The single most important question that I've been asked almost every day of my life, sitting around the dinner table, and more recently over whatsapp or a well placed voice chat with one of my parents, is 'how was your day?' There is no measure for what that question conveys, how loaded it is with concern, care and the potential that it holds for sometimes mundane sharing and often some fantasticself realization and gratitude to spill forth. The question holds promise for a safe sharing of your own stuff, but it's also accompanied by a few nuggets from the askers' day in the life. My dad usually has a range of quick bytes from work and development stuff, to a current read and some reflective philosophy on his mind. Mum will update me on a phone call from one of her aunts, or gran or my aunt, and the latest on the two grand kids scuttling around at her feet or in her lap. Everyday things that add to wholeness and being part of each others' lives. A world of love resides in that sentence of many things, many years, many ways of saying thanks.
On May 5, 1928 a baby girl was born to Muhammad Osman Ghoor and his young wife Mariam Tayob out in the sleepy Transvaal town of Potgietersrus. Born as second to an older brother, she would grow up to be the eldest of five more sisters and five more brothers. Today, 84 years later, I revere her influence and inspiration in my life. She is my beloved grandmother, restfully living her reflective days in Durban, SA. This is why the east coast city holds just so much fantasy for me, I admire and envy it for the job it has to have my granny living there.
Ma calls us the cream of her life, because she says, children are the milk of life, and so grandchildren are the 'malaai', i.e the cream of the milk; the delicacy, the luxury as it were. I last visited her in Durban in mid-Feb, and so a visit is long overdue, and she shared with me that she had begun writing down her thoughts about her life, not so much memories or autobiographical accounts, but rather reflections on the journey. And then she sent me to the drawer where I would find the notebook and bits of card on which notes had been scribbled in her signature, classic scrawl. She asked me to read them out loud, and I did, stopping every so often to ask a question or to listen when she prompted me to, so as to give her a chance to add or annotate her notes.
I'm thinking about those notes now, and wondering how much more she has gotten to pen in the last few weeks. It's such a thrill to know that she's actually writing! I hope the muse will allow me the luxury to do so for the next 50 years :)
Happy Birthday, to my darling grandmother. May the Beauty we love in you always inspire us to generate more of it in the work that we do, in the love that we share, in the life that we live.
My last few posts towards year end always tend to reflect on the year gone by; kind of like a taking stock of things done, the to-do list checked off and a retrospective meander through the mind.
It doesn't take much to muster the courage to make these notes of course: data gladly presents itself, just as it did this weekend past. There's nothing like a friendly, family social event (such as a wedding) to stir one into a mix of familiar faces. A mocktail of sorts in which I found myself in Alice-like charm, drowned in some contentious, other bemusing fluid moments of a ping-pong game gone awry. My writing is almost as dizzy as I feel.
There is one certainty I should make note of: the past, if left like a weeded plot untended, will crawl over your garden wall and make its way into the present. That's a given. Weeds. The kind that can kill roses, if you're not too careful. Okay so life is still fragrant, but I am left thinking, reflecting, with words like disingenuous swirling in the murky waters of my mind. And I'm wondering about life as some supposed sort of continuum, the dots and dashes I see instead, the adoption of a process of broken steps, the inheritance of the discontinuous.
It's been a while since I free wrote a load of cryptic hogwash. It feels really good.
I'm still upset by the findings that landed in my lap, though.
But they won't alter my course.
I've dreamed of peace and freedom ever since I was a little girl. That one day, things would change, and I would finally grow wings. It never happened. But then, one day, I woke up and realised, that the thing I wanted more than anything, was to fly, and that that was never on the cards for a reason: I'm a human being, and not a bird or a unicorn or some ill-placed-in-time flying dinosaur. I'm a person.
And I learned that freedom isn't a different kind of mobility; it's a different way of being, a mind free of conditioning that's so lavishly lathered onto you from a very young age, and it's a demeanor of your own choosing. Freedom is peace. And peace, in and of yourself, is freedom. I stopped dreaming of wings, and changed my focus. I got wings, and dropped those ego boundaries. I became one with Us. You became Me. Love became eternal. The world reached the clouds. Sky melted into the earth. Life taught us Oneness. We experienced Peace. Love seeped into us. We inherited a new legacy. We discovered anew: Freedom is.
