Today the status of women in Islam has shifted from the front of the class to the back of the mosque, which is literally where women in Islam now stand. From leading wars to being trampled on.
For the most part, women in Islam today exist quietly in the shadows, out of sight and out of mind. I have stopped reading books by Middle Eastern authors. They make me naar. Where are the powerful stories? Where is the #MuslimGirlMagic? (Yes, I know about Malala. She’s cool. But that’s not nearly enough.)
This backward thinking when it comes to women’s rights is not reserved for hectic Saudis. It’s happening in Muslim communities in South Africa as well. Because patriarchy keeps them seen but not heard.
When food is served at Muslim funerals, the men eat first. It’s like a scene from a barbaric period drama. The only difference is that the women don’t sit in the centre of the floor waiting for bones to be thrown at them. They get to hang about elsewhere. But within earshot of the men’s requests. So in between feasting and talking, the male folk can be easily catered to.
Here’s another example. At Muslim weddings (and in general), women have to dress modestly to avoid the male gaze. This is of course over and above the fact that in some really conservative cases the women are separated from the men by a large, thick curtain. We must not tempt these gods with our satanic presence. We must not ‘ask’ for it. Then, of course, there is the religiously liberal reason for all of this: men are weak, they can’t help it, it is a woman’s responsibility to help them be decent human beings who can keep it in their pants. I am unavailable for this nonsense, thank you very much. Help yourself or go away.
There are no women who lead the prayers, or deliver the sermons and the speeches. There are no Muslim women who oversee marriages and bless unions. Not that I know of, and not that I have seen. And I have been to a lot of Muslim weddings. In Indian Muslim communities, girls tend to get married as early as sixteen because this is mostly the only goal they’re allowed in life. A lot of them aren’t victims; they’re pretty enthusiastic about this life of theirs. But I believe firmly in the words of Maya Angelou: ‘When you know better, you do better.’ And how can women know better when female scholars who receive airtime in Muslim communities are so few and far between?
More than that, when’s the last time Muslim men – youths or elders – attended a talk or religious gathering led by a woman? How many male Muslim feminists are there? I will eat my hat if you can point out more than five in a community I have a relationship with. Like Laudium.
All of this results in a male-directed narrative. It results in men talking to men about what men have to say about men in the Muslim community. More than that, it means men get to talk to men about what men think about women and their place in society. It’s like a cult. Honestly. And this cult of modern-day Islam has made me extremely anti-religious.
Aisha never stood for this kind of shit. Why should I?
I’ll go to mosque when I can stand at the front.
I offer you this piece of information from the International Association of Sufism (this knowledge is presented because of my inherent Islamic duty and my inherent Islamic guilt, but also because Sufism is something I can get behind):
Islam is a religion where your temple is not a building but your heart; your preacher is not a priest but your intellect; and if your religion is founded upon mere imitation, you are a blasphemer.
In Islam, ignorance is an unforgivable sin, so is your evasion of responsibility for yourself as well as towards all the members of the living world, past and present.
It is incorrect to blame Islam for the shortcomings of its followers, which are the failings of most of humankind.
A religion that is centred on the rights of human beings, and sets both men and women free from the chains of bondage, should not be used in propaganda for the sake of condemnation.
So if you must practise, go with god, not with men.
Bar brawl with my brother
My brother visited me in Sea Point for the first time in a year. He’s six years younger than I am and super cool. I wanted to give him a good time and be cool too. Rebecca and I took him to dinner in Bree Street, very hip, and then we wandered down Shortmarket Street and found ourselves at Manila Bar for karaoke. He fell asleep on the couch while a couple of students belted out Bon Jovi. He’s a good-looking kid: I got the Jet store genes, he got the designer set. So even while he was catching a few winks on a dirty, torn pleather couch, a young woman and her friends proceeded to take photos of him. With flash and everything. No shame. Rebecca and I hung out a bit because I wanted to sing, but Justin Bieber did not play, so we left. I didn’t want the night to end so I insisted that we stop by Corner Bar, up the road from my place in Sea Point.
