Silent Minaret

by Shukri, Ishtiyaq

  Katinka shrugs her shoulders. “I wouldn’t know Issa’s daily bathroom habits in the way that she does – that conversion is like a house of cards.” She frowns dismissively. “Why? Does it matter? In any case, a lot of people here still see a daily bath as excessive.”

  Still, Vasinthe thinks, a word not used very often in relation to western habits. She leans forward. “I mean more than hands,” she says. “I’m talking about ritualised washing. That’s the impression I got from what Frances described.”

  Katinka looks puzzled. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  Vasinthe straightens herself. “Look,” she says, “our family is of diverse faiths. Diversity is our normality. It’s what we take for granted. It’s what we nurtured. In fact, homogeny has always been anathema to us.”

  Katinka screws her eyes and nods attentively in response to the urgency in Vasinthe’s tone.

  “You see, when the boys were growing up, home was always, still is, a secular place. It’s what held us together, gave us a future, brought us to where we are now. School on the other hand,” she shrugs, “that was different. I wanted them to be educated together; in those days that meant Christian and private. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, sometimes it was seriously lacking, but back then there simply was no other choice.” Katinka continues her urgent nodding, trying hard to resist memories of her own, very different, upbringing.

  Vasinthe resumes her probing. “At what times of day did you meet Issa? Was he as obsessed with time as he was with washing? ”

  “No, no, not in the least.” Katinka protests. “We met at all times. Different times. It just depended.”

  “On what?”

  “On what we were both doing; on what suited us both. Why?”

  Vasinthe hesitates.

  “Tell me,” Katinka insists. “Why?”

  A woman approaches, struggling along the path against the weight of an enormous, elaborate pram. Does one need to take a test to push that thing, Vasinthe wonders. She waits for a woman to pass. “Katinka,” she says anxiously, “I need to know. Had Issa become religious?”

  Katinka is stunned. “Issa!” she exclaims. “Religious? God, no.”

  “You sound certain.”

  “Absolutely,” Katinka insists. “Without a doubt.” She takes a quick distracted puff before elaborating eagerly on her rebuttal. “Look,” she says, chopping the air in a decisive gesture, “I admit that it wasn’t always possible to tell what Issa was thinking, but it was always obvious what he thought and, I can assure you, he thought very little of those whose principles are governed by a religious creed.”

  Vasinthe appears unconvinced.

  “Believe me,” Katinka implores. “I can still hear him now.”

  Like some Tory MPs, the religious would quite happily drag us all back to the 15th century if they’re really honest.

  After lunch, Vasinthe invites Katinka to her room, “Just for a few minutes,” she says, puckering her nose encouragingly. When they enter the room, Vasinthe gestures to the armchair by the window. “Please, take a seat.”

  Katinka sits neatly on the chair, aware of the smell of tobacco on her clothes.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Vasinthe says, perching herself on the corner of the bed nearest to Katinka. She holds out a package with both hands. “This is for you.”

  Katinka’s face lights up with surprise at the unexpected gift. She rarely receives gifts and, apart from her conservative education, most of which she has had to unlearn and revise, none, ever, from her family. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

  She feels around inside the bag, like a child exploring a Christmas stocking. She retrieves the bigger of the two objects first and brings her hand to her chest in exclamation at the ornate box.

  “What is it?” she asks with heightened curiosity. Slowly, she opens the box. And gasps. Carefully, she sets the crystal bottle on the table beside its lavish ornamental box. Sunlight strikes the crystal and a rainbow of colour explodes into the room. Katinka leans back admiringly. “Pragtig,” she says. “Can I try some?” she asks, unable to contain her excitement. Without waiting for a response, she removes the elaborate gold cap and rubs a drop of the rich amber liquid onto her wrist, releasing its perfume into the air like a flock of fragrant flapping wings.

  “I hope you like it?” Vasinthe smiles enquiringly.

  “Like it?” Katinka exclaims with delight. “It’s wonderful. I’ve never smelt anything like it. Thank you very much.”

