The poems’ themes varied from religion to memories of his mother and his childhood. He was never published. Such opportunities did not exist for his generation, class and race. He bought a DIY manual on self-publishing and read it studiously, but nothing came of it. To satisfy his byline needs he got a printer and compiled the poems in files so that they looked like real books. The poetry anthologies of Cassim Mohamed Dawjee are still lying around somewhere in Pretoria.
Reading, writing and watching the news are just about the only conventional things about my grandfather when considered in the light of cultural and religious norms. With every decision, thought and opinion, he proudly lifted his middle finger to the world he found himself in and carved his own path. He didn’t care what anyone thought. In that way, he is my hero. He made me laugh without knowing he did. But he also made me think.
Once, when Muslim evangelists pitched up at the gate, he asked that the dogs be released from the backyard to scare them off. He went outside with a whip to do the same. I love that story.
What follows are a few things my grandfather did in his life, and the lessons I learnt from them.
Be loyal to your car, but don’t give a shit about it
My granddad drove an ancient, massive, olive-green Mercedes-Benz. I don’t even know what model it was. It was always falling apart. It was an automatic and it’s the car he used to teach me to drive. He was always doing things to the engine that I am pretty sure didn’t need doing and only contributed to its demise.
At one stage, the window on the driver’s side gave in. It would stay wide open because it just slid right down into the door panel. Instead of having it fixed, Pappie, as we called him, used a butcher’s knife to hold it in place. This. Was. A. Terrible. Idea.
He drove me and my sister to school in that car every day. It was a long drive because we lived in Laudium and our school was out of town in Valhalla. He didn’t drive well because he always handled the steering wheel with one hand and had his other hand out the window, fingers tapping the roof of the car. In the summer when the whole window thing happened, he’d try to roll the window up and down while driving, constantly dissatisfied with the temperature.
Removing and replacing the knife required him to use both hands. The car went everywhere and so did the massive knife. It was quite a spectacle and quite a chore. The knife needed to be properly rammed into the side of the little window slit, which took some force. He endeavoured to keep his eyes on the road while trying his best not to miss his target and stab himself in the leg. He never missed, and I’m glad about that, but I often find myself laughing to stop from crying with fear of just thinking about it.
Lesson one: Sometimes in life, all you need is a huge knife to cut through the bullshit. If you believe in yourself, you can always make it work, no matter the risk. And screw the rest.
If the puzzle pieces don’t fit, throw them away
The June holidays were the longest holidays in the school calendar and Pappie and I always built a puzzle. We started small, 300 pieces or so, and then gradually the puzzles got bigger.
Every day after our ‘keep busy’ extramural obligations, I would rush home to his dining-room table and admire the progress from the day before. Sometimes, while I was away, he would add more to the puzzle so it was slightly bigger than when I left it. I didn’t mind. I am an impatient person and I was keen to see the finished product.
We had a system where he would unpack a variety of porridge bowls and we would sort the pieces before we started. The bits that went on the border were always the easiest to fish out because they all had straight edges, so I went for those first. All of them went into one bowl. Then, we placed the cover of the box in front of us so we could get a feel for the whole picture and start collecting pieces with similar colours that could potentially fit together. Each bowl had a different colour. This process took longer as the pieces got smaller and the puzzles got larger, but we could only start building once we were done doing this. It really was quite a good strategy. Relaxing, too.
One winter holiday we tackled a 5000-piece puzzle. I can’t remember what it was, but in my head it’s a painting. Possibly a Monet? There were lots of dappled greens and blues, and the details were hard to make out. I think the border bowl was the only one we managed to sort properly that year. This was our Goliath, but I knew the feeling when we were done would be so worth it. That feeling never came.
