Silent Minaret

by Shukri, Ishtiyaq

  “That shit still happens here,” Katinka had said. “And Brixton Police Station is notorious for it.”

  The perpendicular tunnel leads to the bus terminus and Issa’s flat in one direction, and in the other to the mosque, with the silent minaret. A phone booth at this exit is covered with stickers: ‘Read Chomsky’.

  Frances was right. It is all boarded up, all the ground floor windows and the door covered up with corrugated iron. It strikes him that this is the only time he has seen corrugated iron in London – the metal out of which nearly all South African shanties are built, the metal of his grandmother’s shack before Ma Gloria had the walls bricked.

  He imagines the dark emptiness inside the mosque, the deserted corridors, the quiet prayer hall full of unsaid supplications, the dusty, moth-eaten carpets.

  He hears just the ends of sounds, the silence after shoes have been kicked off, the last drip from a tap in the ablution fountain – plop – the hush that follows bending bodies and folding cloth when the straight lines of worshippers have fallen to their knees, foreheads to the ground.

  Like at Issa’s flat, when he first opened the door. He was sure he’d heard the shower being turned off. He paused in the doorway, thrilled. Plop. He’s back!

  “Issa!” he shouted, dropping his bag. He ran into the bathroom. But there was nothing, just a dusty cobweb dangling silently from the dry showerhead.

  The excitement hadlasted only a moment, but the disappointment was crushing, ultimate, like Vasinthe’s sinking feeling in the park when she realised that Katinka, in fact, knew nothing.

  He slid down the wall, sank into his knees, and wept.

  “You’re back!” an old voice exclaimed in the doorway.

  He looked up and saw the anticipation fall from her face like a mask and crash into pieces on the floor, like it did from Ma Vasinthe’s at the airport, when she realised the missed call wasn’t from Issa.

  “Oh,” the old lady said, not able to conceal her disappointment.

  He rose to his feet. “I’m Kagiso. I’m here to pack up his things.”

  “Come with me,” she called, turning away from the door. “I’ll get you some breakfast. There’s nothing in there.”

  He raises his camera to the disused building. Through his lens, he sees a sticker on the padlock by the gate. When he has taken the photographs – the windows covered in corrugated iron, the silent minaret, the locked gate – he crosses the road to read:

  To those against whom

  War is made, permission

  Is given (to fight), because

  They are wronged; – and verily,

  God is Most Powerful

  For their aid; –

  (They are) those who have

  Been expelled from their homes

  In defiance of right, –

  (For no cause) except

  That they say, “Our Lord

  Is God.”

  Qur’an S. xxii, 40

  Vasinthe and Gloria

  ONE SPRING MORNING IN EARLY September, when Vasinthe gets home, she finds that Gloria has moved her seat, as she has done for three decades, from its winter position next to the stove to its summer position by the door. A new season has been ushered in. Comforted by the continuance of this small tradition, Vasinthe smiles. Soon – always at otherwise unobserved Diwali – they will spend a weekend cleaning the house. Cupboards, wardrobes and bookshelves will be unpacked and scrubbed – old clothes and utensils set aside for delivery to a destitute women’s shelter in Braamfontein – curtains changed, windows cleaned, carpets steamed. The operation will commence on a Friday afternoon. They will work late into the night and start again early the next morning.

  When the boys were at home, they each had their allotted roles – men’s hands can clean as well as women’s. Issa always participated fully, almost with relish, offering help elsewhere when he had finished his own chores. Kagiso had to be goaded. All weekend, they’d eat convenience food: fish and chips, microwave dinners. By Sunday afternoon, they’d start rushing towards completion, like the fast forward sequences that come towards the end of makeover programmes. On Sunday evening, Vasinthe would drive them to a roadhouse for burgers and milkshakes. When they returned home, they would collapse into bed, exhausted, in their spotless house.

