Why writing takes time, patience and a vow not to commit murder

Being a writer is often a thankless job. It entails many hours of isolation, swearing at your computer screen and any living thing that moves around you and insomnia. Insomnia is a big part of being a writer.

Wordsmiths are also supposed to conform to the fine traditions of drinking surreptitiously from a hip flask and wearing a wide-brimmed floppy hat to let everyone know how eccentric you are, but being religious-ish I have yet to take up the drinking part and the wearing of a scarf interferes tiresomely with the big floppy hat idea.

My original point was that it is for the most part, unrewarding and wretched. And there is no shortage of people telling you to “hurry up” and get published. Which makes me want to stab them with a rusty ice-pick. But there are those brief moments that make it worthwhile, like finding the R100 note that I stashed in an old jacket pocket a year ago (most writers live below the bread line, and I am no exception) and the day I got the email from StoryTime’s editor, Ivor W. Hartman, telling me that two of my short stories had been nominated for selection in the literary e-zine's second anthology of short stories, African Roar 2.

I always knew that if I took up writing fiction, the road would be a long, empty monstrosity with many potholes and misleading signs, sort of like driving in the Tshwane Municipality formerly known as Pretoria. I prepared myself for millions of rejection letters and editors’ secretaries slamming the phone down on me. That’s how the industry rolls and I’m not in a hurry.

The only problem is that I wish someone had told that to my nearest and dearest. It’s almost as if someone put the evil idea into their heads that I would be an overnight success and that I would suddenly be transformed into a multi-millionaire, giving television interviews, accepting awards and cutting red ribbons inexpertly at opening ceremonies. The worst part is when they start mentally spending the non-existent money from a non-existent publishing contract for me. I’m talking beach houses and speedboats.

The two stories I mentioned earlier are both very special to me. “Trapped” was the very first short story I ever wrote and within ten minutes (figuratively speaking) it had been accepted for publication and was generating a lot of discussion and awareness about the problem of woman and child abuse in South Africa, an issue which is close to my heart.

“Longing for Home” was a story I put a lot of work and attention into. It centres around a young Zimbabwean girl, who, sent to England to study towards a degree, finds herself the sole breadwinner of a large extended family when violence erupts back home in Zimbabwe. It is a story of broken expectations, an African sense of duty and finding love in unexpected places.

So please feel free to read my two stories at the links above and you can also check out some of the other fine offerings by my fellow StoryTime writers. If you liked my two stories you can vote for them here – select Trapped by Hajira Amla – StoryTime#77 and Longing for Home by Hajira Amla – StoryTime#91, then scroll down to the bottom and click on the Vote button. Finding out my stories have been selected to go into the anthology would be one of those sweet, sentimental moments a writer waits for. My lower lip is ready to tremble theatrically any time. Voting closes on the last day of September 2010!

Thanks
Hajira

Breaking the blockade of Gaza. One dead body at a time.

This morning I woke up to news that made my stomach churn with anger and utter disbelief. The Freedom Flotilla, a convoy of nine boats carrying aid to Palestinians living under siege in the Gaza Strip, was attacked in the early hours of Monday morning in international waters by Israeli security forces. Video cameras streaming live showed the moments the Israelis being lowered down on ropes from a helicopter gunship, while heavily-armoured warships flanked the aid boat on either side.

The men that came on board from the helicopters were armed to the teeth with automatic rifles, bulletproof vests and night vision goggles. It must have been the most alarming sight to see them descending from the ropes, fingers on hair triggers.

The activists on the deck of the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel in the convoy, were obviously frightened but determined they would not go down without a fight. There was an ensuing melee. I did see an activist give an Israeli a good couple of thwacks with a folding chair, just like they do in the fake wrestling programs you see on TV. But I never saw a wrestler get shot dead for hitting someone with a chair.

As yet, the Israeli government has still not confirmed the exact number of dead, but sources have put it at 19 thus far, with up to 60 people wounded. The remaining activists were escorted to the port city of Ashdod in Southern Israel, where the wounded were taken to hospital and the others were held in a makeshift detention camp where they would be processed and probably deported later. The 10,000 tonnes of aid in the boats would be unloaded, checked, searched and slowly “dripped” into Gaza at the mercy of the Israeli government. Dangerous and subversive contraband, such as cement, would not be allowed into the Strip due to a ban already in place.

The Free Gaza Movement organised this flotilla with the aim of breaking the siege that has been strangling the people of Gaza for three years. The group was comprised of approximately 700 pro-Palestinian activists from over 50 countries, including a Nobel Laureate and several European legislators (including a Turkish MP who was found to be one of the victims killed in the military operation).

However, the Israeli Army (I refuse to call it the Israeli Defense Force) would have you believe that the people who organised the flotilla are part of a “radical Muslim organisation” with ties to Al-Qaeda and Hamas (yeah, like my grandmother. If you had to believe the Israelis, only that Muslim gal who was a stripper before she became Miss America doesn’t have ties to Al-Qaeda, and that’s probably only because she doesn’t wear enough clothing for her to conceal a bazooka underneath).

