Merle Colborne
places
Across from the London Tailor Shop in Durban’s Madressa Arcade, the walls of the Colonial Hairdressing Salon are press-stuck with images of Hindu gods and a barber-shy Sai Baba.
An abundantly-bearded client in a Muslim khurta has arranged himself in the veteran red leather, hand-carved oak chair with its weighty brass fittings, clawed feet and small plaque proclaiming “Jones Brothers/Barbers Suppliers/Toronto”.
The prices – “Haircut R15, Shave R15, Schoolboys R10” – are scrawled on the mirror. There are elderly brushes on the counter; a tin of talc has a faded picture of a pale 1950s infant and the words “Baby Powder”. The men don’t seem to mind, smiles the barber whose father started the business 80 years ago.
The Madressa Arcade – which curves between Grey Street, famed for the mosque of which it is in fact part, and Cathedral Road, named after the red brick Gothic revival style Catholic Cathedral – presents a disparate skyscape: mounted Islamic motifs like dollar signs, Christian steeples, arches and the sinuous undulations of razor wire. This is one of those rare parts of Durban where the “rich cultural mix” breaks out of clich’d print into vigorous reality and verses from the Koran intoned through the public address dissolve in a passing swell of taxi kwaito.
The two-storied arcade, built around the turn of last century, is named after the school (madrasah in Arabic) established along with the mosque and, except for the dwellings at either end, was always intended as commercial premises.
For a time it was used as accommodation for seamen on leave from the ships that plied between Africa and India but even then, through local people collecting requested goods from the lodgers and placing new orders for things from India and the Far East, it kept its commercial character.
The ground level consists of small inter- leading shops that spill on to the pavement under the overhanging balcony that forms a walkway between the upstairs premises.
The Indian shopkeepers sit on plastic chairs opposite each other and chat between the yelled enticements of their assistants. The stock still reflects the needs of simple people: shoe laces, Primus stoves, charcoal irons, tin baths and bulbous rubber syringes in assorted sizes. These are still a hot seller even among the youth and are used for what they always were: enemas. They make a big impression on foreign tourists.
Two or three shops sell beads, still imported in wooden crates from the Czech Republic.
At month-end the queue outside Phutumani Bazaar can be 20- or 30-long as upcountry women come for fresh supplies, sometimes bartering necklaces, belts and even the flat circular red ochre hats known as imihloko for the tiny coloured beads served by two or three generations of men in ivory khurtas and long white beards – the youngest though is clean shaven and “cool”. One shop operates from an ancient oak till and though the bell no longer pings, the brass trimming and the calligraphic National still gleam against the burnished wood.
The arcade naturally reflects the changes in the larger commercial world. Today there’s a cellphone shop, the draper’s much-mended pink plaster mannequins wear polyester and the shop that used to specialise in retailed crockery now sells cheap watches and sunglasses wholesale to hawkers who come from all over the country and beyond to stock up on what people want: image, readymade.
Importers of secondhand leather jackets from Belgium do well enough, but times are tough for the several tailors, one of whom works on a dinky black Singer overlocker, “Over 100 years old and never any trouble.”
The plaiting of cultures, eras and decorums makes the Madressa Arcade stimulating in sometimes startling ways. There’s a Muslim bookshop run by a woman in a CK T-shirt and trousers. Across the way from it a money lender with no qualms about interest.
I borrow the key to the ladies loo from the young black woman in the office. When I return it, we crack up with shared delicious laughter. The lavatories are “squat and drop”. Instead of a toilet roll there’s a plastic jug of water on the floor. A handwritten sign says: “Please rinse after pissing.”