a little about what being a Muslim meant. I knew that your Sunday was on a Friday, even though that confused me. I knew your church was called a mosque and it didn’t have pews and chairs. Instead it had carpets. And I knew that there was a month called Ramadan when everyone had to stop eating if the sun was shining. But we didn’t discuss it much. There were so many other things we needed to talk about, weren’t there?
“I’m fine, Mrs Van Rensburg,” you said when you got back from washing your hands and Mom offered you some lunch. “I had something to eat just before I came. My mom packed extra, so I’m not hungry.”
I ate my sandwich while you watched and kept on trying to tell my mom that you were fine.
“Cheese? Are your people allowed to eat our cheese? Or how about a tomato sandwich? Tomatoes can’t be a problem, surely?”
But my mom wasn’t the only one acting weird that day of your first visit.
Remember when I took you to my bedroom so we could play with my Barbie and all her new clothes? You stood at my doorway, staring at a painting on my wall. I mean, you looked really surprised, your eyes wide. A little frightened, even.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. The painting looked pretty normal to me, a picture of Jesus with children all around him. Underneath it said: Suffer the little children to come unto me. My ouma gave me that picture before she died.
“That’s Jesus, isn’t it?” you asked, still staring. “It’s just that we don’t have any pictures of our Prophet Muhammad, you know. We aren’t allowed to make drawings and paintings of him. Not ever.”
Now I was staring. That sounded strange to me.
“Yes, the only pictures we have are verses out of the Qur’an. Written in Arabic ’cause that’s the language of the Qur’an. They look nice though. Arabic letters have beautiful shapes.”
So I opened my drawer and took out my Children’s Bible. Another of my ouma’s gifts. We sat on my bed, looking at the pictures in it together: Jesus being born with the sheep standing next to him, Jesus in the temple when he was twelve and then in the desert when he was grown-up, Jesus riding on a donkey. I didn’t show you the picture of Jesus dying on the cross though. I tried never to look at that one myself. You kept shaking your head.
Then my mom’s head appeared around the side of my door. She seemed worried again.
“Louise, love. Why don’t you rather show your friend your new Barbie clothes?”
So I did. And we were still playing with my Barbie when Kyle got home from school in his cherry-red Riverside High blazer. As always, the whole house seemed to light up. It always felt like that when my big brother was home.
“Hey, you two squashed-tomato noses! What are you sitting inside for on such a magic day? Come on, get your costumes on. Let’s hit the pool.”
You borrowed one of my costumes and we both laughed because you were so much smaller than me and the material bunched up all around your middle. But so what! We were ready for action!
We had a great time in the pool. Kyle picked us up, one at a time, steadied us on his shoulders and then hurled us bottom-first into the water. The splashes we made reached my mom’s deck loungers. She came out to rescue her cushions.
“Louise, are you sure this is alright? Are you sure Faheema’s allowed to swim? I don’t want her parents to be upset.” But because Kyle was home, Mom managed to smile as she watched us dive-bomb some more.
It did get easier though, didn’t it, your visits to our house? My mom stopped acting so weird and worried all the time. Sometimes I heard her talking on the phone to her friends.
“Yes, that’s Louise’s little Muslim friend. She’s coming to play tomorrow … No, it’s not a problem at all … You know me, Tina. Live and let live, that’s my motto. And Louise is very fond of her.”
But still, there were times she and Dad passed their secret eye messages when I talked on and on about you. There were times when she lifted me onto her lap and said, “You know, Louise, you must try to have more friends. It’s not good to always be with the same person, day after day after day. Always in each other’s pockets. What about Susan de Lange down the road? Or Annette Winterton?”
I wanted to answer that she was with Dad day after day after day. So how come that was alright? But of course I didn’t. It would have sounded cheeky and Mom didn’t like me being cheeky.
And you did start to feel more comfortable, didn’t you? After a while?
And you must remember, Faheema, I was quite nervous the first time I went to your home too. I really didn’t know what to expect.
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