Читать книгу Fatima Meer - Fatima Meer - Страница 9

My father’s greatest admirer was his younger brother Ahmed. Ahmed’s adoration of his big brother is quite clear from his testimony about their early life together. Growing up, I was witness to the wonderful bond that existed between the brothers. Ahmed (who I called Gora Papa) related some of their early experiences to me after my father’s death and it is from his handwritten record that I draw this picture of my father’s early life.

My father, Moosa Meer, was born in Surat in 1897 at a time when the citizens of the town were returning to their homes after having been evacuated due to an outbreak of plague. His birth date was considered auspicious because it coincided with the day water came through the city taps for the first time. My father’s father, Ismail Meer, was in Natal at the time of my father’s birth and my grandmother, Khatija, joined him in Natal when my father was an infant. Since she was of failing health, my grandmother returned to Surat, and my father and his younger brother Ahmed spent their early years moving between their father in Natal and their mother in Surat.

As children in Surat, Moosa and Ahmed played cricket, soccer and participated in jujitsu and wrestling. My father was a very good wrestler and accepted challenges from professionals, at times even beating them. Ahmed boasted that his big brother could take on five men at a time. He also boasted that my father was a champion kite flyer. Once a year there was an annual kite festival in Surat. Competing teams of kite flyers vied to bring the others’ kites down. My father’s kite was never brought down. Ahmed recalled one competition in which my father’s team emerged victorious, rousing the anger of a vanquished team, whose members tried to rough his brother up. They were real toughies but my father had them running.

My father often talked about his enjoyment of the tranquil life on the banks of the river Tapti that flowed through Surat. He reminisced about watching the fishermen, each with a bamboo across his shoulder, with baskets at either end of the bamboo in which the fish were carried.

Around 1909, when my father was about twelve years old, my grandmother Khatija died in Surat. A few months before her death, my grandfather and my father had both left Surat for South Africa. While in South Africa they received word that my grandmother was very ill. They immediately left for India by boat. From Bombay, father and son took the train, arriving at their house in Surat at midnight. My grandfather told my father to call out to his mother – it would surprise her and make her very happy he said, since he was her favourite. But it was my father’s grandmother who came to the door to inform them of his mother’s death. She had passed away when they were midway on their journey, on the first day of Ramadan.

This event remained firmly marked in the memory of both my father and Ahmed. The young Ahmed said he never felt as alone in his life as when his mother died in the absence of his father and elder brother.

A few months after his mother’s death, my father left again for Natal in the company of family friends while my grandfather and Ahmed remained in Surat. In Durban my father lived with a family friend, AC Angalia, and was enrolled at school but a few months later, at age thirteen, he left school to take up work as a shop assistant in Pietermaritzburg.

From Pietermaritzburg, my father moved to Thornhill Junction at the invitation of a shopkeeper known only as Vanker in Ahmed’s testament. He was paid £3 a month to assist in the shop. According to Ahmed, my father was happy at Thornhill Junction. He worked there for about eight months, leaving to join his maternal uncle Ahmed Mohamed Variawa in one of his shops in Kimberley. My father spent somewhere between one to two years in Kimberley. Ahmed Mohamed Variawa, a remarkable personality, was something of a leading figure in Indian politics and sport, and he had a positive influence on my father.

For a short while in early 1914, my father, grandfather and Ahmed moved to Winters Rush, an area in the Barclay West district of the Cape inhabited by Afrikaner diamond diggers. They subsequently returned to Waschbank and later that year (in July 1914) my grandfather died, leaving twelve-year-old Ahmed in the care of their Uncle Chota Meer.

My father, seventeen years old at the time, started working in Chota Meer’s shop. He worked there for a number of years under harsh conditions, thirteen hours a day – from 6 am to 7 pm – seven days a week. He did all the manual work and, even though he had only passed standard two at school, he was able to keep the books, and tutor his cousins and young brother. One of his duties was to read the English language newspaper, the Natal Witness, to his Uncle Chota Meer each morning as his uncle could not read English. My father, though, angered his uncle since he not only read the news but also analysed it. Chota Meer did not tolerate anyone else’s views and he ordered Moosa to read only the news to do with business and prices.

