Last words from Karin Brynard

This time every year, one’s life becomes a hectic rush towards the festive deadline, writes Karin Brynard. And quiet rest becomes the stuff of dreams.

One of the reasons why I love the Kalahari is for its silence. Come mid-December and the earth lies bleached and flattened by the heat, all life retreats into inert silence. Birds sit motionless in the green depths of the camel thorn trees, their beaks agape to cool the blood. Even insects scuttle for the shelter offered by a leaf, a stone or bush, waiting quietly for the heat to pass.

Closing your eyes, you’ll sense the hushed arrival of the silence. For it has presence, a quality of being. Like an unseen person entering one’s personal space, turning up out of nowhere and merging with the rhythm of one’s breath, the beating of one’s heart.

Many people find it hard to be with silence – those awkward pauses in a conversation, when loadshedding shuts off all machines and the TV darkens, becoming mute and dumb.

These folks get restless, anxious, even panicked or depressed. They desperately seek the reassuring sounds of life. Not me, though. Silence attracts me, settles me, anchors me. It leadeth me along still waters, restoreth my soul.

For silence contains the wisdom of the ages, as was explained to me some years ago during an unusual sermon – a sermon without words. Imagine: a red Kalahari dune. The shade of a camel thorn tree. A San-elder, old and grizzled. And I. Sitting on the bare sand. No word exchanged between the two of us.

Only silence.

I was there doing research for a novel. The old man was Oom Dawid Kruiper, the late leader of the Khomani-San. I asked him about the wise ways of the San people of old. He spoke for a while but at a certain point his voice trailed off and then it simply stopped. He said no more. I took it to be the end of the interview and started, rather sheepishly, to gather up my little tape recorder and cameras. Sit, juffrou, Oom Dawid gently ordered. So I did.

The oom remained silent. And so did I. Three quarters of an hour passed, an hour in the end. It felt peculiar, sitting in the bare sand and keeping shtum. I fidgeted, checking my phone (no signal this deep into the dunes). And then something changed. I felt it in my body, my breathing settling down, and in my heartbeat, steady and calm. Above our heads the soft sighs of the shifting branches of the ancient camel thorn. A feathery wind caressed the red sands and its spindly grass. The veld had turned into a cathedral with Oom Dawid ministering from the pulpit of the dunes, taking the lesson from the wing beat of the humble grasshopper.

I listened. And I understood.

Suddenly, I was transported back to a hot Christmas holiday from my childhood in the Karoo. We were camping in a thicket of thorn trees somewhere on a farm. After lunch, we would all take a little nap and a dozy hush fell over the camp. And then came the awareness of the honeyed smell of thorn tree gum, the sound of finches stirring in their nests above our heads. All about us there was wilderness, but I felt safe and gently held by it. I belonged not only here among my kin, but in the snug embrace of these huddling trees and on this land, this earth. I knew my place in the silent universe.

Don’t get me wrong. I do love sound, the life-affirming joy of music pumping, of people’s shouts and laughter, a raucous taxi rank, even bloody Jingle Bells blaring in the shops this time every year. After my husband’s death, people kept on asking how I endured the sudden silence in our house. But silence is what

I miss the most, I’d say. The pair of us could really talk – long, deep, sweet conversations. I miss it, but I miss our bonded silences more. Sitting quietly by a fire or on the stoep, reading

– in intimate communion.

At Christmas time in Stellenbosch, the town empties out. My neighborhood goes quiet. I’ll decorate a Christmas tree for my family coming for Christmas lunch. Afterwards, I’ll sit outside and watch the heat waves dancing on the flaming strelitzia. And in that stillness the Christmas message will arrive, of peace on earth and goodwill unto all – in holy quietude.