Touching dreams of my ancestors

JOSEPH, the second youngest son of Jacob – one of the three Patriarchs of Judaism – was envied by his brothers.

Their jealousy was rooted in events that had occurred long before they had been born. They might have, over time, been privy to versions of what essentially was a love story happily fulfilled in the life of one and unrequited in that of another.

It was the story of two sisters, Leah and Rachel, and their love for Jacob, their cousin fleeing from the wrath of his elder twin, Esau.

Joseph and his younger brother, Benjamin, were most likely favoured because their mother, Rachel, had been their father’s first, and perhaps his only, love.

Jacob fell in love with Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother.

As part of the process of engagement, Jacob served Laban for a period of seven years. These long years “seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her”.

However, at the end of those years Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah: her veil-covered face privileged her entry into the bridal chamber intended for her younger sister.

The treachery of father and daughter only became apparent in the nuptial bed the following morning.

Custom required that the eldest be married first and so Jacob had to wait a further seven years to secure the hand of his beloved.

But he could not forgive Leah for her part in the deception. Their marriage was an unhappy one and Jacob denied Leah the affection she longed for.

Sadly, Rachel died during the birth of her second son whom she named with her dying breath, “Ben-oni, the son of my sorrow”. Jacob, however, renamed the boy “Benjamin, the son of the south”.

It did not help though that Joseph, the dreamer, was very upfront about the kind of dreams he had and in which he featured in a manner superior to his brothers.

In the one dream the brothers were binding sheaves in the field. The sheaves bounded by Joseph stood upright while the sheaves of his brothers bowed to the sheaf of Joseph.

In another dream which he shared with his sibling, “the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me”.

Over time the attitude of the brothers hardened towards Joseph to the extent that they were amenable to a suggestion he be killed: “Here comes this dreamer. Come now… and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”

Many dreams lie fallow and unfulfilled in our lives. It is because of the way the stories of our past find its way into the present in fractured versions of what really happened.

Our understanding of these varied accounts and the way in which we embrace a particular version of the truth as gospel is often informed by our context, our immediate needs and longing.

Many years ago, probably from about 2001, I would often walk along Loader Street in the now fashionably named “Cape Quarter”.

I would stand outside the house in which my paternal greatgrandmother, Maria Magdalena Stoltenkamp, and successive generations of the Weeder family once lived.

I had never, in living memory, lived in Loader Street in the way I had done in Ebenezer Road, a blok-blok-patile distance east of Somerset Road.

But maybe it’s because the house on Ebenezer Street is no more and the one in Loader Street still stands. Maybe it’s the closest I can come in this life to touching the dreams of my forebears.

I tell this story, and the one about Joseph, so that our children will know this city still belongs to us. That we built houses in which others now live but which we own in our dreams.

On one of my vigils outside the house on Loader Street, the current occupant – I learnt later that he was from California and that he lives in our house for three months of the year – approached and asked if I was looking for something.

“Not anymore,” I replied.