Fatima Meer. Fatima Meer
ordered Moosa to read only the news to do with business and prices.
Chota Meer had a short temper and my father was often the butt of it. They clashed over many things. When the First World War broke out, my father applied to be enlisted in the Turkish army to liberate the caliphate held captive by the British. His letter of application fell in the hands of his uncle who forbade him from pursuing such nonsense.
My father was unhappy in this restricted environment but was particularly concerned that Ahmed was growing up without any education. He decided to leave his uncle’s home and he asked Ahmed to go with him and be educated. Ahmed enthusiastically opted to accompany my father, but wanted to say goodbye to his Uncle Chota Meer and to fetch his clothes. My father told him that the train was leaving for Dundee in an hour and there was no time so they boarded the train and arrived at the house of another uncle, Cassim Meer (the son of Suleiman, the only Meer brother who remained in Surat). My father enrolled Ahmed at the only school in Dundee, a Coloured school which went up to standard six. Ahmed continued at this school to standard six, while my father worked.
In 1916 my father found employment at the AM Kharwa & Son Car Wash in Ladysmith at a salary of £60 per annum. Working conditions were less restrictive than at Waschbank. My father had weekends off, his daily routine was much shorter, and he and Ahmed were able to spend more time together. They played soccer and cricket, and once a month they went to the cinema – my father apparently knew all about the films. During this time my father developed his love of books and reading and he started building a library of books, ordering them by mail – his favourite authors being Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas.
Around 1921 my father, then 24 years old, went back to Surat to marry his Uncle Mohamed’s thirteen-year-old daughter Khatija. Their first child, Ismail, was born in Surat in 1922. My father spent some three years in Surat as a gentleman journalist. He enjoyed the company of Monadi, the editor of the Muslim Gujarat, and he wrote a few columns for him, so discovering his talent in journalism. To Monadi, my father was an intellectual and to young Ahmed he was a physical giant – in different ways quite a romantic hero to each of them.
Mohamed Meer, a keen businessman, whose business sense had taken him from a peasant to a nawaab (prince), decided that my father, his new son-in-law, should either join his businesses in Burma or return to South Africa. My father chose the latter. So, bidding goodbye to his young wife whom he loved very much and his young son, the apple of his eye, he set off for South Africa to join his maternal uncle, Ahmed Mohamed Variawa, in Kimberley. His wife and son were to join him once he had established himself. His younger brother, Ahmed, already living and working with the Variawas had sent good reports of life there.
Khatija (our mother, Ma) described Raja Wadi, the palatial home her father had built in Surat, and the joys of her childhood to me:
“The bungalow is large, double storey, with porticoes embellished with flowers and leaves etched in gold. There are palm trees and fruit trees- bor, custard apple and annoos. On Eid day, swings were tied on their branches and we would paddle through the wind to reach the sky, and when the vendors came, we ran to Utawala Pir’s shrine and spent our Eid money on ice cream and sweets. In the afternoons when the sun was low and no longer beating on our heads, our coach would draw up at the entrance of our bungalow and we would go riding into the city.”
Oh how many tales Ma wove.
About Fatima Chachee, who came to teach them to embroider in gold thread. About the jewellers summoned by her father to fashion jewellery of their choice and how he would weigh the jewellery on completion to ensure that the gold was intact. About how her eldest brother had sat sobbing at the foot of the stairway on his wedding night because of his disappointment with his bride (they subsequently had five children) and about cream so thick that one could lift it up. About green wheat or ponk, and neera – the juice tapped from palm trees in the early morning before it fermented into toddy.
While we grew up on stories of Surat and Raja Wadi and of Ma’s early years, my mother, Amina Ma was a mystery in the Meer clan. Amina Ma never talked about her parents and siblings. It was as if she had no family. She just was.
All the other elders in the clan in which I grew up had parents and brothers and sisters. They were all rooted in the past. Amina Ma appeared to have nothing and perhaps I rejected her because I did not want to have nothing.
Had I known Amina Ma’s life prior to her marriage, I may well have had a closer, more positive relationship with her, but I did not know that life. It remained a family secret to me until after she died. The only person I knew from that life was her brother Lionel, who came to be known as Cassim, and who, after my mother died, sketched out the bare bones about her life. I tell what I remember from his account.
Amina Ma was of European descent. She was born in Kimberley in 1912 to Hannah Farrel, the eldest daughter of Charlie Farrel and Amelia van Vollenhoven. She was named Rachael Farrel.
The family tree of my mother, Amina Ma, born Rachael Farrel in 1912.
Charlie Farrel was originally a farmer who emigrated from Longford in Ireland to the United States of America and from there to South Africa. He had a sister (whose name is not known to me) and a brother, John Farrel. Amelia Van Vollenhoven’s family had emigrated from Holland and settled in the Cape.
Amina Ma’s father is known to us only as Koplan, a Russian Jew who was a tailor by profession. Koplan probably promised Hannah marriage but kept procrastinating. She bore him two children – Rachael and Lionel. Hannah apparently eventually discovered that Koplan was already married and had another family in Russia. She then left him and married Wally Bailey. Bailey was at the time working for Ahmed Mohamed Variawa, my father’s maternal uncle, in the small town of Douglas near Kimberley. He and Hannah set up home next to the Variawas in a semi-detached cottage, where Hannah bore Bailey a daughter, Lily.
In 1918, when Rachael was about six years old, and Lionel about three, Hannah died in the influenza epidemic. After Hannah’s death, Wally Bailey married Hannah’s sister, Susan, and she bore him three children – Irene, Millie and Frankie.
Rachael with her mother, Hannah, and stepfather, Bailey.
Rachael (the tallest) and Lionel (second from left) with cousins.
Bailey was prepared to accept Rachael but was not interested in Lionel – partly because Lionel had inherited his biological father’s dark looks. Bailey would tell Lionel to keep out of sight when the family had visitors. Lionel was later palmed off to their grandparents, the Farrels, who lived at 4 Ross Street, Kimberley, in very poor circumstances. Later, two more grandchildren, Amelia and Joseph, came to live with the Farrels. These were the children of the Farrels third daughter Minnie, who died in 1922.
Rachael was unhappy with her aunt Susan and her stepfather Bailey who beat her. She wrote to Granny Farrel asking to be taken into her home, but Granny Farrel, not wanting to upset Bailey, was reluctant to take her in.
In 1926, when Rachael was about fourteen, my father Moosa Meer entered her life. He had returned to South Africa to work in his maternal uncle’s shop where he was placed as shop assistant under the management of Bailey. My father soon learnt about Rachael and how miserable she was. When she came to the shop he saw how petrified she was of Bailey.
Perhaps Rachael confided in my father and soon the two became drawn to each other. Practically all the adults in Rachael’s life had rejected her – her father Koplan, her aunt/stepmother Susan, her stepfather Bailey and Granny Farrel. Rachael perhaps saw in my father a kindly person, offering to protect her. My father was outraged by Rachael’s plight and decided to rescue her and her eleven-year-old brother Lionel.
Bailey discovered the growing relationship between Rachael and my father. He was incensed, and as my father’s