Chota Meer had a short temper and my father was often the butt of it. They clashed over many things. When the First World War broke out, my father applied to be enlisted in the Turkish army to liberate the caliphate held captive by the British. His letter of application fell in the hands of his uncle who forbade him from pursuing such nonsense.

My father was unhappy in this restricted environment but was particularly concerned that Ahmed was growing up without any education. He decided to leave his uncle’s home and he asked Ahmed to go with him and be educated. Ahmed enthusiastically opted to accompany my father, but wanted to say goodbye to his Uncle Chota Meer and to fetch his clothes. My father told him that the train was leaving for Dundee in an hour and there was no time so they boarded the train and arrived at the house of another uncle, Cassim Meer (the son of Suleiman, the only Meer brother who remained in Surat). My father enrolled Ahmed at the only school in Dundee, a Coloured school which went up to standard six. Ahmed continued at this school to standard six, while my father worked.

In 1916 my father found employment at the AM Kharwa & Son Car Wash in Ladysmith at a salary of £60 per annum. Working conditions were less restrictive than at Waschbank. My father had weekends off, his daily routine was much shorter, and he and Ahmed were able to spend more time together. They played soccer and cricket, and once a month they went to the cinema – my father apparently knew all about the films. During this time my father developed his love of books and reading and he started building a library of books, ordering them by mail – his favourite authors being Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas.

Around 1921 my father, then 24 years old, went back to Surat to marry his Uncle Mohamed’s thirteen-year-old daughter Khatija. Their first child, Ismail, was born in Surat in 1922. My father spent some three years in Surat as a gentleman journalist. He enjoyed the company of Monadi, the editor of the Muslim Gujarat, and he wrote a few columns for him, so discovering his talent in journalism. To Monadi, my father was an intellectual and to young Ahmed he was a physical giant – in different ways quite a romantic hero to each of them.

Mohamed Meer, a keen businessman, whose business sense had taken him from a peasant to a nawaab (prince), decided that my father, his new son-in-law, should either join his businesses in Burma or return to South Africa. My father chose the latter. So, bidding goodbye to his young wife whom he loved very much and his young son, the apple of his eye, he set off for South Africa to join his maternal uncle, Ahmed Mohamed Variawa, in Kimberley. His wife and son were to join him once he had established himself. His younger brother, Ahmed, already living and working with the Variawas had sent good reports of life there.

Khatija (our mother, Ma) described Raja Wadi, the palatial home her father had built in Surat, and the joys of her childhood to me:

“The bungalow is large, double storey, with porticoes embellished with flowers and leaves etched in gold. There are palm trees and fruit trees- bor, custard apple and annoos. On Eid day, swings were tied on their branches and we would paddle through the wind to reach the sky, and when the vendors came, we ran to Utawala Pir’s shrine and spent our Eid money on ice cream and sweets. In the afternoons when the sun was low and no longer beating on our heads, our coach would draw up at the entrance of our bungalow and we would go riding into the city.”

Oh how many tales Ma wove.

About Fatima Chachee, who came to teach them to embroider in gold thread. About the jewellers summoned by her father to fashion jewellery of their choice and how he would weigh the jewellery on completion to ensure that the gold was intact. About how her eldest brother had sat sobbing at the foot of the stairway on his wedding night because of his disappointment with his bride (they subsequently had five children) and about cream so thick that one could lift it up. About green wheat or ponk, and neera – the juice tapped from palm trees in the early morning before it fermented into toddy.

While we grew up on stories of Surat and Raja Wadi and of Ma’s early years, my mother, Amina Ma was a mystery in the Meer clan. Amina Ma never talked about her parents and siblings. It was as if she had no family. She just was.

All the other elders in the clan in which I grew up had parents and brothers and sisters. They were all rooted in the past. Amina Ma appeared to have nothing and perhaps I rejected her because I did not want to have nothing.

Had I known Amina Ma’s life prior to her marriage, I may well have had a closer, more positive relationship with her, but I did not know that life. It remained a family secret to me until after she died. The only person I knew from that life was her brother Lionel, who came to be known as Cassim, and who, after my mother died, sketched out the bare bones about her life. I tell what I remember from his account.