  But this year, Vasinthe and Gloria will be less efficient. They will call an end to Friday without having completed half their usual tasks. On Saturday, they will start late, half-hearted and listless. By the middle of the morning, Gloria will mention two young girls who are in the neighbourhood in search of work. Vasinthe recruits them without question. She leaves Gloria to supervise them while she retreats to her study. She starts to unpack her bookshelves, but slowly works her way towards the wooden Thai box in which she keeps their old report cards, some childhood drawings, some of her favourite hideous souvenirs from school trips. She spends the rest of the afternoon going through the mementos in the box.

  “I don’t understand,” she recalls saying to Peter during a recent visit to him on his remote farm. “I don’t understand why he just disappeared. That is just cruel. Why couldn’t he talk to me, to us? Why had he become so alienated, from his own family?”

  Peter didn’t look at her. Instead, he lit a cigarette and stared into the rolling green hills of the Eastern Cape. “Distance is a powerful thing,” he said, softly. “It changes people... When I went into exile, all those years ago, I promised myself that wherever I went, my journey would not be over until I returned home, to South Africa. I spent the next fifteen years wishing away my life, Harare, Lusaka, Lagos, London, my fifteen years across the Styx.

  “‘Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say death for exile hath more terror in his look, much more than death. Do not say banishment.’ Romeo knew whereof he spoke.

  “I don’t think I had a lucid moment during any one of those interminable years. The day after the ANC was unbanned, I finally boarded a plane at Heathrow, bound for home. I couldn’t wait. Only Jacob was there to meet me. He held a sign that said ‘Peter Godfrey’ – in case. His mother was waiting in the car. I walked past the sign. Everything had changed, the airport building, the atmosphere, Jacob – but most of all, me. I couldn’t even recognise myself in the name plate held up by my own son.”

  “But Issa wasn’t in exile.”

  “No, but he is a child of the struggle.”

  “The struggle’s over, Peter.”

  He looked at her. “No Vasinthe, the struggle’s never over,” and then turned away. “There is a lot in Britain to alienate a young idealist. ‘Inglan is a bitch’, Vasinthe.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and brought the cigarette slowly to his mouth.

  “When Jacob was killed, my first reaction was to phone my parents. I picked up the receiver, but I couldn’t remember the dialling code for Port Elizabeth. Couldn’t even remember their home number, so I dialled the only number I’ve ever been able to remember: 0181 926 0215.”

  “Who’s was it?” Vasinthe asked.

  “Cheb’s – the exiled Algerian journalist who lived in the flat next to mine. We met in the pub on the corner. We both worked nights. Nights were the worst. We both worked them, then stopped for a pint on our way home, to help us forget the night and sleep through the day.” He drops the butt into his empty beer can then reaches into his top pocket. “On the day I left London, he gave me this.” He passes Vasinthe the note folded inside a small plastic sleeve:

  Goodbye Peter and good luck. This is what you’ve been waiting for. When a new society dawns in South Africa, as I’m sure it will, spare a thought for those whose struggle continues. Maybe the land of the vast African continent will prove to be a better conductor of democracy than the water of the narrow Mediterranean Sea.

  Your brother, Cheb

  When she handed him back the note, he returned it to his top pocket, and tapped his heart.

  On Sunday, she repacks the books she’d taken down the day before – no dusting, no culling, no alphabetising.
In the afternoon, she gives Gloria the cash to pay the girls and suggests that she recruit the more diligent of the two for full-time work, under Gloria’s supervision, starting Monday.

  On the table is a bunch of fresh flowers with a little card. In her summer seat by the open doorway, Gloria sets aside the newspaper and watches as Vasinthe opens the envelope:

  Fish River

  12th September 2003

  Good to see you again, Vasinthe. Don’t think I can do the big city anymore, but you’re welcome back here anytime. Thinking of you today. Hope the boy shows up/gets in touch/is found soon. Please keep me informed. Not knowing is killing, but be gentle with yourself...

  “They’re from Peter,” she says, laying down the card. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  Gloria nods. “It was a huge bunch. I’ve put some in the living room as well.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have a look at them later.” She sits down while Gloria pours them each a cup of tea; a ritual that Gloria has insisted upon ever since the boys left for university.

