Fatima Meer. Fatima Meer
come to an end and so did Eid.
Other charmed days followed. Papa brought Allah Pak into my life. Solly, Ahmed and I sat in a circle on Papa’s bed and he said, “Close your eyes tight so that everything is black and no light can enter.” And we did just that. “Keep them closed”, he said, “until I say open.”
We opened our eyes to a feast before us. Each of us had a plate of sweets and fruit. We looked in wide-eyed wonder at Papa, Ma and Amina Ma. We asked, “Where did all this come from?” Papa said: “It all comes from Allah Pak.” I asked, “Where is he?” and my father said he is far, far away in the heavens. “He sent us these things from all that distance?” I asked. My father confirmed that he had. And my mothers smiled approvingly as my father added, “Allah Pak can do anything. He is all-powerful. He looks after you. He looks after all of us.”
I constructed my own image of Allah Pak. I identified him with my father and he took on his gender, but I saw him in a red dress, reclining above me in levitation. I did not share this image of Allah Pak with anyone. It was a secret in my mind, a secret between Allah Pak and me. One day I was walking with my uncle Gora Papa, my father’s brother. I saw something red levitated far above me in the sky, and I called in great excitement, “Allah Pak!” and Gora Papa said, “That is a kite”.
Ma told us about the Prophet Muhammad and we listened in rapt attention as she told of the time he was dying.
“The Angel Jibreel comes to take away our souls and we die,” she said. “He comes at his will, and he takes our soul at his will. We are all helpless before Jibreel, but in the case of Prophet Muhammad, Jibreel knocked on the door, and Bibi Fatima the Prophet’s daughter asked, ‘Who is it?’ and Jibreel said ‘It is I, the angel of death’. Bibi Fatima said, ‘I will not allow you in, go away’.
“The Angel knocked again. This time Prophet Muhammad asked his daughter who was at the door and she told him it was Jibreel. ‘Then why did you not let him in?’ She said ‘He wants to take your soul. I won’t let him in.’ Then the Prophet told her she had to open the door. ‘It is a courtesy that he asks to come in. He can come in without opening the door. He is paying his respect and you must respond with respect.’ Then with tears streaming and sobbing, she opened the door. Jibreel entered and asked Prophet Muhammad if he was ready and could he take his soul and Prophet Muhammad said ‘Yes’, and then with great gentleness, Jibreel took the Prophet’s soul and bore it away to Allah.”
I was deeply impressed by this story and by another Ma told us about the Prophet.
“It was the custom in those days among the wealthy to bring in a wet nurse to nurse a baby and she would take the baby to the countryside and nurse him there where the air was clean and fresh. So the baby Muhammad was sent to spend the first few years of his life with Dai Halima, his wet nurse. Dai Halima had her own baby and the two babies suckled at her breasts. When the two boys were about three years old and were playing together, two angels came and took Muhammad away, and opened his heart. The little friend ran in consternation to his mother, screaming that two men were attacking Muhammad. Halima ran to rescue him. She found a laughing Muhammad and no sign of the two men. Muhammad told her not to be alarmed. It was only the angels, ‘they opened my heart and cleaned it!’.”
Ma added that Muhammad was thus without sin. He was pure. He is the model for us all to follow.
One of the earliest stories my father told us which left a lasting impression on me was about King Solomon’s justice:
“Two women came to King Solomon with a baby and each claimed the baby belonged to her. To prise out the truth King Solomon said to the two women ‘Since you are both claiming the baby, why don’t we settle this by cutting up the baby and giving each of you half?’ The false mother accepted the solution but the true mother said she would give up her claim as she could not allow her baby to be cut up. She wanted her baby to grow up and have a good life, and if the other woman could give him that life, she could have the baby. So King Solomon satisfied himself as to who was the real mother. The people marvelled at his justice and that has remained recorded for all time.”
I could not have been more than four years old when my father told us this story, but I remained troubled for days that the false mother could have opted for half a baby. I could have asked my father to explain how any human being would want another human being cut up, only it wasn’t done to ask questions, and therefore it never occurred to me to ask. The thing was to listen and if there were questions, to hope that they would be answered somehow in the course of telling the story. So my questions remained unasked, and therefore unanswered.
The madressa I went to was at the Motala’s home in neighbouring Clairwood. The father and son ran a shop. The mother and daughter-in-law ran the house – two rooms at the back of the shop. There were no children in the house so the daughter-in-law, who gave me my first lessons in Arabic, welcomed me most warmly. The book I was to learn from was one Papa had made for me. He had written the Arabic alphabet at the back of an advertisement which had a picture of a girl drinking a popular cold drink called Sun Crush from a bottle with a straw. Daughter-in-law and mother-in-law were critical of this human image on the back of Allah’s alphabet. They were a simple and gentle couple but they made me critical of Papa, and Papa was someone only to be admired. I wished he had bought me a proper book instead of making me one, and that too on the wrong paper. It seemed that he could not afford to buy a book.
The most interesting thing in the Motala home was a basket hung at the entrance from a rafter. The Motala’s kept mithai – sweetmeats – in it. I discovered this on my first day. Lonely and upset, tongue-tied and weepy at being left with strangers, I did not respond to my first lesson. To entice me, the older Mrs Motala brought down the basket and withdrew from it delectable portions of mithai. I was sufficiently comforted to start my first lesson. The next day I kept looking at the basket. The daughter-in-law saw this and inquired if I wanted mithai. I nodded vigorously. She gave me some and as I guzzled it, she gave me a lesson apart from Arabic. Very gently she explained that I came there to learn Arabic and she was there to teach me. I did not come to eat mithai and that was the last mithai I would get because there was no more.
The next morning I was reluctant to go to madressa. “Yesterday you were so keen, what is the matter today?” Ma asked. I said there was no more mithai today. They were horrified when they learnt I had asked for mithai. Ma told me how wrong it was to ask anything of anybody outside of the family. Amina Ma gave me a slap and sent me off with Papa making it quite clear that I went there to learn, not to eat mithai. I got down to my lessons after that. I was left at the Motalas all day. Papa usually fetched me on his return home.
CHAPTER 5
A Growing Family: 1933–1934
The family I grew up in was never confined to my parents and siblings. It extended to many uncles and aunts and dozens of cousins living in a kutum, a constellation of nuclear families who could trace their origin to a common progenitor. My father was the recognised head of our kutum. As such he was not only highly respected but also held responsible for all members of this extended family. He was also the first member to establish himself in Durban and thus our home became the reception point for relatives who migrated to the city from northern Natal and Kimberley.
In Wentworth our family soon almost doubled in size. First came Papa’s brother, Gora Papa (Ahmed Meer) and his wife and two children from Kimberley. Gora Papa worked with Papa in the press and he and his family lived with us. Later Papa and Ma’s cousin, Gora Mamoo (Hoosen Meer, son of their Uncle Chota Meer), and his wife and daughter came from Dundee to live with us also. Some months later Papa and Ma’s cousin, Choti Khala (Ayesha, daughter of their Uncle Chota Meer), joined our Wentworth household.
Our uncles brought with them three cousins – Gora Papa’s sons, Unus and Abassi, and Gora Mamoo’s daughter, Zohra. We had three bedrooms and we lived a family to a room, the older children sleeping on mattresses on the floor or with the parents on the beds, as space permitted.
The day Gora Papa came into my life, the family was in celebration. I was four or five years old and there was love between us at first sight. Well my sight was somewhat dim, for I had