Fatima Chapter 8 |1974: Shakes the Samurai

In those days lives, families and customs were differently crafted in society, and while they were doing the same things we do now, they did them differently.  Each generation is bound to this cycle.  The Chinese say that it is tradition to break tradition.  The forms of tradition and ritual are complex entities, they are weaved into collective and individual psyches, actions, reactions, processes and objects that surround us, driving us one way or another towards the four corners of our cages.  Members of south African prison gangs in this country call their world ‘die vier hoeke’ and we have similarly metaphoric corners that manufacture the various shapes and shadows of our experiences, while the themes remain the same; love, betrayal, status, jealousy, revenge, slavery, domination, and occasional redemption.   . 

Shakes was born into a large family, who were upper caste orthodox Muslims who had come to South Africa as ‘passenger Indians’.  These were Indians who had paid their own fare to South Africa and had emigrated specifically to start up businesses that could reap the benefits of a large newly settled population of indentured labourers from India, and the opportunities that a new land teeming with resources and activities afforded. 

His father presided over a large extended family and they all lived on the same street on the North Coast of Natal, in sugar cane country.  There were many brothers and sisters, and while little quarrels and differences occurred, they were part of everyday life and there was a middle-class, Victorian dignity about how conflicts were handled.  His father was a busy but kind and gentle man who handled the extended family affairs and was the residing patriarch of the family.  All decisions were passed through him, and he was the leader amongst the group of elders in the family.  He was an excellent role model to those around him and took a personal interest in each and every family member.  He was slow to disapprove and the children of the family loved him dearly while still holding a deep respect for him, which they learnt from the adults around them.

His mother was the love of his life.  She adored him as her youngest and he grew up in her company as a little boy always doted upon and loved by her.  He would sit on her lap as she cleaned dahl, beans or shelled peas on long childhood afternoons.  She was a saint to him; a simple woman with a graceful manner about her, never angering easily or prone to self-pity.  She accepted the path that life opened up for her with a grace and ease that few manage and was the image of charity, never acquiring more than she needed.  She always cleaned out her closet of an old item whenever a new item was acquired for her, leaving her closet always a reflection of her mind, uncluttered by owing too much excess and the proliferation of choice.  She lived simply, ate simply, loved simply and was imbued with a deep wisdom of things because she always stayed focussed on what was most important.  Maybe it was this quality that made Shakes such a good cricketer and batsmen in particular; the ability to stay calm and keep focussed on the task at hand is something he learnt by an osmosis of a kind, just from being around her so much. 

It left him with a kind of essential zen in his nature and this gave him a regal bearing.  It was this nature that most women found irresistible.  He was a calm, highly attractive guy who was a huge success and didn’t flaunt it around.  He treated everyone with the same good natured interest, and while he wasn’t a conversation maker he was always sincere in his interactions.  Sometimes he joked, and one would get a glimpse of the lightness in his mind and the softness of his nature.  It was the seventies and he was a player of sorts, whose philandering was as normal a role to play as his un-touted status as a sportsman.  He was a jock, but not a braggart, and this drew women to him in flocks and droves.  His good looks and high-caste notwithstanding, he was the model fantasy for a new generation of women both in South Africa and abroad.  South African Indian women viewed him as a Bollywood movie star is, lauded and cheered.  It did not sit comfortably with his modest inner nature, but he reaped the rewards of it anyway.  He was a samurai on the field and with women.  His cricket bat and his dick were instruments of desire where he found the deeper parts of himself, explored his creative impulses fully and became more known to himself through spontaneous invention through form.  He loved women; they gave him the comfort of his mother and eased the loneliness of travel, new cities and new faces.

There were many changes occurring in South Africa.  Forced removal had already taken place and the group areas act had already done a good job of separating races from each other physically, psychologically and spiritually. 

The churches had split, with the right wing Nederlandse Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) taking the role of an active agent of apartheid, selling it as a spiritually inspired dream, and the Anglican and Catholic churches on the left, staying true to their original parishes of a mix of black and white citizens.  To the right wing NG Kerk, the Afrikaners were like the Jews, Gods chosen people in Africa who had once made a covenant with God.  The discourse in the other churches was too liberal, the Catholic Church even had communist bishops.  The bishop of Rio, Dom Helder Camara had once said, 

“When I feed the poor they call me a saint, when I ask why the poor are starving they call me a communist.” 

It was the protestant churches that flourished under apartheid however, as they had played an active evangelical role in poorer communities which were isolated from main-stream South Africa and the economy.  These communities had a deep need for knowledge of their place in the world, and in a variety of ways the churches helped people escape the indignity of being brown.  If one was a Christian, one was somehow more acceptable in mainstream society, even though you were still a second class citizen you could still be ‘trusted’. 