  “You have to take a break,” she chided. “You can’t keep going on like this. There’s no need for it any more. Time to take it easy now that they are gone.”

  “But -” Vasinthe tried to protest.

  “No buts! That university won’t collapse, not one of your patients will die, not one of your students will fail if you have a cup of tea when you get home.”

  When they have had their tea, Gloria will chop onions and tomatoes while Vasinthe has a shower. When she returns to the kitchen in a fresh kaftan which Gloria will have chosen, ironed and laid out at the foot of the bed, she will cook the dish that has always accompanied whatever main meal Gloria has already prepared – dhal. “The staple food of India,” her uncle used to say. She loved it as a child and, as an adult, after so much had been forgotten, revised, deliberately abandoned, this simple dish remains her one unbroken link to her convoluted, inaccessible past. It is often all she eats when she is alone and, for all of them, no meal is complete without it.

  Before she says goodnight, Gloria asks what she already knows the answer to – if the answer were any different, she’d be the first to know. Still, she has to ask her obsolete question. To ask is to demonstrate hope, articulate possibility. Not to, would be unthinkable.

  Vasinthe knows when the question is coming. She could pre-empt, but she waits to hear it. Gloria is now the only one who asks daily, here, in the privacy of their home. She prefers it that way. In the early days, she found the constant questions everywhere she went, invasive. By the time she got home, she felt prodded, tugged at. Every day she wishes that she didn’t have to release her unchanging answer, like a poisoned bow into the air, deadly accurate, slowly fatal. But she accepts Gloria’s acknowledgement and waits to acknowledge it in return.

  Having wiped away every last drop of water from the shining kitchen sink, Gloria will wring the cloth tightly and wipe the sink again. Then she will drape the cloth over the draining board, slowly, carefully, as if to defer the moment. She will wipe her hands on her apron and look up at her reflection in the kitchen window – the window through which she peeped, terrified, from the outside, more than thirty years ago. With her back to Vasinthe and her hands tightly clutched in her apron, she will utter her simultaneous question-statement, gently, cautiously:

  “No news today.”

  Vasinthe will lay down the newspaper and take off her glasses. “Sorry Gloria. No news today.”

  This exchange marks the end of their day, like turning out the light.

  But, not tonight. “Thirty-three years today,” Gloria adds, still staring at her reflection in the window.

  “Yes. Thirty-three years today.”

  Gloria turns around. “I’ve made a cake.”

  Comforted by the continuance of another small tradition, Vasinthe smiles.

  Gloria smiles too. “Would you like a piece?” she asks, puckering her nose encouragingly.

  Somewhere and Nowhere

  KAGISO WAKES UP IN A BLACK VELVET SKY. The stars hang around him like diamonds, the full moon hovers overhead like a huge pearl. He doesn’t move his head; just stares out through his small oval window at the majesty.

  Lethargically, one by one, his senses rekindle and he becomes aware of a gentle, lilting, slightly sorrowful tune in his ear. Katinka knew it. How Frances smiled when she heard the exhumed piece of music earlier that afternoon.

  “Would you like me to play it again?” Katinka asked when the tape stopped.

  “No, no. I’ll listen to it later. You two had better be off now. This young man has a plane to catch.”

  They descended the staircase. When they reached the landing outside Issa’s flat, Kagiso stopped. “I’ll just pick up my bag,” he said nervously to Katinka.

  “Need help?”

  “No. I’ll manage.”

  “Okay.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  He stepped into the room. An amplified silence bounced around its emptiness like a crazed ball in a squash court. The exposed corner where the bookcase used to stand cowered, trying to cover its nakedness like a shy girl. On the bedstead lay the mattress, awkwardly restored, like a shamed adulteress. Only the quotations remained on the walls. For a moment, he thought of just leaving them, but only for a moment. He walked from one to another, picking them off the wall. Like truths from a fortune cookie, reading them, then slipping them into his bulging journal.

