May 20. Monday. For the first night since Wednesday, I manage to sleep more than three hours. Upon waking up, I start SHOW ME THE PLACE by Hedley Twidle, a book of essays purchased after seeing him and Ivan Vladislavić in conversation on Sunday afternoon.1 I make myself scrambled eggs with fresh tomatoes and grated cheddar. Everything tastes fresher here. The flavours are deeper, even breakfast. For lunch, we go to my favourite Italian restaurant in town, attached to a wine estate, a bottle of whose sparkling wine we drank during my family birthday dinner on Saturday night. I get the lasagne. We order a tiramisu to share. My father leaves for the airport for his flight to Johannesburg—it’s back to the office for him. For dinner, my mother cooks steak with mushrooms. The climate change author, she warns, said we should not eat beef. It’s delicious. My sister, my mother, and I watch the new episodes of the third season of Bridgerton—a series I have half-watched alongside them over the years. They fill me in on plot points I’ve missed. Jonathan Bailey’s character, last season’s protagonist, pulls a bedsheet over his head and proceeds to go down on his now-wife. In response, mum says, simply, ‘Okay.’ R and I explode with laughter. In bed, I watch ZOLA (2020), directed and written by Janicza Bravo, with additional screenwriting by Jeremy O. Harris. Picked this one because it was getting traction on my timeline recently, which is funny in an Internet-ouroboros way as the film is based on a Twitter thread. It’s whipsmart and dazzling and wry about, maybe even disgusted by, sex, for all its depictions of sex work. It seems interested in stressing the work of sex, in its paid and unpaid forms. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get to it.
May 21. Tuesday. R off to work in the morning. On the road to Cape Town, my mother and I stop at a lavender farm. I buy soaps, take my time smelling each one. I am trying to cultivate a greater sense for sensuality in my life, attend better to simple pleasures. You know the drill. We planned to take my maternal grandmother, who turned 92 this month, for fish and chips at Mariner’s Wharf (a close runner-up to Kalky’s for me), but the weather turns. Instead, we go to Bihari for lunch, chosen for its accessibility in two areas: no stairs and a halal menu. My aunt, my mother’s younger sister, joins us for lunch. We order lamb biryani, dahl, and, my grandmother’s favourite, tandoori prawns. I talk to my grandmother and I realise she has forgotten things. She thinks I have been in Germany for the past six months. She thinks I did not attend a cousin’s wedding in December. I feel upset, but shelve the feelings. I don’t know what to do in moments like these. Do I steer her memory on its right course, or hold her hand as we walk its desire paths together? What new information will be confusing? What would be least upsetting for her? Then, she asks me if I’ve found a halal butcher in the US and I remember that it’s still her with whom I’m speaking. Later, we buy fish and chips and fried calamari from a spot in the Southern Suburbs before saying farewell to my family. We pick R up from work at the Waterfront, enjoy Turkish coffee and baklava there before heading back to Stellenbosch. Back at the flat, we finish the last of Bridgerton together. R posits a theory that the costume designers incorporate animatronics into the gowns to create the exaggerated heaving effect of the ladies’ bosoms.
May 22. Wednesday. Early flight, solo; my mother is staying on in the Cape for another day. I get breakfast beforehand at Mugg and Bean—a quote-unquote low-carb option of halloumi, avocado, sautéed spinach, and roast tomatoes. In the queue to board, a couple competitively plays Candy Crush. On the flight, I read more of the Twidle. It’s a travelogue of sorts, traversing real (such as decolonial academic conferences), imagined (Ursula le Guin’s sci-fi worlds), and becoming places (nascent intentional communities in a KZN forest), guided by a wondering whether the moral arc of the universe bends towards optimism or pessimism. In these times, the collection asks, is optimism vital? Is it even possible? In his essay ‘Monsoon Raag’, on the Auroville township in Pondicherry, he describes visiting the experimental community’s archives:
I found the black-and-white pictures of Auroville’s early days hypnotic. Foreigners in loincloths dig wells alongside local villagers, or carry away excavated earth on their heads in baskets. People with long hair are making dams, building soil bunds, scrutinising architects’ models that seem both futuristic and traditional, geometric and thatched. Everyone looks underfed but radiant with purpose. A young Indian woman’s face filled the picture: she is walking through a field, no doubt on the way to do something meaningful—build a clinic, paint a school, fire a kiln. Her expression, serene and beautiful, seemed almost historical. I wasn’t sure anyone looked or could look that way any more: suffused with such optimism and openness to the future.
