Silent Minaret Page 2

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, we have commenced our descent for London’s Heathrow airport. In preparation for the landing, please make sure that your seats are in the upright position and your seatbelts fastened, that your tray tables are folded away and that your hand luggage has been safely stowed.”

  The announcement wakes Kagiso. Sleepily he moves his journal into his lap and folds away his table. He does not crane, like the woman next to him, eager to catch a glimpse through the tiny window of the enormous city below; he’d rather not be doing this. Instead, while the aeroplane bides its time, swooping and tilting and dipping in the skies above the sprawling city, waiting for its moment, he closes his eyes again and tries to chase the dreamlike memories that have been scattered by the announcement.

  When he was a little boy and already captivated by the moving image, a grainy black and white sequence, an amalgam of the SABC propaganda films of their childhood constituted Kagiso’s mental picture of what that spring morning in September 1970 must have been like. No dialogue accompanied the images, only the imagined rattle of an antiquated projector. He knew very little about what actually happened on that day, so his mind film was very short.

  In it, she is walking down a road in an affluent Johannesburg suburb. A two-month-old bundle is strapped in a blanket to her back. She is in search of work. She knocks on another front door. A heavily pregnant woman opens. They have a brief exchange, which he cannot hear above the rattle of his imaginary projector. The pregnant woman smiles and invites her in. She closes the door.

  That is it. The end.

  The pregnant woman has her baby, a boy, later that same day. But he only knows that in these few words. That is all there is to know. He never imagined the birth. For a long time it never occurred to him to do so.

  He has spent most of the overnight flight from Johannesburg scratching in the journal cradled in his lap, at first repeating, as has become his custom, his opening affirmation as soon as they were fully airborne:

  SA 238 Johannesburg – London

  Thursday 7th August 2003

  I am Kagiso Mayoyo. I grew up in Johannesburg, but I was born in Taung. Taungs as the old people say, the place of lions...

  Taung, a small village hardly ever featured on the map. Approximately half way between its more famous neighbours: to the south, Kimberley, city of diamonds and, consequently, home to the largest man-made excavation on earth; and to the north, Mafikeng, besieged by 6 000 Afrikaners under the leadership of Generals Snyman and Cronje at the start of the South African War in 1899 and defended by Colonel Robert Baden-Powell for 217 brave days.

  Yes, the very same and very honourable Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, brave defender of Mafikeng and arguably the determiner of Issa’s fate. But has anyone ever heard of heard of the Black Watch? And does anyone even know that, were it not for them, Mafikeng would have fallen to Snyman and Cronje because, during the siege, Baden-Powell relied heavily on the Barolong, the Black Watch, my people, to defend the town?

  History was not intended to capture this part of the story; Baden-Powell went to great lengths to omit it from his reports and from his diaries. He also omitted to mention that my people were forced to survive on less rations during the siege than their British counterparts. Yet, at the end of the siege, which had turned Baden-Powell into a national hero in England, not one of my people so much as saw the glint of a medal. But while the Colonel was able to contrive his written submissions of the siege to London, he had less control over the version of events that passed from the mouths of my forefathers into the ears of their descendents. My grandmother would gather Issa and I at her feet on the mud floor of her dark shack that smelt of fire wood and into which daylight sparkled through holes in the corrugated iron like stars in the canopy of night.

  “Forget about medals,” she’d roar in a big voice imitating the elders in the kgotla. “Land will be our true reward for aiding the British in this war. The honourable Baden-Powell has promised it to us in abundance.” But then my grandmother would lower her head and look to the mud floor between her feet. “They received,” she would start, letting her pointing hand rise and fall three times, once for each word that followed, “not one inch. African land – Baden-Powell’s to give, Baden-Powell’s to withhold.”

  My grandmother would lean forward, her elbows resting on her knees. “‘Forget about medals,’ the elders urged, ‘and land takes long to allocate. But money, money is easy to give and we hear that the good people of Britain have raised money, a lot of it, £30 000 for the reconstruction of our town. The generosity of the good people of Britain, that will be our true reward.’”