  Upstairs, Frances listened to the echo of his footsteps ricochet around the empty room. The daunting sound was all she could hear; it crowded out even the sound of the buses in the terminus. She reached for the solace of her red satin pouch.

  When he had removed the last quotation – ‘History includes the present’ – Kagiso left the key on the desk as the agent had requested and walked towards the door. He picked up his bag and cast his eyes around the stark room, surveying a disappearance that had now been made complete (everything, he thought, consigned to Alexandria, memory house of the world).

  When Frances heard the door close, she turned up the volume on the gentle lilting tune and started a prayer to St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers.

  His throat is dry.

  When he got into the car, Katinka smiled at him. “Okay?”

  “Ja. Let’s go.”

  “Nie so haastig nie,” she said mischievously and opened her palm. “See what I made.”

  He gawked. “Three!”

  “Padkos mos. One for the North Circular, one for the M4 and one for the car after you’ve checked in. Smoke and fly. Vestaan jy?” she joked, laying the spliffs in the recess by the gear stick then stroking them gently with a maternal touch.

  He laughed.

  “But wait. That’s not all!” she exclaimed, reaching behind her ear. “Here’s one I made earlier, to get us on our way. After all, we have to get from here to the North Circular, you know, en die vader weet, ek is daai desperate vroumens.”

  At Heathrow, when it was time to say goodbye, she walked him back into the terminal building. At the entrance to the departure gates, she pulled him back. “I can’t go any further,” she winked. “I’m a sharp object, you know!”

  He laughed, and then, when she threw her arms around him, he cried.

  “My engel,” she whispered, pulling him tightly towards her. “Kom hier!”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to straighten himself. But it was too late. The floodgates had already opened and all that could be done was to step aside while the months of tears and sobs and snot came gushing out.

  She stroked his hair gently and started singing that strange rhyme from home:

  “Siembamba mama se kindjie

  Siembamba mama se kindjie

  Draai sy nek om

  Gooi hom in die sloot

  Trap op sy kop

  Dan is hy dood.”

  “I’ve never understood,” he sniffed, “how that was supposed to console a child. I mean, how is anybody supposed to t
ake comfort from being strangled, thrown in the gutter and, how do you say trap in English, stepped on the head?”

  “It’s a poem – Langenhoven – from the Boer War,” she said distantly, staring at the huge gun draped around a security guard at the far end of the departure hall. “About Boer children in British camps.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. But I guess the comfort’s in the tune, not the words.” She sat up and tapped his head. “Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he conceded, nodding forlornly. “It worked. Thanks.”

  He tries to swallow, but his tongue gets stuck to his palate. He lifts his head above his headrest to look around. The cabin is dim and quiet, just the drone of jet engines propelling them through the night sky. The darkness is pierced here and there by the occasional beam of vertical light from overhead reading lamps. I must have slept through dinner, he thinks, looking down at the book in his lap. He recognised the girl balancing on a stick from Frances’ description of the cover and had set it aside for the journey:

  ‘... Just when things are improving?’

  ‘All the more reason,’ said Ishvar. ‘In case things become worse again.’

  ‘They are bound to. Whether Om marries or not,’ said Maneck. ‘Everything ends badly. It’s the law of the universe.’

  He lays the book aside and moves slowly up the inclined aisle towards the galley. He wants to hold an upturned bottle to his mouth and drain it in a quick succession of deep quenching gulps. But satisfaction is to be staggered. On the counter are small glasses of water and orange juice, neatly laid out in rows. He knocks back several of the glasses of water. He wants another, but decides on an orange juice in mid-reach. Then he steps aside to peep through the small window in the thick door.

  From this angle, moonlight bouncing off the front edge of the enormous wing, transforming it into a long blade of silver light, evokes an image Frances conjured: “a laser beaming across the Sahara. I often sit here at night and try to imagine what that must look like, a green laser beaming across a clear desert sky.”