Where I come from

There’s a new world somewhere.

Leaving your country of birth is never easy.

We kissed and hugged and cried.   We left behind grandparents, countless cousins, aunts and uncles and close friends.   People had huge families in those days.  My father had twelve siblings and each of them had an average of six children.   Together with their wives and husbands we were a mighty, formidable family.  Our house was always packed with visitors.   For me as a teenager, it was an adventure.  For my parents, especially my father, it was a break with lifelong traditions.  He worked as a tailor employing three assistants in a small tailor shop five minutes from our home.   In my early memories of him I see him sitting on the counter in his shop, one leg tucked underneath the other.   The upper leg was used as a resting place for him to do his hand sewing       like making buttonholes or sewing hems or finishing the edges of the lapels on the jackets.   With twelve siblings I guess he was never lonely.   He was a quiet, often angry man.    Stocky and strongly built.  He ruled with an iron fist. My three brothers, my sister and me, were terrified of him. He truly loved my mother and never laid a hand on her.   We the children? Well, that is another story.  I particularly bore the brunt of his anger which resulted in several “beltings” and smacks across the face by a hand covered in food.  The Muslims ate with their fingers then and I was seated right next to him at the edge of the formica table in the kitchen.   I had never thought much about his work but recently watched a movie, The Outfit, which made me realise that despite his limited schooling, being a cutter and tailor, was a talent to be envied.   

Hand in hand with the feeling of loss was the excitement of starting anew in a strange and faraway country.   England. A tradition in Cape Town was that all the family had come to bid us farewell and as I mentioned before, it was quite a huge family.    We waved furiously as we slowly climbed the gangway to a new life.  We waved until they were tiny specks in the distance on the still crowded dock.

At least we were not coming from a place of sadness as it is with immigrants and emigrants these days.  One could say that we were leaving a brutal regime responsible for the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.   The Malays in Cape Town did not involve themselves in politics too much even though we did give it a go at school in a bid to appear rebellious.  A notable exception was Imam Abdullah Haroun who was murdered in prison by the South African Police in 1969.  He was a dear friend of my father, who died not long after the Imam in the same year.  

We left behind a comfortable home with magical memories but anticipated a brand-new beginning.   All I knew about England was, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth, The Oxford book of Verse, Oliver Cromwell, and various other books we studied at school.

Two weeks at sea on a huge ship felt like a dream.   It was a new kind of freedom.   The young folks on the ship were friendly and inclusive and for a teetotal staunch Muslim it was “an education”.  They were so fashionable and sexy, exciting, and original, funny, and new… I was entranced and snuck out of my cabin every night to go and join them.   I felt overdressed amongst the bikini clad blondes.   It was an absolutely fabulous experience.    However, being seasick was not that much fun.

Fourteen days later we set foot on England’s shores.   A grey and dismal day.  The beginning of countless grey and dismal days.  Every minute of the next three hours on the train to London was most enthralling.  Not so much the scenery but the wonderful feeling of being in a different country. So different to my hometown back in Cape Town.   Houses tightly packed with adjoining backyards flew by close to the railroad.   Here and there the week’s washing fluttered in the wind.   Children played merrily running in and out of the white sheets.

We arrived at Victoria Station thoroughly exhilarated.   There before me appeared my high school poetry.  LONDON.   ENGLAND.  “Upon Westminster Bridge”. popped into my head.  I was transported back to my schooldays when we memorised the beautiful words of Wordsworth.  (What an apt surname.)  “Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky”.  For me at least at this moment in my life the “earth did not have anything to show more fair”.  London was a huge buzz.  Updos and beehives.   Mary Quant and gothic makeup. Carnaby Street and Harrods.  Petticoat Lane.  Mixed couples openly holding hands, Buckingham Palace, the Thames and a potpourri of new sites and smells and sounds.   I was entranced.

My brother, Slim, was accepting his medical degree at Sheffield University.  My parents were so chuffed and you could see it in their beaming faces at the graduation ceremony.  I was like Alice in Wonderland walking through Sheffield University with all the books and desks, and graduates wandering around in their black robes looking clever and important.   And thus ended six years of study for my beloved brother.  It had been a gruelling few years for him.   He left home at fifteen a shy but very bright teenager.   Some awful years with landladies involving racism and bad meals.  He was a brown boy in the sixties in England.   The time when many West Indians migrated there in search of a better life.   At that time, we never realised what a damn tough time it must have been for him and my eldest brother, Joe.   I thought it was so glamourous having family in England.  They never told the family about all their trials and tribulations and quietly succeeded in attaining their university degrees.  Slim left for America and worked in Boston for a while and then Chicago.  My Sister, Dij had gone over to England at eighteen years old and studied at Birmingham University.   My brother Joe continued to become one of London’s most respected obstetricians.  Not bad for the children from a pretty ordinary background.

My sister acquired her PHD in Cancer Research.    She briefly studied at the Tenovus Institute in Cardiff.   It was mentioned that she was bordering on genius.  Her husband had studied Pharmacy in at Cardiff University and thereafter purchased a Pharmacy and managed a successful business.     She joined him in the business and never furthered her research.   Personally, I was very disappointed for her because I felt she was destined for much bigger achievements and would probably have continued some very valuable research.   In the poem “Invictus by William Ernst Henley written in 1875 he writes

“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”.   If only more people could live by this motto.   

A three-hour train journey to Sheffield followed.  I was our plan to stay in Sheffield for six months to be there for Slim’s graduation and get a feeling for the north.  

Sheffield, in the sixties wasn’t very pretty but it was home to the oldest football club in the world.   This was a smoky industrial city set in Yorkshire, famous for its cutlery, silverware, glass and the odd Morris Dancers, a jolly group of men with bells around their ankles.  Sheffield at that time was at the forefront of Western Europe in many industries.   The land of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest.  An eerie place and at the time still smarting from the Moors murders.   Two evil monsters, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were sentenced to life imprisonment for the horrific murders of five children.   The mood around Sheffield was very dark and scary. The air still trembled with fear at the horror these two had imparted on the city.   I was so petrified I slept in the room with my parents, on a mattress, on the floor.   I would not travel anywhere on my own and, certainly not after dark.   These children had been kidnapped by the monsters in broad daylight.   Tortured then brutally murdered.  I could not wipe the terrible thoughts from my head, I was lost in a mental fog.

We settled into a five-bedroom house, not far from the Saddleworth Moors where the murders had been committed.  A couple with two young children lived next door.   I started watching the children to be sure they were safe.   A boy seven years old and a girl about two years younger.   I feared for their safety even though the murderers had been captured tried and imprisoned.   They were joyful, happy children and their parents equally loving.   No one had really settled down after the murders and everyone was still watching their children like hawks.

I plucked up the courage and started a shorthand writing course at a private house on the other side of town.   It was a short bus ride but as usual I had compound eyes on the journey.  Ever wary of some new horror that might emerge.

One night I arrived home to find the two children wandering the streets.   My heart throbbed wildly.  Darkness was falling.  They could not find their mother.

“What are you doing out here in the cold?” I asked.  

“We can’t find Mummy” they cried.

Taking their tiny hands, we started searching the neighbourhood.   I thought my parents might have seen them.  No. Finally, we crept through the house.   We started downstairs gingerly scanning each room.   Nothing.   We tiptoed upstairs and slowly tried every door.

Last room was the main bedroom.

There she was.   Lying on the bed.  One side of her face bruised and black.  

“Why isn’t mummy moving?” asked the little girl.