Author: saaleha

I am a writer and photographer (look up my work on www.shootcake.com) based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I have an MA in Creative Writing from the university currently known as Rhodes. My writing accolades include winning the 2014 Writivism Short Story Prize and the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize for my debut collection, Zikr.

Illilliqa

Some of the things I will miss:

  • Walking everywhere at anytime without having one of my hands pat a can of pepper spray
  • Halaal everything
  • www.otlob.com
  • Egyptian halwayat (a key contributor towards the development and nurturing of my third chin)
  • Late night shopping
  • Interesting shopping
  • The kindest, massive-hearted, deep-souled people: Dina, Mae, Dana and their families, Bibi and her buddies
  • The cool old and the cool new; the different textures of Cairo
  • Getting around on the Metro
  • Fresh juice (my favourites are sugarcane and watermelon) at LE1 a pop from the shop around the corner
  • The flat breads
  • Cheap nutella
  • Decent taxi drivers
  • City living
  • The photo ops
  • The stories I could pluck out of the air

 

Some things I’ll be glad to give a miss:

  • The tap water
  • Leaky plumbing
  • The dust
  • The smog
  • The litter (these people need a massive zap-it-in-the-zibi campaign)
  • The crazy driving
  • Playing chicken everytime we need to cross a road
  • Dodgy taxi drivers

 

Will add to this as stuff occurs to me. It’s been a wowsome four months. Our Arabic tongues aren’t quite as fluid as we’d like but this made for a great start.

In my reductionist world…

…there is no honour killing, only honourable living.
No woman is forced in to or out of a burka.
The mind is valued over the mob.
We celebrate the fi6nah in our mothers over the fitnah.
We walk our own paths towards the Divine, without pissing on the roadsides of others.
We do not take knives to the genitals of our daughters.
We allow everyone their right to love.

TBC.

(note: ‘fitnah’ with an empty mouth ‘taa’ could translate as ‘sedition’, whereas ‘fitnah (fi6nah)’ with a rounded and full mouthed ‘taw’ could translate as ‘perspicacity’.)

The Buried

It was 3 AM and I was digging a hole in the desert.
Christa stood next to me.
In the torch light, she was a fidgety monster patting a bundle in her arms.
“Is it done yet Tess?”
Her voice was gritty in the smooth silence.
“Almost there hun, you just hang on.”
She went back to poking at the swaddle and cooing in delirium.
“Uh-huh, I’m so sorry baby, I’m so sorry. Momma’s gonna try and make this better you hear? I’ll be better next time. I’m so sorry.”
I’ve been here three times before; digging holes for Christa in the desert.
You could call me a good friend.
Dependable. Complicit. Fucking insane.
Continue reading The Buried

Ummi

My parents would have been married 28 years today.

I wonder if I would have truly known my mother’s strength had my dad not been taken away.

Widowed at 27, she shouldered her world so squarely, so boldly. She is my daleela, my minaret.

I turn 27 this year, nowhere near the woman she was then and the woman she is now.