Corner Bar is amazing. It’s as old as Egypt and disgusting. You can smoke inside and it’s tiny. It’s always a hot box in there and the patrons are mostly regulars of the male variety. They’re middle-aged or older and have the distinct feel about them of either having been kicked out by their partners or just hanging about after a day trawling on the Atlantic. Sometimes, the odd group of youths from the language school next door hangs about. They don’t speak much English, so they mostly keep to themselves and don’t bug anyone. The older dudes usually don’t either, so all things considered, it’s fairly comfortable in there for two women who just want to hang out without travelling too far, you know? My brother, always one for atmosphere, was convinced after this sales pitch, so we hopped in and took a booth.
I have never had many physical altercations, except for the odd bullying incident in school, where I was the victim of racism and a tiny moving target who had no friends and was asking for it. I don’t think you can really count being pushed down stairs, or having my hair pulled, or even being teased for having a sanitary pad in my blazer pocket after a bunch of mean-girls went through my stuff in the locker room.
If I really stretch my memory, there are two incidents where I fought back. One was in Grade 8, when I was once again being teased. I had had about enough and I ended up using all the fight in me to topple a relatively large boy off his chair because he was talking smack about my mom. Then there was this one time during lunch break when I was at the centre of an actual ‘barney’ with my sister’s nemesis. I was defending my sibling’s honour this time. I can’t remember what against. I do remember the cigarette I had under the tree at the lapa afterwards with the other losers who only spoke to each other to borrow lighters. It was fantastic. Stuyvesant Red. The loose draw, the painter’s cigarette, disgusting and totally worth it.
I got a bleeding mouth when I was shoved in primary school, but garnered no other physical scars from these episodes. But that’s okay; I am a gold medallist at falling over my own feet, so I made up for the scars elsewhere. Ankle sprains, fractured wrists, cuts, bruises. Breaking ribs while playing soccer, losing a piece of skin on my elbow during a tennis match (there’s still a pruned version of what used to be perfectly healthy epidermis). Your standard knee scrapes, of course. Once, I even dropped a weight on my face at gym.
Seriously, I’m a pro at being clumsy. It’s never elegant and it’s never heroic. These are not ordinary accidents is what I am getting at. Everyone gets hurt sometimes, but this, this is freak-of-nature stuff. It’s almost impossible that one person can be this hopeless at standing on her own two feet. And it’s strange, because I have excellent hand–eye coordination. The knack for falling is so bad that when I started longboarding and decided I could get in some good practice by skating to the gym and back, my partner’s first words to me when I got home were not ‘Hello’, but ‘Did you fall today?’
Then this Corner Bar brawl happened: my first physical clash as a fully grown human who is still fairly tiny. This drunken white dude from the senior society tripped me with his government-issue crutch. Why would anyone do that to a fragile angel, you ask? Let me tell you.
It was midnight on that Saturday with my brother; the regular crowd had already shuffled in
. There was no piano man, but old-school rock classics were playing on the shabby stereo. People were chattier than usual, maybe because it was witching hour. A young white dude, let’s call him Dave, walked up to us and cosied up. He started building chats as big as the Carlton Towers, mostly with my brother. He was jolly, from Durban, and that’s about all I know. I paid no attention to his conversation, as an introvert who is excellent at zoning out. I needed a break from the white noise so I made my way to the bathroom and, upon exiting, witnessed a kerfuffle.
Dave was storming out, his foreigner friends from the language school trying to restrain him. He was shouting that he didn’t want to be there any more. He didn’t want to be with ‘this racist’. The restraining attempt ended up outside. I’m not one to miss out on observational treats, so I followed, but it was boring. I went back in to take my seat and discovered that Dave’s rant about ‘this racist’ was in reference to the crutch-bearing geriatric I mentioned previously. Let’s call him Asshole.
