Staying faithful to Earth

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Home is where the haunt is

Ghosts, like people, tend to be attached to a particular place. The term ‘to haunt’ in English has three linked meanings. First, for a ghost to manifest itself at a place regularly: a grey lady who haunts the chapel. Second, to be persistently and disturbingly present in someone’s mind: the sight haunted me for years. Third, to frequent a place often and repeatedly: that’s his old haunt. Home and haunting go hand in hand. Ghosts don’t haunt an entire city. They haunt a specific house, a dwelling, usually assumed to be the place where they died.

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Baba

Poetry A friend suggests a psychologist, but my grandmother was a house witch, her mother the thirteenth child of the thirteenth child. Knock twice on the cards...

Up for debate

In ConversationDebate emphasises different ideals. You are forced to argue for positions you don’t believe and, regardless of your stance, you learn always to consider the opposing perspective. That is quite literal: after preparing your case, you turn to a different sheet and write the four best arguments for the other side or mark up your argument for its flaws and inconsistencies. Paper and pen. That is countercultural at a time when we expect a tight nexus between speech and identity, and I think there is something to be gained from such role-play.

Religion as resistance

Non-fictionIn their youth, my parents participated in the anti-apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers. At one of these schools, my teenaged mother challenged a teacher for making a racist comment and subsequently chose to leave the school when they backed the teacher instead. My father’s father was a Shaykh, his uncle an eminent Islamic scholar known across both the Cape and wider South Africa. In their youth, my parents participated in the anti-apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers.

A meditation on our planetary kin in the universe

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