Evolution of the mind is a beautiful thing to behold. While reading The Museum of Innocence last week sometime, I was mesmerized by the layers of expressiveness, the obsessive, deep emotion, the frivolous made real in so many ways. Orhan Pamuk's writing can be easily put down for another day, or drowned in so totally that the rest of the world of work is reduced to background noise. Please note spoiler alerts from here onward, for if you plan on reading the book!
And so, the reason for my having bought and read this book on a whim quickly revealed itself to me. You see, while reading the book, I was taken by the idea that I could, after what seemed like ages, read a book just for the fun of it. But then, I got to the latter chapters and was treated to the conversation between the author and the protagonist. And I was completely blown away. I realised then, that this was no mere coincidence. I was certainly not just reading this book for the fun of it!
This book turned uncanny in it's message to me. It was also rather unpredictable.
Readers of this blog will know that along with the courses that I present, I have been engaged in the research and write-up of a political biography over the past two years. This means that I have had the honour of meeting and interviewing some interested veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle; various gregarious and surreal personalities from around the world, Paris, the UK, South Africa and India. The journey has been hugely satisfactory for the most part; a delight in many ways. But I've said this to a few friends, that the writing of biography also feels on some days like a project of dodging bullets and filling holes. I know - it sounds a lot dodgier when it's said that way. It's not a literal exposition at all. But it's every bit as crazed and meandering as its meant to sound.
Until I read this book, that is. Orhan Pamuk's written conversation with his protagonist, Kemal Basmaci, is for me as a biographer, ultimately revelatory and highlights the many features of the biographical process and the importance of giving it authentic subject voice.
And many things regarding the telling of the tale; defining the idea that it's easy to want to write 'everything' that gets dumped in your lap. That there are many people who are loathe to the idea that much will be revealed therein, details which they had hoped would never see the light of day. [Some will go to lengths to make sure this status quo remains unaltered.] That there are some who will make fraudulent claims to history, when in fact they were never really at the front line, as the unsung heroes really were. There are many who will have the story from their viewpoint. And then, there is the view of the protagonist. And this is all that matters. In this way, the biographer's job is made clear cut, if not simpler.
I learned these things from Orhan Pamuk. And I think that the path has been cleared for me to go on.
Everything for a reason, then. No coincidences, only plan.
There must be something powerful, and beautiful, something rather enigmatic, about seeing the city that you live in turn so many shades, show so many colours, reveal various personas as the seasons wash over it.
In that place that you call 'home', sober autumns might be followed by a bright white Christmas; and scented springs followed by a vibrant, raging summertime!
But, what if the same can be said of the person that you love?
What then?
Sober moments, rare and fleeting might be followed by blinding cold, the winter of your Love. Fragrant love-making, impassioned or sweet, followed by the storms of a violent retribution.
They say that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
Either way, the seasons still wash over it; over that place you call home. And rest assured, the Master Painter forever waves a kaleidoscopic paintbrush over that city of your dreams.
Seek forgiveness the wise man said. Forgive. Forget. Let go.
Seek forgiveness? the young man asked. No, said the sage. Seek to forgive, and then you will find the Forgiving.
We carry the heaviness in the pit of our bellies. An ulcer murmurs, rumbles, and then ruptures. We carry this heaviness, hoping to heave it at the source; and then to seek forgiveness, but all we need is to seek to forgive.
We need not Forget. We need to Forgive. And then, to Let it go.
Can you forgive? the wise man tested. No. Perhaps. Not I? thought the lad. Forgive? said the man. Yes, said the lad, Forgive them, forget them, let it go. Good, said the saint. Not good, said the lad, There's one yet to forgive for the furor of life, and he's the one who looks back in the mirror.
For some people love is delivered fresh from the oven, aromatic as a prayer, to be consumed only after a ritualized washing of hands. Others meet God five times a day: each time they are hungry God manifests on a plate to fill them up. This banquet is beyond religion, more personal than breath, universal. The spent soul is replenished through the echoing chamber of an empty, grateful body, each of its cells saying repeatedly thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Poem "The Banquet" from 'The Everyday Wife' (2010) by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers.
Book Review: 'Say You're One of Them' (Abacus, 2008) by Uwem Akpan.