Andy David from the Israeli foreign ministry would like to convince you that these people “were not there to deliver peacefully (sic) humanitarian aid. They were waiting with knives, with metal bars. They were there to attack.” The Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Daniel Ayalon, referred to the Freedom Flotilla as an “armada of hate and violence”. And to think that they pay their PR people top dollar.

Other spokespersons from the Israeli Army tried to defend their trigger-happy behaviour by saying that the activists were waiting for them and they were “lynched”. Because that’s what peace activists do. And the Israelis were so defenceless and afraid for their lives. They are also obviously too underfunded and backwards to have heard of tear gas, rubber bullets or crowd control training.

I hate that anyone had to die or even get hurt for this, but if anything, it will make Joe Bloggs more immune to the brown stuff that is constantly being spewed out of the Israeli PR machine. It also shows the power of social media. Twitter and Facebook have been overloaded by today’s events, and I’d like to think that ordinary folk have made a difference in bringing the issue home to all of us. Today, we shared, discussed, argued, re-tweeted and got information directly from the ground.

That’s the kind of democracy and freedom of speech that counts, but it’s also the kind that the leaders of the “free world” don’t really like because it can’t be edited to suit them. Today, the Israelis found themselves on the back foot while trying to bluff their way out, and everyone in the world has called their bluff.

Marriage: flatulence, warts and back hair.

Women spend a lot of time looking for their soulmate. The “One”, the proverbial knight in shining armour, the man with the golden member. Whatever. Guys might think they’re looking for the “One” (you know: cooks, cleans, is contracted to wipe your mother’s backside when she becomes too old to eat solid food, etc. Oral sex is a plus.), but in reality, most guys will settle for whatever they land up with, as long as it has nice breasts.

The truth is, there's no such thing as a soulmate. There's simply a process that must be followed in marriage, and not everyone has the stomach for it. Sometimes the mixture goes green and has to be thrown out.

Guys don’t often look at the long-term picture here. Breasts hardly ever last forever - even the fake ones. Usually they are so surprised that a real live woman lets him touch her, he will, after enough nagging, settle down and have 2.5 kids. Trouble is, Married Utopia is like cheese – it may taste pretty nice, but after a while it gets stale and eventually, slightly furry. Especially after 2.5 kids.

Women have a knack for working with what they have. They will take that weedy underpaid office clerk and make him into that knight in shining armour, or he will die trying. Women see men as malleable lumps of clay, waiting to be moulded into a desirable shape with a late model car. She dutifully reminds him daily of his shortcomings and inspires him to be a richer, more successful man who will give her more money. She never gives up until he has become a tortured shadow of the dream she married. Still, by the time she has it, it is hard to deny the fact that he is balding and farts when he is nervous.

Men, on the other hand, tend to get disheartened quite easily. Just one year into the future, your glamorous sexy wife is transformed into a lumpy, misshapen mutant that either cries when you touch her or leaks milk out of her breasts, which, incidentally, used to be the object of desire of all the guys but now resembles uncooked dough in two long plastic bags.

So, you’ve been married ten years and your husband has avoided all your attempts to murder him and collect the inheritance. You’ve twice caught him texting other women and he now has enough scars and just enough brain cells left not to try it again. Your kids are big enough to start becoming their own people, and you have both realised that they are the kind of people you don’t really want to know. Getting to that plateau is the key. It is only then that the two of you will finally unite in mind, cellulite-stricken body and capitulating soul. The war is over. It is time to call a truce, wax each other’s backs and avoid your kids at all costs.

Positively positive: the buck stops here

There are many different theories floating around out there about the meaning of life, why we are here, what the hell forty-two has to do with any of it, et cetera.

Whatever your personal or religious beliefs, whether you are a by-the-book religious type, a New Age spiritual sort, a hedonistic atheist or anything inbetween, I think the one thing we cannot possibly argue with is that life is hard. It sucks sometimes. Of course, then sometimes it doesn’t, but there’s always that moment when you think, “really? Does it really have to be this stupidly hard?”

Perhaps it would be better to think of life as a great video game, filled with tough challenges and levels. Only you don’t get given a bazooka to blow up anybody that irritates you and sadly, you only have one life.

Whether you live in a shack or a mansion, you will be faced with challenges and burdens. No-one has the right to say that their life is harder than the next person’s. It is also stupidly pointless to play the blame game. We could all blame our parents for traumatising us beyond repair by making us listen to Billy Ray Cyrus singing “Achy Breaky Heart” on repeat in the car all the time. All the time!

But this is not about me. Whatever gave you that silly idea?

If someone did something to hurt you in the past, you can’t carry on living your life until you have truly forgiven that person. Some things can’t be changed. Sometimes we have to accept a reality that we don’t like.

If you live with any bitterness or hatred in your heart for any person, situation or event, it begins to define who you are, and the negativity slowly seeps through into every aspect of your life, your being and your attitude.

We may not be able to change what has happened in the past, but we can change how we react to it. It is not an easy process, and may take years to successfully achieve.

There will always be negative people in the world out there. You will come into contact with them, you will work with them, you may even have the misfortune of living with them.

