Chapter 20 | The one with the first crush and the colored friend

My cousin Rasheed was my very first crush. It sounds absurd when I write about it now but back then, I was smitten. I don't know what it was about him, if anything I think it had more to do with the fact that, aside from Zaheer, he was the only other male I actually knew.

Papa's warnings had indented in us a fear than didn't leave us even when we were at school.

In Grade five there was a boy, Abdur Razaq, who sat next to me in class. He was from Cape Town and he lived in Jo'burg with his guardians, his grandparents.

I didn't know the reason for this, because I had never bothered to ask.

He was very business minded and had started selling sweets and stickers out of what once was, an ice-cream container. I grew fond of his company and even though we didn't spend our breaks together, we would converse during class.

Ary (as I would call him) never took money from me and so I was the girl who didn't have to 'put out' in order to get some. It meant nothing to me, I was too naïve.

Our form class however, took to teasing us, remarking every time they'd see our heads huddled together, not understanding the significance of our friendship and mistaking it for something more.

Then the year came to an end and I never saw Ary on the school grounds or anywhere else thereafter. I assumed he moved back to Cape Town and I moved on with life.

I had one close friend in Grade 6, Suraya. Despite Mama's apprehension with coloured people, I thought Suraya's demeanor to be rather lady-like.

So she had two front teeth missing and hair that strung more strings than a guitar player but her personality struck me like a chord.

She lived in a dingy flat in Langlaagte, painted so purple, even Justin Bieber would have been taken aback. Her father overlapped the couch in the lounge that doubled as a hallway - I wasn't sure whether he was sitting on the couch or the couch on him.

We played outside for a bit. Then she told me about the grafitti wall that was used by the youngsters living in the area for 'snogging' purposes. I had no idea what that meant and so I bobbed my head like a Hawaiian doll in a hula skirt.

She must have picked up on my naiveness and went on to explain what 'snogging' entailed. I was perplexed.

People kissed?

On the mouth?

Willingly?

 With their tongue's?

Before marriage?

My mind was reeling in dimensions further than America's range.