The Heroine’s Journey – The One About Mamma PART ONE

It’s 6 months now since Mamma’s janaaza, her funeral. “Do you miss her?” people ask. When you bury your mother, you don’t just miss her. There’s a part of me that got buried with her and is now also gone forever. The days that followed her janaaza came with painful, tormented memories of the last few weeks of her life in Ward F7 at Groote Schuur Hospital, where she was in a coma on life support and in palliative care until she maningal’d (died). In the dreams I had of her the nights following her death, she was also fast asleep. Unalive in almost every shape and form. So unlike who she was when she was actually alive: warm, expressive, engaging, robust.

So you can imagine how I compensate for her absence in the house: I lost myself and disappeared into her over the last 6 months, so I could stay close to her. I wore her denim shirts, the ones that were hanging behind my bedroom door. I literally stepped into her shoes and found a pair of her beige, bedazzled slippers under her bed that fit me, even though we wear different shoe sizes. For Eid/Labarang this year, the soutvleis was left to cook in the pot for a whole day with seasoning. Mamma’s style.

People refer to me now like I’m the New Awaatief. They comment a lot on how I look like her. Family and friends look in my direction for the last word or approval on things which she’d give. Because Mamma was a matriarch. She’s the person in the family who took the lead with family affairs, and she always knew what to do. She had knowledge of Islam and could advise accordingly, she could lead salaah (prayers), she could make opening dua (prayers) at grand events. She would be the one to switch the radio on when it was time for the Athaan (call to prayer). She was the malboet, the one who would call to inform everyone that family members are sick, or if there was a janaaza. She was the trustworthy, competent mahram (elder, chaperone) you’d want next to you when you’re making important life decisions that affect you and your family.

So I’m supposed to take this as a compliment, you know, when people look to me like they looked to her. Klein Awaatief must rise to the occasion. There’s mos a reason I fit so comfortably into those beige, bedazzled size 4 slippers even though I wear a size 6. But you see, now we’ve moved past the 6-month mark. The memories of her on life support are now fading. She’s now alive and awake and vivid in my dreams. Just last night in my dreams, she looked me straight in the eye, the first time I felt her gaze since she went into that coma. Mamma told me 2 things last night. Allah will reunite us one day, and she instructed me to wake up for Fajr (sunrise prayers).

With her sense of aliveness returning, I now feel her presence in the house again. The funny way she’d walk to the toilet like she was dragging along a wooden leg. The sound of her own feet in those beige, bedazzled slippers. And her teacup, the size of a soup bowl. She liked to drink large cups of Rooibos tea with two teabags left in them, no milk or sugar. Her masala collections in the kitchen, enough to season our cooking for a year or more. All the natural remedies came from the late Uncle Cedric’s shop in Athlone. Yes, I drink Uncle Cedric’s herbs. No, I don’t drink out of her cup. And I’m also comforted by the lyrics of the songs that remind me of her: Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

I find myself muttering a eulogy of some sorts to myself about her. The story of Mamma that only I know because I am her only daughter. How happy she was at her first UNISA graduation in 1998 when she completed her BA degree. That was the happiest, the most joyful I’ve ever seen her alive. She broke an intergenerational curse that day by taking back her power, the power removed from her when she had to quit her studies at a younger age because of the socio-economic circumstances she and her family faced during the apartheid era.

After the graduation ceremony, I asked her, “Mamma, where are we going now?” and she responded enthusiastically, “We’re going to have tea and cake!” Like having tea and cake on your graduation day was a well-earned Queen’s feast. Like what else would you possibly want to do on this here, this weekday in 1998, when you could also skip school for a day and dress up in your Labarang best to see your Mamma on the happiest day of her life. And then 16 years later, I walked across the stage of the now Jakes Gerwel Hall at UWC with my own BA degree in my hand. Mamma capped me at the end, a privilege and honour I enjoyed with her being a staff member at the university who could join the academic procession that evening in March 2013. Boom! Another generational curse broken.

There were other tributes that came through about Mamma. From people who knew or worked with her when I was a child or before I was born. It’s an eerie feeling hearing people give testimonies about her that I cannot account for. Like from a colleague who worked with her at AMC Classic back in the day, when she was a secretary before her graduation and journalism career took off. Or when her second cousin, who used to work with Aumie, Mamma’s mother, and they would travel together from Walmer Estate to her place of employment in Salt River. My number was mos on Mamma’s janaza notice that went out on WhatsApp, so now I am on the receiving end of all these messages.

A good friend of mine put it so accurately when she spoke of the tension I feel, “knowing that a woman who in many ways belonged to so many people, who was a feature in so many homes”. The Voice of the Cape radio station put out a tribute about Mamma on the morning of her janaza on-air and also on social media, honouring her contributions as former VOC Board of Trust member and VOC News and Current Affairs presenter. They referred to my Mamma as a “trailblazer” who became “the first lady to serve as vice-chairperson of the Muslim Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)” and ended with “her contributions to the transformation and governance of VOC will forever be remembered”. But they forgot to add that Mamma also got invited to travel to Somaliland in 2001 and to Palestine with the Muslim Judicial Council in 2004 as a result of being a VOC journalist.

The year Mamma went to Somaliland, we only had one TV in the house. 9/11 broke out. Mamma and I were competing for the TV remote. I was trying to watch my TV Sitcoms on SABC 1, and she was trying to catch the news as research for her drive-time radio programme in the morning. My 7 pm comedy TV time was my playground, the place where seeds were planted for, as it turned out, the stories I wrote later (South African Actress Zenobia Kloppers calls me a “funny writer”). But what Boeta Gasant Fridie didn’t say in his VOC tribute is that Mamma achieved those accolades because she got dibs on that TV remote that night. Something I’m still upset about!

Sometime before Mamma’s 100 days – a Cape Malay Muslim event to commemorate the number of days since her passing – Daddy and I sat down with Mamma’s professor to discuss the Master’s degree programme she was studying at the UWC History department documenting the history of Cape Muslim women studying the Qur’an. I’m heartbroken that she did not finish. I looked forward to seeing her take to the stage again like she did on her graduation day in 1998, and taking time out of her retirement to finish the work of her life. Mamma was on a study holiday with her friend in Hermanus, writing her thesis chapters when she fell making wudhu (ablution), a fall which led to her death. A prologue to her thesis is now open on my desktop. Her personal library with books by Shakespeare, Achmat Davids and Edward Said is still on the shelf in the other room. Again, people look to me for an answer on how her work will finish.

Recently, I started a Facebook LIVE channel titled The Heroine’s Journey, inspired by The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. Tuesdays at 8 pm. I’m slowly experiencing a Return to the Self, so I can pick up the heroine’s journeys inside of my playwriting as well. Mamma’s beige, bedazzled slippers are still under my bed. And my boentjie bredie comes out exactly like hers, even though she never really taught me how to cook. But I haven’t worn her denim shirts in a while. My red coat now hangs behind my bedroom door where her denim shirts used to be. I’m learning to find safety again in my own clothing, my own skin, my own life. You can’t map out any heroine’s journey without first acknowledging your own, the heroine in me and also the heroine whose womb I once rested in.

Back when I was living abroad for the first time, Mamma sent me a WhatsApp text saying: “I told Snowflakey, Tashnemy is faaaar away from us”. Now, Snowflake and Mamma are both far away from me in another world. I imagine she’s telling Snowflakey the same thing again she said to me in that text message, while they both restfully hang out in a garden, Mamma reciting the Qur’an with no disturbances, Snowflakey resting at her feet, this time Mamma reminding her of what she told me in my dream last night: Allah will reunite us one day.

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