Silent Minaret

  First published in 2005 by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd.

  10 Orange Street

  Sunnyside, 2092

  Johannesburg

  South Africa

  Second edition published in May 2006

  © Ishtiyaq Shukri, 2005

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 1-77009-249-8

  978-1-77009-249-5

  Cover design by Disturbance

  Set in Bembo 12/15

  Printed by Paarl Print

  See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za

  To Colette& the National Missing Persons Helpline, UK.

  When Cities Crack

  When cities crack, do stories too,

  their scaffolding

  collapsing?

  Then I trawl the fragments lying disarranged,

  searching, this side and that.

  Emerge, ashen,

  fragments limply

  dangling

  from upturned palms.

  When cities crack, do memories too,

  like china heirlooms

  smashing?

  Then I crawl into the folds of memory,

  lifting,

  calling,

  tapping.

  Searching for the missing,

  never finding.

  Brushing, carefully dusting,

  only ever finding

  skeletons of silence

  cobwebs of sound.

  When cities crack, do people too,

  their lives

  disintegrating?

  Then they seep slowly through the cracks,

  drip drip,

  only brittle vessels remaining.

  Then I come with upturned palms of stained

  – scraps and chips of –

  glass,

  bits and

  – collage –

  pieces,

  mosaic pictures hobbled together from fragments.

  Here, I say, I’ve salvaged what I could,

  your stories,

  and then capsize ashen palms into cracked vessels,

  everything together

  lumping.

  “I’m sorry it’s so disarranged, like ravaged cities

  cracking.”

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  When Cities Crack

  I - The Room

  II - The Bookshelf

  III - The Café

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks

  I

  The Room

  ‘History includes the present!

  Eric Auerbach

  Prayer Beads and Cigarettes

  “Now, AND AT THE HOUR of our death. Amen.” When she has finished her prayers, she struggles out of her armchair and shuffles across the room. In just a few months she has begun to feel her age. She opens the window at the other end of the room and peeps out over the early-morning clamour of the station and bus terminus below.

  Another hot day has been forecast and news images from France have unsettled her; old people who have succumbed to the heat are being kept in refrigerated trucks till awayonholiday relatives return to claim them for burial. Some have already been placed in temporary graves. She draws the curtains against the bright light. Unless she shuts out the sun now, the room will soon become unbearably hot and she will have to retreat to her tiny bedroom at the back of the building for respite. She settles back into her armchair and pours her rosary beads, like precious grains of amber, from a cupped palm into a red satin pouch in which she also keeps the tasbeeh he gave her.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed when he casually dropped the beads into her lap, then proceeded to explore the string with curious fingers. “Issa, this is exquisite. I can’t possibly accept it.”

  Yes, you can.

  “But your friend brought them fro – ”

  Tradition. He knows I’d never use them.

  “Then that was not why he gave them.” She held out her hand. “I think you should keep them. To remind you of your friend and his pilgrimage.”

  Issa leaned forward and folded her fingers gently around the beads. My friend also gave me a lewd T-shirt he’d picked up in Amsterdam on his way back. I’d rather remember him by that. I want you to have the beads.

  She squeezed his hand and smiled mischievously. “Can I see the T-shirt before I decide?”

  He didn’t laugh often. But that cracked him up.

  It was she who first realised that he had gone missing. They had creaked around each other’s lives between cheap paper-thin walls for nearly three years, during which time she had come to rely on his routine.

  She wasn’t too keen when she first realised that a student would be moving in downstairs. Sat anxiously in her armchair while he dumped boxes, waiting for the music, the endless cycle of noisy friends to start and never stop. But she was needlessly concerned and sat up, startled, when she heard the rare sound of footsteps ascend the staircase and land outside her door.

  Knock knock.

  She knew it must be him, so she pressed her palms gently to her hair and opened the door without interrogation.

  Good morning, he greeted. I’ve come to introduce myself. I’m Issa. I’ve just moved in downstairs. He extended his hand.

  “How do you do?” she responded. “I’m Frances,” and put her hand in his, the old and fragile enfolded in the young and strong. She hurriedly unpacked a smile when he unexpectedly accepted her hopeful invitation to a cup of tea.

  “...You must be thirsty?”

  That would be very nice, thank you.

  Her anxieties proved premature; his movements downstairs soon became a comforting, harmonious accompaniment to her own lonely life.

  Like her, he woke early. At six o’clock, as she started to recite her first prayer of the day – “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary...” – she would hear his radio alarm click on to the serious political breakfast programme he always listened to in the mornings. She puzzled at how one so young could take the world so seriously. We southerners have to, he responded curtly to an enquiring comment she once passed.

  The only quality of life most of us dare to hope for is after death.

