Sarah Kay
Issue 12 • March 2014
(This poem begins and ends with the song “Shosholoza,” a Ndebele folk song that some hail as the “unofficial”or “second” national anthem of South Africa. It was sung by migrant workers in South African mines as a song of resistance and solidarity.The very rough translation is: Moving fast, moving strong, through these mountains like a rolling train to South Africa. You are leaving, you are leaving through these mountains like a rolling train from Zimbabwe.)
Shosholoza, ku lezontaba stimela siphume South Africa
Wenu yabaleka, ku lezontaba stimela siphume Zimbabwe
Noor Ebrahim had fifty homing pigeons.
He lived in District Six at the center of Cape Town.
Noor Ebrahim lived with fifty pigeons in District Six
at the center of Cape Town, where there were twelve schools
and the Holy Cross Church and the Aspeling Street Mosque
and the Jews on Harrington Street. With the immigrants and
the natives, the Indians and the Malaya,
the Blacks and the Coloureds. Noor Ebrahim lived with fifty pigeons
in District Six at the center of Cape Town, where there was
Beikinstadt Bookstore and Parker’s corner shop; where you could
buy bread and paraffin for the stove, fish oil, bulls-eyes
and almond rock; where you could walk to the public baths,
pay a ticky, get a fifteen-minute shower, and find yourself between
the gangsters and the businessmen bathing side-by-side, right there,
at the corner of Clifton and Hanover Streets.
Noor Ebrahim lived in District Six at the center of Cape Town.
With fifty pigeons and his family.
Now watch.
Take 1 city: Cape Town. Divide it into 12 districts.
Now take one of them, District 6,
add 70,000 people over time.
Divide that by the Group Areas Act of 1950
and you wind up with what?
I will give you a hint. It is the same as if you were to divide by race.
So you are left with a remainder of 1 Apartheid Government
and 1 declaration of 1966 which stated that from now on District 6
would be officially recognized as a designated whites-only area.
So no more Hanover Street with the thick smell of curry
coming from Dout’s café, and no more Janjura’s groceries,
Maxims sweeterie, Waynik’s school uniforms, and the sound of
children. Shoppers. Merchants. Buses. Laughter. Song. No.
At the end of all that, you are left with only bulldozers.
Leveled buildings. Razed land. Broken glass and brick.
Not even phantoms will haunt this ghost town,
because even their floating figures are not white enough.
Noor Ebrahim moved the ten kilometers to Athlone.
He packed fifty pigeons into their cages and left District Six
at the center of Cape Town. He left the Peninsula Maternity Home
where hundreds of coloured babies were born every year
and the soda fountain where you could sit and watch the ladies bring
their laundry down to the public wash house three times a week.
He left his house on Caledon Street.
Noor Ebrahim left his home on Caledon Street in District Six
at the heart of Cape Town and moved the ten kilometers to Athlone.
He lived there for weeks. Driving, sometimes,
past the empty pit of land where District Six no longer stood.
The winds blew hard, and they swept through the dust and the dirt
and the broken glass until every blade of grass bent
beneath the weight of what was no longer there.
After three months, the droppings at the bottom of the birdcages
had become three layers thick. Noor Ebrahim decided it was time
to let the pigeons fly free—fly free so they could find their way back.
He knew that not all of them would return that night.
He knew that the next morning, some of those cages
might not be as full. But he also knew that sometimes gravity
can become a little too comfortable.
So that morning, Noor Ebrahim opened the doors on the cages,
and the winds that swept through Cape Town swept through and
lifted all fifty pigeons up into the air in a cloud of feathers, as if to say,
It does not matter how long we have been kept in cages.
It does not matter how strong your gravity is.
We were always meant to fly.
That night, Noor Ebrahim returned from work.
He turned off the car, went around to the back of the house, and
cried out in pain. Not a single bird had come back to him.
The cages were lined with droppings and feathers, but no pigeons.
The man who had watched them level his house to the ground
without shedding a single tear, now felt his mind go cloudy and his
ribcage felt as empty as the ones the birds had abandoned.
He got back into the car to take a drive and clear his mind.
As he drove down the long streets of Cape Town,
the wheel moved beneath his hands and he found himself
on the abandoned roads of District Six.
As he reached Caledon Street, Noor Ebrahim slowed to a stop.
Because there on the empty plot of land where his house once stood,
were pigeons. All fifty of them.
Standing amongst the dust and the dirt and the broken glass,
looking up at him as if to say, Where is our home?
South Africa. We sing a song of strength.
We go on like a rolling train forever.
We never let gravity become too familiar.
Because we were always meant to fly.
Shosholoza, ku lezontaba stimela siphume South Africa
Wenu yabaleka, ku lezontaba stimela siphume Zimbabwe