Stirring the Pot Read online

  STIRRING THE POT

  Published in 2022 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg. No. 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2022 Quraisha Dawood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2022

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0467-0 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0468-7 (ePub)

  Cover design by publicide

  Author photo by Elana Schilz Photography

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  For the women who let me into their homes and hearts

  1

  ‘US MUSLIM WOMEN, YOU KNOW, we’re the first to sell each other out. Look at the Hindus at that temple down the road: they keep their name protected. They’re united. You’ll never hear one Hindu saying anything bad about another Hindu. Even the blacks. But we? Na, na, we tell everyone everything, and they know all our private business.’ Ruki shook her head. She was fuming about the most recent neighbourly spat between her and Shirin. ‘We even forget our language, and then what will our children have?’ she demanded breathlessly.

  Zaina gathered that the disagreement had something to do with the eternal tug of war between the age-old linguistic nooses that bound them to Indian villages of the past: one, a regal delicate strand of Surti saffron; the other, an earthy voluminous cardamom pod. They were like spices in tightly closed jars next to each other on the rack, refusing to let go of their labels or acknowledge each other’s merits. Each was as overpowering as the next, of course, but if a fine balance was achieved, they would make the best aroma together, Zaina imagined.

  Ruki was in a state, her cheeks a bright shade of red, rising like butter pastry in a hot oven, Urdu curse words escaping through her teeth. Zaina knew better than to try to appease her. When Ruki’s words ran away from her like a steam train, it was best to move back and watch it pass than stand in its way and become a martyr.

  Zaina recognised only a few words and realised again that there was a vast distance between her and Ruki. Not just in terms of language. No, it seemed as if Ruki lived in a different time completely. It was as if this chasm between the old and the young was growing wider and deeper; as if the Truro, which had first brought Indians and their suitcases of culture, religion and emotional baggage to South Africa over a century and a half ago, had reappeared, filled with a young, English-speaking generation, and was pulling away from the shore towards a global village somewhere on the other side of the world. It was a village where Beyoncé danced to bhangra, Kylie’s lipliner and Gorima’s kajal sat on the same face, and every traditional dish tried to reinvent itself with that damn ‘f’ word – fusion.

  Zaina felt pity for Ruki, who would be left behind. But Ruki felt pity for Zaina, too. Zaina would never understand the simplicity of life before TV and cellphones and Google, which made everyone think they knew better than their elders.

  Ruki strained across the sewing machine on her dining-room table, positioning herself at the perfect angle to refill the bobbin. It gobbled up the pink thread greedily, and she slotted the bobbin back into the hungry Singer. She sat down again, knees apart, foot poised at the pedal of the machine, glasses halfway down her nose. She moistened the thread in her mouth until it was as sharp as her tongue. Like an expert snooker player, she held it between her fingers and aimed for the eye of the needle. Triumph. The sewing machine whirred up again at the insistence of her foot.

  As Ruki pedalled harder, fuelled by anger, Zaina felt a little uneasy, much like the taut chiffon stretched out under the needle. It was as if the world was pushing down on her, pulling her apart, her secret threatening to burst from her seams.

  Usually, she didn’t mind visiting Aunty Ruki if they met in the corridor, but she regretted having taken the stairs to the roof today and having passed so languidly by the second floor. There was always a chance of bumping into Ruki and then being absorbed into her flat, willingly or unwillingly.

  Durban was like that. It was beautiful, with its azure sea and skies, jade foothills with cool valleys, and striking gold minarets which eternally made shahada to Allah, but it was a small city. In small cities where each street seems sewn onto another, and tempers in traffic seem too large for the narrow roads, isolation is a rare jewel. ‘If you leave your house in Durban, there’s a sixty per cent chance you’ll almost get run over by a taxi and a ninety per cent chance you’ll run into people you know. This goes up to one hundred per cent if you’re dressed poorly,’ Zaina’s best friend, Billy, liked to say.

  Summer Terrace was a microcosm of Durban, with its close quarters and all-too-familiar acquaintances. It could be comforting at times, but today it was claustrophobic. All Zaina wanted was to relax on the roof and try to calm her heart before she met him. She wanted to be cool and composed, and google random nonsense to ease her mind.

  But good Muslim girls didn’t deny an elder, so when Ruki had insisted Zaina come in for a few minutes, she hadn’t had the heart to refuse her invitation. Now, twenty minutes later, torn between duty and desire, Zaina found herself listening to Ruki’s lecture about the lofty status of a neighbour in Islam. She knew it well, almost by heart, after ten years of living in Summer Terrace.

  Zaina nodded sympathetically, allowing herself a few minutes to enjoy the sugary simplicity of the piping-hot kheer Ruki had insisted she tasted, appreciating its soothing almond-infused milkiness.

  Ruki’s antique wooden clock sat on the sideboard and chimed sleepily to signal it was 2.30 p.m. Imraan wanted to meet at 3 p.m. Zaina forced herself out of Ruki’s couch, which was threatening to swallow her whole, and mumbled that she had to leave in a few minutes.