  The response resonated and for a few mornings after that she also tuned in, but the sound of all those politicians lying and bickering first thing in the morning didn’t appeal to her.

  She slips the red satin pouch into the pocket of her cotton house gown. Satin pouch cotton pocket, satin pouch cotton pocket. She does not withdraw her hand immediately but waves it gently around inside her pocket. Satinpouchcottonpocket, satin cot an pocket. She enjoys the feeling of cool cotton brushing against her skin and the muffled jingling mingling of the beads, like the sugar crystals reserved for special guests, that she used to sneak into her pocket from her grandmother’s silver sugar bowl when she was a little girl. The two strings of prayer beads always get tangled in the pouch – a trosebery, she thinks – so that she has to peel the beads apart, like seeds from a pomegranate, when she sits down to pray. Sometimes, her gnarled fingers struggle and when the light is bad, she has to start with the cross to help her identify which of the almost identical beads belong to which string. She doesn’t mind; the ritual helps settle her mind – rosary tasbeeh, rosary tasbeeh – and evokes a scene he once described of a mosque in the shadow of a cathedral. She looks up to imagine the sight: a cathemosdraquel, she thinks – to match her trosebery.

  “He washed a lot,” she recalled to his mother during her briefvisit to London immediately after his disappearance. “Extraordinary the amount of times that boy washed during the course of a day. He had a shower every morning at six thirty – just as the sports news was starting, you see – and again ev
ery night at ten which, I must admit, rather baffled me.”

  “Well, that’s not unusual back home,” Vasinthe said, defensively. “In fact, bathing has always been central to our daily routine.”

  “Yes, I understand that, except he also washed several times during the course of a day.”

  Vasinthe frowned.

  “Oh yes. He was always washing. I’m surprised he had any skin left on him at all. Do you know, he washed every time he came in from outside. Yes, I could tell because I would hear the key in the door, then the sound of him kicking off his shoes and walking to the bathroom which is directly under mine, turning on the hot water tap – I could hear the boiler come on – and then washing for several minutes. He would do that every single time he came in from outside, without fail.”

  The cross, she thinks as she handles it – a barbaric execution on a plank, the main difference between the two faiths. She hadn’t realised that that was all. In recent weeks she has not been able to make the short walk to Mass and resolves to share this with Father Jerome during his next Communion visit.

  “It’s a rather crucial difference,” the priest responds in his heavy French accent.

  “But even the immaculate conception and the virgin birth! Did you know that, Father?” She passes him a slip of paper from her bedside on which she has copied a quote in her neat, careful hand. “Have a look at this.”

  The priest takes the quote, but sets it aside.

  She watches him blow out the candle and slot it into place in the black leather bag, his portable altar, she thinks, like a doctor’s bag is his portable surgery. Portable altars, portable surgeries, portable meals.

  “And don’t you think it peculiar, Father, how one religion remembers things another doesn’t?”

  The priest picks up the quote:

  Behold! The angels said:

  “O Mary! God hath chosen thee

  And purified thee – chosen thee

  Above the women of all nations...

  Behold! The angels said:

  ”O Mary! God giveth thee

  Glad tidings of the Word

  From Him: his name

  Will be Christ Jesus,

  The son of Mary, held in honour

  In this world and the Hereafter

  And of (the company of) those

  Nearest to God.

  Qur’an S.iii. 42-45

  “You mean like Christ, God incarnate – remember – having died on the cross to redeem our sins?” Father Jerome lays down the quote and secures the buckles on his black satchel. Done. Next, Mr Anderson on Stroud Green Road.

  She smiles slowly. “I was thinking about the name of the Virgin’s father.”

  The priest is hot. He wants nothing more than to snap the white strip from his collar and undo the tight button underneath. He lifts his satchel from the chair and tugs ineffectually at the neckline of his black shirt instead.

  “Imran,” she says, picturing him, as she always does, standing on a bridge.

  “Pardon?”

  “Christ’s grandfather on earth. He was called Imran.”

  The priest frowns.

  “Yes, Father, he was. And the Wife of Bath, she was an Arab woman. Did you know that, Father?”

  By seven he would be scratching around in the kitchen. So far as I could tell, he didn’t eat very much. I never saw him coming and going with big bags of shopping or garbage. But the recycling bin downstairs was always full of newspapers, often with articles cut out. He used to get them everyday from the newsagents on the corner, and some milk for me if I needed it. On his way back, he’d hand the sports section to the fruit vendor outside the station who always gave him a piece of fruit in return.

  At about ten past eight the volume would go up on the radio for the main interview of the day – some big wig, who, for some or other reason had made it into the news that morning. At nine the radio would go off. This was my favourite time of the morning because then there would follow the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever heard. A gentle, lilting, slightly sorrowful tune – just beautiful.