We make easy associations of images with the stereotypes and myths that have come to be a part of how we make sense of society. Social divisions, national identity or age have come to be markers of behaviour and the way we relate to each other. So when we think of childhood, we have at least some amount of sweet, fantastical memory attached to it. The memory of being a child certainly would have held some moments of pleasure. So it might come as a spoke in the movie reel to digest the idea that childhood is a commodity in Africa. And Uwem Akpan brings this idea to life in his bestselling book ‘Say You’re One of Them’.
Never have my notions of identity and society been as steeply challenged as they have been on reading this beautifully orchestrated telling of story, this compelling oratory. Because that is what a book like ‘Say You’re One of Them’ must be described as. The words don’t just sit there, lame, impotent as letters on a page might be expected to; they jump up at you and dare you to piece the puzzle together, they dare you to drink in the images that are revealed of Africa’s brutality towards the most innocent fruit of her womb. The children of Africa.
Akpans anthology of five stories take us on an armchair travel from Kenya to Benin, than onward through Ethiopia, Nigeria and finally, Rwanda. And along this journey, the reader is held at the edge of the armchair rather than calmly settled into it. The stories are striking in their detail. Akpan makes no apology for revealing to the sanitised reader what life in Africa demands of its children.
We continue to insist that greed and survival are two vastly different concepts, and yet when we are made to see how they collide and bring the face of humanity to commit up until now, unspeakably inhumane things, then we are forced to realise the reality of childhood in a continent weighed down by inequality, unrest and all things antithetical to a natural way of being.
Uwem Akpan reveals this as his intention early on, and with little effort. And his methods vary: in each of the stories he is able to bring to the narrative the flavour and tone of the original language, be they indigenous African languages or the tongue of the colonial French. He takes this method further in his display of language as beyond the realm of just words and geography.
From the outset, this tapestry of stories expects you to step into the bare feet of a small child. At that point, the dust is removed from in front of you and any evidence of childlike innocence torn from your soul. You have to get it at last: this is what it is to be a child in Africa.
But once that veil of innocence has been removed, the ageless wisdom and resilience of children is beautifully emphasized. Akpan by no means glamorizes Africa. While his love for his continent of birth is tangible, we are made to see through the eyes of child prostitutes, beggars, those being readied for trafficking and those torn from each other on the basis of imagined social lines; Hutus from Tutsis, Catholics from Muslim. And then Akpan extends his metaphor: if it is the children who bear the brunt of society’s dysfunctions in the family unit, then it is Africa’s children who bear the brunt of a world wrought with inequalities.
There is also to be found a profoundly moving statement in the sadness of each of these stories, and yet it is the strength of these tiny examples of humanity that resonate for the reader. The power of the need to survive, to surpass the pressure of an unfair world adds a lustre. But there is work to be done and Akpan does this by allowing us to dig through the grime of the stories in order to find those inevitable questions about where it is that we might find ourselves on the scale of greed and survival. Without a doubt, it also draws a line in the sand between what it means to be a child in the world, in Africa, in the lands of the North and the South. And the answers glare at the reader defiantly awaiting rejection of their truth. Do we dare to deny that these brutal stories are more fact than fiction?
If Akpan compels the reader to continue turning the pages, and manages to awaken an almost denialist sense that such things might occur in the contemporary social world, one thing that we certainly cannot deny is his superb mastery of storytelling, his ease with language and metaphor. His writing is marvellous; his characters believable. Their experiences are a drought to the soul, but they serve as a reminder and awaken the compassionate in us, in sheer rejection of the evils that befall the weakest among us, mainly children.
Akpan succeeds in many ways as a spiritualist, as a humanitarian, as a storyteller in both bringing characters to life as well as stoking the fires of social awareness and conscience in the reader.
But most of all, he succeeds in showing the triumph of human spirit above the adversity that offends and challenges many of Africa’s children on a daily basis.
oOoOo
Uwem Akpan was born in Nigeria on May 19, 1971, in the southern village of Ikot Akpan Eda. Both of his parents were teachers and he and his three brothers grew up speaking English and Annang. He joined the Jesuit order at the age of 19, in 1990 and became a priest on July 19, 2003. He has also studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of East Africa and philosophy and English at Creighton and GonzagaUniversity. He later earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing at the University of Michigan in 2006. ‘Say You’re One of Them’ is a collection of five stories from Africa. Of these stories, ‘My Parent’s Bedroom’, set in Rwanda, was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2007, and longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award in 2008. After completing a teaching assignment at a seminary in Harare, Zimbabwe, he is now at a parish in Lagos, Nigeria.
