The Architecture of Loss

by Z. P. Dala

  The colors, sounds, and smells of one of the largest Kavady Festivals in the Southern Hemisphere would excite her imagination for days before and after. It is true, the town was a silent, slumberous one, but when it came to festivals, it held nothing back. Going large, extraordinary, and over the top was Brighton’s way of staging its own rebellion.

  And the Kavady Festival was the favorite child. It attracted hordes; it even attracted documentary filmmakers from chilly European countries who swarmed around every ritual, their camera lenses reflecting their amazement at the sheer force of something so exotic.

  Afroze stood up, wondering how the burdens of her past had somehow slowed her body down into an achy fatigue. No amount of sleep could place a balm on the unnatural malaise of her muscles. She remembered her activities of the day before, wondering if her attempts at kicking down the door of the khaya had exerted her body too much. Her mother had refused to give her the key, and she remained sitting in her bedroom with Sathie petting and cajoling her at her bedside.

  Every part of Afroze ached, yet she felt strangely exhilarated. Perhaps because the horrid building at the back of her mother’s house was all hers now, to destroy. To conquer.

  She thought of Sathie, the man calling himself her mother’s lover, and she could not explain, even in her own secret reflections, why she quickly batted aside any thoughts of him. Somewhere in the middle of her restless night, she thought she smelled him nearby, that heady combination of leather, wood, and minty breath. And the scent that only a man can give off and only a woman can smell.

  Afroze knew that despite her best efforts, the smell of him, lingering as a nebulous notion over her sleeping form, had calmed her through the night. She tried to summon up any emotion to banish her thoughts, and she settled on the rampant anger that flew toward the room where her mother lay, clearly dying but hanging on with bravado.

  She heard someone move around the kitchen, and the smell of breakfast cooking assailed her. She pictured a plate of fried sausages and had to place her hand over her mouth to swallow hard on a rising nausea. The wave passed. Afroze needed desperately to get out of that house. And she knew where she would go: to the fragrant fires of the temple. The Kavady Festival had always given her some comfort.

  This festival was the culmination of a month of rigorous fasting, where no meat or fish or fowl was eaten, alcohol and drugs were forbidden, and no bedroom activities were allowed. Just for one month. The salivating devotees would hearken to the loud songs of Lord Muruga and Goddess Amman, aiming their cleansed bodies toward the bearing of wooden chariots on their shoulders.

  The largest chariots were festooned with flowers and colored with a rainbow of powders—whose origins were somewhat dubious, as there always seemed to be a terrible asthma outbreak after festivals—would be carried by these dazed and crazed devotees up the main street, a snaky one-way with the strange moniker of Petrol Road. Of course, in official terms, the main road of Brighton carried the name of the love-crazed wife of the English lord, but now only two tarnished plaques on either end of the street bore her name. The locals, not particularly caring for the history of Lady Charlotte, had christened the street Petrol in honor of the two fuel-filling stations that sat across the street from each other.

  Two fuel stations in a town with more bicycles than cars seemed incongruous and unnecessary, until you heard the story of the two warring brothers who both wanted to be “Lord of the Gas.” In the inexplicable tales that dotted the history of this town, Afroze and her parable of mother hatred fit in perfectly.

  And it was just the thought of hatred that spurred Afroze’s slow body toward the field where all the devotees stood with their festooned chariots at their sides. They had taken vows and come in from towns and cities dotted all over rural Zululand to carry their burdens, such as crosses and heavy wooden structures laden with flowers and fruit, and continue onward toward the thin snake river. Here, they begged their final pleas for healings, riches, babies, husbands, and everything in between that made a life worth living.

  Crying, beseeching, in deep trances, they waited for the sun to be directly above their bodies. The announcement of noon needed no expensive watches. Into the overburdened river, hundreds of altars would be immersed. The river was weak; it could not contain flotsam and jetsam iconography: flowers, fruits, photographs, and dreams. The altars were never borne away but remained bobbing in shallow water for days.