On a dull, overcast day, I walked to the dining-room table, confident and excited to get started again. As I approached, my steps slowed in confusion: What is he doing? Puzzle pieces were strewn everywhere, the bowls empty. Knife in hand (yes, the same one; I think he really liked that knife), he was tearing through the portion of the puzzle we had already managed to construct. Cardboard dust exploded onto the table with each swift slice. In between carving, he gathered the chips of his work into a dinner plate, carried it out to the front garden and littered it onto the sand with flair. Like he was feeding birds or something. Only no one wanted those puzzle pieces, not even him.
I didn’t ask him outright what he was doing, but he answered me. ‘These pieces don’t fit, my child. This puzzle is broken.’ In my head I was like, Uh, yeah. Coz you broke it.
He added comfortingly, ‘Don’t worry. We will get one that works and start again.’
Lesson two: Sometimes in life, you fail. And when you do, fail with passion and then try something new. Don’t drive yourself insane with the things you can’t do. Try it out, then move on. You can’t be great at everything. Admit your weaknesses. Focus on your skill set. And screw the rest.
When the neighbours are rowdy, be rowdy too
Laudium was a noisy place. Someone was always revving a stationary car or racing up the road. Kids played in the street while moms yelled at them. Neighbours chatted loudly to each other from the stoep, or shouted at each other across streets. There were constant drive-bys at the house across from ours, where rich youth who’d made their way to the lower parts of town from their mansions on the hills arranged quick drug deals. On Saturdays, there were PAGAD marches to protest against those same drug deals.
Everyone had a dog and at the same time the dogs belonged to no one, so they would bark at each other while patrolling the streets. There was always a broom saleslady yelling ‘Besem!’ as she paced the pavements, and doorbells rang constantly as street hawkers carrying bunches of coriander and bouquets of okra on their heads offered their products to housewives. It was vibrant and chaotic. And it came with a soundtrack. More than the revving of engines and the racing of cars was the playing of music.
Men who lived in houses without curtains and looked like they couldn’t afford a bath always had cars equipped with the biggest subwoofers. The car across the road was a white Ford Cortina and I am pretty sure I never saw it leave the driveway, but it was packed with more speakers than the FNB Stadium during a sell-out show.
Saturdays and Sundays were particularly noisy. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, the family across the road would mostly hang out in the yard. Dumpies of Black Label and Hansa lined the unfinished brick wall – some full, some empty – while the men took turns walking to the car and back to take a sip and light a cigarette or possibly a joint. Every time they returned to their ‘sustenance’, the volume on the car stereo would be louder. Now and then a woman would emerge from the front door to empty a dustpan or shake out a rug – but there was never the expected ‘Can you please turn that down’ conversation.
This was just how days ticked over. The norm. Nothing unusual. The idea of noise pollution did not exist. The bass rattled the windows of houses to the very end of the street. On Saturday afternoons, the music made my dad’s dental practice in the back sound like a house party. At least patients could not be turned off by the frightful buzz of the drill in their mouths. This went on the entire weekend, every single weekend, and not a single soul complained.
Until one fine, sunny Sunday, years after this had been going on, Pappie reac
hed the end of his tether.
My parents, siblings and I lived in the smaller, upstairs section of our house. Even with all the noise outside, we always managed to hear exactly what was going on downstairs. On this particular Sunday, I was sitting on the balcony, watching the white Cortina explode with sound, when my ears caught the hum of a kerfuffle downstairs. My parents were having an afternoon snooze and I was bored out of my mind so I went down to look. In his lounge, my granddad was frantically disconnecting his hi-fi system. It wasn’t that big, but it had a lot of wires that connected the small standalone speakers to it. He fussed with this and that, mumbling under his breath.
I assumed my natural position and watched in entertainment. Hier kom nog ’n ding, I thought.
He went outside with the equipment bunched up in his arms, wires trailing like streamers, and placed everything on the stairs facing the street. He threaded the cord through the lounge window and hurried inside to plug it in. He had the disposition of a man whose plan was about to come together.
He carried the hi-fi from the stairs with the intention of placing it outside the fence on the curb, but the cord was not long enough. His demeanour changed immediately to one of frustration.