I've been back in Durban almost a fortnight, counting the beauty, the days of good and wondrous encounters, the love of life and the blessing of being around my maternal grandmother. I bask in the sunlight of her spirit. Sitting in her presence is a quenching for my soul. I drink on, satiated.
And then I drink more of her loveliness.
There's a varied peace in this...
I measure my life in milestones. Not timelines, but in connectivity with loved ones, proximity to them. Haji'ani Ma, my maternal grandmother, is my measure for all these things.
I have noted various stages along her life path. A strong and resolute woman, but also a fragile and lovely being. She brought up her two daughters after being widowed at the age of 39. And I was born before her 50th birthday; to her eldest daughter, her first grandchild.
The cream over her milk, as she likes to say of us grandchildren.
She will be 82 this week.
Holding her delicate body in my arms, feels like I'm hugging a dream.
I already know that a part of her is looking onward to higher places.
And a part of her remains here, with us. Counting our successes, sharing our smiles. A haze of the fantastical forever lingers. Reality beeps to the beat of our hearts. Mortality of the body overshadows immortality of spirit, being, a lifetime of dreams realised, hopes dashed, joys shared, loss made visible.
Instead of counting the days, I want to celebrate the precious moments. One at a time.
I have just done reading Jodi Picoult's "My Sister's Keeper", and discovered that there are far too many moments of writing that I could play a kind of contact sport with, many that I thoroughly enjoyed. There were also times that I had to put the book down for a bit and distract myself because of the fullness of the emotion that Picoult's characters are able to bring out in the reader. In myself.
Here is one of the extracts that I liked reading. Tightly writ, loaded in so many ways... A reminder of how I would like to tie my more purple prose together:
(Picoult, pp89-90) "Is there any place on earth that smells better than a Laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed - comfort food for your nose. When I was little my mom would take hot clothes out of the dryer and dump them on top of me where I was sitting on the couch. I used to pretend they were a single skin, that I was curled tight beneath them like one large heart. The other thing I like is that Laundromats draw lonely people like metal to magnets. There's a guy passed out on a bank of chairs in the back, with army boots and a T-shirt that says Nostradamus Was an Optimist. A woman at the folding table sifts through a heap of men's button-down shirts, sniffing back tears. Put ten people together in a Laundromat and chances are you won't be the one who's worse off. I sit down across from a bank of washers and try to match up the clothes with the people waiting. The pink panties and lace nightgown belong to the girl who is reading a romance novel. The woolly red socks checkered shirt are the skanky sleeping student. The soccer jerseys and kiddie overalls come from the toddler who keeps handing filmy white dryer sheets to her mom, oblivious on a cell phone. What kind of person can afford a cell phone, but not her own washer and dryer? I play a game with myself, sometimes, and try to imagine what it would be like to be the person whose clothes are spinning in front of me. If I were washing those carpenter jeans, maybe I'd be a roofer in Phoenix, my arms strong and my back tan. If I had those flowered sheets, I might be on break from Harvard, studying criminal profiling. If I owned that satin cape, I might have season tickets to the ballet. And then I try to picture myself doing any of these things and I can't. All I can ever see is me, being a donor for Kate, each time stretching to the next. Kate and I are Siamese twins; you just can't see the spot where we're connected. Which makes separation that much more difficult. When I look up, the girl who works the Laundromat is standing over me, with her lip ring and blue streaked dreadlocks. 'You need change?' she asks. To tell you the truth, I'm afraid to hear my own answer."
Anna Fitzgerald, 13. My Sister's Keeper, pp89-90, by Jodi Picoult.
Standing on the paved concourse just in front of the old Market Theatre complex, a wave of elation washes over me. The wind flicks wisps of hair around my face. Pigeons scatter across the tarmac in front of me; a minibus trundles by. I twirl around to face my host, and the old building proudly bares it's chest to reveal it's status as Museum Africa. This is where it's all being happening; the launch of my new book: Memoirs For Kimya, the networks of creativity and all things bookish, and the energy of the literary arts infiltrating the Jozi CBD.