I arrive home to khuri kitchri, beans curry, fried aloo. The women in my parents’ Johannesburg apartment building have supplied food to my dad all week, because, with my mother away, they believe he will starve to death. (When A describes to me what he’s been cooking while I’m away, I ask him, ‘Is there a vegetable in the room with us?’ Maybe the ladies aren’t completely wrong about men.) In truth, my dad is an accomplished cook. In truth, I benefit from all of this deliciousness by proxy. It should be noted that khuri kitchri, a yoghurt curry, is one of his favourite dishes—the ladies know him well. I spend the afternoon preparing documents for my Schengen visa appointment tomorrow morning in Pretoria, ticking off the litany of requirements in my notebook. My father and I watch two episodes of Monk, a detective show on Netflix that my parents have gotten into. It’s a bit cutesy for my taste but I like the main character, the neurotic but brilliant private detective title character Adrian Monk, who is played by Tony Shalhoub. My dad picks out a back episode to show me, says there’s a surprise within. It’s Stanley Tucci as guest star!!!!!!!!! Tucci plays an actor hired to shadow the detective in preparation for a film adaptation of a major case Monk solved. Tucci’s character, a method actor, matches Monk’s freak… a little too hard. He starts taking on the detective’s obsessive tics to the extreme.
May 23. Thursday. In the morning, I go print out all my documents and get visa photos taken at the Killarney Mall Postnet. The photos turn out decent. I hate my US student visa photo—taken after a long day at work one Winter afternoon. I look haggard. Admittedly, that’s also probably how I appear to passport control at Newark after a 16-hour flight from Johannesburg. I walk home with the documents in tow and eat three Akhalwayas chicken samosas in quick succession. I notice that one street corner in Killarney, close to our apartment building, which for the past few years has been reliably strewn with rubbish, has transformed in my absence. Someone’s planted beds of aloes. My dad takes me to my visa appointment. In the car ride, I tell him about what I noticed on my walk. He says that this act of urban design was actually the result of the concerted effort of an apartment building opposite the corner, done as a deterrent to street hawkers. I think back to the sentinel, spiky cacti: hostile horticulture. The visa processing centre is a nondescript building in Pretoria East. Thankfully, unlike the US consulate in Sandton, there is seating, snaking metal chairs in the brightly-lit room. We wait in the queue for an hour. Once at the counter, I am informed I am missing one (1!!!!!!!!!) document—printed-out confirmation that I am flying from Johannesburg to Newark in June—and have to come back tomorrow to hand it in. I have to close the loop, so to speak, show that I am traveling back to the US despite my trip to the Netherlands being from and returning to Newark. I’m furious, but try to keep my temper in check, try not to Karen out on the agent who is just doing her job. I was due to fly to Cape Town for the weekend on Friday morning—only having this odd pitstop in Gauteng to process my visa—and now I will have to postpone my trip. By the evening, I have tired of khuri kitchri—who knew it was possible to reach this saturation point? I rustle up a pasta dish with pesto, feta, peppadews. Two more episodes of Monk before bed. I am amazed at my parents’ appetite for television.