  Silently, the pragmatic temple officials would eventually send surreptitious cleaners who, by cover of a darkened sky, would clear away the debris. The vows and yearnings of hundreds would have to be carried away in trash bags. Some believed that the temple priests took these offerings personally in a fancy, clean truck to be immersed in the sea in nearby Durban. Most knew that their desires, in their physical incarnations of wood and dead flowers, ended up in nearby landfills. It was best to be sensible, and not think too hard about things like prayers. And where these prayers went.

  Afroze found strange joy in watching the preparations for the main ritual, a grand, loud ceremony where a very large chariot would be pulled with strong ropes by the very devoted. The main chariot was the protected home of the effigies of Goddess Amman and Lord Muruga, that forgotten son of Lord Shiva. Everyone knew the jolly face and the waving trunk of the beloved elephant lord, Ganesha—Shiva’s preferred and pampered son. But Muruga seemed to have been forgotten in Ismail-like fashion in the pages of lore. The Kavady Festival brought him out to shine.

  Perhaps the desperate and pleading devotees, who had fasted and prayed for miracles, realized that it was not always the popular one that came to their rescue. The unsung hero may sometimes answer your call more profoundly than the fat-cat favorite, the one that gleams in the daily sun. There came times when it was best to beseech the underdog.

  The preparation for pulling the heavy chariot up the hill that was Petrol Road was calculatedly arduous. They could pull with their hands. God would answer their call. But if they pulled with their pain, God would reward them with so much more than they had asked for.

  Pain was coveted in the form of piercings. Young men with shiny bare backs would drink copious amounts of milk mixed, possibly, with the paste of marijuana to send them into a trance so deep that they never felt the metal fishing hooks piercing their skins, hooks laden with huge limes that pulled their dark skin downward. The most devoted, in a rolled-eyed turbulent trance that they never remembered afterward, would attach the ropes to the hooks, and pull their weight in flesh. They danced in their devotions, their tongues pierced too with fanned-out pins. They preened and showed their piercings with aplomb. Certainly, they had to put their sacrifices and pain on show. For all to see.

  Blood somehow was never drawn. Or blood was rapidly wiped clean away with rough towels. If blood was drawn it would show that the devotee hadn’t been altogether sincere in his fasting in preparation for his pulling of the chariot, and perhaps had enjoyed a piece of fried fish hiding in some Christian friends’ house—or even worse, a piece of beef while skulking in the home of a Muslim.

  And of the Christian and Muslim people of the town, they watched the chariot parade in a jumble of awe and disgust. But they watched anyway. The Christian flock, fresh from their praise singing on Good Friday, left the mission chapel, tapering their songs and ministrations to a delicate act of timing, ensuring that they flowed onto the street in time to see the chariots being pulled. Timid ladies wearing Easter hats held embroidered handkerchiefs to their mouths, afraid of fainting at the sight of it all. The converted ones, the ones who had been brought into the flock from Hinduism and been dunked clean of their pagan practices, were the first to shake their heads at the barbarism of it all.

  Inside the catacombs of their born-again hearts, they tried not to think too much of the barbarism of a crown of thorns and the bleeding hands and feet of nails in wood. But still, they could not look away. No one could. Later, they ate roasted lamb and raisin bread at tables decorated with stuffed bunny toys
and sunflowers, cocking their ears for the raucous songs that spurred the chariot pullers onward and forward.

  Within the perfumed coolness of their domes and minarets, the Muslim men padded to the windows in clean, bare feet. They too did not want to miss the fantastic spectacle. The old men muttered about how the Sufi saint Khwaja also enjoyed a parading chariot, a green-and-gold one that did not ask to be borne by pierced skin.

  In all their differences, on the Goodest Friday of Fridays, the collective soul of all Brighton throbbed to many beats. The soft hymns, the frenetic chanting, the raptured Sufi songs—all cried out together. Pray for us all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Afroze found safety and solace in a cluster of women. It was something she missed greatly in her life, a female tribe. Somehow, women never really liked the pretty puzzle that was Afroze Bhana. She struggled through school days in Cape Town, never quite making a close girlfriend with whom she could giggle. In university, she took architecture and found that, in this vocation, which celebrated feminine curves and flowing lines, women were a scarcity.