Amina Ma was of European descent. She was born in Kimberley in 1912 to Hannah Farrel, the eldest daughter of Charlie Farrel and Amelia van Vollenhoven. She was named Rachael Farrel.

The family tree of my mother, Amina Ma, born Rachael Farrel in 1912.

Charlie Farrel was originally a farmer who emigrated from Longford in Ireland to the United States of America and from there to South Africa. He had a sister (whose name is not known to me) and a brother, John Farrel. Amelia Van Vollenhoven’s family had emigrated from Holland and settled in the Cape.

Amina Ma’s father is known to us only as Koplan, a Russian Jew who was a tailor by profession. Koplan probably promised Hannah marriage but kept procrastinating. She bore him two children – Rachael and Lionel. Hannah apparently eventually discovered that Koplan was already married and had another family in Russia. She then left him and married Wally Bailey. Bailey was at the time working for Ahmed Mohamed Variawa, my father’s maternal uncle, in the small town of Douglas near Kimberley. He and Hannah set up home next to the Variawas in a semi-detached cottage, where Hannah bore Bailey a daughter, Lily.

In 1918, when Rachael was about six years old, and Lionel about three, Hannah died in the influenza epidemic. After Hannah’s death, Wally Bailey married Hannah’s sister, Susan, and she bore him three children – Irene, Millie and Frankie.

Rachael with her mother, Hannah, and stepfather, Bailey.

Rachael (the tallest) and Lionel (second from left) with cousins.

Bailey was prepared to accept Rachael but was not interested in Lionel – partly because Lionel had inherited his biological father’s dark looks. Bailey would tell Lionel to keep out of sight when the family had visitors. Lionel was later palmed off to their grandparents, the Farrels, who lived at 4 Ross Street, Kimberley, in very poor circumstances. Later, two more grandchildren, Amelia and Joseph, came to live with the Farrels. These were the children of the Farrels third daughter Minnie, who died in 1922.

Rachael was unhappy with her aunt Susan and her stepfather Bailey who beat her. She wrote to Granny Farrel asking to be taken into her home, but Granny Farrel, not wanting to upset Bailey, was reluctant to take her in.

In 1926, when Rachael was about fourteen, my father Moosa Meer entered her life. He had returned to South Africa to work in his maternal uncle’s shop where he was placed as shop assistant under the management of Bailey. My father soon learnt about Rachael and how miserable she was. When she came to the shop he saw how petrified she was of Bailey.

Perhaps Rachael confided in my father and soon the two became drawn to each other. Practically all the adults in Rachael’s life had rejected her – her father Koplan, her aunt/stepmother Susan, her stepfather Bailey and Granny Farrel. Rachael perhaps saw in my father a kindly person, offering to protect her. My father was outraged by Rachael’s plight and decided to rescue her and her eleven-year-old brother Lionel.

Bailey discovered the growing relationship between Rachael and my father. He was incensed, and as my father’s boss, he reported the affair to Ahmed Mohammed Variawa and prevailed on him to dismiss my father. Bailey sent Rachael off to her grandparents, the Farrels, in Kimberley.

One may conjecture that my father used all his powers of persuasion to win over the Farrels, and that they, in their overburdened poverty, saw a solution in my father’s offer to take over the two children – Rachael and Lionel. So it was with their grandparents’ agreement that my father left Kimberley with Rachael and Lionel at 4 am one morning by taxi for the nearby town of Christiana.

The local white community was enraged when they discovered the children missing, and the local church deacon, a Mr Basson, intervened. The police set out to rescue the children, but failed to find them. The story circulated that Charlie Farrel had sold Rachael for a Scotch cart.

My father took Rachael and Lionel to the home of a Muslim family in Christiana. From there they took a train to Leslie, a small town on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It was probably here in Leslie that Rachael was converted to Islam, given the name Amina, and my parents were married by Muslim rites. For a while Lionel and Amina lived with my father’s friends in Leslie.

My mother Rachael Farrel and my father Moosa Meer.