I laughed because this plan was ridiculous: not only was the cord way too short, but the decibels on that system would never compete with the ones in the car. He disappeared. And just when I thought he would give up and the error of his ways was upon him, he returned with an industrial-size extension cord and proceeded to play what I can only remember as the golden oldies on 702. Volume turned up to the max.
He returned to his favourite couch in the lounge, next to the window. The hi-fi remained on the curb, exhaling its death rattle. He settled in, content and proud. He leant back with his eyes closed in meditation and lightly tapped his hands to the beat on the arm of his couch. It was definitely the music of the Cortina he kept rhythm to. His radio was sadly silent in comparison, as I knew it would be. But his little act of revenge drowned out the noise and brought tranquillity to his mind.
Lesson three: Don’t just do something; do something silly. You can’t go through the world trying to change anyone, or educate everyone. You don’t have to understand everything to accept everything. Sometimes, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And screw the rest.
Barley soup and ginger beer for the soul
A man of experimentation, my grandfather was. Always taking things apart for no reason to see if he could put them back together again. Sometimes he would intentionally find a problem with something. A button on a cellphone that was too sticky for his liking, a clock mechanism that made too much noise but operated just fine. I think he liked a project. He liked to keep his hands busy.
Once he tore something apart, though, he was mostly unable to get it to function again. His house was always filled with nuts and bolts and discarded wires he never threw away in case he needed them again. In the darkest nooks and crannies, you could find bundles of bits and bobs that all went together to make something that once was and never would be again. He kept all of it. I think he thought the solution would come to him and he would be able to fix it one day. This habit of fiddling with things did not stop with technology or engines or stoves.
Food could not be kept safe from his alchemy either.
Every winter he would make a vegetable soup, heavy with barley, and unintentionally feed the ceiling with it.
He meticulously bought all the ingredients and insisted on boiling everything in a pressure cooker, which always failed him. I’m pretty sure he got the recipe right; the technique, not so much. After it exploded, lid of the pot in the air and soup painted on the ceiling, he would settle for the remnants at the bottom of the pressure cooker – mostly soaked, porridgey barley. He always brought a little over for us to taste in a tiny container. I knew where the rest was, but never said anything. He did this over and over again. Every. Single. Winter. The same meticulous shopping process. The same recipe. The same pot. And the same fail. It was a running winter joke that warmed us in the northern cold.
Then came summer, his ginger beer–brewing season. I can guess at the recipe of the soup, but if you asked me how he made his ginger beer, I would not be able to tell you. I know it had ginger in it – obviously – and yeast. Lots and lots of yeast. He made ginger beer the same way people in the movies make lemonade: habitually. Except he didn’t charge five cents per cup. He never got the chance, because, just like the soup exploded in the winter, the ginger beer exploded in the summer, and the only thirst it quenched was that of the hot ceiling above it.
Stained with the silhouette of a cloudy drink, that ceiling was always a reminder of the potential of persistence to leave a mark, which is at least … something.
Lesson four: When you bottle things up enough, they’re bound to burst out of you, and sometimes that’s okay. In the face of adversity, sometimes you just have to say what you have to say. Get angry and empty out the frustration. Leave your mark. And screw the rest.
The clock stops short and that’s just the way it is
In the winter of 2006, I went to England for three months. I was teaching at an American school so we worked with the US academic calendar, which meant I was treated to a ‘spring break’ from June to the end of August every year. Paid leave, a decent salary, long holidays and an escape from the winter months. Good deal.
It was my first time abroad alone and I set up base camp in Nottingham with some family and then made my way around the British Midlands. I also spent one day in Edinburgh, where there was no summer but the people were warm.
Close to Nottingham is Derbyshire, where you will find the house of D.H. Lawrence. My grandfather loved D.H. Lawrence, and The White Peacock was one of his favourite books. He reread it so many times the pages of his copy were worn thin by their turning. He also loved a woman in Birmingham, which isn’t too far from Nottingham either.