  But women can be cruel creatures. They know themselves in each other’s eyes. They stamp validation of all their little acts and rites only by viewing everything through the eyes of a sister. Clothing became beautiful only when appraised by another. Love became real only when the bits and pieces of it were shared and spoken about to each other. Heartbreak somehow lived up to its name once recognized by the words of a sister-woman. Loving each other, hating each other, copying each other, and never fully able to see without the others’ eyes is the language only women speak. And a shy, scared tomboy who cannot find words is an easy limb to sever.

  Afroze spent much time looking for the friendship of a circle of the feminine. She found comfort in Moomi. But as she grew into a young woman, there were things she could not tell her stepmother. She yearned for a sister or a best friend, but she was never lucky enough. In her Cape Town society avatar, she did the expected dance, the air kissing, the playact of having women friends. But they were not really friends at the end of the day. They just clung together in a fashionable cluster, skimming the surface of closeness in short, sharp chats about fashion.

  Suddenly, here in Brighton, Afroze the refugee felt a deep craving for feminine energy. She desperately wanted to belong to a kin of women. The Kavady Festival that she so enjoyed was a celebration of feminine energy, the bounty of harvest from a female Earth.

  As she edged her body into a group of laughing girls, almond-eyed maidens with long, plaited hair and adorned with an array of magenta bougainvillaea, sudden unexpected elation ran like a current through her body. She laughed along with them, and it was the sweetest of sounds.

  The beautiful maidens stood close enough to see that sometimes through a threadbare, cotton loincloth, a devotee’s devotion went too far, but they knew well enough to keep away when the throngs went mad. There had been one a time long ago, when the Kavady Festival was at its height of popularity, a time often spoken of by yellow-toothed old men, that a group of the town’s most beautiful maidens had stood too close to the lustful animal thrust of a devotee in trance, and as he danced on one limb with hooks and spikes in his dark flesh, he had swept like a wild simoom into the little petals held by the simpering bunch of sweet virgins. Nine months later, all the virgins who had been present gave birth to dark-skinned baby boys with strange holes in their backs and palates, and a penchant for playing with the gourd vegetable called monkey balls because no one knew what they were really called. Brown babies with cleft palates and holes in their backs became big men with cleft palates and holes in their backs and the purity of the virgins was never questioned. Lord Muruga was a mischievous chicken. He had just played a trick.

  But just to be safe, the parading of the virgins at the height of the Kavady’s frenzy was always very closely guarded by a very fat woman in a red sari and wild disheveled hair, who patrolled the group of virginal charges and didn’t need much to scare the men away.

  The men, freshly pierced and in a frenzy, were urged on by the increasing tempo of the devotional songs and loud drumming of a percussion instrument never seen outside the festival, but whose stretched top skin somehow defied the strict vegetarian fast of the devotees who dared not even carry around leather wallets.

  Of course, could men who normally wore formal business suits or skinny jeans store a fat wallet in a loincloth? They took their chances, hoping that when they reached the heights of their frenzy that the tightly wound cloth wouldn’t betray their dignity. There were those who hoped for a loincloth to fall to the dusty ground. Those were ones who needn’t ask the lords for blessings after all.

  As Afroze melded into the fragrant gaggle of pretty, young girls, feeling free and happy for the first time in a long time, she joined them in their playful taunting of a young man who came rushing forward baring his chest, pierced in many places. As he fixed his sharp eyes on the flirt of the group, he came up into her face and stuck out his tongue and wiggled it naughtily. The gleaming, metal spike that pierced his tongue looked dangerously sexual. Clearly, he knew his role well. The flirty girl, standing next to Afroze, blew him a kiss. And all hell broke loose.

  The guardian of chastity, the fat woman in the red sari wound too tightly, hair wild and unkempt, came rushing forward at this tryst.

