TALES FROM DADDIMA

TALES FROM DADDIMA  

? Farouk Asvat

In the early morning air

Grapevine shadows traipse

On the sunbeam polished yard:

I saw her death

Through youth

Through the distance of a windowpane

Understanding only what she said:

    Allah, O Merciful One,

    Call me into Your arms

    Before the Group Areas

    Take me away

To a veld, a hill of waving grass,

And prickly pears that stay with me

Like memories of mulberry stains

Stolen from the churchyard,

While the burning grass of a veldfire

Gives rise to a bleak township

Of white mansions

With opulent faces.

My earth is broken.

This red loam I have come to feel

Through running fingers

(From the distance

 Of a misty shore,

 Another desert by the sea)

Has dispelled the piss of my youth

Covered it with the pane

And mortar of a new age:

The mielies I planted

Growing like I grew,

Mudponds that kept goldfish for a day,

Clingpeach blossoms I waited for,

The evening cool of granadilla vines,

The soothing call of the azaan

As I broke my fast with dates and fahluda,

Fowls I played with in their coops

That clamped my jaws at maghrib

And brought godzilla into my bed

Wet with fear,

The admonishments of my father,

The boomslang that came to play

Out of the rotting brickwork

And flaking lime

Because I liked whistling at night,

The apricots that fell with silence in the night

While the alley cats howled

Like children crying,

The quinces I climbed

Playing on silver zinc roofs,

Socks I wore to sleep,

Pulling my hair when ambulances sirened:

- They're not coming to take me away? -

Covering my head with a knotted hanky

So the bats won't stick to my hair

Or the impunity of monkeys

Stealing roti straight off the tavvah,

Hot and ready;

And the peasants living in banyan trees

Eating leaves like paan

For the monsoon season,

And mambas long as rivers;

Hot clammy nights on the stoep

With mosquitoes and rats for company

In the village in India

That my grandmother left

On the SS Karanja

That brought her with a trunkload of memories

To meet a lanky man on a bicycle

Hawking from the sea of Natal

That looked like Mumbai

(Marak par Takoli via Delguba Bay)

To build a house of sandbricks

Near the banks of the Schoonspruit

These are all gone.

In one final breath:

The time my father and I

Tried to rescue a turtle dove

With a handkerchief at the end of a stick

From an abandoned mineshaft,

The time we lay our heads down

On eiderdowns behind the shopcounter

In prayers that smelled of incense

And the more mundane tastes

Of tobacco, soap and malt

Asking Allah to bring my Daddima back

Through another diabetic coma

Through another amputation

(this time above the knee)

That left her with an assertive dignity:

A proud woman in a silk sari

Who walked the city streets with impunity

Hand in hand with her favourite grandson:

Taking me to the best sweetmeat shop

Run by a dirty-grey-overalled man,

For the best haircut in town

By a cripple with a crutch and stump,

Long John Silver minus his parrot,

On Seventeen Street, Fietas,

Where else?

But all this is nostalgia.

In the end

She no longer moved from her bed

Holding a life together;

All ended in sleep,

Without fuss or bother,

As a serene pigeon comes

To rest on her face

As she lies on a cold cement floor:

The butcher's freezer

The bedroom of my youth

Used surreptitiously

Because of the Law

Because it was once rented

To a white man from Lithuania;

Covered in a plain cotton shroud

Smelling of camphor

Meant to keep the rot at bay;

As I think of my destiny:

Born in the embrace of a mosque

Birdshit growing from my forehead

An aunt prophesying

A destiny of anguish;

As visitors come sobbing with red eyes,

My father's eyes swollen

For he said he cared for her

While I comfort him;

Neighbours and aunties come

In business suits and white robes

To wail a last performance,

As I look with the dignity of my youth

Into her face,

Quiet forever.

No more stories.

There will be no more stories

No cheerful blasphemies against friends

No more curses

No more the laughter of visitors

After her last journey

Across the railway line

There is only the cold earth,

The cold earth will take her forever

As it received her amputated leg

Without ceremony,

Only prayers muttered

Devoured by oblivion

Or the unwelcome fires

And the crushing of the ribs

But still

A headstone

Will proclaim a place for her

After the first rains have collapsed her earth

And buried her flowers

Near a travelling Turk

Resting since the turn of the century

Until the awakening by the trumpets

We raise our hands

White kufiyas covering our heads

Offering prayers

To my grandmother

Who loved life

And left a gift

I cherish forever

? farouk asvat

   https://faroukasvat-poems.blogspot.com

    https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/farouk-asvat-52a6b642

    https://www.amazon.com/author/faroukasvat

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