when Alan Paton comes to tea one day Dinahâs mum brings out one of the Kaiserâs damask tablecloths. This is because, although heâs political, heâs written a book that has made him famous in America. Itâs called
Cry the Beloved Country
and itâs going to be made into a film.
Dinahâs dad goes on playing tennis with Veejay Pillay, and oneday the whole family is invited to a Hindu wedding. This requires them to cross the great divide into an area of distinct otherness where Indians live. The roads have more potholes and there are more banana trees. They descend from the ridge of the Berea into the valley behind. Indians must not live or work or have their shops in our parts of town, although, for the time being, they are cheek by jowl. Whites have the cooler ridges and Indians have the muggier valleys that the mosquitoes like best. Dinahâs dad says these geographical demarcations are thanks to General Smuts, our leader. Where Indians live, or have lived, can always be charted by the density of the mango trees, lychee trees and avocado trees they planted. And later, as people are more rigorously moved from one area after another, as the system moves from imperial-racist to criminal lunatic, the trees become a sort of memorial to them, a sort of trail, like Hansel and Gretelâs stones.
The wedding takes place in what Dinahâs classmates call a koelie temple, though she doesnât tell them about the wedding and, anyway, a koelie temple is sufficiently remote from her classmatesâ experience to mean that any reference they might make is exclusively metaphorical. It means something gaudy and trashy. So a girl will say, âShe was all dressed up like a koelie temple,â if the personâs clothes were too shimmery and brash. The koelie temple is amazingly gaudy. So are the saris and the dresses of the little Indian girls. They are all made of purple and shocking pink and saffron-coloured silk with an overlay of scratchy lace and lots of sparkly trim and silver braid. The bride and groom, lavishly garlanded, sit for what seems like all day in a sort of bower at the altar end of the temple while the guests are served food on banana leaves. The banana leaves are their plates. Dinah is amazed by the templeâs ornate interior because she has never been in a Catholic church â or in any church â and has had no contact with the baroque. All the churches she passes on her way home from school are Presbyterian or Methodist. They are all built of red brick, except for the one that has a sort of peanut-brittle pebbledash. The newer ones look like petrol stations or like giant 1940s gramophone cabinets. Some of the Dutch Reformed churches that sheâs seen in newspaper pictures look quite a lot like grain silos. Dinahâs father is against religion but, once a week, on Sunday mornings, she hears the tail-end of the Dutch Reformed Church service in Afrikaans, because it comes justbefore a classical music programme that her dad always listens to.
The church service frequently overruns its time, and this is because the dominie likes to pray and sermonise for ever. He intones his words in a slowed-up, stretched-out monotone, as if he were trying to make each one last as long as possible. This drives Dinahâs dad into a frenzy. He swats the radio with a rolled-up newspaper as he waits for whatever Haydn or Palestrina is being promised in the weekly radio guide, and he rants at the dominie in fluent Afrikaans. Once the prayers are concluded itâs time for the final hymn. This is nearly always a slowed-up version of one or other of the hymns that Dinah knows in English from her school assemblies. The Dutch Reformed hymn singing has a bullish, male-dominant sound and the hymns are sung strictly in unison. Harmonising is what natives do and who wants to be like them?
From almost every bus ride in Durban all through Dinahâs early childhood, gangs of Zulu road
Cry the Beloved Country
and itâs going to be made into a film.
Dinahâs dad goes on playing tennis with Veejay Pillay, and oneday the whole family is invited to a Hindu wedding. This requires them to cross the great divide into an area of distinct otherness where Indians live. The roads have more potholes and there are more banana trees. They descend from the ridge of the Berea into the valley behind. Indians must not live or work or have their shops in our parts of town, although, for the time being, they are cheek by jowl. Whites have the cooler ridges and Indians have the muggier valleys that the mosquitoes like best. Dinahâs dad says these geographical demarcations are thanks to General Smuts, our leader. Where Indians live, or have lived, can always be charted by the density of the mango trees, lychee trees and avocado trees they planted. And later, as people are more rigorously moved from one area after another, as the system moves from imperial-racist to criminal lunatic, the trees become a sort of memorial to them, a sort of trail, like Hansel and Gretelâs stones.
The wedding takes place in what Dinahâs classmates call a koelie temple, though she doesnât tell them about the wedding and, anyway, a koelie temple is sufficiently remote from her classmatesâ experience to mean that any reference they might make is exclusively metaphorical. It means something gaudy and trashy. So a girl will say, âShe was all dressed up like a koelie temple,â if the personâs clothes were too shimmery and brash. The koelie temple is amazingly gaudy. So are the saris and the dresses of the little Indian girls. They are all made of purple and shocking pink and saffron-coloured silk with an overlay of scratchy lace and lots of sparkly trim and silver braid. The bride and groom, lavishly garlanded, sit for what seems like all day in a sort of bower at the altar end of the temple while the guests are served food on banana leaves. The banana leaves are their plates. Dinah is amazed by the templeâs ornate interior because she has never been in a Catholic church â or in any church â and has had no contact with the baroque. All the churches she passes on her way home from school are Presbyterian or Methodist. They are all built of red brick, except for the one that has a sort of peanut-brittle pebbledash. The newer ones look like petrol stations or like giant 1940s gramophone cabinets. Some of the Dutch Reformed churches that sheâs seen in newspaper pictures look quite a lot like grain silos. Dinahâs father is against religion but, once a week, on Sunday mornings, she hears the tail-end of the Dutch Reformed Church service in Afrikaans, because it comes justbefore a classical music programme that her dad always listens to.
The church service frequently overruns its time, and this is because the dominie likes to pray and sermonise for ever. He intones his words in a slowed-up, stretched-out monotone, as if he were trying to make each one last as long as possible. This drives Dinahâs dad into a frenzy. He swats the radio with a rolled-up newspaper as he waits for whatever Haydn or Palestrina is being promised in the weekly radio guide, and he rants at the dominie in fluent Afrikaans. Once the prayers are concluded itâs time for the final hymn. This is nearly always a slowed-up version of one or other of the hymns that Dinah knows in English from her school assemblies. The Dutch Reformed hymn singing has a bullish, male-dominant sound and the hymns are sung strictly in unison. Harmonising is what natives do and who wants to be like them?
From almost every bus ride in Durban all through Dinahâs early childhood, gangs of Zulu road
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