  When she has secured the bottle and returned it carefully to its tabernacle, she removes the smaller object from the bag. She carefully undoes the wrapping to reveal another box, this one shallow, blue and rectangular. Again she smiles expectantly. She opens the box to reveal the rich velvet rear casing of a picture frame. Intrigued, she turns the box upside down on her palm and lifts it carefully off the frame, like a lid. When she registers the photograph, she raises her free hand to her gasping mouth.

  “Oh my God!” she exclaims, “I’d forgotten about this.”

  There, cradled in her hand, encased in pure silver, is the Grand Parade on the balmy late summer’s night of February 11th 1990. The moment comes flooding back. She runs her hand affectionately around the frame. “I only knew him for a day, then. I remember asking the guy next to us to take it. How young we both look,” she sighs, scrutinising their ecstatic faces in the foreground. She brings the picture closer. “And see,” she says, pointing at the tiny figure waving from the balcony in the distant background. “He did come out, even if only we know who he is.” She looks to Vasinthe. “Thank you very much,” she says. “I’ll keep it where I can see it everyday. I miss him.”

  Vasinthe smiles a nodding clenched-lipped smile.

  At the door, Katinka hesitates. Vasinthe looks expectantly at her.

  “I never had the opportunity to congratulate you,” Katinka says.

  “Congratulate me? What for?”

  “Well, it’s been two years, so it’s a bit late, but our country’s past is longer than that, so I want to say it, to acknowledge it.” She becomes flustered, her palms sweaty, fiddling with the bag of gifts like a nervous schoolgirl. Then stops fidgeting, raises her head and looks Vasinthe resolutely in the eye. “I wanted to congratulate you on your Emeritus Professorship. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Vasinthe laughs. “Oh that,” she exclaims, waving her hand. “There’s no need.”

  Katinka straightens herself. “Yes, there is. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but when Issa told me, it made me very proud. And he was proud too, I know it.”

  “Well, I didn’t know it meant so much. I had no idea. Thank you very much.”

  Katinka turns to leave, then turns around again. “One more thing, if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was wondering, how does one address an Emeritus Professor? ”

  Vasinthe laughed. “Well, just call me Vasinthe.”

  “No, officially I mean?”

  “I prefer Ms, but most people call me Mrs.”

  Katinka was surprised. “Mrs, is that it? After all the years of – ? But why?”

  Vasinthe shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t really know.”

  Then Katinka raises her eye browse and nods knowingly. “So, beyond title then.”

  Vasinthe smiles and adjusts her scarf modestly.

  “But no ordinary Mrs,” Katinka continues, still nodding.

  Vasinthe laughs. No ordinary Mrs. She likes the sound of that.

  alif, dál, dhal...

  SHE HAS FLED HER SUNNY KITCHEN for the cooler recesses of her bedroom where she is perched on her bed, surrounded by sheets of paper covered in elegant calligraphy. All that remains for her to learn are those letters that can be joined to the preceding letter but not to the letter following: alif, dál, dhal .

  Then she reaches for the card she has bought specially. It is of a little boy in a village school practising the alphabet on a hand-held writing board. She opens t
he card and writes down the entire alphabet with her best pen, neatly and without mistakes. When she is done, she holds it at arm’s length, then smiles. She adds a sentence at the bottom: I miss you.

  After she has sealed and addressed the envelope, she sends him a text message: I no da alfabet

  Setting aside her work, she turns to the pictures on her bedside table, Karim’s striking greyblue eyes – “Alexander left them to me” – looking straight into the lens. Issa’s look over the photographer’s shoulder into the distance. She opens her tabernacle of smell, then anoints the pictures with the luxurious precious essence.

  The Verses

  KAGISO FLIPS ONTO HIS BACK. The buses, noise from the pub, his foolishness by the river, thoughts of work, all conspire into a cocktail of insomnia. He is especially anxious about the final order of sequences: history, he realises, can’t always be told in a straight line. The documentary is not being broadcast till next March, to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Mangope’s fall, but a lot remains to be done; he has a big meeting with the SABC scheduled for when he gets back to Johannesburg.

