We are scatterlings of Africa

WITH the synchronicity peculiar to the world of reading, I read two books about immigrants this week and one about a woman who lives all alone on an island, a one-woman island the sea is reclaiming, with big cracks appearing in her house. We are all refugees and sojourners, says the Bible. I like to read about people in new, strange circumstances for which they have not yet learnt survival mechanisms. Everything is experienced afresh, as if through the eyes of a child.

Is there anyone who has never thought about emigrating? There must be. World news soon cures me of Fernweh (homesickness for far places) and the exchange rate obliterates any chance of it. My sister is a proud citizen of New Zealand and happy there. I have read Ryk Hattingh's Huilboek and loved it, especially as it contains flashbacks to his youth on the East Rand, his drug problems and anxieties.

Zirk van den Berg posted on Facebook:

About 18 months ago, I wrote a piece about our emigration for the newspaper Vrye Weekblad. Some readers asked for the rest of the story, and now they can read it. LANDUIT [literally “land out", a term for going abroad] is appearing in bookshops in South Africa this week.

Van den Berg kept on writing in Afrikaans from New Zealand, and now his emails to friend and fellow author André le Roux have been published, with connecting text and retrospective insights. There are also emails from his long-suffering wife, Elsabé.

Van den Berg wanted to emigrate because he was afraid of the violence and crime. He could no longer sleep peacefully. He left with very little money, with two small children and a reluctant wife who passionately loved our country. She went on condition that they could return if it didn't work out. He gave her this assurance and broke his promise.

The thing about Van den Berg is he's so startlingly honest that you get to sympathise with him. He sees himself as short and inconspicuous, while his wife is tall and lovely. He is introverted and undiplomatic. He is clumsy and awkward, and experiences emotions differently from other people.

The book's subtitle is “want jy wil mos (because you want to)". Things do not work out, from the start. Work keeps eluding him, even though he goes for hundreds of interviews. He sounds like me in an interview: I can never enumerate my strengths, only elaborate on my weaknesses. They never call back.

Love is a golden thread

The weather is gloomy, the rental houses meager and unheimlich. The children are grumpy and his wife lapses into grief. Yet, like a golden thread throughout the story is the love he and his wife share, the fact that they continue to laugh together. He refuses to give up and go home with his tail between his legs.

He finds freelance copywriting jobs to keep the wolf from the door. After all, he is a wordsmith and his emails bear witness:

A little hope is a dangerous thing.

My two-year-old daughter has a cold. She walks around here and complains: “Oh, no, my nose is running out, my nose is running out."

That then the highlight of my day.

(’n Bietjie hoop is ’n gevaarlike ding.

My dogter van twee het verkoue. Sy loop hier rond en kla: “Ag nee, my neus loop uit. My neus loop uit.”

Dit dan die hoogtepunt van my dag.)

The reader identifies with the author's troubling questions: Is my worth measured by my ability to earn money? And: When you move out of the country, you don't move away from your inherent problems. Yes, you always take yourself along.

The ending, if there can ever be talk of an ending, is happy: The children are grown and well-adjusted, happy Kiwis. He and his wife are still together and still laughing. It's a fascinating document of displacement. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence, but at least there is grass too.

Landuit by Zirk van den Berg is published by Tafelberg and costs R288 at Graffiti.

In the second book, Matriarchs, Meze and the Evil Eye, we have the opposite situation: A Greek extended family who lived in Egypt immigrated to South Africa in the ’60s. From Costa Ayiotis we have already read the irresistible My Big Fat Greek Taverna.

Now we follow little Kostaki from his birth in Minya, Egypt, until they immigrated to South Africa. After an inconvenient rental flat, his father buys a face brick house in Kempton Park, with a large verandah and an empty plot full of fruit trees next to it. The house has to be large, because the household consists of Costa, his father, Stelios, and his mother, Victoria, his father's widowed mother, Yiayia Kalliope, and his father's sister, Aunt Mary, who used to be Maria in Egypt. It's an unholy alliance: The three women are always at each other's throats, or rather, two against one: mother and daughter against daughter-in-law.

War in the kitchen

Costa's mother is vain, stubborn and opinionated, prone to nursing grievances, extremely outspoken. The biggest war is raging in the kitchen. Costa's mother, Victoria, loves exotic dishes while Yaiyia and Aunt Mary prepare only Greek or Egyptian food. The three women are very superstitious and believe in curses and the evil eye that jealous people put on you. It's a never-ending battle.

Aunt Mary is a formidable character with a sharp tongue. She is not quite five feet tall and married to and estranged from a diplomat/spy. She made the KGB tremble in their socks. All three women are obsessed with little Kostaki and want to fatten him up. Food plays a cardinal role and the reader's mouth waters when reading about the elaborate preparation of dishes. Butter and olive oil play a leading role. And, of course, lemon and cucumber. Lamb on the spit.

A comical look at South Africa

It's also a comical look at South Africa in the ’70s, time of my own childhood. The Afrikaans boys have blue eyes and blond brush cuts, they go to school barefoot come winter or summer and bully the English and immigrant children. If you hold your own and beat them up, they respect you and become friendly.

Their neighbour is some inspector at the airport nearby. He wears a uniform and checks the suitcases of incoming foreigners. He confiscates whatever he fancies for himself and spoils Costa's family with part of the loot: chouriço sausages, presunto (Portuguese ham), Serrano ham from Italy, Bayonne ham from France, and Black Forest ham from Germany. Bacalhau (salt-dried fish), exotic cheeses such as gorgonzola, parmigiono, pecorino, provolone, roquefort and stilton; also Katjes liquorice, tins of spekulaas, Swiss chocolate, and marzipan fingers.

This is an irresistible book.

Matriarchs, Meze and the Evil Eye by Costa Ayiotis is published by Melinda Ferguson Books and costs R320 at Graffiti.

The Fabled Earth spans a decade and a half. The main character, Cleo, lives on a one-woman island called Kingdom Come which the sea is steadily reclaiming. She is an artist who trades her watercolour paintings, herbs, and vegetables for provisions from the nearby land. She is attached to the myths, fables and legends that she'd heard from her grandfather. She is a hermit, but suddenly two people from her past show up on the island, separately. The past is being resurrected.

The reader gets a glimpse of her history, how she landed there, on nearby Cumberland Island in southeastern America. All sorts of secrets are exposed to the light of day.

Brock is a born storyteller who sweeps the reader along. It's the Deep South, but don't expect Prince of Tides or Where the Crawdads Sing. There's less melodrama, it's more restrained and dreamy.

The Fabled Earth by Kimberly Brock is published by HarperCollins and costs R278 at Amazon SA.

What are we listening to?

“The Stranger Song" by Leonard Cohen:

♦ VWB ♦

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