  Ruki’s barrage of complaints faded as she shuffled off to fill a container with kheer for Zaina to share later with Rabia, her mother. Zaina waited by the window and let herself be distracted by the sea as it brandished its foam-tipped waves, like a child with a shining shield-and-sword set waiting to play. Eager joggers bounced along the paved promenade in time to the music playing directly into their ears.

  On fresh Sundays after the early-morning prayer, Fajr, the same stretch would be salted-and-peppered with Muslim men in their white hats and the flowing black cloaks of their wives. Zaina would often catch a glimpse of them from her room, as they passed from one edge of her window to the other. They’d become familiar to her: their styles of walking; the older couple who held hands, and the ones who were newly married and shy. She wondered if they knew she existed, this place existed.

  Zaina thought a lot about space and people. It was one of the side effects of doing her Master’s in architecture. Besides, this building made it hard not to think about these things. Summer Terrace sat a street away from the beach, behind two looming white hotels and a patch of grass that egotistically called itself a park. Two large jacaranda trees framed the entrance to the building. In the spring, when the trees were in full bloom, it looked almost like someone had painted the trees there, on either side of the pale building, dreaming of the lavender Octobers to come.

  Zaina thought about how different the outside of the building was to the inside, and how so many things looked different on the outside compared to how they really were on the inside. Especially human beings. She almost felt guilty.

  The three-storey complex had been built sixty y
ears before for a large, extended family, the Bhoolas, who for some ungodly reason longed to see each other every day, so each of the fifteen flats emerged into a circular corridor. It reminded Zaina of a triple-layered ring doughnut. Mr Bhoola, the balding Hindu landlord, and his sickly wife still lived in a large flat on the top floor. Over the years, his family had scattered across the world and he’d been left this strange circle of a building to care for. Importantly, he maintained the building well.

  He meant well, even if his jokes were stale. He didn’t mind that most of the flats were now occupied by Muslims – they kept their homes clean and paid their rent on time. The fact that they didn’t drink was a bonus. The building, with its converging corridors and communal spaces, felt more like a large home.

  The residents came and went as their routines dictated, the husbands setting off to work while the wives chatted to neighbours across the floors through the doughnut hole. Sometimes the spatial imposition of seeing their neighbours every day was sweet. Other times it was sickly. Mostly, it was just noisy, especially these days, with the impending marriage of Zara, Auntie Julie’s enigmatic daughter, who lived in flat 12 on the third floor.

  Some front doors were always open. Others, like Shirin’s, were firmly closed, mirroring the walls she’d built around herself. Aunty Shaida’s daughters and Laila’s litany of children ran around the building on weekday afternoons as if the structure was their personal jungle gym. Shirin often opened her front door to shoo them away, and often Ruki shouted at them to get indoors for prayer.

  Downstairs, Robert sat in his blue security-guard chair behind the glass doors, in his grey Guardian uniform, answering calls or letting people in on the intercom, recording names in the Visitors’ Book, and silently providing the occupants with peace of mind. He’d never known what he was truly protecting in those flats: Robert had never been in any of them. Yet he knew what had been cooked in them and who had cleaned them, from the old ice-cream containers of leftover food he received and the slow revolving door of maids he grew to know.

  On the ground floor, behind the main building, were the open-air parking bays, bordered by a row of storerooms. Over the years, four of these two-metre-squared rooms had become maids’ quarters. Each offered just enough space for a single bed, a small table for a kettle and a two-plate stove, and a modest cupboard with a cooler box on top of it. Old television sets or bar fridges that had been discarded by the madams were fixed by Robert or Jabu, the window-cleaner, and fitted into the small rooms.

  These cold rooms were hot property among the residents. For some, having a maid ‘live in’ meant that these women didn’t have to travel long distances back home after a day’s work. For others, it was an exercise in convenience: all they had to do was phone their maids when they needed them.

  One of the storerooms doubled as a changeroom for Robert and a space for Jabu’s window-washing equipment and detergents.

  A communal bathroom with a basic shower and toilet sat at the end of the row of storerooms. It was dark and damp, like a mouldy crust nobody cared to look at.

  Many madams had never looked inside these rooms unless they parked their cars in front of them at night and the harsh headlights shone through any open doors. Sometimes, their eyes were drawn to the flickering fluorescence through the bathroom window, but they dared not look inside. They told themselves this was out of respect. You don’t look into someone’s home or into the eyes of another woman’s husband – a Muslim woman had to be modest in her gaze.

  But perhaps they didn’t want to make eye contact with the monster of apartheid, which was still very much alive after three decades of supposed liberation. Its poison still seeped and spilled into the crevices of the country. It breathed fire into the tongues of racists and controlled the hallucinations of many who imagined the past as ‘the good old days’.

  The people had been sold a dream that the monster had been slain, but they didn’t realise that its fetid breath had infected them and the land. The spectre of its ugly head reared often in their hearts, and everyone tried to deal with it as best they could.