Before I went to the bathroom, Asshole had hobbled in, foot in cast and smack in mouth. He went straight at me. I was wearing this cap, you see, a really fantastic snapback that I purchased on holiday in Thailand. It says ‘Normcore’ and I had it on because I was going through my annual bad-hair phase. ‘Jou kop is te groot vir daai hoed,’ he said. Then: ‘Jou hoed is te groot vir daai kop.’ He couldn’t make his mind up; he just wanted a reaction. He was a lonely pain in the ass, I decided. Soeking, as we say. I ignored him.
After Dave departed, everyone left in the bar was black except for Asshole, the barman, a young American woman and Rebecca. Asshole became progressively more difficult to ignore. He left my hat alone and proceeded to throw insults at us about our race while sipping on his Windhoek Lager. We started off passive. ‘Just finish your beer and go home, man,’ my brother said. I chuckled a bit on the inside. The ignorance of this old human was kind of hilarious, but also dangerous. Consider the amount of privilege and self-confidence he had to have to throw this crap around in a bar full of young people of colour where he was clearly outnumbered.
When he started having a go at my brother, I felt the heat rise in my throat. I was about to spit fire.
‘You go home,’ Asshole sneered. ‘I live in a place you people can’t even afford. I will call the apartheid police for you. Verwoerd would have known what to do with you people. He would have thrown you to the dogs. You guys are dogs!’
I turned on him. ‘Call them! Call the apartheid police, man!’ Lame, I know. But trust me, it’s hard to insult a white man with an inflated sense of self who is so … average. Below average.
‘I am a dog! I am a dog!’ my brother shouted. ‘Want to see?’ And he proceeded to howl. Next-level stuff.
This guy was the barman’s friend, so the barman got involved. To his credit, he asked Asshole to settle down, told him what he was saying wasn’t allowed and then asked us to settle down as well. At this point the American woman chirped in: ‘Come on guys, can’t we all just get along?’ I could not contain my rage: again, a misplaced sense of involvement and entitlement. How dare she? No one asked her. She needed to find a lane.
‘Shut the fuck up or leave,’ I said. I am not proud of this profanity. Rebecca promptly left the scene to stand outside. Armed with a healthy inquisitiveness, however, she peered in through the window every so often, and had her phone in her hand. I think she was ready to call Netcare or something.
The barman called a rent-a-cop: a general security dude in the area. He strolled in, tall and thick, a coloured bloke with a very Spanish name.
‘Here’s the apartheid police. Throw them out, throw them out,’ yelled Asshole, swinging his crutch. The barman also requested that we please leave. Were these people serious? I went up to the Spanish-named rent-a-cop and explained the racist ranter’s offences. We all shouted and made it very clear that we were not going to be thrown out unless he was thrown out first. What typical politically incorrect crap was this? As people of colour we had to leave? Nah. It was not flying. The African students agreed and stuck to their seats. The American subsided, mostly out of fear. Rebecca monitored her phone’s battery outside. The Human Rights Commission should have an emergency number, in my personal opinion. Mr Security Man was relatively understanding and gently nudged Asshole out of the bar. Asshole took a seat at the picnic table outside and waited for us with crutch bated. As soon as he left, we peacefully exited, the bar empty, the barman locking doors. No more classic rock.
Still convinced that he had achieved gold-medal status in the race Olympics, Asshole carried on ranting that we had experienced the power of whiteness and the apartheid police. My brother walked up to him and spat at his feet. It was the most reactive and aggressive I have ever seen him. Aside from the random grunt and fist in the air because he gets frustrated when designing inner-city buildings, he is a totally laid-back guy. I was a bit proud of him, to be honest.
‘I’ll fuck you up! I’ll fuck you up!’ Asshole shouted, swinging his crutch and aiming for my brother as best he could despite his early-onset dementia and clear inebriation.
I lost my cool. ‘Fuck him up, fuck him up!’ I raged, and went straight for him. The students held me back. And as they released me, Asshole tripped me with his crutch. I fell face-first and broke my fall with the palm of my hand. I now have a scar on my right hand that is not the result of my own clumsiness, but proof of an aggressive racial attack.
