Can literature teach us our history or help us to change our perception of the past? History abounds with gaps, only stories imparted through generations could account for that. Stories do not only pass down the accounts but also lifestyles, manners, custom and most importantly, culture that shape the society.
Nadia Davids’ novel, Cape Fever astonishingly enlightens the life of a Muslim girl living in a society which she is not fully part of. It is a captivating story of Cape Malays who were brought to the Cape Colony 100 years ago as slaves.
Cape Fever follows the story of a domestic servant, Soraya, who works for a house lady, Mrs Hattingh. It is set after World War I in an imagined colonial town in South Africa that is meant to be Cape Town. The impact of WWI is deeply felt; war stories are all over and memories hurt. Mothers who lost their beloved ones mourn. Those who are waiting for their sons to come over. Mrs Hattingh is one of them, all memories of her son are preserved in his room. She hardly touches anything in the room.
Once privileged to be part of the middle-middle class, she covers her bills thanks to her son’s pension from the War Office, London.
Soraya works at an old colonial manor where she is expected to do everything, from gardening to cooking. The setting is Victorian and grotesque, incorporating ghostly tales that preoccupy Soraya’s mind. She is a decent Muslim girl who is engaged to Nour, who works on a distant farm while waiting to be appointed to teach at the college.
The first meeting with Mrs Hattingh is unpleasant. She speaks with a tone of superiority. As they try to establish a tentative trust, Mrs Hattingh’s attitude shifts but Soraya gets disappointed — though not surprised — when she insists on checking her bag before she leaves the house. Soraya pretends to be illiterate.
The house is a labyrinth of secrets and Soraya finds herself drawn into its mysteries. She senses the presence of spirits. She feels a connection to the previous housekeeper Fatima and Rosa, a woman in a painting who resembles her. Soraya becomes obsessed with them.
Mrs Hattingh perpetuates the illusion that her son would soon return from London. But as time moves on, he never shows up. Rumours say Master Timothy had been injured in the war, his face disfigured but Soraya refuses to believe since she trusts his mother’s account. As the novel moves towards its climax, the house lady’s secrets begin to unravel. Soraya’s discovery that Mrs Hattingh has been fabricating stories to sabotage her relationship is a turning point. She pieces together the truth about Master Timothy and gains access to letters revealing that Mrs Hattingh’s son has been critically ill at the hospital. Soraya channels her emotions into a calculated revenge. She forces Mrs Hattingh to confront her misdeeds and make amends for the harm inflicted on her and Nour.
One of the threads of the novel is religion and it continues to become part of the story. Davids highlights the role of religion in shaping identity and how Islamic culture is preserved through oppression and colonial alienation. The novel also advocates that this belief holds the community together and is resilient in the past.
This important intervention Davids brings into our attention is rarely acknowledged, which is mostly ignored in such narratives. It is that belief that reminds them who they are and strengthens them towards oppression. When you cannot resist, the only way to survive is to protect what is your own. Memorisation was part of that preservation [and it] should come through recitation since they are not allowed to read their holy book, Quran.
Soraya recalls her father’s advice on memorisation: “… memorisation of the sacred through recitation. If you commit to memory, you become one of the prayer’s guardians: it will not matter if a fire burns every page it is written on, if every house of the Beloved is pulled to the ground, if all of our people are slaughtered but one, for the one who remains would have been taught to remember. The person is pen. The person is the paper. The person is the holy book’s memory.”
Her father is a pious man, a calligrapher whose works (rakams) are celebrated in the Muslim Quarter. After he dies she starts painting her own childhood to keep them alive. She is tutored by her father, as a narrator of the novel, she tells us a story of shrines: “Shrine is the grave of a great man, a man of unusual faith and uncommon bravery, a man who led a rebellion against slavery, who was captured by the settlers and sent to this colony as punishment.”
Cape Fever is a story of survival and resilience. It is partly a powerful account of collective memory that sheds light on a small part of South African history.
Cape Fever is published by Scribner.