  “Shame on you. Shame on you. Disgusting behavior, acting like a whore to tempt our devotee away from his trance. Witch woman, loose elastic on your panties, I’ll show you what Goddess Amman does to flirty-flirty kissy-kissy girls!”

  She dived into the throng of bodies, arriving back out of the mass by pushing and shoving those bodies aside. In her hands she carried a large, stained bucket; and before anyone could move, she threw the entire bucket of brightred colored water toward the girl. The girl was agile. Afroze suddenly felt sluggishly slow once again, with almost no reflexes.

  The entire bucket of red water splashed Afroze full in the face and drenched her white blouse. She crossed her arms over her chest, realizing too late that she had worn a white, cotton blouse and no bra. In this dry-bone climate, her bra had become a chafing irritation and seemed to have shrunk in Halaima’s boiling washtub. She had relinquished wearing one for days now.

  Afroze gasped and screamed, reeling backward with force. She was about to hit the ground in a stumbling, clumsy fall when she felt a strong, steady hand grab her waist and whip her around quickly, shielding her wet white shirt in a tight embrace. She breathed in deeply. The smell of leather and wood and minty breath.

  Sathie.

  “Come, come with me, Rosie. Get out of this crowd. Things are getting quite out of hand today.”

  She was grateful for his supportive arm; her legs felt like they belonged to a rag doll, and she leaned on Sathie as he guided her out of the crowd, keeping his large frame in front of her to protect her wet modesty.

  “My house is just here, near the end of the field. It’s too far for you to walk back to Sylvie’s house. Not like this; the streets are thronging.”

  Afroze nodded. And she knew exactly why she had nodded her head. Warmth and a dizzy, drugged haze settled over her. She followed Sathie numbly, but not dumbly. She enjoyed his strength and direction. It made her feel like a warrior-woman. And not a meek cast-away little waif, come home to seek a semblance of love.

  Sathie led her to a tiny building behind a larger house, unashamed to take her into the hovel that he slept in. It was small, but it was clean. Just a room, with a neat bed, a beautiful piano against a sunny wall, a writing desk, and an old wardrobe that smelled of sandalwood. Now Afroze knew why he smelled that way—the quality of old wood, the scent of delicately carved patterns in sandalwood and teak inlays. Afroze appreciated design in all its forms, and she fell in love with beautifully crafted pieces. Her affection for wood and expert carpentry had seeped into her veins from her mother’s carpenter father, but she never knew this at all.

  She stepped bravely into Sathie’s room. There was a natural ease
now. Not a doubt, not a moment of hesitation shivered thought her mind, but strong sensual anticipation shivered through her skin. Sathie walked over to his cupboard and pulled out a sandalwood-smelling towel. He stood away from Afroze and handed it to her, unable to take his eyes off her at all.

  She knew now. She had not remained behind because of an old, ugly building or her reputation as an architect. She had lingered here because she had seen something in Sathie’s eyes that made her want to stay. She had no shyness with this man. Everything with him seemed natural, her way seemed clearer than she had ever known it.

  She ignored his offered towel, and staring him in the eyes, she slowly peeled off her wet blouse, standing before him brazen and proud, hiding nothing.

  Suddenly, the roles were beautifully reversed. Sathie, the suave master of seduction, the verbose lover, with words caught in his throat. He had never seen something as beautiful as this. Bare breasted, her skin still stained with the streaks of red coloring, gleaming like a goddess in the light. He saw before him the true, flaming Diana. Her youth, her proud stance, sticking out her breasts for him, only him. Wild, moist, dark-brown masses of curls tumbled over her back, into her face; a lock caressed her fleshy lips.

  This youth, this supple skin, the almost feral look on a face that usually looked bland and afraid, aroused him more than he ever thought possible. He wanted to drown in the rivers of this woman offering her body to him. She asked with her eyes for him to drink every last drop of this elixir—he knew now, he was given a reprieve, a way to taste the long-forgotten days of Satin. The Lover.