Fatima Meer. Fatima Meer
and prevailed on him to dismiss my father. Bailey sent Rachael off to her grandparents, the Farrels, in Kimberley.
One may conjecture that my father used all his powers of persuasion to win over the Farrels, and that they, in their overburdened poverty, saw a solution in my father’s offer to take over the two children – Rachael and Lionel. So it was with their grandparents’ agreement that my father left Kimberley with Rachael and Lionel at 4 am one morning by taxi for the nearby town of Christiana.
The local white community was enraged when they discovered the children missing, and the local church deacon, a Mr Basson, intervened. The police set out to rescue the children, but failed to find them. The story circulated that Charlie Farrel had sold Rachael for a Scotch cart.
My father took Rachael and Lionel to the home of a Muslim family in Christiana. From there they took a train to Leslie, a small town on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It was probably here in Leslie that Rachael was converted to Islam, given the name Amina, and my parents were married by Muslim rites. For a while Lionel and Amina lived with my father’s friends in Leslie.
My mother Rachael Farrel and my father Moosa Meer.
My father went to Waschbank to seek the assistance of his cousin AC, the son of his uncle Chota Meer. AC arranged with a friend, Ismail Master, to fetch Amina and Lionel from Leslie and he prevailed upon his father to accept Amina into the family. Chota Meer made clear that my father had to bring his wife, Khatija, and his son, Ismail, from Surat and commit to caring for both his wives equally. Khatija – Ma was informed in Surat that her husband had taken another wife. My father wrote to her and asked her to join him. Her family advised her against doing so, but Ma, as she was to tell me many, many years later, told her family that she loved my father and that her place was with him. She immediately left for Natal with her five-year-old son Ismail.
For a time, my father and two mothers lived in Waschbank. Ma told me that Chota Ba (as she referred to Chota Meer) took them in on her account. She was Mohamed Meer’s daughter. Mohamed was not only Chota’s elder brother but also his former business partner.
And so it was in Waschbank that Rachael’s Indianisation began. There is a photograph of the young Rachael, in a plaid skirt and white blouse. But in Waschbank, under Chota Ba’s severe authority, her plaid skirt disappeared and she was put into trousers, long dress and head scarf like Ma and Ma’s cousins, the daughters and daughters-in-law of Chota Ba.
My mothers Amina Ma and Ma in Waschbank.
Left to right: Chota Meer’s daughters-in-law, Gori Ba and Gori Apa, Chota Meer’s daughter Badi Motala, Ma, Amina Ma and Chota Meer’s daughter Ayesha who we called Choti Khala.
Rachael was a quick learner and her transformation to Amina appears to have been rapid. She was soon indistinguishable from Ma and the other aunts in my clan in her Indianness. She spoke Gujarati exactly like the others did. Amina struck roots in the Meer family. She was integrated into the Meer clan and nobody asked any questions. It was sufficient that Chota Meer had accepted her. She related as sister-in-law to every one of my father’s generation and was respected by all as their own.
My father sent Lionel to work for his relatives, the Malls, in Howick. However, Lionel found conditions so miserable that he wrote to my father that he would commit suicide if he were not rescued. My father then asked his cousin Cassim Meer of Dundee to take Lionel on. Cassim Meer took Lionel in and it was around this time that Lionel converted to Islam and was named Cassim.
My father, unemployed with dependants, and an uncle whose displeasure he could sense, was offered a job as editor of the weekly English-Gujarati newspaper Indian Views by the owner, Ebrahim Jeewa. He left for Durban and found accommodation at 137 Grey Street close to the newspaper’s offices and printing press.
The Jeewas had immigrated to Natal from the same neighbourhood as the Meers in Surat, and had bought the newspaper and printing press from its founder MC Angalia in the 1920s. My father had by then established a reputation as something of a writer both in English and Gujarati, having written for a newspaper in Surat. Although he had to this point in his life earned a living as a shop assistant, he now found his vocation in Indian Views. In 1927 my father became the manager of the Indian Views and by 1934 he became the proprietor of both the press and the paper, and its highly regarded editor.
When my father arrived in Durban, the police caught up with him. A charge was laid against him for kidnapping Rachael and Lionel, but due to the intervention of A.I. Kajee and Sorabjee Rustomjee, the case was dropped. My father had by then achieved sufficient status to be patronised by these leaders of the premier Indian political organisation, the Natal Indian Congress.
My father sent for his family from Waschbank and they began their life together in the home of my earliest memories. Papa, Ma, Amina Ma and my brother Ismail were soon joined by two additions to the family: I was born to Amina Ma on 12 August 1928 and a few months later Solly was born to Ma. I was a pleasant, healthy baby. Solly was sickly, and forever crying. Ma did not have sufficient milk for him so Amina Ma breastfed both Solly and me.
Amina Ma at fifteen was perhaps not yet ready to be a mother, perhaps not even really a wife yet, since Ma was the dominant wife, and she an intrusion. Amina Ma, younger than Ma by four years, did most of the household chores. She was probably accustomed to hard work, and to being ordered about.
One can but conjecture that she was vulnerable to exploitation since early childhood. Ma, on the other hand, had been brought up in relative luxury by her father. She had done very little work, and was used to being waited on. But this is speculation on my part – to place myself in the vortex of my clan and to understand my relationship with my mothers.
II
Bluer Than the Blue Sky
My Childhood
CHAPTER 3
Jeewa’s Building: 1928–1931
My early childhood sweeps through a number of houses. My earliest memories are of our flat in Jeewa’s Building at 137 Grey Street4 where my consciousness of self began. My first recollection of physical space is not of a house but of a floor, lino-covered in green with red roses under a bed screened off from the room by the crocheted edge of a quilt.
Jeewa’s building still stands today, little changed, thanks to the 1950 Groups Areas Act which froze all development for three decades in Durban’s Indian business area. There are shops on the ground floor and residences on the upper floor along a passage protected by a black cast iron railing.
One entered the residences through a large quadrangle and up a flight of steps. Our flat comprised of a small covered courtyard, at the entrance of which was the kitchen, the washroom and toilet. The entrance led to a front reception room and two bedrooms. All the rooms led to a wrap-around veranda which overlooked Victoria Street, named for the Empress of the British Empire, Grey Street, named after one of Her Majesty’s colonial governors, and Queen Street5. The British royal family thus encircled our quarters, but we remained oblivious of that family.
We lived in this accommodation for a number of years – our unusual family with two mothers, Ma and Amina Ma, and one father, our Papa. In my earliest memories there were my three brothers (Ismail, Solly, Ahmed) and myself. Ultimately there would be nine children – six brothers and three sisters. Ma’s Ismail, Solly, Ahmed and Gorie and Amina Ma’s which included me, Mahomed, Siddiek, Farouk and Razia. My family called me “Behn” meaning sister.
My family: Our Papa Moosa, our two mothers Khatija (Ma) and Amina Ma and their nine children.
As the years went by