Category: Blog

My name is Saaleha Bamjee

I could have been a Sakinah, a Qur-atul-Ayn or a Naseeha.

Had I popped into this world Y-chromosomed and cocksure, I may have been named Dhul Qarnain.

My folks settled on Saaleha; pronounced Saw-li-ha with the h sound emanating from the throat, exactly like when you have to hock up that annoying bit of phlegm.

The name Saaleha means Good even Pious. My parents hoped.

The original spelling of my surname has an H after the A, but for reasons unknown, it was filled in like that on my birth certificate and I’ve seen written examples of my dad spelling his the very same way. I have no idea what my surname means. I want to believe that Bhamjee/Bamjee means something more than “One who opened up a shoe shop in the Oriental Plaza”.

My forefathers were not even Bhamjees to begin with. They were Patels, but apparently, there were just too many of those coming in on the ship to South Africa. So someone had the foresight to adopt the Bhamjee name, thus consigning to me a lifetime of having to explain that we’re not related to the Bhamjee’s Shoes people or that uncle who was involved in the dodgy soccer ticketing business.

The magical webbiness of the internet brought me not only love, but the unique (and blessed) opportunity of meeting another Saaleha Bhamjee (her surname spelt with the H).

My own dear doppelganger and friend, the other Saaleha (of course to her, I am the other Saaleha) thought me terribly potty-mouthed when she first visited my blog. I’m a lot more mellow these days; ask Noorjehaan who was expecting a trigger-happy chain smoker on our first meet. I must have been really angsty.

Saaleha is also a writer, and we’ve even collaborated on a script for a radio drama series. You can see how our names and similar vocations would generate a bit of confusion.

To ameliorate this, I hyphenated my surname after I married. But even though I was presenting myself as Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet, it was still quite muddling for some. The guys down at Adgator got our blog codes mixed up and it’s happened where I’ve received emails not meant for me (disappointingly, nothing risqué).

During our time in Egypt, I decided to pop my dad’s name in the middle of mine. It was one part memorialisation and two parts pragmatism. I dropped the Mayet from that as it just seemed like too much to chew down (though I’m still very much Bamjee-Mayet at heart). Should I ever publish, I will do so under the name Saaleha Idrees.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, I am still, officially, Saaleha Bamjee.

You can call me whatever you want.

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’.)

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.

Wadi Rischrasch

Dovecote

Sometimes, Cairo, with all of its rich fullness and grainy texture, displaces the mind’s quiet.

As both vanquisher and subduer, al-Qahira fills the spaces between thoughts with its Life and Living.
You would imagine that in order to reclaim some of yourself, it would take a great many hours to escape the city’s penetrating charm.
Not so, as you spare just a pair and head out for the desert, along Korymat road, passing through the Helwan tollgate.
It takes an au fait guide to make the necessary u-turns and entries through the unofficial breaks in the concrete barriers of the dual carriageway.
With your back to the churning of industry, you follow on the tracks of camels, donkeys, 4x4s and motorbikes towards Wadi Rischrasch.
The landscape introduces itself by its wide grey plains. The valley soon narrows, drawing in the rocks and cliffs. The colours become earthier. Water has had its way here but you’d never tell by the shattered clay of the earth. But when the water comes, it comes, and the little starts of vegetation are that testament.
Between the hills that look like huts and pareidolic faces cut into the sides of the eroded mountains, stillness replaces what Cairo displaces.
This is where you can speak to yourself and listen.
Further on the way lies what used to be King Farouk’s hunting lodge. Located to perfectly capture and circulate the cooling winds of the wadi, this is where the last King of Egypt would come to find his own quiet (and hunt the gazelle collected, conveniently, for him).
The dovecotes make for quirky sentries and the buildings now function as a rendezvous for bedouins with business (apparently some hush-hush about hashish) and tourists who want a different story to tell.
While the insides of the stables and kitchen declare that Mohammad was here in 2004, the rocks outside bear more ancient graffiti. There are rudimentary depictions of cattle and gazelle you may speculate as being left behind by some keen, and bored, herdsmen hailing from pharaonic times.
If it weren’t for the fresh animal spoors, the wadi may soon trick you into believing you are the only breathing thing left in the world.
And the bedouins too leave their own tracks. Their motorbikes score doughnut rings in the dust and there is an alien packet of chipsys wedged under a rock next to shoes that must have trampled a hundred thousand miles. But this is detritus you can deal with.
The golden walls of the wadi lull and soften.
Here the skies are clear.
Your lungs are loose.
Your thoughts are your own.

More pics (and less windier words) on Naeem’s blog

Crossposted on  Al Rahala.com

Omphaloskeptical

My hands cradle the rising beneath my navel.

Moon-breaths dictate this ebb and flow of my repose.

It has been just three months and the miracle biology in my belly has rendered my profile alien but soothing.

My fingers probe the extra flesh and for some seconds I am rewarded by a stirring; ah, there is work being done.

Yeah, that chicken was pretty damn good.