If you turn right up Chiappini on leaving through the gates of the Salesian Institute and carry on up the hill, you enter a warren of brightly coloured terraced houses, red, yellow, green, purple, beige, and maroon. Today the little streets are crowded with women and children sitting on the doorsteps and on the kerbs eating their food. Smartly dressed men come and go in cars, entering and leaving houses, shaking hands, some indulging in extended greetings with each other.
It is a Muslim neighbourhood and today is Eid, a festival day marking the end of Ramadan. An old man coming towards me down the steps of the mosque told me it was their Christmas Day. He was all smiles and shook my hand with great vigour as we wished God’s blessings on each other. In that moment, on Chiappini, on the festival of Eid, the hearts of a Christian and a Muslim were united in the blessings of the one God.
On the other side of the world, a Christian pastor was planning to burn copies of the Koran. I wondered what the old man might think of that. And God. What does He think?
I am sleeping in the cloister of the Institute. It is on the top floor and from the high balcony you can see all the way across the bay to Milnerton and Blaauberg in the distance. On Saturday night you can hear the loud boom, boom from the gay nightclub up the street. It goes on until 5am; long after Cubana on the other side of the road has sent everyone home. During the World cup, the whole thoroughfare of Somerset Road was throbbing and heaving with match day crowds who coursed in and out of the many restaurants.
By comparison, it is now as quiet as a cloister.
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