  As nine o’clock approached, I knew that tune was coming, and as I got my rosary out to say my morning prayers, I would try to hum it in anticipation, but I would never get it quite right.

  And so every morning at nine, I would smile with recognition when it came rising up through the floorboards, and I sat down to pray: In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...

  I knew then that he would be at his computer, surrounded by all those books, writing for hours, all through the morning, with the same piece of music playing over and over again in the background. He said it blocked out the noise from the street below and helped him concentrate.

  She doesn’t know how to use the tasbeeh. He didn’t really know either, but said it was simple, that you just rolled the beads through your hands during prayer rather than pause at every individual one. Sometimes, when she hasn’t been attentive, she’s found herself saying the rosary with his tasbeeh.

  When this happens, she doesn’t stop to swap prayer beads, she just continues by counting the decades on her fingers, the tasbeeh dangling from her old bent hands:

  Hail Mary,

  Full of grace,

  The Lord is with thee;

  Blessed art thou amongst women,

  And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

  Jesus.

  At around noon he’d nip out to the local shops on the other side of the station. It’s very vibrant down there, lots of Algerian, Ethiopian and Caribbean stores. You can buy almost anything you can think of – so different from when I first moved here. You couldn’t find an onion then. Bananas. And satsumas! Good heavens, back then they were a treat rare enough for Christmas stockings.

  He always knocked on the ceiling to see if I wanted anything. I would knock back, once for no or twice for yes. If I knocked twice, he’d come scaling up the steps, three or four at a time as he used to, to see what he could get me.

  He didn’t have a TV, so he’d call by most evenings to watch the news at seven. We’d usually have a bite to eat together, bread and soup, beans on toast, simple fare – like me, he wasn’t one given to excess, though I always got the impression that for him, simplicity was a choice rather than a necessity. Sometimes, when he was feeling homesick, he’d cook his favourite, lentils and rice, for which I soon developed a taste, but which he always ate with a faraway look, only ever having a couple of mouthfuls, moving the food around his mouth slowly, as if it hurt, before giving up and setting his plate aside.

  After dinner, he’d stay for a while and chat about this and that – what he’d heard on the radio or read in the papers that day. Sometimes he’d bring clippings from the day’s newspapers to show me. I always pretended to understand them, but to be honest, the issues that interested him were a bit too advanced for me. He must have known I was none the wiser really, but he never lost interest or patience and was always very polite.

  Occasionally, he’d even talk about his writing. He’d get carried away and very animated about it all and I would watch with interest, not because I understood very much about what he was saying, but because I enjoyed seeing the excitement his work brought to the face of someone usually so serious.

  But more often than not, it was me who did all the talking, especially, you know, towards the end. He didn’t seem to mind listening to all my ramblings, about the war and that. Very unusual, I thought, for such a young lad to be interested in an old lady’s memories. But then again, perhaps that’s not so surprising. After all, he did spend his days writing about history.

  Then he’d go back down there, and that piece of music would start up again for a couple of hours. He’d have another shower at ten and at eleven his light switch would click off.

  And there you have it. That was how Issa spent his days. Well, at least till everything changed. Occasionally his friend Katinka would call round and sometimes he would go to see her. But otherwise he was here, downstairs, a
t that computer – day in, day out. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Boring even, some might say. But they’d be wrong. I spent too much of my life being dazzled by peacocks, learnt too late that it’s the quiet ones, the ones who make themselves invisible, God’s abstemious creatures, who often hold the trick.

  She looks up at the clock. Half past nine. A long hot day full of desolate sighs yawns ahead. She wishes it were evening so she could step out onto the roof to take in the cool air. It will be two hours before her newspaper is delivered. Her newspaper and her portable meal. And then? What next? Portable toilets? Portable black bags? Zip. Portable refrigerated French –

  She stops herself. Reaches for the packet of cigarettes from the table next to her chair.

  Katinka had forgotten a packet during one of her visits some weeks back. At first it lay there for days. She’d look at the packet, wishing for Katinka to call by for them. She almost picked up the phone once to remind her about them, but she stopped herself. Don’t be silly, you old bird. Why would someone want to come half way across London to collect a packet of cigarettes? She smoked them instead.

  “A bit late to be starting new habits, Frances,” the woman from Social Services remarked while she laid out her portable meal on a portable tray in her lap.

  “Helps pass the time,” Frances responded indifferently.

  “But you want to be looking after your health, especially at your age.

  “It’s my age that needs the health warning,” Frances said. “It will see me off long before these do.”

  “Don’t be so silly,” the woman chided, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Now eat up. I’ll be back with your tea at five,” and then she vanished through the door.

  Portable altars, portable surgeries, portable meals. Come and go. Come and sorry, can’t stop, go.

  Black and White