A word about your award, Sir?

We meet lauded local author, Zinaid Meeran and discuss sudden status and fluid identities over forty percent volume at the gates of sobriety (Saracen's already taken)

Zinaid's not having a good time. He can't sleep, and suddenly he's become a god. Ok, a demigod. Only actors get to be gods; Zinaid is just a writer. A writer whose first published novel, 'Saracen At The Gates', won him the 2009 European Union Literary Award. 

As a result, he's suffering what he terms 'author's divinity', a lesser known social ill typical of literary land newbies.  You're  published? You're no longer an obscure, struggling artist largely ignored in select company? Yes, now you're stared at dumbly, and pawed at, sometimes. 

“It's the way curry mafia doctors are worshipped” he smiles, dryly, but there's a twinkle in his eye. And I'm going straight for it.

Zinaid is an unlikely literary figure. Probably because he's also a film maker. He dresses stylishly on a budget wardrobe (army jerseys, silk scarves, leather shoes, a ready smile and those piercing, burning brown eyes), and secondly he edits his own prose. 'Killing your kids' yourself it's dubbed by the more sardonic in the world of words. It's generally frowned upon by professionals as literary suicide.  But, then, the paradox between rules, rituals and realities makes this man smile, sometimes in amusement, sometimes in amazement. More often,  the latter; his is a relentless imagination and it's hungry for expression.

Down a few phrases of his prose, and the words roll right off the page, and drop - plop  - into your imagination (or is it your drink?), where they breathe a life of their own into your being (or is it your belly?), unfolding whole cities and spinning worlds that could, if you're not careful, take you to the gates of an imaginary world not so distant from the one you're standing in (or is that swaying?). But you're not so careful, are you? If you've drunk this much - I mean - read this far.  Cheers to that.

It's Happy Hour here at Boo Radleys, where new alcoholic treats arrive almost by themselves to drown the one you just downed. For the record, we did try to be professional, but Deluxe was already closed. Which is probably lucky, considering the novelist/film maker is an insomniac. Let's see if any of our ramblings make any sense...

Heretofore, our elegy to bars and bras - a short, sharp interview with one of Cape Town's most marvelous men who sports - as he corrected me - 'cow brown' eyes. It must be the Mojitos.

CTMag: How'd you get published?

Zinaid: I noticed this literary award and sent the manuscript to them. I won, and Jacana published.

CTMag: Do you think you would've gone with Jacana if it had been the other way around?

Zinaid: Ja. I would have; they have a good reputation for publishing off the wall stuff, like Zapiro and what have you; politically more challenging perhaps.

CTMag: They published Kopano Matlwa's 'Coconut', too.

Zinaid: They have this maverick kind of feel to them. I didn't want to waste time applying to different people. Which is not necessarily the best way to proceed.

CTMag: Yes, if you're writing full time.

Zinaid: I'm not; I feel it's too narrow. I'm into film. There's a danger of dabbling in everything, becoming a debutante.  But I'm not a careerist; I have no ambition whatsoever. There's all these rules of The Profession, and I don't seem to know any of them. I'm always getting into trouble. Others in the profession are always giving me a good talking to.

CTMag: There's been a buzz about the book being involved with a film script?

Zinaid: It's hard to explain. It all kind of happened at the same time. The film is called Gazelle 99. The SABC wanted to get into making feature films. I rewrote the script with my brother (Jahn Meeran). I thought we'd make the film before the book. Things were going well with the SABC, and then we didn't hear from them. You know they basically stole a billion rand. Now all these film makers are sitting around wondering what happened to them. Ten of us. Eleven; because of the twin duo.

CTMag: You and your brother, Jahn?

Zinaid: And it takes money; it's ambitious.

CTMag: But you said you have no ambition.

Zinaid: Ambition sneaks up on you, when you think you're this loser and then you suddenly realize you're this megalomaniac.

CTMag: Isn't it more imagination than ambition?

Zinaid: I didn't realize making feature films was that hard. Getting money, having exec producers determined to rewrite your script entirely. I love them all, but they have marketing ideas. So writing became a relief; you're alone in your kitchen.

 CTMag: Locally, it's a hard market; we're relatively illiterate, the market moves about 750 000 units a year.

Zinaid: I didn't think about it; I just wrote it; it's just a compulsion

CTMag: How do you feel now when people are in awe of you?