  At this point I would look to the forefinger on my grandmother’s limp hand as it dangled between her knees, and when it started to unfurl as it always did, I knew what was to come. “Not one penny. The only reward our people received for their sacrifice, was more death – more than, 1 000 of our people died of starvation. So, your Boy Scouts’ Baden-Powell may be a national hero in Jo’burg and London, but here, among our people, he’s a lying thief.” And then my grandmother would disappear into the even darker darkness behind the thick curtain that divided the shack in half and into which we never assumed we could follow.

  Surprised?

  I was too. And angry. Exactly how, I started to wonder, could one people’s hero be another’s villain? And how, I wanted to know, would my people have been any worse off if the demonic Boers had been victorious?

  But what has all this past got to do with me, now, here hurtling northwards towards Issa-less London, the African sun setting dramatically to my left? Well, everything. Ma Vasinthe received an e-mail from Issa some months before he went missing. It contained only one line: ‘The past is eternally with us.’ It may have contained more. Ma Vasinthe may have deleted the rest before she forwarded the e-mail to me, but I doubt it. Issa was very good at one-line summations. ‘The past is eternally with us.’ That is very Issa.

  So yes, even as we approach the equator at an altitude of 36 000 feet and travelling at an awesome 840 kilometres per hour (Taung not even a speck on the global co-ordinates of our flight path), the past gives easy chase because of Issa. It was he who first challenged the official version of events we were taught in school, though I must confess that I shook my head in dismay when he called Baden-Powell a ‘lying thief’ in our history class. This caused an outrage that unsettled sensibilities at our private school for months – Mr Thompson, our history teacher, being leader of the northern suburbs branch of the Scouts and a longtime admirer of the Colonel.

  But Issa remained resolute, even as he became the butt of snide comments from Maths to Phys Ed: ‘Dreamer, schemer, history’s cleaner.’ Eventually, Ma Vasinthe, who usually let us fight our own battles, intervened. She put Issa in touch with a research student at the university, who helped him compile a bibliography of recent revisionist research into the South African War. It took weeks and Issa read every entry before presenting it to Mr Thompson.

  “Conjecture!” he exclaimed dismissively, throwing the bibliography to one side. “Mere conjecture. Speculation by a bunch of new age leftists at Wits. And woe betide that university for encouraging it. History cannot be re-written,” he confirmed. “History is, and at St Stephen’s we accept only the thorough, rigorous and sanctioned historical versions outlined in the syllabus, in which, let me remind you, the conflict of 1899 to 1902 is referred to as the Anglo-Boer War. I would advise you to remember that, Shamsuddin, when you take your examinations.”

  But Issa didn’t heed the warning. As I read the question in the mid – year exam asking to explain Baden-Powell’s role in the siege of Mafikeng, I knew that not only would he ignore the alternative question on the Jameson Raid, but also that he would present Mr Thompson with his view of Baden-Powell as a lying thief. Even though the final examination of that year was externally marked, the fact that Issa had compromised his mid-year scores meant that in the end he got five A grades and a B for matric, rathe
r than the six A grades he would almost certainly otherwise have attained. It was a defining moment. Issa was never given to excessive displays of emotion, but in the end he lost the struggle to fight back the tears as a huge drop fell, plop, on the official advice of results.

  Issa took to his room for three days playing ‘We don’t need no education’ at full volume, over and over again. During that time, only Ma Gloria was allowed in. We never knew what they spoke about. When he eventually emerged, it was to pick up the phone to turn down his place at the prestigious white liberal University of Cape Town where we had both, to Ma Vasinthe’s delight, been accepted.

  I’m going to UWC, he declared to our shocked assembly when he put down the phone, and then spent the next few days rushing in a late application to the University of the Western Cape, the intellectual home of the left and the most radical university in the country.