It's the end, now. Everything has been packed into the boots of our cars, and the backseats heave with some posters and flyers and layers of pink cloth that gave temporary flesh to the skeletons of steel tables. The azaan from the nearby Newtown mosque punctuates the calm air, spreading its sweet fragrance through the Newtown precinct. Calmness prevails. I have so much to be thankful for. To Him who renders me speechless by the Beauty that is revealed in my life.
Cars speed by on the highway within view; we're tucked away underneath the bustle of it all. I appreciate the variance: usually, I am one of those car's speeding between the North and the South on the upper levels of the highway networks, little realising the authentic value of spaces that lie beneath all that craziness. Spaces that wait to be reclaimed as the Real forces of life. Not drenched in hastiness, but rather quenched by contentment and a simple gratitude of the creative life of a city filled with history and activism; a celebration of life in every way.
And this, really, was the theme for this years Jozi Book Fair: the intention to reclaim authentic space in the city. When I met with the organisers for the last time yesterday, accolade was passed between us in a wholesome relay. A general happiness prevailed. And I know for certain that a shift in my consciousness has occurred. And I have remembered many things long forgotten in my choice to take the rollercoaster through my days. Stillness speaks :)
And there's more. Coincidence? You decide: About two weeks ago, I ordered a gift for myself. I knew at that point already, that it was a significant gift to present to myself. A gift of tranquility. A gift of seeking rest. In content, it may seem superficial compared to the symbolism in context. Let me explain... As a child of five, I remember visiting my mother's grandfather in Potgietersrus in the Limpopo Province. He was a tall man, as even his photo's confirm, and even more so to a tiny person as a toddler might be. He used to call me 'Sakeenah' instead of 'Shafinaaz'. I often asked my mom why he chose to do this, and she would say: He knows secrets that we have yet to learn. And she would smile when saying this. I thought it was meant to pacify me. But sakeenah means tranquility. I may have been the coolness of his eyes... :)
And so in an effort to celebrate my layered forms of self-identification, I bought myself a little work of art by the artist of Soul&Paper. It's called 'Sakeenah', and was delivered to my delight, on Saturday night. Thank you!
I am not sure that we decide on 'objects' of adoration. Sure, there are always ways of being attracted to someone or forging close bonds and friendships that give you a sense of profound warmth, belonging and kinship. But adoration is a word that washes over me like a torrent of graceful summer rains; drenching and soothing and cleansing all at the same time. Adoration. How can you not love a word like that? :)
If you are not much of a wordlover as I am wont to be possessed by such a hobby as wordloving, then reflect on this at least: you will adore something or someone at least once in your life. You will love, yes. You will desire and yearn for and dream of and remember. But especially, you will adore, if only once in your life.
And that adoration will form the basis for almost all forms of reference. It will tell you about the object of your adoration. But it will thrill you to know that you have filled your being with the sweetness of having adored, and been engulfed for a time in adoring another. The great likelihood is that you will have been adored.
How lovely!
And you will carry with you that label of adoration; an unequivocal card of identity that will add to your resume of life a small sense of accomplishment, and even a reasonable explanation as to why the perfect heart that you were born with, might actually look a little tattered (and somewhat torn?). Just like an old book that has been read a few too many times; but is loved more now, in it's almost pitiable state, than it was when it first gleamed proudly atop a bookseller's shelf.
Aah, to adore and be adored is precisely what being alive is all about! And then to refer to it in fairytale form everytime the mind insists that such things are tricks of the fantasy writer's realm. The soul remembers. And the heart knows. Adoration is.
I'm off to Port Elizabeth tomorrow. Flight out at 6am. Yep. Means that I probably won't sleep much tonight. Or that I will sleep really early and then not after the morning Fajr prayers. I notice the difference; when my heads lead and I don't make it awake in time for the early morning prayers. My being feels like I missed out on a meal. A nourishment. Something significant. I didn't wake up today; I felt it. Rather, I am feeling it. All day today.
