Читать книгу Called to Song - Kharnita Mohamed - Страница 7

Qabila was sewing a cloth so large, there was no horizon. A riotous kaleidoscope of red and blue and fuschia and yellow and black and white and every other shade. She could not say where one colour began and another ended. The needle was too big, too heavy for her hands – and then too small, too light. The air reverberated:

To live

is to be free

of the spell

To be free

of the spell

is to claim

a spell of your own

To spell

is to bespell

and to bespell

is to unmake the world

Unspell

Bespell

Spell

The spell was sung, spoken, breathed, whispered and moaned in every tone and timbre. The words weighted the air like a symphony. It was beautiful.

Qabila sang. As the words tantalised her pores, her stitches sewed each letter, each syllable deeply into her. With each sigh in the spaces between words, with each moan, each exhalation and inhalation, the words beat at her, caressed her. Like a man savouring a woman he adored. The words threaded their way through her hair, wove her toes together, rubbed the sore spot in the middle of her back. Carried her and held her still. The cloth grew as she stitched every needful stitch to the thrum of the words.

This time, she didn’t have to materialise the words on paper. On waking that morning, the words vibrated on her skin, danced and fluttered in her muscles. She stared at the ceiling from her king-sized bed for one, mouthing the words under her breath, over and over and over – she couldn’t stop. She felt a little loosening inside, as if a tightly closed box was being unsealed. Whatever was inside was seeping out. And still she said the words. Faster and faster, the box loosed its contents. And on that still morning, Qabila sobbed. She didn’t start slowly and build to a crescendo of weeping: the full weight of her sorrow was matched by the intensity of her sobs. She no longer needed to say the words: they streamed through her eyes, in every tear, in every gasp, in the tearing and pushing of the boundaries of her life. Just when she thought she could enter an ordinary day, the sobs would start again. Scratching her throat and salting her cheeks.

Qabila, who rarely missed a day at work, sent an sms to her Head of Department: ‘Not well, came down with something.’

That day of great mourning, she wandered her house, touching the memories lodged in things, sullying them with her tears. She wept in the corner of the room she rarely entered but could not empty. Habib’s posters were on the wall: the solar system, the numbers. He’d wanted to go to the stars. And she remembered. She saw them laughing together: down on the floor, playing with impossibly small cars, the Lego that was always underfoot. Pantomiming a tickle monster as he ran and screeched, breathlessly hoping to be caught. The old woman gently wiping down his tired little body. She touched his clothes, the little jeans and the Spiderman T-shirt he was so fond of, and the Batman pyjamas he wore so faithfully in those last months. So many superheroes and no rescue. Her mother holding her in this room, day after day, when her very reason to live had been buried. Her mother facing Mecca, prayer mat on the floor, her body moving fluidly to intercede with the same God that had broken Qabila.

She sat on Habib’s bed, in the shrine that was now older than he’d been when he left this place. She disturbed the sacred air and the sacred linen with her screams and tears. ‘Habib, Habib’ – his name a litany and dirge. Who would remember him with her now? All the stories her mother had, of him, of her, gone. Sitting in Habib’s room, Qabila knew, no matter how she longed for her, her mother would only ever be with her in fragments and snippets. She was truly an orphan now. No one’s eyes would soften for her the way her mother’s had, or ‘tsk’ at her in frustration – and love her in spite of it. She was a mother without a child. A daughter without a mother. A wife without a husband. Lost.

Rashid found her curled in the corner of the room, cried dry, staring into a memory trap. Their eyes met. His grief rose to meet hers – and then pulled back. He walked away.

More tears. How could he thrive in this bleak life? How could she?

Rashid’s shoeless feet came back into view. He laid a box of tissues on the floor, then scooted to sit behind her with his back to the wall, pulling her into his lap. His kindness pulled more tears from her body.

He’d loved Mommy too. While Mummy Kayna tried to banish his grief, Mommy had let him mourn. She was the only one he would sit with in Habib’s room after the leukaemia stole his life, stole their life.

Qabila let him wipe her face, and turned to stroke the tears off his. They held their vigil in the corner of their dead son’s room, until their forty-odd years pulled them into the comfort of the bed they’d once shared. When they held each other, it was with a child-like chasteness: they’d used up their desire for each other a long time ago, sex had too often been a battleground.

Rashid left her for a while and returned with food that choked her; but she ate because he asked in a voice she’d forgotten he possessed.

She didn’t dream that night. She didn’t dream that week. She didn’t have any lists. Her only purpose was to surrender to the tearing open of the long-fastened box.

Rashid joined her. They wept. When the tears lost their urgency, talked. They remembered her mother and, remembering her, they remembered him. Habib. The child they’d almost given up on having. They smiled at how he’d marvelled at worms. How funny he’d been, how brave. How fully he’d loved his favourite nurses, and how fond he’d been of cheese. How their mothers had doted on him – their little princeling. All the small things that make loving a child the biggest thing in the universe.

