp. She heard the swearing and other horrid words that rebounded off the urine-soaked bridge and ran away.
She thought of the gangs of teenagers she had watched on television, always punctuating fighting-talk with an insulting reference to someone’s mother. She wondered why fights and rage always brought in a mother.
“Jou ma se . . .” Your mother’s . . .
Running as fast as she could toward town, desperately looking for a taxi cab on New Year’s after midnight, she realized she could easily be in deep, deep trouble. She had met another gang of merry-rich partygoers who took her for a real Bergie woman and began taunting her.
It took frantic explanations and a name drop or two, and soon she found herself holed up in another after-after party in a Camps Bay mansion. Again, the drugs were aplenty. And she remembered nothing much more of how the night had ended or with whom she had ended it.
When she had woken up and cleaned up well enough and gone to face Moomi the Monday morning after, bitterness rose in her throat as Moomi spoke. Afroze recognized the reality behind that fake put-on accent of the model who had been offering blow jobs at the party. She balked and retched at Moomi’s table and Moomi rubbed her back, gently saying, “Agh, pretty Afroze girl. You is such a weakling. You must eat more, neh, you too skinny. Never mind, you leave Moomi’s bredie now, and go lie down on the settee, neh.”
Afroze looked into Moomi’s face and saw the chewing motion she made with her lips as if she were eating up her own mouth and had run into the bathroom to retch loudly. Moomi stood by the door, handed her a towel, and kissed the top of her curls. But Afroze was disgusted by her own self. Reviled. Without even looking at Moomi’s face, Afroze had bolted clean out the door.
After she left Moomi’s little house, she went home to the apartment she shared with two models and an artist, burned the gardener’s clothes, and bought him new ones from a proper boutique in town. The gardener, not at all impressed with Abercrombie and Fitch, had ripped the sweatshirts at the sleeves, and even had cut out the coveted fashionable “A” and was contented with yet another torn outfit. He felt it suited him better.
“Aber-what-what se ma. Ugly shirt!” he muttered and pruned the bushes.
The news of the fight between Bergie beggars and rich kids hit the newspapers. But of course, most of the rich kids’ fathers owned those newspapers, and everyone in Cape Town was appalled and shocked at how badly behaved Bergies could be. A rich-kid state of emergency had been called, and every Bergie from Hout Bay to the Cape Flats was looked at with suspicion. Which really didn’t bother them much. Nothing new.
Afroze stopped going by Moomi’s house for at least two months, but then one day she had arrived at the unlatched back door as if nothing had happened.
The following New Year, the theme was “Harry Potter.” Much better that way. Afroze reluctantly went to that party wrapped in a cloak telling everybody she was invisible. The ennui had begun that year, after the party of beggars.
It was how the depression crept in. Feeling like a fraud, a bastard child, someone who did not deserve all that she had been given. More trouble than you’re worth, you are. Her mother’s words, which had been hiding in the catacombs, came gushing out. More trouble than you’re worth.
It was then that she met Hugh, another bright young star, a man she loved madly. She initially hid her depression well from him, and even convinced herself it didn’t exist. Until the day her father threw her out of the house for sleeping with a white man. For refusing to choose his religion. And even though she tried, even though she loved Hugh, parts of her were empty halls of echoes. Hugh sensed her emptiness and wondered why she hated herself so deeply. Enough to make herself suffer.
Now she went to no parties. And she relished the small patched-up home of her youth. Moomi’s little house. But she could never go back there to live. It was too late. Her father would not have her back. She had been his greatest embarrassment among the Islamic scholars and religious men that he spent all his time with. This shameful daughter from his shameful past was not accepted. Another parent now denied the existence of Afroze, his child.
Only Moomi had accepted her for all that she was and all the choices she had made. But always, subtly in their little conversations, Moomi would throw in little dashes of suggestions about how Afroze cou
ld return to the straight path and be accepted in the community again. Afroze ignored the suggestions.
She felt no conviction for anything at all. But she felt shame like a spear. Once, she had been ashamed of Moomi, of this place with its pawn-shop furniture and Moomi’s silly attempts at painting the walls in odd colors. Now she tried to imprint every single mismatched item on her tired mind.
“Afroze . . . eat, child. You never eat lately. You don’t like my cooking, neh? Maybe it’s not the fancy Camps Bay restaurant food you’re used to . . .”