I hope this serves as adequate reason to not miss out again. And again. The flesh is weak sometimes, and turns into molten lead, writhing in bed to the demon's lullaby in my ear. Heaven's music might be sweeter, but its like that proverbial bowl of marshmallows when ur just a weak, infant soul. Dear God, make me grow up. Today.
And Protect me. Everyday.
And so, after what is probably a decade or more, I will travel out to the friendly city. And hope to see Grahamstown, too. When I completed by matric all those many years ago, I applied for my first choice of study, architecture, at PE university especially interested in the idea that the university is set at the seaside. I chose Wits in Johannesburg instead. But PE still beckons more than a decade later. I liek the idea that a place can be labelled the Friendly City. There's something feelgood about that. And I'm excited about the trip, even though I hear that it's already quite cold out there. And with the image of sun and sand in my head, I've already packed a bag of summer dresses and pretty tops with cargo pants, flip-flops and sunglasses. Oh and sun-screen too, of course.
And so, that's to be reviewed, but the excitement stays :)
“Of His signs is this: that He created for you spouses that you might find rest in them, and He ordained between you love and mercy.” (Quran, 30:21)
Just in case I was wont to imagine for a second that life is filled with rampant coincidences, I was once again reminded of the opposite this weekend. On the front page of my new novel occurs the above verse from the Quran. I love this verse for the simple promise that is revealed in a few words. And on my way to M's nikkah ceremony on Friday, I decided to post this up, in commemoration. I love it even more so after having heard the guest speaker, Hafez AB Mohammed, also an Advocate of both the SA High Court and the Dubai International Court, who quoted the same in his speech on Saturday night with a more than eloquent commentary and discussion on what 'sukoon' really entails.
'...that you might find rest in them...'
I wonder what that means for the many whose lips or eyes might glance over briefly or recite more fervently at some point. As a precursor to my book, it serves only to remind that a spouse might be the reason for life's irritations to be overlooked. That love might indeed be a worthy conqueror. (Especially in the context of an abusive marriage as is the case with my protagonist). But rest, in the speakers terms also meant a commitment to forever-ness. An oath and an allegiance to that partnership in all respects, with every part of a person's being. I think that thats the most beautiful word in the verse. And rightfully appearing before love and mercy... in fact a necessary pre-requisite to it.
A loyalty to self and extension of self. A state of being. A place. A rest.
An old world exists hidden in the recesses of some of Johannesburg's quaint suburban patchwork. Some remnants lie behind palisades crawling with flowering plants; other signs exist just in the archives at Baileys and various scattered media. My fingertips pry these places with a mixture of glee and apprehension and what I might discover. I am a good month into the new project and I have written scant little about it, save for a few transcripts. Just one dive in and I am being swept away by the current that prevails. I am on a spate of interviews as part of the data collection phase; and I have yet to speak to a person under the age of 60. Life is revealing itself to me at a whole other level. Writing does no justice.
The stories pile up on my virtual desk. Some merge in tapestries of biography that will themselves reveal to be whole new stories to look into. Other's add colour to the mainframe of a story that works its way into my new work. And it's all just the raw material for now... a range of logs that wait for the craftsmen to get to work creating canoes that will carry contemporary readers across the river to the other side... to a view of a world that our generation can only ever read about and never really know.
I am to write a biography in the next few months; and the realness of a non-fiction work is filling me with an amazing sense of being once again a part of something wholesome. I love narrative biography; the basis for 'Daughters are Diamonds' was just that. This is different though; I am walking into a world that even my imagination at a stretch would be unable to tease out. It will present itself as the life story of a man who, arguably, may not have commissioned the work if he was alive. That in itself lends to a responsibility in the way that I present this. The comments resonate, both in the archives, and from the transcripts of his contemporaries, his children, his recorded notes and memories. There once walked a man distinguished more by his sense of presence than by the guarded allegiances he made with the freedom struggle of his time. My thoughts are scattered more by the brilliance in simplicity than by the ostentatious delving into this almost forgotten world.
At some point, I must emerge from this trance and get back to the drawing board for some real work. For now, the flower-picking continues...
Shafinaaz is a sociologist, artist and poet based in Johannesburg, SA. She is the author of several works of non-fiction and fiction, and has been listed in HayFestival's Africa39 category of top 39 authors in Africa under the age of 40 at the London Book Fair 2014. Also see www.shafinaaz.co.za
