by Jenny Robson
We always went out to break together, lunchboxes tucked under our arms. Even when that Marcus Singer and Colin Gottschalk and their friends began walking behind us in the corridors, chanting, “Vanilla milkshake, Milo milkshake …” I don’t think we ever really understood what they meant. Marcus and Colin and their friends were just silly boys who were always saying silly things and annoying the girls. All through break, we sat together giggling. And breaks seemed to go on forever, out there in the Western Cape sunshine.
*
Grade Three began badly though. That was the first year that we were separated, put into two different classes.
You were assigned to Mrs Dlamini’s class and I was put into the other class with Miss Twine. It was horrible for me, sitting there every day without you and your dimples. Nothing seemed much fun. I felt lost and alone, as though I was starting school all over again. I used to long with all my heart for break time to come. Miss Twine was always telling me off for looking at the classroom clock instead of concentrating on my sums and phonics.
She shouted sometimes, Miss Twine. She was a big woman with a big voice, even bigger than Mrs Walker’s. Well, that’s how I remember her. The floorboards beneath my desk seemed to shudder and buckle. I was always terrified that they would give way altogether and I would fall down, down, down into the Art room below.
Some time in the third week, you went up to Mrs Dlamini’s desk and said, “Please, Miss, won’t you check. There was a mistake, I think. I am supposed to be in the other class with Miss Twine, I think.”
That was brave, I’m telling you, Faheema. I always remember that, whenever you go on about what a coward you are and how you never stand up for yourself; about how easily you give up instead of fighting for what you want, about how you never dare question authority. Well, you did your best to stand up for yourself then, even though you were only eight.
Not that it did any good! Mrs Dlamini showed you the register with your name right there in the middle.
“No, Faheema, this is definitely where you belong,” she said.
But that was also the year we learned to play netball. Wasn’t that fun?! And at least we could be together there. Rushing up and down the tarmac with that huge brown ball flying through the air. And jumping as high as we could. And screeching to a stop at those white lines that seemed to appear from nowhere! I can tell you one thing, Faheema, you never looked scared there on the netball court. Never! Even though you were the smallest by far.
Mrs Dlamini was our coach and she kept blowing her whistle at us. “Louise, you’re in the WRONG PLACE again … Faheema, you’re OUT OF BOUNDS!”
Those white lines seemed to appear so suddenly, just when we were really caught up in the game, just when we were least expecting them.
We weren’t very good at this netball business, neither of us. You were so short, Faheema, the ball just kept flying right over your head like a UFO. No matter how high you jumped. And me – well, I just never had any ball sense. My mom always warned me: “Don’t expect too much from this netball, love. I don’t want you feeling disappointed. You have other talents, remember. Like your lovely writing.”
And she was right. In our house, Kyle was the sportsman. Cricket, rugby, water polo, swimming. You name it, he could do it. Every prize-giving, he had to go up onto the stage when they gave out the sporting awards. You’ve seen the cabinet in our lounge full of his medals and trophies and photographs.
*
It was also in Grade Three that you and I started visiting each other’s houses. We were old enough now to walk the eight and a half blocks that separated us. And it was safe enough for our moms not to worry, especially with the police station right in the middle and no big roads to cross.
You came to my house first, do you remember? Straight after school one Wednesday.
My mom was acting a little strange about it all, whispering in the kitchen while you were in the bathroom washing your hands. “But what am I supposed to give her to eat, Louise? I mean these Muslim people have all sorts of strange laws about food. There are all sorts of things against their religion, you know.”
By then I understood a little about what being a Muslim meant. I knew that your Sunday was on a Friday, even though that confused me. I knew your church was called a mosque and it didn’t have pews and chairs. Instead it had carpets. And I knew that there was a month called Ramadan when everyone had to stop eating if the sun was shining. But we didn’t discuss it much. There were so many other things we needed to talk about, weren’t there?
“I’m fine, Mrs Van Rensburg,” you said when you got back from washing your hands and Mom offered you some lunch. “I had something to eat just before I came. My mom packed extra, so I’m not hungry.”
I ate my sandwich while you watched and kept on trying to tell my mom that you were fine.
“Cheese? Are your people allowed to eat our cheese? Or how about a tomato sandwich? Tomatoes can’t be a problem, surely?”
But my mom wasn’t the only one acting weird that day of your first visit.
Remember when I took you to my bedroom so we could play with my Barbie and all her new clothes? You stood at my doorway, staring at a painting on my wall. I mean, you looked really surprised, your eyes wide. A little frightened, even.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. The painting looked pretty normal to me, a picture of Jesus with children all around him. Underneath it said: Suffer the little children to come unto me. My ouma gave me that picture before she died.
“That’s Jesus, isn’t it?” you asked, still staring. “It’s just that we don’t have any pictures of our Prophet Muhammad, you know. We aren’t allowed to make drawings and paintings of him. Not ever.”
Now I was staring. That sounded strange to me.
“Yes, the only pictures we have are verses out of the Qur’an. Written in Arabic ’cause that’s the language of the Qur’an. They look nice though. Arabic letters have beautiful shapes.”
