At the moment I am reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and Rian Malan’s Resident Alien. I was recently introduced to him. I think he is one of the finest journalist-writers in the country.
There are articles in the book that made me catch up with some of the country’s major cultural and political events of the past 20 years. It’s an inspiring kind of journalism, with a storytelling side to it. There’s a utility to it, like someone is trying to achieve something.
I am a movies person. I like a different range of movies, from Martin Scorsese and Robert Rodriguez to some of the best Indian cinema, made by directors like Rang de Basanti and Aamir Khan, and Fatih Akn, the Turkish/German director.
At the moment I am listening to Kailash Kher, and then there’s another band called Indian Ocean. One of their best albums is called Kandisa — I listen to it all the time. It tells the story of India in a modern way. It’s a mix of traditional instruments, electric guitars and uses Sanskrit lyrics.
I am very much a pizza guy but I also like home-cooked Indian food — my mother’s food. My favourite restaurant in Durban is Spiga d’Oro.
I don’t come to Jo’burg often and I don’t know much about it, although I know a bit about Fordsburg. I find it fascinating — it could be anywhere in the world in terms of its vast variety of migrants.
It also has the rich and the poor. It’s a strange mixture of everyÂthing. It could be downtown Berlin or Barcelona. Every international city has a space where a big deposit of everything is dumped.
My favourite cities? They are Istanbul, Berlin, Durban, Barcelona and New Delhi. Whether I would want to live there forever, I don’t know. What I would like to be able to do is live in different places.
I would love to be in Durban at a certain time of the year, then in Delhi at another. I like the idea of being a global citizen. I like the idea of being in different spaces and soaking up different ideas. I get tired of being in one place. It puts you in a comfort zone.
I now live in Doha, where I work for al-Jazeera. Living in Doha is like living in a post-apocalyptic country. It’s a bizarre mixture of sand and nothing. It’s very obviously dry and dead, yet no place is like that. If you are willing, you can unpack and uncover the layers of that place.
When you get to Durban or Berlin, you can immediately see that there are things going on and you can unpack it.
Doha seems like there’s nothing going on. But it’s not like that. It’s an intriguing space — underneath it has Âmultiple surfaces.
Azad Essa is a South African writer based in Doha, Qatar. His book Zuma’s Bastard is published by Two Dogs