on the longest day ever, I covered up Kari.
Eden & Eden
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5
When I stood there on that pavement, in the first minutes of Saturday, newly covered in Gigi’s burka and cloak, it felt like I was at the start of something, something heavier than the thin burka and abaya on my body. I still don’t know what, but it was more than just the beginning of a new day. It was the start of Life After Ground Double Zero.
In the burka, Shireen seemed to give me her mental stamp of approval. Halaal! Hair tucked away, body camouflaged.
Bo blink, onder stink.
She hooked her arm through mine and we walked the short distance to the house. “Salaam, salaam,” the men greeted as we walked past them, their heads bent together, talking into their cigarettes, standing in front of the two super-white double garage doors. Swirly paving under my feet where there used to be grass. Two great pots with lollipop trees where Ouma’s hibiscus trees used to be. When did this Walmer Estate Wisteria Lane happen?
Shireen and I swished silently into the house and no one even looked up. If I’d worn these clothes at Eden on the Bay, people would’ve stared. Here on Eden Road, the busyness of many burkas, many keffiyehs and many salaams made it normal. “Ninja clothes!” Owen would have snorted about the burka, but he wouldn’t understand how it somehow gave me strength. I don’t really understand it either, but I felt safe, like I was armoured up for what was coming.
Inside the house all the furniture had been cleared, and men were setting up trestle tables in the lounge; women were making tea and sandwiches in the new-to-me open-plan oak kitchen behind. For all the movement, there was no chaos. It was as if everyone knew what needed to be done and knew what they had to do. Incense sticks stuck into potatoes burned in random places so that the air was already heavy with sandalwood.
“It’s so full already, when did everyone come?” I whispered to Shireen as she led me past the sombre faces and the wooden benches lining the passage wall – seats for those who would come later to read out of prayer books.
“People started to come as soon as they heard, they come to help, you know how it is.” Shireen shrugged. Three photo frames on the wall along the passage were covered with cloth, photos with Ouma in them probably. Another big square covered with cloth filled a spot that looked right for a mirror. When a Muslim dies we are not to look upon the dead or the living.
Shireen took me past our old room, mine and Mama’s, on the left. Past the staircase on the right, stopping in front of the next room, the one that had been Ouma’s.
It was still Ouma’s, I realised as we entered. Just that where her bed used to be in the room she loved was now a katel. Instead of lying warm and cosy under heavy blankets, she was just a small shape under a white sheet on a metal stretcher. And where the room had smelled of Pond’s, now there was only the funeral smell of camphor mixed into the sandalwood. I had once seen an empty katel go into the room at a funeral long ago. Ouma and I had been the ones sitting on the benches that time, as the metal stretcher with its sunken metal bed was hoisted past by strong arms. I can hear Ouma’s voice even now: That’s what they put the body on, Karima. It’s made like that especially for when the dead person’s family – only the men for men and women for women, mind you – washes the body. All the water drains out underneath. But you can’t actually see the washing; it’s all done in a special way under the sheet so it’s not funny for anyone. They wrap the body in sheets and that’s it, that’s what you go to the grave in. No coffin like in the movies. And no ladies at the grave crying. It had freaked me out, that story, mostly the part about having to wash a dead person.
“Let’s sit here, Karima,” Shireen said, squeezing us onto a bench between women sitting a metre or so from Ouma’s covered feet. As we sat, the women washers started moving. Unfolding sheets, opening bags of dried rose petals, unrolling cotton wool. I knew they were getting things ready for the washing, and they moved quickly, purposefully, but with no hurrying. I got up when the main washer lady called me to cradle Ouma’s head and the others continued with their dance. I held Ouma’s head that I couldn’t see, so light under the sheet. The women kept doing what they did, letting water run somewhere over her body.
I was calm. I wasn’t freaked out at all, like I thought I would be when Ouma had first told me how it worked. It seemed the most beautiful last thing to be able to do for her. It felt right that Ouma would be given her last bath by people who knew her and loved her, right there in her own room. Wrapped in sheets and red rose petals, her body surrounded by the sounds of friends and family praying for the peace of her soul. It seemed right.
She couldn’t be buried until it was light so I must have sat there for hours, waiting for sunrise. But I didn’t look at anyone besides Shireen and Ouma and the washers. As I let the prayers fall around me, wash over me, calm me, I felt like I was in a trance. I didn’t think. I listened only when Shireen told me what to do. When the ladies started to get up to greet Ouma, to kiss her face and say goodbye, I knew it was nearly time for Ouma’s face to be closed for the last time. Shireen said when it was my turn. I looked at Ouma, lying there without her smile, looking like herself but nothing like herself. Her cheek cool where I pressed my lips, not too hard, like Shireen said.
I sat back down and Shireen went off to help someone else further down on the bench. The two of them huddled over Ouma for the longest time, the other woman’s burka falling so that it covered both her and Ouma’s face from us all.
As they turned to make their way back to the bench, I dragged my eyes away from Ouma towards them, towards eyes that looked exactly like mine.
Mama.
6
I had expected to see her, but I still wasn’t prepared.
“Look after your mama, Karima,” Shireen said, guiding Mama to sit right next to me, putting my mother’s hand right into mine. Shireen moved to sit tight on the other side of Mama.
“Salaam, Karima,” Mama said, her eyes full as we kissed on each cheek just as we had always done my whole life. Like Normal. As if we were Normal. There was nothing more between us because then the men came. They came to get Ouma. We stood up and watched as Ouma’s face was covered with soft cotton wool and cloth for the last time, and I felt the prayers vibrate heavy in my heart, my mother’s hand holding mine, strong and firm, as the men carried the katel out of the room.
After that I did only what Shireen said. Except the Look after your mama part. I didn’t know how to do that, so when Mama let go of my hand I left her to Shireen. Shireen seemed to know exactly what to do, helping Mama make her way slowly, limp-step-limp, to the table where more old ladies sat. I kept busy, doing the other things Shireen told me to do, passing out tea and biscuits and sandwiches and plates of food to uncles I didn’t know. I took hugs and kisses from aunties I didn’t know. Strangers gave me their comfort. May Allah put peace and contentment in your heart. I heard one woman whisper to another: That’s Karima! Dr Essop’s sister. Yes, man, I am sure it’s her, you can see in her face, that’s Mrs A’s daughter, that. Look at the eyes. Old Ouma Edie loved her so but then when she was twenty-one she ran away. Just two weeks before she was supposed to marry Gigi’s Fiekie! Lucky for Gigi, hey, or maybe unlucky – who knows. But talk is that something really bad happened before the wedding because no one ever saw her around here after that. Mrs
