It’s not you, it’s me

It may have a heart of gold, but Firdose Moonda has decided it’s time to ditch her native Joburg

Orhan Pamuk still lives in the building where his mother first held him

SORRY, Jozi. I’ve moved on. We both know it was time. You’ve had me since the day I was born, in Lenasia, an area demarcated by apartheid for people of my race. You had me through my childhood in Troyeville, on the edge of your once-magnificent, then best-avoided and now-stirring downtown, and you had me as an adult in Rosebank and Illovo, our own creative capital.

You’ve done all the big things with me: learning to walk, drive, fend for myself. Graduating, starting a career, marrying.

You were even there with me when I travelled, because you were the end point of every journey. You welcomed me with open arms each time I returned — even from places I declared much better than you. I don’t think you minded that. Why would you? You are “a world-class African city” after all.

You even have a subway these days. The first place it took me was the airport, but I’m sure that wasn’t a subtle ruse to get rid of me. It was a sign of progress. The place I’ve come to now has only an elderly overground rail network. It’s affordable and people use it. But still — how backward.

You and I would smirk together when we thought of Cape Town. It’s so slow, we’d say. Tell me about it. That great hulking mountain’s only purpose is to get in the way of what might have been a perfectly good office park or an expanse of cluster homes. And as for the wind! How’s a girl supposed to maintain a hairdo? I’ll have an answer for you in a few months.

I may also have some other answers by the time we meet again. I’ve been told that leaving the city of your birth is the only way to truly grow up. With my fourth decade looming over me more menacingly than the flat rock that dominates my new skyline, I thought it was time to become a big girl.

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author, disagrees. He still lives in the building where his mother first held him in Istanbul. His relationship with his home city is obsessive. He has written a whole memoir about it, but most of it is so soaked in melancholy, it is difficult to know whether Pamuk loves Istanbul or just loves to be miserable in it.

And Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect, would be disgusted by the theory that grown-ups have to fly the nest. He spent all of his days in and around Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter — he refused to leave the city, even if his work demanded it, until he was killed by a tram on a road he crossed almost daily.

Spanish footballer Jesus Navas would think I was beyond brave. He suffers from chronic homesickness. It affected him so badly he was unable to accept national call-ups because they required spending too much time away from Seville. Once, at a train- ing camp just an hour away in Huelva, he became so agitated his father and brother had to go and pick him up.

Navas started getting over the condition when he joined Spain’s 2010 World Cup squad in South Africa. How sweet that we did something for him — and now he can live in the UK, in Manchester, playing for that well-heeled team in light blue.

Jonathan Trott would think my impulse was absurd. The English cricketer abhors long tours which take him away from his adopted Birmingham. Yes, Trott is originally from Cape Town but, like you, Joburg, he does not think much of the place. He once declared he prefers Birmingham to the city of his birth, irrespective of the weather. Having seen Birmingham up close, I think Trott is the absurd one.

At least there is one group of people who will unanimously approve of my decision — my Zimbabwean friends. Not one of them has not lived somewhere else. The political and economic situation in that country has forced between three and five million from their homeland. Most cannot see themselves returning no matter how much they may want to, so they have created pockets of home elsewhere. They call London Harare North.

“We live transient lifestyles,” one of them told me not long ago. “And that’s how we learnt to adapt to living just about anywhere.”

That may be the real skill involved in maturing, being able to move on without too much drama, while still embracing the delicate emotions that come with uprooting oneself. There is the inevitable reminiscing. There may be some regret. There may be some relief.

For me it comes to this: for all your smells, sights, sounds and stresses, Johannesburg, you are splendid. But now home has moved from the heart to the mountain. Don’t hate me for saying this, but it doesn’t seem too bad. LS