Shakes was a Muslim raised in a family where spiritual virtue was paramount.  He didn’t flaunt his spirituality but it was always a strong part of who he was.  He learnt religion from his mother and father.  In Islam, the mothers are the main spiritual teachers to boys and girls.  There is thus a strong maternal influence in the essential spirituality and the love of God and one’s own mother are often intricately interwoven.  A betrayal to God is like a betrayal to one’s mother and vice versa.  The Koran teaches;

“Heaven lies beneath your mothers feet …”

Thus, wherever he was he ensured that his religious obligations as a Muslim were fulfilled through the noon prayer every Friday.  When his mother would die, much later in his life, this would become a deeper way of connecting with her again and he would pray more often.  His prayers ensured his mothers spirit would rest easily, and was his way of showing her his love, despite his greater knowledge of the limitations of a purely spiritual view on the world.  In his world, the secular and spiritual worlds had different junctions and intersections from others but he never missed Friday noon prayers at a Mosque.  To miss three Fridays was to denounce one’s membership to Islam and this was something he could never do, despite his knowledge of different ways of existence.  Even when his travels took him abroad, he found a way to observe this basic rite of piety.

Shakes would break with tradition in a number of ways though.  The first would be when he travelled abroad to play county cricket as a professional in England, refusing to bow to the South African race restrictions on sport that were encoded in law by Dr Verwoerd.  The second would be to marry a woman of lower caste than himself, who was also from a family much poorer than his own.  In Indian tradition, the girls’ family pays for the wedding. 

Being low caste but rich still ensured an acceptability of a kind amongst the higher castes here in South Africa, but a low caste person who was poor was still largely an ‘untouchable’, even amongst Muslims.  In the Muslim Indian community caste was still rife and the lower castes were generically termed ‘Heddroos’ (pronounced quickly as ‘hair-throoze’).  They were Urdu speaking Muslims who had originated from Hyderabad.  The ‘Soorties’ were the upper caste Gujarati speaking Muslims.  They had originated from Gujarat and had mainly arrived in South Africa as ‘passenger Indians’ and had started up their own businesses and bought their own land. 

It was fortunate that Fatima was both Muslim and had Gujarati speaking origins.  It was thanks to their joint faith, Islam, that he was able to bend and break some of the old Indian traditions.  He was a Muslim, and he maintained, was required only to marry another Muslim.  After all, all were equal in Islam.  This ensured the support of his family in his decision, and to his credit, it was their respect for him and not just his achievements that enabled him to get away with this unorthodox arrangement.

The one tradition he kept though, would create a number of unorthodox arrangements throughout his life.  His later philandering during marriage, although adequately discreet, would have a toll on his family that he would never envisage.

In England, there were many girls who took to him quickly, and at the end of the sixties it was still a sexually vibrant environment where sex was regarded as a normal part of dating and interacting with a potential partner.  His sword was always out for action in those days, and it was hard to retreat from battle, even after marriage.  His instincts were still alive, having been cultivated in an environment where the psychology of casual sex and free love were encouraged.  He found it hard to separate this part of himself from the person he would be required to be when married.  Indeed,

“Even Islam acknowledges that a man can have more than one wife.  Why is that?” he thought.

His first trip to the UK had come during his courtship with Fatima.  She had been patient, still at school, awaiting the return of her great love with yearning.  She wrote him regularly and it fed a secret part of him while he was away.  He knew that he didn’t love her less because he had relations with other women as well.  She knew that he probably enjoyed the attention of other women but never entertained herself with the tortuous thought that he may find someone else.  Whenever she received a letter from him she would burst with joy at the slightest affections he wrote down.  Every declaration of love to her and allusions to their future married life together would restore her to her centre, making her stable and secure in his love.  As long as he loved her, she could take on the world – he would be her house built on rock.  He would be the four corners of her existence, providing her with meaning to her boundaries and enduring, constant love and support.  Unfortunately, he didn’t think that being faithful was necessary.  It is understandable why.

By the time he’d laid eyes on her he’d already been abroad and lived in the UK.  This was during the late 60s and he’d been thoroughly exposed to the principles of free love and casual relationships.  It was a changing world ideology and he’d been exposed to it at every level and felt a part of the socio-political winds of change that were sweeping the first world.  He knew that being a man or a woman in this society would mean something different in future, and he strayed from the example set for him by his own parents.  His father and his uncle had married two sisters.  It had been an arranged marriage, and the closeness of each of the siblings to each other guaranteed that they would always be there for each other, and they were to the very end of their days inseparable from each other as a family.  It was their tandem marriage that ensured the survival of the extended family unit, and formed the hub around which the other families revolved.  They brought everyone together.  Much later, when the older generation had begun to die out the extended family would become fragmented and while they were not completely apart, were never really together as they were in the old days. 

Co-location is the key to the success of extended family hierarchies.  When this was later savaged by the various apartheid relocations and removal schemes these family structures fell apart, and with them, their hierarchies and influence over each other decreased.  It increased a feeling of having to be sustainable within ones nuclear family units, rather than depend too greatly upon the extended network.  It wasn’t there every day in your face to remind you of its function in a real and meaningful way.  After all, clans and tribes are like any animal community, they stay together in order to reaffirm collectivist bonds and instincts.  Even sports teams are the same.  Face to face contact is important to maintain normal human relations and intuitions.  Shakes would find himself growing older in a world where his responsibilities were rapidly increasing, family bonds weakening and his cricketing career indelibly tied to the anti-apartheid struggle of the time with all its dilemmas, conflicts, surprises and forgotten promises.  The parts of the family that had managed to remain together would have to become a more dominant priority in his life.  The moment Nadia had been born he had ended his cricketing career and retired from professional sport.  

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