And with the light his life had brought, they remembered the other child. The one who never had a chance to meet them in the world. Abdullah they’d named him, slave of Allah. The pregnancy that had trapped them in this marriage. And for the first time, they dreamed him into life together: whose nose, whose eyes, whose character? What kind of loves and joys would he have had, what hates and despairs?

It was a week of great loosening. Unravelling. A grey week spent in the graveyard of their marriage, reviving their ghosts and meeting each other at the fences they had built.

They’d met in 1985. A year of turmoil, mass rallies bringing young men and women across the Cape Flats together in a bid for freedom. They’d believed they could change the world, chanting slogans and running from police and teargas and purple rain and swinging sjamboks. A year when children became the conscience of a brutal land.

Rashid had been in his last year of school at Belgravia High, where they’d burned tires and fought the machines of the South African police force with stones and shouts of defiance. She’d been in Standard Seven at Mondale High, angered by the knowledge of young people, just like her, being jailed and starved and brutalised; but not really believing things could be different.

Until an earnest young man came to her high school to inform them of the organised discontent across the country. He showed her the possibility of a country without servitude to white people, and without hatred for other oppressed black people. For the first time, she heard about the anti-apartheid struggle’s use of the word ‘black’: a reclaiming, mobilising use, including all the people the government wanted to separate into a bizarre hierarchy of ‘Indian’, ‘Coloured’, ‘black African’. He talked about jailed people she didn’t know existed; someone called Mandela, who was imprisoned on Robben Island. And young people who were eating nothing but jam and bread in prison cells across the country. She also learned songs of freedom.

While marching for freedom on the streets, they set the stage for entrapment with each other. Outside a crowded Athlone stadium, they exchanged shy smiles as their groups of friends mingled. Her school had bussed them in from Mitchell’s Plain so they could march with the UDF.

‘Do you remember how we ran to Moenier’s house after they started shooting teargas at us?’ he asked.

‘I was so scared. I didn’t know where to go.’

‘You were so pretty, man. I was worried you would get hurt. That’s why I took your hand when we had to run.’ The memory made him smile.

‘I fell in love with you that day, you were so protective. But I was just a pretty girl to you.’ She’d accepted years ago that she was interchangeable.

He waved the comment away. ‘You were a pretty girl, Qabila. You were brave to be there. I liked that.’

‘My father thought I was a fool,’ she said. ‘He slapped me so hard I fell when I told him.’ She’d never shared this, the aftermath of their adventure. Slowly, she spoke the half-forgotten memories, finally bringing them into the world: ‘Standing over me, nudging me with those shiny white-and-black brogues. Just like your mother, you can’t do anything right! You both need to learn how to behave! Mommy screamed at him to leave me alone. That it was her fault. She’d do better. He dragged my mother through the house into the closed bedroom – for backchatting, for forgetting who was the man of the house. For forgetting the rules. He really liked punishing her behind closed doors. It was terrible watching him do it. Worse when that door was closed.’

Rashid’s hand cupped his mouth, pulling the flesh around his jaw forward and then relaxing it. Over and over. She looked away, sighed deeply and shook her head. She didn’t need his pity.

After that beating, her mother wore long sleeves and dark glasses for weeks. Her father bought her a handbag. She had so many trophies to commemorate the beatings. So many. When he died, Qabila was happy. What kind of man dies and is not mourned by his child?

‘May Allah grant her Jannat ul-Firdaus, inshallah ameen. I’m glad I never knew him,’ Rashid said finally. ‘You hardly ever talk about him, about growing up. About, about all of it. If your mother hadn’t told me, I would never have known. He’s the cause of all your trust issues. You really should talk to someone about it, a professional.’

Qabila wasn’t in the mood for this. ‘We hardly talk about anything, Rashid,’ she said. ‘It’s not like you discuss your family’s skeletons.’

His eyes narrowed. The left eyebrow lifted ever so slightly. He took a deep breath and turned his face to the window, nodded slightly. ‘There was a different kind of war in our house. Cold, very formal. The endless meetings we had when Faghria came out … She was shaming the family. Destroying our reputation. The things my parents put her through, the things they said. Making her get married! How she … I don’t know how she stayed sane. They tried to break her down in every way. I was too young to fully understand. Now I do.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I love my parents, I truly do. They were trying to give her the best, to protect her in the best way they knew. It must’ve been so hard, then, to have a gay child.’

Qabila shook her head. Mummy Kayna and Boeya hadn’t spoken to Faghria in years, would probably never speak to her again. When Faghria came out after her divorce, they’d cast her out. She and her partner, Caroline, would forever be refugees in Johannesburg. If only Faghria had been at Mommy’s janaazah, rather than Mummy Kayna with her contempt.

‘We should go and visit Faghria again,’ Qabila said. ‘I miss her. I saw Caroline at a conference a few months ago. She said Faghria would love it if we came.’ Qabila shrugged, even though he was turned away from her. ‘We only ever stay with them when we’re in Joburg for work. I miss them. Faghria is my kind of people.’

