This reader’s impression was written and sent to LitNet on the writer's own initiative.
Song of the slave girl
Ashraf Kagee
288 pages
Jacana Media, 2025
Available: South African bookshops and online at Song of the slave girl – Jacana
Who doesn’t like a good story? Yes, for some, reading may feel laborious, but when a “yarn is spun” (can you picture the rocking chair, the blazing hearth and the old crone busy with wool and word?), you are spellbound.
Which is exactly what Ashraf Kagee does in his latest novel, Song of the slave girl. He weaves his words in ways that transport the reader-listener across the portals of time and space with a rhythmic lilt. He shows – and tells – with every word a song’s note, an ingredient that stirs flavours within, and the result is both delicate and rich.
For how else can one tell of a love doomed by circumstance, but by adding a touch of magic? To speak of the possession of human souls, their bodies mere vessels for another’s bidding, makes tales distasteful to many. Yet Ashraf writes of this with the skill of the ancient masters of folklore and fairytales – lightly. He uses his psychologist’s ability to unpick characters with the touch of a whimsical outsider-insider, steering us towards questions that we are scared to answer – yet know that we must consider. It’s this gift of tale-telling that we’ve sanitised out of modern children’s stories – the presence of menace and myth. Yet it is the very presence of the ugliness of humanity’s evil that gives the book’s lovers, Meraj and Djameela, flesh to feel, and loss to lament. It also offers us something timebound, yet timeless.
It’s a daring book. Reminiscent of the ancient “willow pattern story” of the two young Chinese lovers pursued by the powerful bent on separating them, Djameela and Meraj are not allowed to want anything more than lives of subservience – their bodies the delight or device for another’s gain. To increase this pain, to be female was to be no more than “a disappointment, a mistake. A girl.” Yet it is through the silent wisdom of women – and that “magical concoction of katjiepiering and nutmeg” – that Djameela discovers her first taste of a freedom that surpasses her assigned lot, and her “kizmet” (a delicious word of Turkish origin) becomes her own.
Just as Ashraf Kagee has dared his pen to venture into feminine mysteries, he traverses into the whitewashed Cape Dutch homes of the overlords of the Cape of Good Hope (a euphemistic term of masterful advertising!). Here he holds a light – not quite as bright as those in the hovels of the enslaved – to the arrogance of a people who walk their land’s filth across the prayer mats of their chattel, who see them only as “you slaves” to their “us whites”.
Humiliation. Subjugation. Shame. The pursuit of external, puritanical purity at the expense of humanity. Ashraf Kagee doesn’t flinch, unpicking and unpacking the ugliness with resolute penmanship. As he himself is a child of District Six, forced removals and decades of life under another form of white supremacy, I read every word as I would sip a serious wine – I linger, trying to taste every flavour. For to write of such things – feelings matured, distilled, filtered – should require a savoured reading. This is a novel, yes – but it is not a flippant read.
Perhaps this is what this book is, then? It’s a slow reveal of what was whitewashed away. It’s a song sung with lyrics rendered new. It’s a meal crafted with ingredients carefully chosen for flavour and essence. It’s a lesson about humanity in all its vastness – the “dregs” left out of our histories, so often the essence of what must be said. It’s a touch of lightness in whimsical “what ifs”, and brutal harshness in the “what was”. It’s a tale told well, and one for the listening.
*
Ashraf Kagee is a psychologist, academic and writer. His first novel, Khalil’s journey, won the European Union Literary Award and the South African Literary Award. His second novel, By the fading light, was nominated for the South African Literary Award for Youth Literature. He lives in Cape Town and is distinguished professor of psychology at Stellenbosch University.
The post Song of the slave girl by Ashraf Kagee: A reader’s impression first appeared on LitNet.
The post <i>Song of the slave girl</i> by Ashraf Kagee: A reader’s impression appeared first on LitNet.