  I should perhaps also mention that Taung has its own claim to fame, unearthed as it were, by my great-uncle, my grandfather’s brother, while he and his fellow labourers were toiling away in a lime pit in 1925. My grandmother still keeps the article from The Star announcing the discovery. I took a copy of it for my journal the last time I saw her:

  Tuesday, February 3, 1925

  THE MISSING LINK?

  FOSSIL SKULL MIDWAY BETWEEN MAN AND THE APE

  LIME CLIFF FIND NEAR TAUNGS

  IMMENSE IMPORTANCE OF DISCOVERY BY PROFESSOR DART

  A scientific discovery of the very first importance has been made in the Union and developed by investigation from Johannesburg. So far as its nature can be put into a sequence, it is the discovery of a fossil skull representing something really midway between man and the great apes.

  The expression “the missing link” – loose and unscientific as it is – most clearly covers the nature of the owner of the skull in question, which is that of an individual about six years of age...

  I remember Issa asking me from the corner of his mouth where my forefather’s name was when my grandmother brought out the article during one of our visits to Taung. I shrugged my shoulders.

  Missing, he whispered. Just like the Black Watch. Missing from history. Missing from archaeology. Like a missing link.

  When the aeroplane finally slams onto the runway, his head falls forward, once again spilling his rekindled dreams. He presses back into the seat to steady himself against the forwardbackward thrusting of the craft as it rushes down the runway, wings distorted like a mating mantis, straining desperately to bring its trans-global propulsion to a halt.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London Heathrow. Please remain seated until the aircraft has come to a complete stop. We trust that you’ve enjoyed your flight with us. On behalf of the captain and all the crew, we wish you a pleasant stay and look forward to seeing you again in the future. Thank you for flying South African Airways and goodbye.”

  In the arrivals hall, Katinka walks up to the monitor of flight arrivals: SAA 238 Johannesburg landed 06:25. She smiles at the safe arrival of her saviour, her knight in student banger. It was Kagiso who insisted that Issa stop to give her a ride through the scorching Karoo all those Februarys ago, poised as they were, at the dawn of a new world. They have spoken on the phone several times since Issa went missing in April, but this will be their first reunion in many years.

  Summer of 2003

  THEY HAVE BEEN STATIONARY ON the motorway for nearly ten minutes, though, for Kagiso, after all the speed and motion, it seems like much longer. An overhead electronic road sign flashes a warning: ‘Congestion ahead. Slow down.’

  “Has there been an accident?” he asks, moving around awkwardly in his seat.

  Katinka shakes her head. “Nope, just the rush hour into central London.”

  “Sjoe!” he exhales before unbuckling his seat belt to remove his jacket. “You were right. It is hot.” He leans forward, shaking his arms behind him to shed the unwanted garment. “The pilot warned of a scorcher on the plane.”

  Katinka adjusts her sunglasses. “I know. Can you believe it? There’s been great excitement about it on the radio as well. But I’m not complaining. I like this transformation.” She pulls up the handbrake and reaches down to a cavity by the gear stick for a packet of cigarettes. “Fag?”

  Summertime in London. Coats and boots, low grey skies and bare trees, long dark nights and long miserable faces, have all been rolled up like winter rugs and stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs – the control switch on the central heating panel finally flicked, with the victorious sigh of a survivor, from constant to off. However brief its forecast stay, however disappointing its outlook, spirits are high: anything is better than the winter.

  Now, dragonflies dart around to the buzz oflawnmowers. Garden furniture has been dusted, huge sun-deck umbrellas unfurled, and cookers abandoned for barbecues. Flat roofs, however precarious, have become terraces. Long carefree dinners are enjoyed outside. At nine thirty when it is still light, it is hard to imagine the long winter nights when it is dark by four. Trees are lush and green.

  The sky, especially down by the river, is big, blue and high, Katinka thinks. Issa used to love it down there.