Rashid turned, arms folded, looked over her head and scanned the room before giving her a narrow smile. ‘Before I forget. I phoned our departments and told them we won’t be in for the rest of the week. We don’t want them saying we’ve gone AWOL.’ His smile still didn’t reach his eyes. He sighed. Loudly. ‘My troubles don’t compare with your issues. At least Faghria is alive. Your father,’ he shook his head, ‘that man. He has really damaged you. Maybe this sadness is for the best. We can find someone to help now.’

She wanted to protest. This wasn’t some breakdown. She was mourning her mother and sons; it had nothing to do with her father. But she didn’t feel like disagreeing with him, not now. She nodded meekly and ignored the tightness in her tummy.

For that week, Qabila and Rashid ignored the outside world. Seven days of memories and half-truths as they rehashed the unmet expectations and small disappointments and big tragedies that had made them ghosts to each other. Their histories rubbed together uneasily when spoken into the space between them. Each barely recognisable in the other’s story. She could not recall when they’d ever been this tender with each other.

On the last day of tenderness, Qabila was curled up in an armchair, Rashid lying on the sofa, legs carelessly akimbo. It was peaceful. An emptying-out had happened. They’d created the possibility for hard truths in a soft space. For the first time, Qabila had the courage to ask the question she’d avoided for so long:

‘Do you love me?’

He replied without hesitation. ‘What do you think?’

And then he sighed. Weary. Long-suffering. If his eyes hadn’t been tracing lines on the ceiling, she would have thought him a statue. She took in the tense lines of his body, stretched out on the imported blue-and-white-striped bull-denim sofa. The coffee-coloured skin she’d once wanted to burrow under. The sleek brown hair shot through with grey. She’d stopped just shy of running her hand through that hair so many times. The patrician nose, the mouth with its full lower lip she’d bitten when she was young and such things were the sum of happiness, and humiliation could be swept into a dusty corner of the heart. She took him in, line by line, this man who’d been the greater part of her past. This familiar stranger.

She leaned back into the chair and closed her eyes. ‘No. The answer has always been no.’ The steadiness of her voice surprised her.

‘Qabila.’ His voice thick with whatever he was feeling. Still not a yes or a no; not even a maybe.

All these years of not knowing, of never being able to just have the truth of it. How absurd to wonder about your husband’s feelings, but be afraid to ask. Just so she could continue to live as if the fantasy were real. So that when people asked about her husband, she could say ‘we’ and not falter. That little seedling of hope that had never been watered enough to bloom, and yet stubbornly remained alive in the fertile soil she’d provided.

Saying nothing is also an answer. For the first time, she was prepared to listen to what he was not saying, to hear the worst.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’m okay.’ And she was. She truly was. It was like a story one tells oneself and then finds is true. And yet, it was no loss. There was nothing to lose.

She opened her eyes to find him a step away, looking down at her with a look of … what? Concern, fear? She couldn’t tell. She did not care. The muscle at the side of his jaw was jumping. She just looked at him. This man she’d loved painfully for all her adult life, whom she’d promised herself to, and remained faithful to despite the barrenness he’d provided. She looked at his denim-clad knees and past them at the Italian sofa and the heavy walnut coffee table with its perfect, glossy coffee table books. The woman who’d hung the nubby silk curtains had been full of instructions for taking care of the fabric. Qabila wondered what advice she’d give now – that beautiful windows are no substitute for an empty marriage? Rashid was looming over her now. He was always looming. She wondered what life without his looming would be like, for both of them. What would it be like, to not be someone who was loomed over? The idea made her giddy.

‘Why did you never leave?’ she asked.

‘Qabila. Please not now.’

How can someone do that – plead and be implacable, at the same time? ‘You’re looming, please sit down. Why did you never leave?’ Her voice was no longer steady.

‘Qabila, I don’t want to get into this with you, not now.’ Back bowed, he walked slowly back to the sofa.

‘I do, Rashid. I want to talk about it.’

‘This is not important.’

She laughed. It started short and hard, and when it hit her belly it became uncontrollable – every time she looked at his upright, tense body, it would start up again. There was nothing joyful about it.

Contempt and bitter resentment crept into his face. Guard down, his body betrayed him, told her what she needed to hear. But then, as if aware that he was giving her something real and deep, his face blanked again, the emotion leached out. She knew this face. The face that had hidden the truth from her. It could send her a smile like a doctor who’s lanced the pus from your body but is still brightly professional. She’d lived with a professional husband too long.

‘I’m going to pick up some Nando’s for dinner, so you don’t have to cook tonight.’ He offered it like a treat, a favour. Before she could reply, he walked out. The laughter fled as precipitously as it had begun. She heard Rashid’s car start up and leave.

She’d accepted their life for what it was. A pauper’s graveyard, just in the better part of town. Being entombed for one minute longer was intolerable. Qabila picked up her keys and bag. She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew she needed to go.