  He turns on the bedside lamp to reveal the story of Mafikeng and Mmabatho spread out on the floor like an intricately woven carpet. He knows it all, from siege to siege, by heart. And when he closes his eyes, he can see the cities’ story, from the oldest haunted sepia images to the vivid contemporary depictions, unfold in front of him, accompanied by the rattle of an antiquated projector. He does not like the narrator’s voice, here, in his film, telling his story. He regrets having signed the compromise:

  “Well, he is an accomplished narrator. His voice will bring authority and a dignified stature to your film. Without him, we’ll have to reconsider our participation.”

  “In that case,” Lerato replied decisively, “I think we should leave.” He rose from his seat and looked to Kagiso to follow him.

  But Kagiso saw years of work and energy, months of research – the starting point, Issa’s revisionist bibliography – go anti-clockwise down the drain. He thought it his responsibility to be less petulant, more accommodating – so he compromised.

  Lerato’s face fell. And so did his regard for Kagiso. He sat down again, defeated.

  Kagiso gets up from the mattress, frustrated. Suddenly, he feels trapped. My bloody broom cupboard in Johannesburg is bigger than this whole flat, he thinks. So is my grandmother’s simple little house. There is nowhere to go, no other room to go into.

  He is not like Issa. When he works, he likes to spread out. Already he has turned the whole floor into a workspace. Soon he will have to spread out onto the walls. He stretches his arms out beside him, as if to push out the walls.

  They haven’t decided on a name yet, either. He wants something like, ‘Anglo Boer War to Afrikaaner Weerstand Beweging: The Sieges of Mafikeng and Mmabatho’.

  “We can be inventive with acronyms of the war and the organisation,” he suggested.

  “What!” Lerato argued. “ABW / AWB? That sounds like something a ref would shout out at a cricket match.” He wants to call the film, ‘The Three-Second War: The Fall of Lucas Mangope’.

  “Why don’t you just accept that it was a fucking war, man. The fucking AWB had invaded the homeland to suppress the uprising by force,” Lerato insisted, cracking open a Castle. “It was a war with an army of one against an army of three, the last of the frontier wars, and in the end, that policeman was the lone, victorious impi.” He put the can to his mouth and swallowed deeply.

  But Kagiso was uncomfortable with the word ‘war’. “I think it’s disrespectful to those who have seen real war. Yes, we can apply the metaphor of war, and we do use it in the voiceover, but to be true, it was more of a coup.”

  “It wasn’t even a coup,” Farida interjected. “It had the effects of a coup, but when he pulled the trigger, that policeman had no way of knowing that his actions were going to topple the government. Why don’t we just call it, ‘The Gang Bang of Mafikeng and Mmabatho: Baden-Powel and Mangope’, finish and kla’? Enough of all this psuedo nonsense.”

  They agreed to disagree and marked the tape: ABW – AWB / The Three Second War / Gang Bang: The Fall of Lucas Mangope. They will make a final decision on the title when Kagiso returns from London. When they had wished him well and left, Kagiso rolled a joint and rewound the tape to the section of raw archival footage shot on the day at the scene – a dusty road outside Mmabatho, Northwest Province. Capital of the former Republic of Bophuthatswana.

  He’d first heard about it from his grandmother:

  “Have you heard the news!” she shouted down the phone.

  “No,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s happening?”

  “Hey batu!” She exclaimed. “You’re sleeping and meanwhile the sky has fallen on Mangope’s head! Turn on your TV.”

  Sequence 1 A convoy of heavily armed khaki-clad AWB paramilitaries enters the shaky frame. At the back of the convoy is an old green Mercedes. Its three occupants aim guns into the crowd.

  Sequence 2 Shots ring out from the armed convoy. The crowd disperses. A frightened youth runs up to the camera: “Mangope has sold us to the AWB and now he has gone.”

  Sequence 3 More shots ring out. The camera tries to locate their source. In the background, armoured vehicles from the Bophuthatswana Defence Force enter the scene. The crowd cheers. “AWB out!”