Negativity is a chain reaction. Let’s say this morning you woke up and found that your neighbour (who found out a week ago that his wife was cheating on him with her best friend’s husband) smashed your car’s windscreen and put a sizeable dent in the bonnet with the half-brick he threw over your fence to shut your dog up in the wee hours of the morning. You get into a screaming match with him, he tells you he’s not paying for the damage and you go to work fuming.

During the course of your day, you get a quote for the damage to your car, which is astronomical. You snap on the phone to your colleagues, you bite the cashier’s head off at the bank because the queue was long, there was a big sweaty fat guy who had just eaten what smelled like a steak and kidney pie breathing down your neck while you were in said queue and your lunch break was over half an hour ago. Then, when you get home, you pick on your kids because they haven’t done their homework and get into a fight with your spouse because he’s not sympathetic enough when you start bitching about what a crap day you had.

All those people who you acted negatively towards during the course of the day, will in turn feel very wronged and injured and will proceed to take it out on the people whose paths cross theirs. Then those people will take it out on other people. And lo and behold, you have just spread a tsunami of low-grade negativity over the whole city in just one day. Happy now? Who can you blame it on? The neighbour? The neighbour’s wife?

The wave can stop with you. Only you can decide not to pass on the negativity to others by calming down, looking at the problem objectively and deciding that you are not going to allow it to turn your day into something brown and smelly.

You can do it – put a smile on that face and kill ‘em with kindness, charm and wit… and if you are having a rough day, just remind yourself that it takes thirty-six muscles to frown and none whatsoever to think to yourself “you’ll be dead from a heart attack in two years’ time, asshole”.

Weak bladders, hot tempers and servitude

Sometimes when you are married and living in domestic bliss you get these moments where you could just drop what you are holding and move to another country. Change your name. Dye your hair. The little things that have been grinding you down build up to a point where you feel one day, “fuck it, this is not what I signed up for”. At least if I murdered all of them I would probably be out in five years. This is South Africa.

Now let me do the cliché thing and tell you that I love my husband. I certainly love my daughter more than anything else in life. And Lord, shoot me for bothering, but I love my step-daughter too. We have a fairly peaceful, happy home, all things considered.

Then WHY do they all make me so stressed I can feel my hair greying when they are at home? Why do I feel my boobs begin to sag after one hour around them? Why do I feel I can never win?

And no, it’s not that time of the month. I checked.

Every day I calmly tell myself that today I am going to be as cool as a cucumber. I’m going to be happy and walk around with a big smile. No matter what any of them say to me, I will not react negatively. I am a fucking island. It usually lasts five minutes.

Yesterday it all started when I went to pick up my daughter from school. Aayah is a total dreamer. She got into trouble previously because she forgets to go to the toilet at break and then asks to go during class. Then she will muck around in the bathroom, dreaming and singing to herself for perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes. Eventually when she gets back to class she has missed the whole lesson and the teacher and class get disrupted on her account.

So I did what any good mother would do - I threatened her on pain of… well, pain, that if she didn’t stop it there would be Consequences. And all was well in the land of Aayah for a while.

However, this afternoon, as I arrived to collect her, she was on her way back from the bathroom and the teacher informed me that she had again been going to the toilet during class constantly. I gave her a lecture in the car and we headed off to the library. As soon as we got there she started performing for the toilet again – even though she had just gone about ten minutes before. So she had to go to the public library toilet which smells of urine and in which there is no toilet tissue. OK. So now I’m at boiling point. After the library we went straight to Pick n’ Pay to buy bread.

“Mummy, I need the toilet again. I need it really badly.”

Wow. Add to that the everyday homework drama where half an hour of homework is transformed into three hours of telling her every five minutes to concentrate on her work and stop dreaming, punctuated by about ten trips to the toilet, and we have a mother that is ready to jump off a handy bridge.

So I ask myself: does she really have some kind of a problem with her bladder or is this kid just winding me up?

Then I come to the realisation that I am the bad one here. I just have no patience. Is there some kind of magical elixir, a pill perhaps, that I can swallow? “Patience in 5 minutes – guaranteed!” Wouldn’t that be deliciously easy…

Kids are just kids, and I need to admit that I have issues with anger.

The same hot temper gets fired up when my husband gets home. Everything he says to me, I want to jump down his throat for, and make him see that he is wrong and I am right. When I look at my own behaviour afterwards I see a fishwife staring me in the face.

I’m not saying they don’t all have their faults. But my need for control overpowers everyone, even the person I am inside. It’s as if I need everything to be so perfect it could be straight out of a magazine. I suppose that my past has left me with such strong feelings of helplessness that now I want to exert my will and authority over everyone to make sure I am never treated badly again. I expect Aayah to be perfect because I want her to grow up not making the mistakes I made.

Every night after I have put Aayah to bed I regret the harsh words I have spoken to her. I ask myself: today did I build my child up or did I break her down? Did I shatter her self-confidence? Did my kind words, hugs and kisses outweigh my shouts and criticisms? Just about every night I fall lower in my estimation as a good parent.

Today it has been a full hour since she came home from school and I have not yet shouted. I have calmly and patiently asked her to do her work quickly, promising to read her a story if she finishes before 5pm.

Wish me luck.