She reached her hands forward and cupped Moomi’s face. She stroked the aging skin. “Moomi . . . I . . .” she trailed off. She held her hands tightly and looked deeply into her eyes.
“I know,” Moomi simply said and blinked back easy tears, “the pills are not good for you, child.”
“I have to take them, Moomi. They bloody cost a fortune anyway.”
“What depression nonsense, Afroze? What? I say to you, go and get married to a nice man. Not that white man who treats you like trash. Find a good Muslim boy, make nikaah and have babies. Babies will sort out all the depression story.”
Babies. They are not a magic potion.
A nice, decent life didn’t feel like it would be in her future. Afroze had received the telephone call the night before. Maybe if she stood face-to-face with the ghosts, they would be exorcised. And then, maybe she would be free.
Nothing else worked. The bag of pills had become a habit. Expensive, frothy vegetable juices remained untouched on the kitchen counters, some friend’s rose quartz crystal hanging around her neck, sniffs of lemon oil that followed her everywhere, reiki, massages, strange cleansing rituals. Nothing worked.
Afroze had to face the past. And a dying mother was probably the best way to do it. It was time to leave. To go home. To Brighton, after thirty-six long years. Back to “Dry Bry.”
Dust. To. Dust.
She found tears stinging her eyes and had to look away at the old-dress patchwork kitchen curtain. The minutes ticked by. The thick stew remained uneaten in her bowl.
“When?” is all Moomi asked when she was told, and the word lay heavily between them.
“Today, Moomi. Today.”
Moomi sobbed without attempting to hold it in. She had never cried openly in front of anyone, least of all Afroze. But today, something stiff and unbendable inside a strong woman broke, and she didn’t care if Afroze saw her cry. Afroze returning to Brighton meant losing her. Maybe forever. And Moomi was in no way prepared to let her go.
Their little morning dance had begun when Ismail had thrown Afroze out of the house, but ironically this had drawn the two women much closer together. They shared their own little world, in which Afroze would creep into her kitchen at dawn. She knew Afroze led a lavish lifestyle, and earned a good wage, enough not to be in need of her cheap food.
Moomi stood next to Afroze and quickly brought her head to her ample bosom, crying and knowing exactly why she was crying.
“Afroze . . . Afroze . . .” she crooned.
Don’t forget me . . .
“Moomi, I am . . .” Afroze whispered.
“Shhhh girl . . . quiet now. Don’t say anything.”
“But Moomi . . .”
“Afroze, go to her. It is the right thing.” Sharply, Moomi turned her back.
Later, braving the winds as she climbed up the hill that led to her luxurious apartment, Afroze wished she had given Moomi something, some token of love, or another appliance or gadget that would make her life easier.
But she knew her Moomi would never have accepted it.
PART TWO
DRY BRY AGAIN
CHAPTER ONE
Our Allah has created the djinn and He has created the djinn out of smokeless fire and our Allah has created man and he has created man out of a lump of clay. Both man and djinn receive His holy message. Both man and djinn submit to His will. Both man and djinn will face Him on the day of Qiyamah, when all deeds will be brought for judgment, and our Allah decrees that the djinn can see Man and that the djinn can interfere with man, both in very-very bad and so-so good and just plain disinterested so-so involvement in the affairs of man but man of clay will not see djinn and may never interfere in life affairs of djinn and maybe that does not seem very fair, actually. In fact. Because. But.
But it is so. It is so.
And be watchful of the tall trees. Never walk near them at nighttime. The djinn live in the tall trees and sometimes they just can’t help themselves.
Halaima told the tale of the djinns, a story that was familiar to her sleeping child, one that she knew always calmed Bibi, whose mind was constantly active. When a woman’s voice becomes a lullaby, when she cradles her half-asleep child in her lap, she rocks herself without realizing it, mimicking the rocking of oceans and waters. For maybe they made the man out of clay but they made the woman out of water.
Even when the child has fallen fast asleep, a woman who tells a poem-lullaby to the child takes a very long time to stop rocking herself, because the act has been both fortifying and a corporeal drowsing for both mother and child. A child may not need to be rocked. A child may content herself on a voice and a buttery smell. A woman will still rock. Herself.
