I had a Kurdish coffee on Green Market Square. The beans are North African in origin, a very fine blend mixed with milk and sugar and served in a wide-bottomed, copper jug known as a Jezve. It has a long, thin handle made with a different metal which appears rather too big for the vessel but is ideal for tipping out the dark, sweet, mucous liquid. It filled the little cup four times over. By then I had made my mind up. I would have another if ever I visited Kurdistan!
The owner, a very elegant man with deep-set eyes, sat with me as I drank. In between gusts of wind that threatened to put us in orbit, he gave me an animated, fascinating guide to the sad history of his people, a nation that takes in segments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Like the Hebrew people of sixty years ago, they are a nation without a state. Baran was born near Mount Ararat of an Iranian Kurdish father and a Kurdish mother from Turkey. Before coming to Cape Town he was a chemist and lecturer at a university in Istanbul.
We will return to this lovely man’s restaurant, the Mesopotamia, for lunch one day before we leave Cape Town. Perhaps we will meet one of the other four (4) Kurds living in this amazing city!
At almost the same spot as the drowning tragedy of two weeks ago, a whale was beached at Milnerton. It is the whale season in this part of south Africa. The epicentre of whale watching is of course Hermanus, a couple of hours from here on the Indian ocean, so the appearance of this large guest here at Milnerton made the front page of the Cape Times. Smaller mammals in wet suits hauled the whale off the sands and off it went into the blue.
Karen and Margaret sat in on a class with the social worker at the Institute. Also called Margaret, she brings with her the most extraordinary calm to these very damaged children of the street, many currently living in a local hostel called Homestead. The boys had been focusing on the words proud, love, happy and sad over a series of lessons. Today each boy was given a piece of coloured card and was asked to put pictures on the card to represent one of the words. A sentence written on the back of the card expressed the word. One boy had written, ‘when I am sad I go sit alone somewhere and cry inside.’ In the background calming music plays. Margaret – the social worker – has an amazing ability to bring out the deep emotions the boys have in a simple non-threatening way through her personality and the way her classes are structured. At the end they all expressed a certain pride at the presence of two approving visitors.
Love and affirmation just does it!
Many thanks for some excellent work and blog.
ReplyDeleteI'll include some of this in December's magazine. Ed