I must have been a year or two old when this woman stayed with us. It was soon after my grandmother died, and I think it gave him some peace to have this companion. She ended up leaving for England, where she would receive better support and an education for her son, who suffered from a mental illness. She and my grandfather never saw each other again. But they loved each other through flowers, birthday cards and long letters, year after year.
Her letters were typical of the ones I saw in films: rhythmic cursive on light-blue paper and wrapped in envelopes bordered by dark-blue and red candy stripes. They were foreign to me, and I romanticised their aesthetic without ever reading the letters. They were stamped with the seal of the queen and I remember thinking it was very special to receive something like that in the mail, even though the correspondence was not for me.
Sometimes they called each other. Once she called late at night and, knowing it was she, he rushed to the phone, barefoot in the dark, feeling for the landline’s receiver. The next day he had an untidy plaster wrapped around the toe he’d stubbed on the couch. I have no idea what they talked about, but I knew they had a lot to say.
My grandmother died when I was nine months old, but I feel like I have some weird connection to her. Bloodlines, I guess. For this woman, besides being enchanted by her stamps and her envelopes, I felt nothing.
Before I left for England, Pappie called me to his place (which was just through the garage of ours at our new home). He asked me to sit down and handed me a piece of paper with an address and a telephone number. He asked me sweetly to please find the time and a way to see her when I was in England. ‘Tell her I still think about her. And my child, if you do this for me, I will die a happy man.’
I bought chocolates and a bunch of flowers and went to the flat where she lived with her son. I called beforehand to explain who I was and who was sending me. When I walked into her house, the first thing I noticed was a green couch. It was very similar to my grandfather’s favourite single-seater. It’s like they sat in the same chair, miles apart. The second thing I noticed was a framed picture of the Aga
Khan on her wall. The third thing was how tiny that flat was. I am short, but it made me feel big. Sadness fell over me. I was glad I’d come, but I felt weak and I still don’t know why.
Her son brought in a bowl of ice cream. He was about forty and doing well. He had a part-time job at a grocery store. She looked nothing like the pictures I remembered. The Sophia Loren look from the sepia photographs my grandfather had shown me had undergone a metamorphosis and become a sharp but underexposed image of a woman battered by age. We made small talk. I had no idea what to ask, what to say. She asked about my mother and father. She did not mention my grandfather yet, at all. I started to get the feeling I had imagined their whole relationship and that I had made the closeness of them up. I kept reminding myself why I was there in the first place.
She asked me about my life. Reminded me of when last she’d seen me and said I had grown into a beautiful young woman. The awkward silence was filled with passing around the box of chocolates I brought with me. I started to panic. And then the question came.
‘How is your grandfather?’
I told her exactly what I had to. I left out the part about him dying a happy man if I delivered the message. Then I thanked her for the ice cream and made my way out. She stopped me at the door and fetched an envelope. ‘Give this to him,’ she said.
I placed the note in the new copy of The White Peacock I had purchased from the D.H. Lawrence museum and tucked it away in my backpack so it wouldn’t crease.
I made my way home in the beginning of August, and as soon as I got home I handed it to Pappie. He opened the book, held the envelope and smiled. He didn’t ask how she was. He just looked at me and said: ‘Thank you my child. Now … I can die a happy man.’
My grandfather died the next month.
Lesson five: You die the way you live, on your own terms. And … screw the rest.
Sorry, not sorry
One afternoon in the autumn of 2014, I took a mannerly stroll in Parkhurst with a colleague. We ended up in the dog park we frequented. It’s a well-known park in the area and the residents of the suburb convene there to end the workday. People are desperate for this kind of leisure activity in Joburg, where they’re starved of accessible public spaces. Outdoor experiences are few and far between unless you’re willing to drive for a while. Like maybe to the next province, which is not possible during the week.
Sorry, Not Sorry Page 16