So I opened my drawer and took out my Children’s Bible. Another of my ouma’s gifts. We sat on my bed, looking at the pictures in it together: Jesus being born with the sheep standing next to him, Jesus in the temple when he was twelve and then in the desert when he was grown-up, Jesus riding on a donkey. I didn’t show you the picture of Jesus dying on the cross though. I tried never to look at that one myself. You kept shaking your head.
Then my mom’s head appeared around the side of my door. She seemed worried again.
“Louise, love. Why don’t you rather show your friend your new Barbie clothes?”
So I did. And we were still playing with my Barbie when Kyle got home from school in his cherry-red Riverside High blazer. As always, the whole house seemed to light up. It always felt like that when my big brother was home.
“Hey, you two squashed-tomato noses! What are you sitting inside for on such a magic day? Come on, get your costumes on. Let’s hit the pool.”
You borrowed one of my costumes and we both laughed because you were so much smaller than me and the material bunched up all around your middle. But so what! We were ready for action!
We had a great time in the pool. Kyle picked us up, one at a time, steadied us on his shoulders and then hurled us bottom-first into the water. The splashes we made reached my mom’s deck loungers. She came out to rescue her cushions.
“Louise, are you sure this is alright? Are you sure Faheema’s allowed to swim? I don’t want her parents to be upset.” But because Kyle was home, Mom managed to smile as she watched us dive-bomb some more.
It did get easier though, didn’t it, your visits to our house? My mom stopped acting so weird and worried all the time. Sometimes I heard her talking on the phone to her friends.
“Yes, that’s Louise’s little Muslim friend. She’s coming to play tomorrow … No, it’s not a problem at all … You know me, Tina. Live and let live, that’s my motto. And Louise is very fond of her.”
But still, there were times she and Dad passed their secret
eye messages when I talked on and on about you. There were times when she lifted me onto her lap and said, “You know, Louise, you must try to have more friends. It’s not good to always be with the same person, day after day after day. Always in each other’s pockets. What about Susan de Lange down the road? Or Annette Winterton?”
I wanted to answer that she was with Dad day after day after day. So how come that was alright? But of course I didn’t. It would have sounded cheeky and Mom didn’t like me being cheeky.
And you did start to feel more comfortable, didn’t you? After a while?
And you must remember, Faheema, I was quite nervous the first time I went to your home too. I really didn’t know what to expect.
4. arba’a
Mostly I was nervous about your mother. That’s why I kept saying, “next week, next week,” every time you said I should come to your house, since you had already been to mine.
I want to be honest with you, Faheema, and that is the truth. I remember as if it were yesterday: I was so afraid of how your mother would look.
Often before, I’d seen Muslim women – well, women in purdah. Women covered from head to toe in those black burkas. I think that’s what they are called. Billowing black shapes without definition, with only their eyes staring out. Like dark ghosts moving secretively among the rest of us. I’d seen them at the supermarkets, in cars driving past us, at the shopping malls in town, collecting their children from the crèche down our road, even having picnics with their families beside the river. I suppose most of them were ladies who belong to your mosque.
I’d seen them on the TV too, sometimes when my dad was watching the news. I remember once there was a woman talking with only her eyes on the screen and her voice coming out from the dark blankness were her mouth should be. And Dad was getting angrier and angrier. He was talking back to her, as if she was actually sitting there in the room opposite him. It stuck in my mind because my dad doesn’t get angry often. Not like that.
“Of course it isn’t right! How can you possibly imagine it’s right? Going into a school and teaching when the kids can’t even see you! If that’s what you want, then why the heck are you in England? Why don’t you teach in some Muslim country?”
Mom came into the room then, sending Dad eye messages so I could see she wasn’t happy with what he was doing. Then she told me to go and play outside since it was such a lovely day. So I did, leaving behind the woman staring from out of her veil and the TV screen. And Dad still talking to her. But under his breath, so Mom wouldn’t hear.
The thing was, Faheema, no matter how many times I saw women dressed in purdah, I never got used to it. They always terrified me. Deep, deep down, way beneath common sense. How can I explain it? All that black material hiding … what? Was there something wrong with their skin? Or maybe they had no skin at all, just bare bones like the skeleton in Mr Ferguson’s Grade Seven class.
Once, right here beside the river, right here beside Gap Falls, I saw one of those women hug a child, enveloping him in darkness. I must have been six at the time, just before I started school. And that little boy disappeared forever into the folds of black – or so it seemed to me. All the rest of that afternoon, I looked for him and his green-striped T-shirt amongst the happy family gathering, so much larger and more animated than our own picnic foursome. But the little boy had vanished.
“Those poor women!” said my mom, dressed in her shorts and bikini top, dishing up garlic potatoes while my dad braaied. “How can they bear it? On such a hot day! How can they possibly be enjoying themselves? It’s so unfair!”
“Must be really depressing if you’re pretty,” said my brother, Kyle, laughing.
But I didn’t laugh. I didn’t speak.