As she now sat on the veranda of the cottage in Brighton, taking in the fresh, clear air with only the sounds of the surrounding bush, Afroze was drowsing even though a long sleep had been banished by a coffee the strength and color of tar. The back veranda was to blame for this underwater lull, cozy now in a moonless night, embers from a long-serving fire bringing smoky fumes to the air’s cocktail.
It could take Afroze a thousand and one sleeps, the sleeps of Scheherazade’s lover, to finally squeeze the last ugly drop of life-tired from her bones and blood.
The blood of hers, the one whose blood had leeched into her body via a strangulating umbilical cord, had long since been put to her bed. Her mother lay like a baby bird. A bald one, a toothless one, opening gummy mouth every now and then to flap out a snore. Someone, probably Halaima, had covered her thickly in blankets of tasteless colors; they clashed with every object in the room. Afroze wondered how many nightmares one could count in that heap. But the sleeping mother seemed content, her bald turtle-bird head poking out, the only evidence that underneath that pile of strelitzias, Snoopys, and sunflowers lay an actual person.
Her cheap wig hung on a chair back. Vanity finally banished for comfort. Afroze shuddered to think of her mother sitting for hours, being petted by Sathie’s linguistic lauding yet itching to scratch her scalp. And for decorum and style, not scratching her itch even once. Luckily her mother was alone. Undoubtedly, Sathie was capable and virile, but he did not stay the night. Afroze dreaded the thought that he might have stayed, or slept in her sick mother’s bed. Cinderella did not have to fear being discovered. Sathie had sauntered away long before midnight. This mother–Cinderella did not wear glass slippers. Afroze knew. This mother wore slippers of lead. They banged their way on wooden floors. And banged their way toward wooden doors.
I am coming for you. Don’t make me come over there.
On the back veranda, next to the fire, Bibi slept the sleep of the innocent on her mother’s rocking lap. After Halaima had rounded off her djinn story, she sighed and stretched out her arms high above her head. Her lovely, long neck rolled from side to side and cracked alongside the crackle of burning logs. Afroze roused from her doze. Both the women watched the slumbering child.
The offending breakfast still turned Afroze’s stomach, for no other reason than having an overwhelming sense of an unbearable day—with a bizarre septuagenarian love affair being played out in perfumes and lipstick, and a child who wanted to kill a centipede.
It was not the pork sausage. It was not the pork. Afroze was a woman of the world, a bright, young thing. Cape Town parties had taken wildly to the trend of pulled pork. She had kissed mouths that had smelled of meat. But, as it should be, the child returns and the child-adult becomes the child-child
, smacked with a stick and told to repeat all the evil things Shaitaan brought into this world—pork being one of them. She had never tasted it in her life. Though perhaps Sylvie had fed pork to her when she was a young child, before she had sent her away to a home that abhorred everything about the animal. In Moomi’s house, you could not even utter its name. Pig.
“How do you cook it, when it is forbidden?” Afroze blurted out.
“Doctor likes to eat it. And I cook what Doctor likes.”
“You and Bibi, have you been with my mother a long time?”
Halaima clicked her tongue against her teeth, a question-and-answer session not welcome at this quiet time of her night. She showed her irritation with a sigh. But deep down, the woman in her needed to talk to another. Too much of her world was a child, a loquacious man, and a demanding doctor. She had forgotten that sometimes women sit late into nights and share their stories. She had forgotten that this was a beautiful and powerful thing to do. Something inside of her opened up.
“I came to this place with my Uncle Abdur-Rahman. We came from Malawi, my town is Mzuzu. My mother died of a very bad illness, and I was 13 years old. The men told my uncle that I must marry, but my uncle made a promise to my mother that he would send me to school. But the men were very strong, and they were so angry. My uncle took me to school and he waited there for so many weeks, the European people who taught at the school listened to my uncle and they took me into the school. But the men from my father’s place came to find me, they said to my uncle that I must marry. I am a woman. There was much fighting. They said to my uncle that I can read books and maybe I am a witch. I am a woman now, I must be a wife. The European lady, she told the men that I would finish my school. But my uncle was very scared; he told me we must run to South Africa. He will work in the mines. But the South African at the mines was not happy to give the job to Malawian man. Praise be to Allah, I turned 17 and we ran to so many places: Johannesburg, Durban. My uncle met a man at the masjid during Jummah, or Friday prayers.