May 24. Friday. My mother comes into my room in the morning. My father brings us both masala eggs, roti, and fresh chai for breakfast in bed. She and I talk clothing—I’m going to the tailor to get a couple of pieces made in the coming week. We survey fabrics she’s bought and what patterns I want made out of them. Last night, I decided to postpone my trip to Cape Town to next weekend, after the general election. My favourite party poster has been that of Good’s, featuring a photo of Aunty Pat accompanied by the arresting slogan ‘STOP THE SUFFERING’, which, coincidentally, is one of my intrusive thoughts. I print the last remaining document at my mum’s office and make my way to Pretoria. I am given a ticket and told to re-join the queue. One hour later, I reach the counter. I hand in the final document. I feel triumphant. I join another queue for biometrics capturing. A further hour later, I reach the front. The agent wipes down the glowing green scanner for me—it’s oily from a day’s fingerprints. I leave at midday and find myself starving. I go to a nearby café called Zoé’s. The patron to my left orders spaghetti bolognese. The patron to my right is taking a phone call on speaker, several Castle lagers in. I order the safe bet of a scone (disambiguation) with butter and jam. At home, I start on dinner. I make pasta alla nerano and smashed, crispy, cheesy spuds. My mum roasts lamb chops. My dad is out for dinner, and when the cat’s away, the mice will watch chick flicks. We watch two in quick succession: MOTHER OF THE BRIDE (2024), a veritable smorgasbord of B-list actors, and THAT’S AMOR (2022), in which a terribly unlikeable woman going through romantic and career turmoil takes a transformative Spanish cooking class. I, too, think my life could be transformed by a Spanish cooking class. In both films, the mothers are so much more interesting than their twentysomething daughters, which feels true to life. It’s perfect Friday night Netflix slop. Goes down easy. I think it’s important to be made to remember, on occasion, that the majority of movies are of this quality and watched in this effortless way, guided by the algorithmic sorting of ‘Today’s Top Picks for You’, which, in the end, is not so different from the algorithmic sorting that leads me to watch A24 movies. In bed, I persist with my New Year’s resolution of reading more books by men and begin BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy!!!!!!! Hooked vibes.
May 25. Saturday. Breakfast at Bootlegger’s in Norwood. I get an okay shakshuka and a Vietnamese coffee. Over our meal, we plan the remaining weeks of my stay in South Africa, with particular emphasis on which meals I want my parents to cook for me before I leave. My mum and I shop for groceries while my dad gets a beard trim. Later, I browse the secondhand bookstore in the area and debate between two biographies, one about James Cagney and another about George Balanchine. I decide to get neither. A’s working at the bookshop has made me snobby about water damage. My dad’s wallet has been missing since he came home last night so we try searching the house for it. No sign of it in the lounge, kitchen, nor my parents’ bedroom. We can’t find it in his car either. I join him to search Rosebank Mall—he might have left it by the parking station. We speak to the security guard but to no avail. We go to the restaurant where he had dinner last night, but they haven’t seen it either. Finally, back at home, resigned to the fate of canceling and replacing bank and identity cards, I find it on the floor in my room, now the site of my household’s ironing. It must have fell out of my dad’s suit pocket when he laid it down for ironing. I spend the rest of the afternoon working on writing this. In the evening, we go to the joint 60th birthday party of two of my parents’ friends. I join the dancefloor and its disco-laden playlist. With each change of song, someone exclaims that they haven’t heard this one since their twenties.
May 26. Sunday. I feel lacking in focus lately. Next week: back to work, back to gym, back to routine, structure, self-control. It will do me good. For today, shopping with mum at Rosebank Mall. I buy two jerseys and a pair of pants. Later, we meet my dad for lunch and sit outside in the sun. I order steak au poivre (for the gains) with a side of mashed potatoes (for the comfort), but delight the most in nibbling at the filling of my mum’s steak and kidney pie. It has an earthy ale taste. I take a nap in the living room. I call A. We both feel rather sentimental. In the evening, I watch another flick with my parents, MEMORY (2022), via Netflix. Liam Neeson stars as a contract killer with early-onset dementia, who refuses a hit after learning who the intended victim is. In turn, the hunter becomes the hunted. But he’s starting to lose language. He has to write important details in Sharpie on his arm. He wakes up from nightmares, disoriented, and falls out of bed. I eat a scone with cream and strawberry jam before heading to sleep.
I spent the weekend at the Franschhoek Literary Festival with my family, which entailed my jet-jaggedly downing Americanos in the half-hour breaks between three panel discussions per day. We take these things seriously, always have. My parents used to forge excuses to take my sister and I out of middle school classes early to spend afternoons at film festivals. For all my tiredness, the discussions were enlivening, inspiring. On the rides home to my sister’s Stellenbosch flat, along Helshoogte, I fell asleep in the backseat, only pulled out of my napping by my mother encouraging me to look at the view. It has been a long time since I’ve been in the Western Cape for Autumn—perhaps three years?—and I’m struck by its beauty. I last wrote to you from here in the summer, when the vine leaves on the Boland’s winding roads hung heavy with grapes. Now, they are not yet Winter-bare, but withered and browned. The sunshine is a gift that can be taken away at any moment. My mother, returning from a panel on climate change, expressed anxiety about this.