Papa’s cousin) and Cas (Amina Ma’s brother) presented me with two dolls, one dressed in pink, the other in blue. They had collected coupons from tea packets and got the dolls in exchange. I had not seen such beautiful dolls before.
My friend, Fatima Jeewa, came to see the dolls and she enticed me to take them for a ‘walk’, which we did while my mothers’ backs were turned. We went down the forbidden stairs and out of the entrance, and then our courage failed us. We stopped in the foyer of the first shop, sat down on the floor, and began playing with the dolls. But one doll was dropped, cracking its china face. Fatima was scared and ready to run. She wanted no part of the broken doll, but my crying stopped her. She couldn’t very well leave me in the foyer, and she did not know whether I would find my way home. She did the decent thing, helped me with the doll and left me at our flat door. There her courage failed and she fled to her home no doubt pretending all innocence for it was she who had dropped the doll.
My mother found me weeping with a cracked doll in my hand. She retrieved the doll and began shaking me at which I cried all the louder. My uncles rushed in and rescued and consoled me. They took my doll and stuck its face together. But she was no longer as pretty as before and I did not care to play with her.
Random fleeting images remain of that time and that flat. A white man lying flat on his back in our courtyard “dead drunk and disgraceful” as our mothers observed and children taunted him. I did not know what it was, but there it was, my first sight of a flying machine, zooming in the sky as I watched transfixed from the landing of our stairway. I saw my first movie – a soundless Mickey Mouse movie – at the Kharwas who lived in a building adjoining ours. I sat in silent awe as the pictures moved on the small screen, and accepted the half banana that our host provided as our interval fare.
I remember our move from the flat. One night – I must have been around three years old – I suddenly found myself standing in an empty kitchen, the fire still flickering in the stove, but the house empty, and suddenly it dawned on me that I was alone, that they had all gone and left me. I became gripped with fear and then convulsed with loud sobbing at my fate. Our neighbour, Ahmed Jeewa, rescued me. “Aw! Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!” he consoled me as he picked me up. I buried my face in his shoulder and believed at that moment that I would never let him go. He delivered me to my family in the car which was all packed and ready to leave for our new house.
We were leaving for faraway Wentworth, some fifteen kilometres from Victoria Street. People did not live beyond a few yards from their workplace. Not our kind of people – Gujaratis both Hindu and Muslim. They were shopkeepers or shop assistants. Now my father, who was neither shopkeeper nor shop assistant, though he had been promoted from the latter, was editor and proprietor of a newspaper and as exceptional as that was, he was also exceptional in moving out of town.
CHAPTER 4
Wentworth Days: 1931–1932
Each Wentworth day was adventurous, some more so than others and it is the latter that I remember.
The sum total of our family when we moved to Wentworth was my father, my two mothers, my three brothers and I, my uncle AC (Ma and Papa’s cousin, the son of their Uncle Chota Meer) and his family and my uncle Cas (Amina Ma’s brother). Uncle AC though soon left with his wife, Gorie Ba, and his son, Haroon, to establish his own household in Pine Street6 in Durban. From time to time family members from Dundee, Waschbank and Kimberley, would join our household.
My early recollections of Wentworth are hazy. In my mind’s eye I can locate three bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and washroom with a tap and a crude outlet for water. A veranda led to the house and to the shop adjoining the house. Papa had rented the house and shop. My mother Amina Ma was going to be the shopkeeper, her brother, Cas, and when possible my Uncle AC would also help. The idea of a shop was exciting to us children. We identified it with sweets, but there was very little of that delicacy, or any delicacy for that matter, in our shop.
I became conscious of trees and birds in Wentworth. Grey Street had been all concrete, not a tree or flower in sight. Now I awakened each morning to the sound of birds. I would lie in bed looking out of the window to see the birds flying and twittering about in the branches. In my imagination they had human experiences, forever preparing for weddings, parties, or for school or work.
Papa would help embellish my fantasies, but Amina Ma would snatch me out of such musings. ‘Brush your teeth and wash your face!’ was her morning call, as she readied me for my first madressa lessons and the lift I had to take with Papa. We were each given a bowl of warm water. We brushed our teeth with our fingers, with powder ground from embers collected from the grate. Amina Ma then settled us down with bowls of porridge and coffee and bread.
Every morning when Papa went to the printing press, he took me with him and dropped me off at the madressa in Clairwood. He had a car and a driver, a man called Billah. After work Papa lay in bed reading and writing. Sometimes he pottered about the house and made medicines. I thought of him as a genius inventor.
Amina Ma was nineteen or twenty years old at that time, and judging by her photographs, very pretty. But I did not think of her in those terms. I only thought of her in terms of her authority and the fire of that authority. Amina Ma made very cautious purchases for the shop from a man who openly admired her, but she barely gave him a look beyond ordering and paying for her purchases. As part of his attention-seeking, he gave us children a sweetie now and again.
Amina Ma and Ma.
Her brother, my Uncle Cas, the only family of Amina Ma we knew, loved me very much and he paid me special attention. Uncle Cas made no secret of the fact that I was his favourite child.
While living in Wentworth Uncle Cas married Baby Idries. Amina Ma seemed upset about this. Perhaps she felt that he ought to have consulted her and included her in his marriage arrangements since she was his older sister. He took me to see Aunty Baby and while I was eager to go meet this new aunty, Amina Ma wasn’t at all pleased that I went with him.
Once Uncle Cas took me for a holiday to his house in Clairwood. I enjoyed myself there. We would get up in the morning and feed the fowls. He seemed to have hundreds of them. Aunty Baby was a very good dressmaker. She took me to a very special hairdresser. There was magic in his fingers, she said. If he trimmed your hair at the edges it would grow very long. My hair did grow very long. Amina Ma was very pleased.
I was conscious of being pampered, not only because I was the only girl in the family, but also because I was deemed to be pretty. I had golden brown hair, hazel eyes and an almost European complexion, inherited from my blue-eyed, near-blonde mother.
Sometimes Papa would go away for several months on trips to collect payments from the subscribers to his newspaper. I missed him greatly and his homecoming, when he returned laden with presents, was sheer happiness.
I remember on one of his homecomings though he went straight to bed, without picking me up or hugging me. Instead he lay in his bed weak and shivering, and our mothers piled him with blankets. From where I stood in the corner of the room, afraid and isolated, I heard Papa say: “Behn too is not coming near me. I must be very frightening.” That hurt me. I wanted to run to his bed and crawl under his blanket, but I dared not. I fretted all day. How could Papa think I did not wish to be with him?
Often Papa told us stories, and he allowed us to jump on his stomach. I found the soft white flesh of his belly most attractive. I never saw my mothers’ bellies. They were always discretely covered up. In fact I do not even remember seeing their arms, even when they bathed and washed us.
We did not have electricity