We left, Rebecca relieved and strung out. The African students chased after us; they wanted to hang out. Misery loves company and all that, or strength in numbers? ‘Absolutely not. We are going home,’ said Rebecca. And so we did.
At home, I lay on my balcony looking at the stars to calm down. I saw Orion. Fixed as it was and always has been, I came to the conclusion that this was the disposition of the racist South African white male. Stuck and armed with a metaphorical sword (or crutch). Rebecca appeared and asked me if all that commotion was really necessary. This did not help my fury. She went to bed. I was dumbstruck by her question.
She later explained that she was worried that the incident would play out with the standard narrative if it escalated any further. The headline would read: ‘Black hoodlums attack crippled pensioner’. Fair point. In the moment, I had not considered this.
Honestly though, as a person of colour in a situation like that, you reach the point where you accept that even if it’s a skewed headline you get, that’s the prize. Getting angry and saying something is worth it. Being the bigger person is exhausting and sometimes it’s just bullshit.
We’ve been to Corner Bar since. The Caucasian barman did not recognise the ‘black hoodlums’. It was a peaceful experience. Not all whites, I guess.
Zwelenzima Vavi and Helen Zille are starting a super party
The first time I met Basil I didn’t really meet him at all. It was more like I imagined him. It was my first night in an apartment in Gardens after finishing my honours in journalism at Stellenbosch University. I had no furniture so I slept on the floor in the open-plan lounge on the deflated carcass of a blow-up mattress. I was uncomfortable, I was anxious, and when the Gandalf-like silhouette appeared at my kitchen window, I was scared.
I was prepared to suffer on the floor for a couple of days, inhaling the sand and dust the wind swept in, but nothing could have prepared me for this vision. It was so weird that I convinced myself that the exhaustion of the move had made me delirious. I wanted a sleeping pill more than anything. The howling southeaster whipped Basil’s hair about, and because he was only a shadow, I couldn’t tell if he was facing out or looking in. Had he been staring at me through the frosted window for the longest time, or was he trying his best to be blown off the harbour-facing balcony of the fourth floor?
After actually making his acquaintance days later, I discovered Basil’s love for chats. He always managed to catch me on my way up to my apartment after a long day at YOU magazine. As entertaining as he was, I couldn’t call his lengthy anecdotes welcome at tha
t time of the day. I appreciated them more in memory. He seemed to spend less time in his apartment than he did wandering the corridors, chain-smoking cheap cigarettes. The silhouette made sense once I had a grasp of his walkabout tendencies. He smoked on that balcony with his wizard hair blowing in the wind every night. If my apartment looked like his, I probably would have done the same. I managed to peek inside one night while waiting for the elevator. It looked like a storeroom, the passageway crowded with buckets and tins and old scraps of tile. You could see right into the lounge, which was just as cluttered. The centrepiece of the room was an old IBM computer, circa 1990. Not an antique, but a trusty piece of equipment I would hear more about later. The apartment was completely dark but for a dim red light giving the place the feel of a kamer in Amsterdam.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Basil was lonely and hunting for human interaction. He would watch the alleys and as soon as you took the corner, he would pounce and launch straight into some narrative. But Basil was happy to be alone. Not lonely, just alone.
One afternoon when I was home early, he leant between the bars of my gate because the door was open and started to tell me a bit about his life. He was married once, he had two kids and he used to be a drug addict. ‘I’m not any more,’ he said. ‘I got rid of my wife and, thank god, I don’t see my kids any more.’ If this family stuff had come from anyone else, it would have seemed bitter and sad. But Basil really sounded like he was relieved to be done with all of it.
The ‘I was a druggie’ bit helped piece together the puzzle of his appearance. Thin, although not frail for his age. Pale, papery skin marked with the odd homemade tattoo turning blue because of cheap ink and sunlight. Long, white, wizard tresses, of course. Basil wasn’t tall; you got the sense life had whittled him down quite a bit. But even though time had eroded his physique, it seemed to have done the opposite for his mind and imagination. Basil didn’t chat out of desperation for company; he talked because he was a storyteller.
Sorry, Not Sorry Page 6
