The task of improving literacy is traditionally left to the teacher, but the parent is really the first epistemic agency in the child’s journey towards literacy. The opening sentence in Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden, adds: History is the third parent.
On the first page, a father tells his son a story containing a villain. Seeing a trace of consternation on the child’s face during the reading, he stops and asks: “But have you ever heard a story in which the evil person triumphs at the end?” The boy thought a while before replying. “No,” he said, “but before they lose, they harm the good people. That is what I am afraid of.“
This minimal extract embodies everything that is necessary for all children to develop, no matter what the pace or the agency of assessment. Here is a father reading to a child, who is prepared to listen, who then reacts in a visible way and then responds to a question from his dad. The Blind Man’s Garden features, for me, as a must-read in the company of The Kite Runner.
I move on to my second companion for this cold weekend. This is one book in the series Learning Islam and Study Islam Series titled, And the male is not like the female. It is published by Digital Printers and Booksellers headed by Imraan Adam.
My interest in this particular edition was the gender issues that are becoming more and more cogent (and strident) in our post-colonial, pre-election era.
We are aware of the legal and religious minefields that complicate the institution of marriage and family. Litigation and other such issues centre on legitimacy, legality and, by extension, the unseen violence against women that goes beyond the physical.
If the issue remains a moral or religious one, it could be resolved right there. Except for the LGBTQ issue, which moves the engagement into another arena. If this gender group were to become seminal in terms of the numbers required to unseat the present hopeless rulers, the imperatives shift and the discourse changes character. This was the fascination of this read for me.
Last but not least, my favourite literary encounter for this miserable confined-to-bed period is called A Cape Winter Weekend. This is a book given to me by the author.
Here are a few of the gems that caused me great delight. I now know the meaning of the defunct appellation Ottentottu/Quena.
Listen to the sound when you say it aloud. Then there is the account in the book of a Mexican stand-off on a beach between a policeman and a pregnant but feisty lady. Pure entertainment and vastly empowering.
Last, for now, I learnt about a local sweetmeat (cake) that celebrates a bitter political betrayal. Mind-boggling stuff. Reading is a magic wand that opens fields anew. It excites even as it teaches.
I would like to comment on the style of the last-mentioned book, titled, rather bravely, My Apartheid Diary, by a superb young writer called Sedick Crombie. One cannot be blamed for groaning and saying: “Oh, no. Not another text dripping with racial angst.”
Yet this book impressed me for precisely that reason. It is a calm account of the author’s life in Strand. But he has none of the clichéd notions of returning to roots, or exacting attrition. His voice is one of a mature writer, a critical thinker and, mostly, a proponent of conciliation and discourse as major players in the march to social equity.
This is an astute combination of academia and anecdotal strategies. The book draws the reader in because of the voice that soothes even as it seethes, but with extreme intellectual control. As I have said by way of reassurance, I do not write book reviews. But here is a fresh voice that I really enjoyed. The only fault with it I find is: Why did it take so long for me to find it?
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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