  ‘London ceases to be London.’ Pubs are covered in hanging baskets bursting with brightly coloured blooms and by midday, skiving punters flow over onto the pavements like the white froth from their chilled glasses. Flesh is everywhere; shirtless men, wispy-frocked women, translucently pale at first, painfully red as the season progresses, celebrate their liberation from the confines of coats and jackets. Parks, like temples of Akhenaten, burst with sun worshippers; the animated movement of skate-boarders, roller – bladers, kite flyers, Frisbee throwers, contrasts acrobatically with the horizontal inertia of the religious proceedings. The annual traditions of tennis at Wimbledon, cricket at Lords, racing at Ascot, the jubilation of carnival, long queues at tourist attractions and nightly classical music concerts at the Royal Albert Hall all confirm that, even though it might not look like summer, it definitely is not winter.

  Inching their way through the city, Katinka turns up the volume on the radio, then turns to smile at Kagiso:

  There is nothing ambiguous about this summer, she thinks. It will surely be remembered for generations to come, earning its place in the national memory of climatic abnormalities, along with the storm of ‘87, the summer of ’76, the floods of ’53, the gales of...

  She remembers walking the streets of the sun-baked capital in July, desperately dishing out ‘Missing’ leaflets of Issa to anybody who would take one.

  At the time she found it hard to imagine that earlier in the year they were grid-locked for hours when a few inches of snow had brought the city to a standstill. Once again Britain’s fragile infrastructure stood by the roadside, helpless hands on flabby hips, jeering at stranded commuters. Trains, also capable of being rendered immobile by leaves, ground to a halt on icy tracks and motorists forced to spend the night in their cars stuck on frozen motorways, snowed in ahead of the snow ploughs and gritters who got caught up in the gridlock having left their depots too late.

  How do they manage in Russia?

  But then, as cloudless day succeeded the novelty of cloudless day, a feeling of disbelieving excitement took hold of the city: the wish that ‘if only it could be like this every day’ supplanted by the glorious reality of it being like this everyday.

  “Today London was hotter than Nairobi!”

  “Keep your homes well ventilated.” (Houses built for the cold can become murderous furnaces in the heat.)

  “Drink plenty of liquids.”

  “More sangria, anyone?”

  “Strawberries?”

  The tube became even more unbearable than usual. “Ladies and gentlemen, this train will no longer be stopping at Cockfosters. In your own interest, we have been redirected to the Caribbean instead. Ladies and gentlemen, this train is for the Caribbean. Please stand clear of the closing doors.” Smiles became broader, skins darker, office hours shorter.

 
; While bookmakers braced themselves for the biggest weather-induced betting spree since the summer of ’76, leaf-fearing trains ground to a halt on temperamental railway tracks – in the heat they had buckled – and motorists were once again stranded on constantly worked-on but eternally inadequate road surfaces – in the heat they had melted.

  How do they manage in India?

  On the 10th of August the unprecedented was confirmed: the mercury reached 37.9°C at Heathrow, 38.5 in Kent, the highest since records began in 1875, the highest, in fact, since the thermometer that contained it, was invented. Paradise had come to London. And before the year was over, heaven arrived too, in the form of a big gold cup brought back from a rugby pitch in Australia. Everybody wanted a photo-op, especially the ‘Things can only get better’ Prime Minister, who was, by now, gagging for a bit of good news, perhaps making constant invocation to his name-sake saint, the finder of elusive things.

  And now Kagiso, who also understands something of the frustration of a futile search, has arrived to a city transformed. Fountains have become swimming pools and the sandy enclaves on the riverbank at low tide, venues for impromptu beach-like parties: “Do you really like it? / Is it is it wicked? / We’re loving it loving it loving it / We’re loving it like that.”

  When Katinka tells him that they’re approaching Issa’s flat, he looks intently at the throng, the crowded pavements, the busy roads, the well-stocked shops already trading briskly, but all he can see in the teaming multitude of normality is what has gone from it, what is not there, skulking, a haunting absence everywhere he looks – the missing link, he thinks, between him and the city.