Zinaid: I really like it; I feel vindicated. You know that people are interested in your imagination. It's amazing.

CTMag: Why?

Zinaid: Well, imagination is all your own; when you see it interlocking, it's stunning. In film, the things I've been trying to say have been restricted; they have a strict agenda. So, to see publishers not being that way genuinely surprised me. They seem much braver; maybe literature is more open.

CTMag: Well, it reaches fewer people. So profits per project are perhaps less.

Zinaid: Ja. In film we're interested in public money, getting money out of the government. We (brothers) figured a lot of our stuff is about cultural transformation. I've learned that there's a very strict racial agenda going on – it's about dividing South Africa up into these race categories, and anybody who challenges that, well, it feels like apartheid to me,  but a much more sophisticated one. What we're trying to do in film and in this novel, and another I've just finished writing, is to investigate this concept of 'race'. It's something to be ridiculed; it's a really stupid idea. I grew up in a non-racial environment, in Durban. My parents were very involved in the political struggle, very specifically in non-racial, left-wing politics. It wasn't about being race-blind, it was about recognizing racism as a severe problem, and race as artificial. Another faction believed that race is a problem and race is real, and now they're running the show. So was this war in the liberation movement. Saracen [At The Gates] is all about that. The same goes for gender. Saracen looks at what gender is, the way people are forced to behave as men or women, and at sexual identity - gay, straight, bisexual. That's certainly not the way all people see themselves.

CTMag: So you've written about these people?

Zinaid: Yes, and people are curious about this. Looking at how people camouflage themselves so that they can get away with living a fluid/fragmented sense of self.

CTMag: How are you handling being an artist slash revered author?

Zinaid: When I won this award; they frog-marched me in there to talk to a bunch of people. I had a great time; I realized people GET this book. It was touching.

CTMag: Does it make you feel less alone?

Zinaid:Yes. In the sense of a fluid/fragmented self, the one character was brought up the way I was brought up, to have a fluid sense of identity. But Zakirah isn't. But she also has this fluid sense of self. I'm trying to show that you don't have to be educated. You can have it intuitively, and from your background. The other thing is people have this notion of Muslims, let's say 'South African Muslims'. I never intended this book to be about that, it's about the curry mafia, but people interpret out of that 'Muslimness' and even 'Indianness'. I just don't see it that way. That's a fascinating thing; how people see things. When I grew up - and I still have this problem – I was constantly identified as Indian, when I have an Afrikaans grandfather, a Cape Coloured mother, and an Indian father, and an English/South African stepfather. 

CTMag: Wow, you're lucky! 

Zinaid: I know. So when people attack me – for hours – and argue with me that I'm lying about these things, I think, 'this is absurd'. This is why Zakhira is so interesting to me as a character, because she's been trained to be part of this curry mafia and they become the rebels, and then everyone's surprised. It's saying you can always get away with it. That's what the Saracens are all about - recruiting curry mafia girls into their anarchist girl gang to show them that they can escape.

CTMag: You once told me that Salman Rushdie chased your mother around the kitchen table amorously. He's one of my literary heroes. Do you have a mentor?

 Zinaid: Yes. Harry Gaboa Junior. I haven't spoken to him in years. He's an artist in LA. He was wanted by the FBI during the Chicago riots. I think of him as an older version of me.  He has no sense of profession, he does poetry, film, narrative fiction, photography, and he hops from one to the other.

CTMag: What are your outlets?

 Zinaid: All those. Not poetry. I think that's what mentoring really is; having the support of someone who's been there and doesn't think s/he's better. It's rare. I was 29 when I found mine.

CTMag: What do you think children should be reading at school?

 Zinaid: Saracen. From ten years old.

CTMag: I like how confidently you said that.

 Zinaid: Mm. I think that fascination is vilified in education; there's this control in the arts, by the people with the money. [Learning] it's really about being baffled but excited.

 *

Baffled but excited yet? Want to know what exactly the 'curry mafia' is? Watch out for Zinaid at this year's Book Fair (30 July – 2nd August), in the Exclusive Book’s Homebru promotional shelves. He's often seen traipsing labourer's trails around Johannesburg suburbs or bumped into in dark, sweaty clubs serving overpriced whiskey. Tell him I said "hi". And he owes me a drink.

Jess Henson