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The Crack in the Mountain Ayesha Abrahams ABRAYE003 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Town Master’s in Creative Writing Cape Facultyof of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2020 COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree.University It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: 1 February 2020 1 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town The Crack in the Mountain A Novel 2 For Shaheema, Ismail, Ilyaas, Alicia, and Ron. 3 Content Page Prologue……………………………………………………………….…..5 Chapter 1: The Last Supper………………………………………………21 Chapter 2: Acceptance…………………………………………………...30 Chapter 3: Into the Light………………………………………………....58 Chapter 4: Looking Back…………………………………………………69 Chapter 5: Room 804……………………………………………………..87 Chapter 6: The Crack in the Teacup……………………………………..101 Chapter 7: Books and Brownies……………………………………….…105 Chapter 8: Carlisle Curiosity……………………………………………..129 Chapter 9: The Detour……………………………………………………153 Chapter 10: Beautiful Things……………………………………………..160 Chapter 11: The Longest Month………………………………………….197 Chapter 12: Wedding Jitters……………………………………………....208 Chapter 13: What Happens When a Mountain Cracks?..............................231 Chapter 14: Not Tonight………………………………………………….241 Chapter 15: Movie Night………………………………………………....273 Chapter 16: The Crack in the Mountain………………………………….282 Chapter 17: Carlisle Compassion………………………………………....314 4 Prologue I call my mother by her first name because we look nothing alike. Sure, we could have lied and told everyone I was adopted, but things like that didn’t happen when Tasleem was growing up. A child with blue eyes and a nose pointed enough to puncture a balloon was only left with a brown woman if she worked for the parents. I couldn’t have called my mother ‘mom’ if I’d wanted to – she simply didn’t teach me that word. For everyone’s safety I called her ‘Tee’, and later, when I could get my mouth around the word, I referred to her as Tannie (Afrikaans, meaning ‘Aunty’). Much as Tasleem hates it, the name stuck. Twenty years later and she’s still my aunt sometimes. Tasleem blocks the doorway, casting a shadow over the pharmacology textbooks spread across my desk. There’s an exam in the morning and I can’t decipher any labels. “T, do you mind?” I ask, gesturing to the desk that’s so covered in books, notepads, graphs and coloured highlighters that you can’t even see the wood beneath. “Exam tomorrow morning. OSCE in the afternoon.” I rip an earphone out and wheel my chair round when Tasleem doesn’t move. “Tannie,” I snap. Tasleem barely flinches at the name; I don’t think she’s heard me at all. “Do you know who Saskia is?” my mother asks. I notice the phone in her hand. She’s clutching it so hard her knuckles whiten. I can’t remember the last time my mother was afraid. Last year she became Head of Neurosurgery at the finest public hospital in South Africa. Tasleem’s got the steadiest hands and calmest demeanour I’ve seen on anyone. I don’t know who Saskia is, but if she could scare my mother beyond recognition, I already don’t like her. “Who is she?” I ask. Tasleem stares at the wall behind me, then turns on her heel, bounding for the kitchen. I hear the cordless phone crash into its charging dock. “Mommy?” a voice asks. My younger brother’s blonde head pops out from behind a laptop screen as I cross the lounge to our open-plan kitchen. Tariq lowers the volume of his cartoons, and the high-pitched Japanese voices fade away. “What’s going on?” he mouths. 5 I shrug. Tasleem grabs the phone, starts dialing, but throws it down before its even started to ring. Indecision: another thing my mother’s unfamiliar with. “Tasleem, what’s up?” I want to touch her, only she turns away, clutching her stomach like she’s just chugged a glass of curdled milk. I fight the instinct to run around and hug her - that's my little brother’s department. Right on cue Tariq appears at her side and I watch my mother crumble into him. Her eyes are red with repressed tears when she lifts her head. I can’t remember if we’ve ever seen Tasleem cry; I was beginning to doubt whether she could. “Saskia is your cousin. That was her on the phone right now,” Tasleem says. “We have a... cousin!?” Tariq squeals. No relative has made contact during the twenty years I’ve been alive. When I was kid I’d often wonder what it would be like to have a house overflowing with family on Eid, birthdays and New Year’s, but I’ve learnt to be content with just Tasleem and Tariq. My 15-year-old brother seems taken by the idea that someone who shares our bloodline has bothered to call. He stares at the phone, as if daring it to ring again. It doesn’t seem to bother him that Saskia has put the strongest woman we know in tears. “What’d she want?” I ask. “You know my father disowned me when I fell pregnant with you, right?” I almost roll my eyes. We’ve only heard this story half a million times. Tasleem was in her third year at medical school when she met this civil engineer. An older, white man. Andrew Carlisle. She swears he was the best person she’d ever known, but her family would never accept him. Falling pregnant out of wedlock, with a man who was not Muslim – with a white man who’d never marry her – brought shame to her entire family. So at twenty-one my mother was given an ultimatum that changed her life forever: Have an abortion, or lose your family. Tasleem chose me. And her father, true to his word, never spoke to her again. “Yes, Tannie. And I owe you my life. But what’s got you so upset?” I ask. I could be more be sensitive, but I’m not my brother and I wish she’d just spit it out. “Your grandfather, Hoosain, my dad... died this morning.” Tariq chews the side of his cheek; when he was younger, he would do this instead of crying. He winds two skinny arms round Tasleem’s waist, resting his cheek on her shoulder. But for the curly hair, my brother closely resembles Tasleem. He looks like a teenager who’d simply been trigger happy with hydrogen peroxide one day. Though I’ve never met Andrew, I’m supposed to 6 look exactly like my dad. This could be why Tasleem loves Tariq more than me. He doesn’t serve as a reminder of a man she’d loved and lost. Tariq is my half-brother. He’s never met his father either, but seems even less bothered by it than I am. Although his dad’s not dead, just living in another country. “Ten years he’s been suffering. Cancer... nobody thought to tell me. Until today.” Tasleem whispers, as if speaking softly somehow cushioned the blow. I wish I had the right words, but I’m at a loss. We are both fatherless women, my mother and I, but we couldn’t be more different if we tried. I’m standing opposite someone who got to know her dad better than most daughters ever will. Tasleem knew the really good parts – the cheap ice-creams on Sundays, the mail delivery bike rides, the lavish gifts at the end of each school term, the hugs at the end of each day – and she also knew the really bad parts. My father died before I was born, and I don’t know how to mourn him. We only mourn if we have loved, and you can’t love someone you’ve never known. “So, what now?” I ask. My question sucks the warmth from the kitchen. I know I’ve hurt Tasleem, but I can’t help it. I can’t love or pity someone who threw his daughter away because she’d done something that made her less than perfect. A young girl, without a cent, alone and pregnant. If she had been weaker, if there’d been complications. If Tasleem hadn’t had a friend who was kind enough to give us her living room for a few months...anything could’ve happened. I’ve heard the horror stories. And I won’t pretend to bleed for a man who nearly killed me. Tasleem tucks a blond lock behind Tariq’s ear. She frowns into the marble countertop. “We get dressed,” she says. “The janaazah leaves at eleven.” *** According to Tasleem, Dureshni is the person who saved her life. She fetched my mother the night her father learnt of the pregnancy. Dureshni let Tasleem stay with her until well after I was born. It was a rent-free arrangement until she found herself a job on campus. They were both medical students, so Tasleem had to bust her ass to afford a babysitter who could be trusted to care for me in their absence. In between studies, my mother worked three jobs – research assistant, librarian, and occasional tutor – to make rent, buy baby essentials, and keep us both fed.