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
