Let us pray, right after we bop

Some years ago, I wrote a column about Friday the 13th, hotels without 13th floors, aeronautical engineers who design planes without a Row 13 and other general hocus pocus. In the interests of fairness, and to piss off folks like the Rev Kenneth Meshoe who take themselves way too seriously, I threw in a snide remark about folks who snigger at “archaic superstitious beliefs” but “munch on wafers and sip on Sedgwick’s Old Brown Sherry” every Sunday in the belief that they are eating the Body and Blood.

Don’t be mad at me. I get paid a bonus for every reader I piss off. We all have to dance for our respective suppers. Anyway, my e-mail inbox was flooded with an avalanche of e-mails from Bogota to Cofimvaba. One of them was from a nun who saw fit to respond to my 800-word column with a 1,200-word tirade, complete with quotes from St Francis of Assisi, who happens to be one of my favourite saints.

My point is that because of such columns I have gained notoriety as an atheist and, in particular, an anti-Christian. I’m neither of those things. The best description of my spiritual status quo is maybe — and I mean maybe — an agnostic cultural Catholic. But that’s a story for another day.

This brings us to a fascinating episode in the long-running soapie that is my Uber trips. On Monday afternoon before the Heritage Day farce I hailed an Uber from Kaya House. The driver was the most pleasant, charming and gorgeous Somali chap. Toxic heteronormative masculinity prohibits me from saying these things, but the man was simply beautiful.

And then he started playing songs from a playlist that his VW Polo stereo displayed as “’90s and 2000s Block Party”. Ja Rule, Eminem, DMX, Lil’ Wayne, TI, 50 Cent, Kanye West etcetera. The hip-hophead that I am, I was bopping my head to every tune.

When we arrive at home around 6.30pm, he sheepishly says to me, “I hope you don’t mind, but I must pray now.”

I was a bit perplexed. Why would I mind? How had I given off those anti-Christ, atheist vibes during the hip-hop concert? It was not until he opened the boot of his car, whipped out his Sajadat (prayer mat), handheld compass and taqiya (prayer hat) and went down on his knees in my driveway that the penny dropped.

After he opened the door for me, my lastborn son Sihayo looked at me with deep concern in his eyes, “Dad, why is there a man kneeling on our driveway?” So I explained as best I know about Salah (Islamic prayer). I know dangerously little about it except for the little bit I gleaned from

Toxic heteronormative masculinity prohibits me from saying these things, but the man was simply beautiful

my neighbours when I lived on 85 Winston Road in Homestead Park in 1994, a stone’s throw from the Jumuah Masjid. The delicious irony about this address is that it was a Catholic commune. Yet another story for another day.

After digesting this information for about five seconds, Sihayo muttered under his breath, “Oh, I guess Mo Salah’s surname means ‘prayer’ then?”

I shrugged and reached for the liquor cabinet, trying to reconcile the pimps, hustlers and ho’s soundtrack of my Uber ride with the man kneeling on my driveway. “Perhaps his Ebonics English is not that good” was the conclusion I came to.

This experience got me thinking about my own spiritual journey and why I have morphed into the lapsed Catholic that I am.

Reading too many books is not helpful in cultivating a wholesome, unwavering faith. Too many questions abound. At least that is the horse dung I spew when people ask me why I don’t go to church.

This is because I cannot handle the truth. And the truth is that I simply lack the discipline to be an honest, God-fearing Catholic man without hectic internal conflict. The Ten Commandments are a little too demanding for me. I fail miserably at avoiding all seven deadly sins — pride, greed, lust, wrath, sloth and envy — except for gluttony because I don’t eat much. But if gluttony incorporates too much gin-andjuice, I’m guilty of that, too.

Also, I lack the requisite low levels of irony to mouth the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” with a straight face.

However, when I do rediscover my faith and re-enter the path of righteousness, I’ll write about it and how I was bopping to the sound of The Notorious B.I.G, spitting rhymes about pimps and ho’s, on my way to Holy Mass.