  Sequence 4 The camera settles on the green Mercedes, now isolated from the rest of the fleeing convoy. Two of its passengers seem injured. “Black bastards,” one of them shouts, slumped against the rear tyre. Another crouches between the open doors. A jeering crowd surrounds them.

  Sequence 5 The camera zooms in on the crouching man. “Please, God help us,” he pleads.

  Sequence 6 Shots ring out. The footage becomes shaky. A Bophuthatswanan policeman executes the three men with a series of shots fired at point blank range.

  Sequence 7 The camera settles on the bodies of the three executed men lying in the dust beside their car.

  The phone rang.

  “Kagiso?”

  “Yebo.”

  “Your cab is waiting to take you to the airport.”

  “Thanks. I won’t be long.”

  He put the tape in the safe, grabbed his bag and left the studio.

  He tiptoes around the storyboard on the floor, pulls a beer from the fridge and lights a cigarette. Lazily, he turns to the half-packed bookshelf. He takes down a book, another of those enduring blank spaces and, in view of his uncritical support for it — “As a matter of principle” – perhaps the smelliest unfilled hole of them all. A friend had given it to Issa after he’d smuggled it into the country in the dustcover of The Complete Works.

  Shakespeare?! Issa grimaced. Enough already.

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the smuggler cautioned.

  Issa uncovered the contraband. Woah.

  Kagiso opens the book. Under the dedication is scribbled:

  Proceed with caution. This book can change lives. Don’t condemn without reading, don’t support without reading. Always read. It was that imperative that started the iman.

  He flicks through the pages. Nearly all are annotated, with underlining and comments added on all the unprinted areas of nearly every page. The third chapter catches his attention. The annotations are in red:

  20/11/01

  I was at immigration. Despite my student visa, perhaps because of it, I was stopped. My luggage was searched. Even sealed packages were opened. Then I was taken to a small windowless room. ‘Where are you from?’ one of the other detainees asked me. I told him. ‘Then why have they stopped you?’ I don’t know. ‘What’s your name?’ I tell him. ‘That’s why. In here, we all have such names.’

  Yes, but I’m different, I want to shout. I notice the guard at the door. Let me out of here, I want to shout. Yes, you! I’m shouting at you, with the toned muscles and limp brain.

  I wait. That’s when I hear the voices.

  I am suspect. I am being observed. I am being
described. I am being investigated. My story about myself is being verified. The voices get louder.

  An hour later, the immigration official comes back for me. I will be interviewed.

  Oh no! I succumb. I grow horns and hooves. Halitosis. When I open my mouth, my interrogator pulls grimaces and covers his nose. His colleague at the door laughs in disgust. My interrogator writes down every word I say. The same questions, over and over again. I lose patience.

  Write this in that little book of yours, I say.

  He looks surprised.

  Write this: First, don’t you look at me with that air of condescending suspicion, as if you know something about me that I couldn’t possibly know about myself.

  Sir?

  Write it! Then write this.

  Sir, I really must insist...

  And so must I. Write this: Inaugural.

  I beg your pardon!

  Yes, inaugural. Do you need me to spell it for you?

  Sir, may I remind you that I am in charge...

  No, you’re not. You’re a minion, and you have no charge over me. Have you written it? Inaugural? When you’ve done so, write this: Inaugural lecture. Because that is where I’ve been. My mother’s fucking inaugural lecture for her Emeritus Professorship: on the finer points of cornea transplants. I’m afraid I won’t be able to recite the details for your intelligence records; I struggled to keep awake, airport to lecture, you see.

  I need to ask you to co-operate, Sir.

  And I need you to write this: PhD Yes, Big P, small h, stop. Then big D. Because that’s what I am doing here. Now let me out of this fucking place before I start reciting my thesis for you to write in that fucking little book of yours. You might find it interesting. Bits of it have to do with islands of interrogation, a little like this one.

  When Iget back here, I have to verify the voices. I rush to the bookshelf. I feel violated. I feel sick. I want to puke. I flick through these pages...