My father went to Waschbank to seek the assistance of his cousin AC, the son of his uncle Chota Meer. AC arranged with a friend, Ismail Master, to fetch Amina and Lionel from Leslie and he prevailed upon his father to accept Amina into the family. Chota Meer made clear that my father had to bring his wife, Khatija, and his son, Ismail, from Surat and commit to caring for both his wives equally. Khatija – Ma was informed in Surat that her husband had taken another wife. My father wrote to her and asked her to join him. Her family advised her against doing so, but Ma, as she was to tell me many, many years later, told her family that she loved my father and that her place was with him. She immediately left for Natal with her five-year-old son Ismail.

For a time, my father and two mothers lived in Waschbank. Ma told me that Chota Ba (as she referred to Chota Meer) took them in on her account. She was Mohamed Meer’s daughter. Mohamed was not only Chota’s elder brother but also his former business partner.

And so it was in Waschbank that Rachael’s Indianisation began. There is a photograph of the young Rachael, in a plaid skirt and white blouse. But in Waschbank, under Chota Ba’s severe authority, her plaid skirt disappeared and she was put into trousers, long dress and head scarf like Ma and Ma’s cousins, the daughters and daughters-in-law of Chota Ba.

My mothers Amina Ma and Ma in Waschbank.

Left to right: Chota Meer’s daughters-in-law, Gori Ba and Gori Apa, Chota Meer’s daughter Badi Motala, Ma, Amina Ma and Chota Meer’s daughter Ayesha who we called Choti Khala.

Rachael was a quick learner and her transformation to Amina appears to have been rapid. She was soon indistinguishable from Ma and the other aunts in my clan in her Indianness. She spoke Gujarati exactly like the others did. Amina struck roots in the Meer family. She was integrated into the Meer clan and nobody asked any questions. It was sufficient that Chota Meer had accepted her. She related as sister-in-law to every one of my father’s generation and was respected by all as their own.

My father sent Lionel to work for his relatives, the Malls, in Howick. However, Lionel found conditions so miserable that he wrote to my father that he would commit suicide if he were not rescued. My father then asked his cousin Cassim Meer of Dundee to take Lionel on. Cassim Meer took Lionel in and it was around this time that Lionel converted to Islam and was named Cassim.

My father, unemployed with dependants, and an uncle whose displeasure he could sense, was offered a job as editor of the weekly English-Gujarati newspaper Indian Views by the owner, Ebrahim Jeewa. He left for Durban and found accommodation at 137 Grey Street close to the newspaper’s offices and printing press.

The Jeewas had immigrated to Natal from the same neighbourhood as the Meers in Surat, and had bought the newspaper and printing press from its founder MC Angalia in the 1920s. My father had by then established a reputation as something of a writer both in English and Gujarati, having written for a newspaper in Surat. Although he had to this point in his life earned a living as a shop assistant, he now found his vocation in Indian Views. In 1927 my father became the manager of the Indian Views and by 1934 he became the proprietor of both the press and the paper, and its highly regarded editor.

When my father arrived in Durban, the police caught up with him. A charge was laid against him for kidnapping Rachael and Lionel, but due to the intervention of A.I. Kajee and Sorabjee Rustomjee, the case was dropped. My father had by then achieved sufficient status to be patronised by these leaders of the premier Indian political organisation, the Natal Indian Congress.

My father sent for his family from Waschbank and they began their life together in the home of my earliest memories. Papa, Ma, Amina Ma and my brother Ismail were soon joined by two additions to the family: I was born to Amina Ma on 12 August 1928 and a few months later Solly was born to Ma. I was a pleasant, healthy baby. Solly was sickly, and forever crying. Ma did not have sufficient milk for him so Amina Ma breastfed both Solly and me.

Amina Ma at fifteen was perhaps not yet ready to be a mother, perhaps not even really a wife yet, since Ma was the dominant wife, and she an intrusion. Amina Ma, younger than Ma by four years, did most of the household chores. She was probably accustomed to hard work, and to being ordered about.

One can but conjecture that she was vulnerable to exploitation since early childhood. Ma, on the other hand, had been brought up in relative luxury by her father. She had done very little work, and was used to being waited on. But this is speculation on my part – to place myself in the vortex of my clan and to understand my relationship with my mothers.