Shadows of home
The sensation of being torn comes in waves. Can I belong to two places at once? Or is it my lot to be traitor, one way or another
The muddy water of the Thames washes away the ages under the soles of my feet, which are firmly planted on Westminster Bridge. I brace myself against the cold of a rescinding February afternoon. Big Ben behind my left shoulder, lauding time over the ancient stones of the city; the sharp spires of parliament keeping the sky in check whilst the glory of Westminster Abbey magnanimously unfolds itself into presence even when out of site. Sublimity can’t help itself. The London Eye exudes its alien pupil over the figure of me as I attempt to assert myself in the midst of history.
My grandparents must have stood on this bridge as I am now, or rushed across it on their way to Waterloo station to catch a train, perhaps. I imagine my grandmother, an eleven-year-old girl, sitting quietly on her bed in the small bedroom of her humble home in east London, wondering what life will be like without her dad—her kind eyes, which will remain so until her death, brimming with tears. And then I see her years later, biding time in the dark; black cloth stretching across the glass of the window panes as she sips a cup of tea and rests her aching body, weary from hours in a boiler suit, fitting exploders and finishing shells; the acrid smell of the munition’s factory lingering on her skin—wishing that the war would end and wondering what next. And then she’s at church, in casual conversation with a couple of girlfriends, her eyes glancing nonchalantly toward the door as people pour in for a Sunday service—until they’re jolted askew by a tall, handsome man in an Air Force uniform who appears in the doorway… and a romance begins. In London. Their city. My city. Can it be mine, too? I have no story here. Yet. But, somehow, I feel at home.
The sensation of being torn comes in waves.
Can I belong to two places at once? Or is it my lot to be traitor, one way or another—to be cast from the bridge, the weights of punishment dragging me into the depths of mutinous choice.
I came—to see Waterhouse and Van Gogh and Picasso and Turner and Blake and all of it. I came—to revel in Warhol’s immensity and cringe under the gaze of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth; to be punched in the gut by Picasso’s audacity. I came—to walk through Monet’s water garden, breathing in the expanse of the waterlilies in life and in paint; to get lost in the Louvre and cower under Michelangelo’s ceiling and rest in David’s shadow. I came—to stumble upon Medusa and Pegasus, their clay forms calling me back to happy childhood. I came—to feel the pain of Bacon’s horror on canvas or Munch’s existential agony, and to bask in the colour and romance of the pre-Raphaelites.
The tide of history ripples through London, infiltrating every pore—fact and fiction infused into one mythology: one story. The flow of the Thames since before everything. Boudica’s charge, William’s conquering, Henry’s codpiece and his stinking leg. The rats. The fires. Heads on pikes. Shakespeare.
The existential profundity of “To be or not to be” announced on the stage of the Globe theatre as plebs lobbed rotten veg at Hamlet, preferring a bawdy love scene instead—an easier distraction from the soiled streets and stench of the city. Citizens brandishing black armbands when Moriarty killed Holmes. Charles Dickens, walking the streets of Camden Town, tripping over the hardened feet and pallid faces of street urchins, pimped out for alms, and then returning to Doughty Street to express the injustices of the city with ink and paper.
Children parted from parents, on trains into the countryside to avoid the danger of blitz attacks in war. Soldiers returning from the Somme—forever broken. Coronations and weddings; the Crown. Churchill, Tolkien, Lewis, Cromwell, Elizabeth I, Newton, Cook, Flint, Osborne, McLaren, Westwood, Flemming, Turing, Wordsworth, Pankhurst, Wilberforce, Wesley, Arthur, Nightingale, Chaucer…
Hampstead Heath. With its fat pigeons, hyperactive dogs, picnics, lolling lovers. Loud gesticulations and frivolous laughter making way for whispered conversations and slowed footfall as night takes over, impregnating the space, creeping into hideaways with haunting hands, greedy for light.
Stark poverty enclosed in modern day council houses and high rises interspersed between mansions and condos. A people who rebel against and revel in their legacy, with all-consuming fervour.
The city lives in the voice of narrative. Eons of the stuff.
But her sun is weak and her soul is fickle. The ground shakes—layers and layers of uneven stone rumble under the weight of self-indulgence, artifice and entitlement.
Where is the soil?
The sand, the dry winter grass breathed in—infiltrating mind, heart and body, coursing through my veins, so that even when she seems far, she can never be. I catch glimpses of her at every turn. She is ever present. She is in the earth, the sky, the wind and the water—I hear her cries and feel the writhing of her body as she sobs for her people as she shouts against the injustices her children inflict upon one another. It is a mortal cry that is repeated the world over, in different times and in different contexts—and all at once. I see her in the eyes of my children, the arms of my friends, in the voices of my brothers and the heart of soulmate. She’s in the setting sun and the crashing seas. She’s in my house, at Christmas, New Year, Easter, weekends, days, all days—always; ever present. I see the world through her lens. Through the beige of winter and the purple haze of jacaranda blossoms in spring; through the violent vermillion sun and electric blue thunderstorms on the Highveld. She is always…
…as I remember her.
And yet, she is nothing like I remember her. She has grown and changed without me, and when I feel the loss of place that comes with leaving – that is most acute when attacked by the realisation that my children will never know or truly understand South Africa – I remind myself that the home I know her to be is other. Quite simply—other. And yet not because she is me.
Home is here. Home is now. Home is everything that came before.
It exists in the dust and sand of the past and the brick and stone of the present—it lives in my mind and soul, in my memory and I see it in the eyes of my children and the scars on my skin every passing day. No matter where I am, I carry it with me; in my heart—a fist drenched in the blood of life, of living; of being human.
If you have a story you’d like to share about South Africa please send it to Andrea via admin@sapeople.com; and visit Andrea’s OurFiresideStories.com