It was the eyes most of all. Eyes staring out from hidden, secret, dungeon-dark places. Eyes without mouths so you didn’t know if the mother was smiling or snarling.
I had a bad dream that night, I remember, about the little boy being swallowed up in darkness. And then suddenly it was me struggling to escape while the black material covered my mouth and my nose so I couldn’t breathe. And I could feel myself slowly dissolving.
*
So when you invited me to your house, faint shadows from that dream flickered, even though it was from long ago.
But you were more and more insistent.
“I’ve got a music keyboard,” you said. “It’s brilliant. You have to come try it, please, Louise.” You went into one of your rhyming chants then: “Please, Louise, please, Louise, please, Louise.”
You always did enjoy that: finding words that rhymed with my name. Remember? And then you’d say them over and over, like you’d gone a bit crazy. You used to make me laugh so much.
And in the end, I discovered I’d been afraid for no reason. I went into your house and there was your mom, dressed in pretty pink clothing with silver threads that caught the light from the kitchen window. She had a scarf round her head, hiding her hair. But I could see her whole face. Every single bit of it. I could see she had dimples in her cheeks just like yours. I could see that she was smiling as she offered me fairy cakes and a cool drink.
You led me down the passage, past a telephone table where a vase stood, filled with sweet-smelling roses from your mom’s garden. Also pink. And above them hung a big wooden plaque covered in intriguing gold designs.
“That’s a verse from the Qur’an,” you told me. “My dad helped me learn it. It says: Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoo koonoo qawwameena lillahi shuhadaa bialqisti wala yajrimannakum …”
I marvelled at the strange, flowing sounds that came from your mouth, on and on. You’d already taught me how to count in Arabic, of course: waghied, iethnyn, thalaatha, arba’a … But this sounded even more exotic.
“Teach me to say it too,” I begged and we giggled as I tried to copy your pronunciation: Ya ayyuha allatheena …
Your mom had to come and tell me what the words meant in English. She stood in her pink clothes beside the pink roses.
“O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for God as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety. And fear God for God is well-acquainted with all that ye do.”
The words sounded strangely familiar, almost like listening to our pastor at church.
*
And your keyboard was just as brilliant as you promised. We took turns for hours, trying out the different tones and the different rhythms, all at full volume. Until your mother begged us to stop before we gave her a headache. Until your mom reminded you that it was time for your lessons at the madrassa.
More lessons? At this time of day?
“Poor you, Faheema,” I said sympathetically.
But you shook your head. “It’s nothing like school at all. I like it. I like learning the stuff they teach us there. Promise!”
Your mom stood beside you at the front door and waved goodbye to me. With her dimples even deeper than yours and the sunshine glittering off her pink scarf. And the next time you asked me to come to your house, I didn’t say “next week”. I said, “Which day?”
*
Once when I came, in the middle of our school holidays, your big sister, Yasmiena, was home from work. She was wearing the loveliest long earrings, I remember, like two waterfalls of diamonds. She was nervous, worrying about the practical test for her hairdressing course the next day. She needed some heads to practise on. Ours were the only heads around.
“Come on, you two,” she said. “Into the bathroom with you. I need your help!”
That was such a great afternoon! We pulled faces at each other in the mirror while strange things happened to our hair. I went home with a headful of tiny, perfect braids, each one ending in a tiny, perfect crystal bead. For the first time I understood why Malebogo and Thandi and Keletso swung their heads about whenever they had their braids done. It was a wonderful feeling. All that soft clinking going on all around my face
. And because it was school holidays, my mom let me keep the braids in right up to Saturday night.
“That’s a lovely job,” she said. “Strange. I would have thought Muslim people weren’t allowed fancy hairstyles. I wouldn’t have thought they’d allow their daughters to study hairdressing. Just goes to show. You shouldn’t make judgments when you don’t know the facts …”
For a while after that, she and dad didn’t send each other eye messages every time I mentioned your name. For a while she stopped telling me about that nice girl, Susan de Lange, who lived down our street and would love to be friends with me. Or about Annette Winterton, whose mother ran the church fête and who was a talented and extraordinary girl. Just my age too, even though she went to a private school.
So I didn’t have to explain, for a while at least, that Susan was a rough, quick-tempered girl, who scared me. Or that Annette was only friends with very special people, girls who were also talented and extraordinary. Nor did I have to explain that Susan and Annette could never, ever be fun the way you were fun, Faheema. I couldn’t ever imagine talking and talking and talking to them the way I could talk on and on and on to you.
That’s the truth of it. I always felt comfortable and special and right when we were together.
*
Well, almost always.
There was one bad time. At your house. There was one bad moment when you changed from being my best friend, Faheema, to something strange and unfamiliar so that I lost any feeling of connection to you. All the comfortableness and rightness between us seemed to fall apart. Disintegrate.
In that moment, all I was conscious of was the word “Muslim”. It seemed to scream, louder and louder, from every brick in your bedroom wall, from every tile and every carpet tuft on your bedroom floor. As if it was telling me I didn’t belong here and I should go away.
I’m trying to be honest, Faheema, so I might as well admit this.