  The monster’s giant footprints ran deep and wide into the land, creating pockets of forgotten people on the outskirts of vibrant cities and bustling economies. No matter what they did, how much they tried, most of them couldn’t escape the deep impressions. Those few who did had a hard life in the city, often ending up in squatter camps, hanging their washing, their underwear, their dignity on the side of the road. Some worked as maids in the city, living in small rooms below the feet of their madams, while the lucky ones found office jobs, lived in comfortable homes, and sent money back to those who lived in the footprints in the rural areas.

  The maids’ quarters of Summer Terrace reminded the madams too much of the monster. It was a representation of geographical apartheid, with its ring of royalty and its servants on its outskirts.

  The maids were more than servants, though. Their presence gave everyone a sense of security, and they themselves found some stability in a regular income, the routines of the families they worked for and, above all, the feeling of being needed. There were perks to working for a madam, and a Muslim one at that. They always cooked more food than necessary, so the maids often took supper home. Many Muslim madams also seemed almost hellbent on charity, especially during Ramadaan, the month of fasting. It washed away their sins. Be it old clothes, extra food, time off or cold cash, the month was usually profitable for both parties.

  Whether or not they or their madams realised it, each needed the other to fulfil their roles as mothers, wives and daughters. The madams felt less alone in their roles as homemakers, cooks, mothers. They could complain to their maids, share their sorrows when their children were sick, or leave every day and go to work knowing that their home would be cleaned, their husband’s boxers ironed and the pots washed.

  For many Muslim madams like Ruki, their home was their pride. At the centre of that pride was their kitchen. You could be a CEO, but your fridge must be full and your home must be clean. Angels avoided a home that wasn’t paak. Cleanliness was next to godliness.

  As Zaina saw it, the enemies of Muslim women were:

  1. Shaitaan.

  2. Dirt.

  3. Israel.

  4. Scarf pins that got stuck in scarves.

  While prayer was the main weapon in the war against Shaitaan, the maids were an important soldier in the war against dirt, especially in Summer Terrace, where the sea breezes carried sand and rust.

  And a madam couldn’t hire just any maid. No. The maid needed to be recommended by someone, like a matchmaker. The maid needed to know the difference between paak and napaak, and to not be offended when her madam asked her not to clean her bedroom or touch her prayer mat, which she used five times a day. She needed to know that she couldn’t keep haraam food in a halaal fridge, and that shoes were filthy things, carrying foreign dirt from all kinds of peed-on sidewalks. She had to know that children had to make istinja. She had to know that shoulders and underarms and thighs and hair were meant to be hidden, while hands and feet were allowed to be seen.

  These rules were unspoken. A maid had to learn them either by having another maid teach her them, or by breaking them and facing an angry madam.

  The maids’ quarters was a space for the maids to discuss and learn these things. Having a space to live, paid for by your madam, meant having friends who worked alongside you. Of course, the space was cramped, the roof leaked when it rained, and your madam could call you at any time. But you were in the city. There was no worrying about having to wait endlessly for a taxi to get home, or a daily dangerous commute, or being stranded when there was a taxi or bus strike.

  It was clear that the inhabitants of the maids’ quarters, Thandi, Violet, Sibo, Hlengi and Kadija, missed home. They tried to bring as much of their homes into their rooms as they could, and lined the walls with artwork and pictures of their children and mothers.

  Their days were punctuated with WhatsApp voicenotes an
d video calls from home. These strands of data, the network of taxis, the receipts of money transfers to grannies far afield, school fees for their children, were veins that connected them to home, the imaginary place the madams referred to as ‘the farm’.

  And so the identity of the maids was stretched across borders of towns, the places they called home, and the dreams they had for themselves and their children.

  RUKI’S CREAMY KHEER

  ½ cup basmati rice

  1½ cups water

  1½ litres full-cream milk

  1 tablespoon desiccated coconut

  1 cup sugar or ½ tin condensed milk

  pinch ground cardamom

  2 tablespoons slivered almonds

  1 teaspoon rose essence (optional)

  • Rinse the basmati rice a few times in cold water, then soak it in water for 1 hour. This will stop it from sticking together once cooked and will ensure the rice breaks easily.

  • Transfer it to a small pot and add the water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the rice is half cooked, about 15 minutes. Test it by pressing a grain against the inside of the pot with a spoon: it must be a little firm. Drain excess water.

  • In a deep pot, bring the milk to a boil. Add the half-cooked rice and simmer until the grains become fluffy and start to break easily.

  • Add the coconut, the sugar or condensed milk, and the cardamom, and stir well. Let this simmer on low heat for 20–30 minutes until the mixture is creamy, stirring occasionally to ensure the mixture isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pot.

  • Add the almonds and the rose essence and stir in.

  • Serve warm or ice cold. (Solly likes it ice cold.)

  Serves 4

  2

  THE GLITTERING CITY OF JOHANNESBURG, with its high-rise buildings and equally impressive pay cheques, had enticed Ruki’s children over the last decade, and now madam and maid – Ruki and Joyce – found themselves alone in this apartment complex in Durban. They were together in their nest, and they brooded over Summer Terrace like protective matriarchs, especially when Ruki’s husband, Uncle Solly, wasn’t around.