Inspiration from the recycle bin

Don't ask too many questions. Just read!

When they first met, it was in a chat room at a time when the cosmos were in full bloom. I know, dicey places those. But you see, she is of a different generation. A generation where being a computer geek is considered cool. Where conversation with The Parents that involves grunts and nods is considered more than adequate –some kids never have any conversation with the parents except the kind that sounds like, ‘mummy, I need 200. My cell phone is out of airtime’. Where hair irons and hair gel are fashion must-haves and everyone looks like some long lost relative of someone else. Just go to Fordsburg Square on a Saturday night. You’ll see what I mean.

He called himself Indian-Boy. Wow! She went as Indian-Girl. Soul mates! She could feel it in her bones, all of which jut out in all the right places. Clearly she has heard someone in Hollywood say, “You can never be too rich or too thin.” She’s working on the rich bit. He’d better fit the bill.

It has never occurred to either of them that Indian boy/girl – these are more than just misnomers (is there a word like misno-whopper-mer?)- , since both of them have never seen India – the real village India with the cows in the houses – and neither are they likely to. Oh they see India- The Bollywood India – which often doubles as chaars in Holland – speaking Eeenglish -; or chaars in Australia speaking ‘Mate’; or chaars in Thailand speaking…wait for it – more Eeenglish.

So that settles it, they’re Indian – South African, fifth generation, so 100% Indian that they do not understand a word of Gujarati. What would Bollywood be without subtitles (sigh)?

The conclusion is obvious. They must get married - after it was ascertained through calls from one haga to another, via this second cousin of a cousin, that his family – they’re more than just rich. They swim in ghee, and considering the price of ghee, that is not something to sneeze at.

No one gives a toss that he’s not yet 21, or that she is still in matric. Everyone is just too relieved that the poyri found a hara Muslim poyra. Not some Dhori who would have to be converted and definitely not a Malay boy with a surname like Gabriels. How, you tell me, would Rajaa Gabriels sound?

And everyone is over that moon that the poyri did not need the services of Marie Stopes. Abortion is legal, you know! Not that she would ever have been at risk, see. She has been known to mistake his - erm, you know, for a cell phone in his pocket during one of his previous visits when they did more than just talk. She's one of the 'good girls'. The ones who are kept on a leash so short that they have never known what a sleep-over entails. See the inside of a nightclub! Never!

Yes, better that they get married. Terrible times, these are to live in. Our children, they are getting lost. Apartheid was better. It protected us.

And so, without so much as a hurricane warning, a hurricane of Katrina proportions is unleashed on her home.

And she survives. Rajaa bint Abu Bakr ibn Uthmaan Sultan – yes, that’s what appears in her passport (though how Mr Sultan and his pretentious wife got the whole ibn and bint thing right remains a mystery, consigned to the annals of Bermuda Triangles and Highway Shielas, since South African Muslims are famous for their fluent recital of Arabic and complete lack of understanding thereof) – she has survived the whole run up to the wedding. And not just any wedding. An Indian wedding.

She has survived Julie Fois snubbing when her parents had gone to do the inviting. What was wrong with her family that they invited only the parents and their kids and not Julie Foi’s in laws? She has not seen the drama. She has eyes for one face only. That of her husband-to-be whose nights are tormented by images of her virgin flesh being caressed by his callused hands – he hates lotions of any sort, they make him sweat.

She has survived Asma Khala’s argument with her mother about how big the pies for the wedding should be. She has not heard it. She has ears for one voice only. That of her husband-to-be who has kept her up into the wee hours of the morning as he waits for her to put the phone down before him as proof of how much more he loves her. . You put down…no you put down.

‘I’m a survivor, I’m going to make it…’ the chorus of the trashy song repeats itself somewhere in her subconscious, wedged between wondering what the ‘first night’ - that mystery shrouded in musallahs and white sheets - and the nikaah – presently being performed at the masjid will be like.

What if he says no, instead of the qubiltuha wa nakahtuha line, she wonders. He’s been practicing it, she knows. He’s told her the line over and over. Softly whispered it down kilometres of Telkom cable – thankfully it wasn't stolen during that time - into her steadily warming ear. In a language we all understand, it means, I accept her and have taken her into my nikaah (i.e. married her).

“You ready?” Moon-faced Nahla – the Sultans have a knack for regal names. She stops. Stares for a moment. “Wow!” She breathes. And in her mind she says, I want to look just like you when I get married. Like too many Indian girls her age, her ambitions in life seldom venture beyond the six foot walls of a house in a more-trees-than-people suburb and two children strapped up in designer prams.



So this is what's been forcing its way onto the keyboard. I say 'forcing' since I really don't have the time these days. And 'recycle bin'? - you figure that one out...