Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Lone avacado tree evokes sense of longing and sadness
District Six is remembered through many things; some still growing
1950, finally left the home in Albert Street the family had lived in since 1957 in September, 1980. That was quite late in the day in the gathering destruction of District Six.
“I never thought that day would come,” he remembered. “For us, for the people living here, this was our whole life… everything we did, we did here.” He paused. “When you finally left knowing you were not coming back... that was not nice.”
The house, a consolidated property that stretched from Albert Street, facing the city, to Ellesmere Street, facing Devil’s Peak, belonged to Fataar’s uncle, Ebrahim. The extended family included Fataar’s mother and father, Alie and Mariam, one set of grandparents, Goosain and Kulsum, his siblings Mastura, Rashieda, Shafiq and Nazeema, and three cousins, one of whom, Sadiek, who was about his age, was his closest playmate.
Where the older members of the family loved the avocado for its shade, sitting on a bench on the stoep, for the children, it was part of a busy life of play, and mischief.
“We used to climb up the tree and get on to the roof... we weren’t really allowed to play
living here, this
was our whole
life... everything
we did, we
in the tree, but we did it anyway,” he grinned.
“I quite enjoyed climbing up there, but everybody got upset when we did it.”
The tree was also a favourite site for hide and seek.
More often than not, though, the playground was the street – Albert Street, until there were complaints about the racket the kids were making, which would then prompt them to go round the back to Ellesmere, which was quieter. Only one house had its entrance there.
“You could kick a ball against the wall and nobody would complain.” As little children, the games were kennetjie, blikkies and bok-bok, but as they got older, cricket, soccer and rugby took over. The family had been living in Albert Street for less than a decade when the Group Areas Act declaration that spelled the death knell of District Six was issued in February 1966.
It’s a testament to the dogged resistance of residents that the Fataars were still living there in 1980.
By then there were bulldozers tearing houses down all round.
The family found a house in Bo- Kaap, and moved there. Fataar recalled how, as an occasional jogger, he’d compulsively return to District Six, now all but flattened.
“For a long time, there was just one house still standing, in Smart Street, quite near where we used to live.
“People called it ‘the little house on the prairie’,” he chuckled.
I wondered aloud if he’d ever want to return.
“Right now? I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be the same. I think for people who have been staying out in the townships, coming back is better, they get a piece of property, a place of their own.”
He added thoughtfully: “Most of the people who lived here long to come back because of the way it was. Whether it will be the same... I doubt that. But they long for it.”
to move
It is clear Fataar, now a resident of Crawford, has never been immune to the longing.
He remembered how, travelling home on the train from work in Elsies River, he’d make a point of picking out the mosque, the Galielol Raghmaan Jamaa masjid, built in Ellesmere Street in 1908 – which, like the avocado tree, still stands.
“I’d pick it out and know that’s where I lived.”
On one occasion, he recalled, he looked up in the gathering dark.
“It was prayer time... and I saw the light burning up there, the light on mosque. I got quite excited – and felt a bit self-conscious afterwards in case anyone had seen me. But at that moment, I was filled with e xcitement, thinking, ‘Yes, there’s still somebody up there!’”
The interview done, Fataar hesitated near the photographer’s car, and turned back, lifting his hands to his forehead to cup his eyes from the sun. He was looking at the tree again, some distance away now, its solitariness one of the most shaming things I had seen for a long time.
“It must make you sad,” I offered, immediately recognising I was willing him to say one last thing. He paused, without turning to face me, as if what he had to say he must say to the tree. “Yes,” he said finally. “It does. Remembering what it was.”
‘For us, for the
‘For a long time
we refused
until it became
clear that
everyone was
leaving.’