It was Christmas, a time of “peace on Earth and good will towards men”, a phrase from the Bible that has wormed its way into hundreds of Christmas songs whose theme is peace, played most often these days as muzak in secular temples – also known as shopping centres.
It is the most wonderful time of the year, a time that had me looking back to my childhood where Christmas really was the most wonderful time of my life.
This is a story of remembering and nostalgia, and sadness and longing for another time and astonishment at the human capacity for inhumanity.
It was the first time I’d been “home” in 24 years, since we buried my mother on a hot summer’s day in November 2000. So there I was again at the Catholic mission station at Besters, 28km from my hometown of Ladysmith, looking over the grave that now held half my family.
We’d come to inter the ashes of my baby sister, Antonette, who died in June last year, aged 59, of a stroke. The little box, light in its contents, that held her mortal remains was placed directly in the grave where my father is buried, along with my mother’s ashes.
The main headstone was reserved for my father, underscored with the words “Requiescat in Pace” (Rest in Peace). Dad was in prime position at the head of the granite slab for two reasons: he was the head of our household, but also because he died first, in 1994 aged 71, a few months after he’d voted for the first time.
Even now it astounds me that this erudite man of letters was not allowed to vote until he was 71. This remarkable man who read poetry and finished every cryptic crossword he began – who, as a teacher and headmaster, was responsible for unleashing generations of well-educated men and women into the world.
On the slab, too, is a name plaque that remembers my mother with the words “Rest in Peace”. I reserved the Latin for my dad since he was the scholar whose love of the ancient dead language was, well, inexplicable. That said, both my parents could recite the entire Catholic mass in Latin and were utterly appalled when Latin was dumped and English became the lingua franca.
The Saturday of the interment was hot, a blistering 37 degree Celcius. The soupy light shimmered over the cemetery nestled in a grove of beautiful blue gums, the ground littered with their peeled bark. The priest’s heavy white cassock and curiously colourful Mondrian-patterned silk stole were incongruous on this day that called for cotton and open-toed shoes.
Rivers of sweat wound down his head and cheeks, dripping off his chin as he baked, hatless, in the punishing sun. His glasses slipped slowly down his nose.
The candle lit during the blessing danced listlessly and the holy water we sprinkled on all three of my dead relatives was warm.
It was the smell of the place that started the first wave of nostalgia. As I walked solitarily through the long grass back to the St Joseph’s Mission main building, I passed stone buildings that once were classrooms for local children. Now there were bird nests in the creaky rafters, rickety old benches, animal droppings and a faded blackboard which recorded that the last lesson had taken place in 2009.
These derelict buildings had once proudly schooled little ones who would go on to be bank tellers, run supermarket checkout tills, and train as teachers and nurses to supply services to the nearby town.
Up at the mission’s main house, the long dining room where the brothers in training for the priesthood gathered each week so that my dad could teach them English was still there. The paint was peeling, the linoleum floor in need of repair, but the essence of the place was the same.
It was in the church that the wave of a memory from a long ago time hit me with such force I had to sit down on a pew. The yellow-walled church with its statue of St Joseph, the Stations of the Cross painted on walls, the rustling of trees in the woodland, the smell of incense, the light falling at an angle across the baptismal font…
It all came rushing back. My brothers, Anton and Shaun, and I hiding from our baby sister, Antonette, now turned to ash and buried in the earth in the graveyard I had just come from.
While my dad taught his classes, we four children roamed the grounds searching for buried treasure. We rode horses across the nubby veld, with fear-fuelling instructions from big brother Anton to keep our eyes peeled for snakes. We never saw any.
We rode past the shrine of Our Lady of Good Health, also known as Our Lady of Vailankanni, who is said to have appeared twice in the town of Velankanni in Tamil Nadu, India, in the 16th century. Our hands-on dad had conceptualised the idea for this precious place of worship, raised the money, commissioned the artist (who crafted her out of clay, shaping iridescent blue tiles for her robe) and overseen construction.
This place I’d not thought about in 50 years was as familiar to me as my hand. It smelled of home. It evoked comfort and safety, rekindled memories of a happy time filled with the tinkling laughter of children at play. But this place was not home. I’ve made my home elsewhere.
As I drank in the familiarity, taking in the brokenness, I thought of the Syrians and how the 13-year conflict in their country had caused one of the largest displacement crises in the world.
More than 6 million Syrians fled their country when the civil war began in 2011, making a home for themselves (often makeshift) elsewhere, often in places where they were tolerated rather than welcomed. Now there is the threat that they will be displaced again – sent home to a country that for all intents and purposes no longer exists.
Within hours of the rebels seizing the Syrian capital and President Bashar al-Assad fleeing, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Greece announced they were suspending all asylum applications from Syria.
Austria took it further, announcing that it was preparing a repatriation and deportation programme for Syrians who had already been granted asylum.
The world has witnessed a resurgence of right-wing parties across Europe keen to restrict immigration, so there is scant possibility that Syrians will be given the choice of staying put or going home.
But Syrians, both those who want to go home and those who are being forced to go, will go back to a country turned to rubble by both war and the devastating earthquakes of 2023. The water and healthcare infrastructure is broken, and billions of dollars are needed for aid and reconstruction.
I wonder what their re-entry will be like in a place that is familiar to them, and not. I know that for me, going “home” was wonderful and unsettling – but there is no way I want to go back to that lovely ramshackle, broken place to live. Sadly, with the immigrant-unfriendly mood in Europe, the Syrians might have no choice.
After Christmas and as we enter the New Year, we can only hope that peace on Earth and good will towards men prevail. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
