The print shop was filled with generally affable staff with the occasional staff member who to all appearances may have just ambled in off the street, donned the colourful staff attire, and in a twisted practical joke was deriving great joy from sending unsuspecting customers in all the wrong directions.  After some frenzied haggling with the chap at the cartridge counter and managing to actually get the cartridge that I was looking for, and believe me this was no easy task.

The conversation went something like this:

Me:   “do you have cartridges for the Zenon particle accelerator Nano lube replicator XZ9 543T2 printer (names change to protect propriety-mine and theirs)” cartridge

Attendant:  “certainly sir. Would you like the generic, long life, genuine, pasteurized, low-fat or the gluten free?”

Me:  “eh…. “

Attendant:  madly entering binary codes into his pc.. “ooh wait a minute, do you have a cartridge here with you?”

Me: fumbling in my  ‘man’ bag “sure here it is”

Attendant:  “great, could you just lift the flap under the modulator extension spout and check to see if there are three dots, a colon followed by a hieroglyph of an eagle taking a dump executed in an arabesque cross stitch pattern, or if it has three semi colons followed by a diagonal dash with an embroidered Inca symbol for Quetzalcoatl.

Me:  “huh…  hmmm… let me see,… what was that you said again?”

Attendant:  looking at me as though I may be wall-eyed and drooling, then asked me to hand over the cartridge in a voice that suggested that I may be holding something with a detonation button, soothing me all the way as I handed it over.

Attendant:  “ I will be just a minute, feel free to browse around while I find what you need.”

I suspect that by the way he held eye contact with me as he backed away clutching the cartridge to his chest that he was going to dive for the phone as soon as I had turned a corner, in all likely hood to call around and establish with any of the local lunatic asylums if one of their inmates had made off with their office supplies and may at this time be wandering the streets of Mayfair.

With this in the back of my mind I walked about the store thumbing stationery and somehow stumbled upon a dark section of the shop that had at it centre a metal bookrack, bathed in what appeared to be preternatural light issuing from a source unknown.  Okay, okay, so I am perhaps exaggerating a little. But I did come to a bookrack that had on it an interesting illustrated paperback that immediately drew my attention.  The cover had a green monochromatic background; by monochromatic I mean all the different shades that snot manifests itself in.

The central image was the head of a grey haired man, to his lips was held a stunning rose garnished, three quarter full whisky glass.  “Ah, a book on cocktails, how interesting” I thought, until I read the book’s title “Auto Urine Therapy”.  Whoa… that wasn’t a whisky glass he had to his lips, it was a beaker full of pee.   My first reflex was to hurl the book to the floor, throw my coat over it and perhaps stamp on it, but considering my fragile relationship with the printer cartridge clerk, I decided to assume a more scholarly air and flip the book open, this way communicating to the clerk that I was in fact sensible and literate to boot. (To be continued….)

These to “western eyes” peculiar outfits  besides for being particular to the Muslims  sense of modesty and socio/religious sensibilities are in fact very fascinating, as I sought to dig a little deeper and dispel my own veil of ignorance on the topic, here’s what was uncovered.

Interestingly enough the colour of the garments have no bearing on the items functionality and only serve to express the wearers personal taste. Chances are you also will not find Muslim men wearing gold and silver trim as it is considered very effeminate. I also discovered that the naming of the clothing items is as variegated as the styles they appear in, but here follows a list of the more common names in regular usage.

The casual looking headscarf’s worn by woman that come in an assortment of colours (the headscarves, not the woman) are called Hijab’s.

The mask or face veil is called a Khimar and is also used to refer to a particular style of scarf that drapes over the entire top half of a woman’s body down to her waist.

The Chador is worn from the top of the head down to the floor. It looks very similar to what Mother Mary is represented as wearing in a myriad of artworks.

The cloak worn by woman over their clothing is called an Abaya, this one though is worn form the shoulders down, with separate face veil and head scarves.

The single piece head covering that only reveals the eyes are called a Niqab. The head covering with the screened mesh eye covering is called a Burqa.

Well now, being armed with all this knowledge surely made me feel a lot more ‘at one’ with the crowd as I traipsed the busy streets of Mayfair. Why I could quite fancy myself strolling along in a rustic long tunic and loose trousers otherwise  called by those in the know, erm, ‘cough-cough’ as a Salwar Kamees, greeting fellows in Thobe’s, those long white robes Muslim men wear.

Perhaps even mopping the sweat off my brow with a Ghutra. A Ghutra being a checkered pattern head piece that instantly reminds me of a red and white tablecloth my grandmother once had .  There are naturally numorouse other forms of apparel, but these seem to cover the main items.

The weird thing is I had a sneaky suspicion that a lot of the women so bedecked may in fact not have been Muslim, but were in truth affluent hoity toitie’s sneaking about for bargains, and not wanting the Joneses to know of their penny pinching ways were therefore slinking about in this incognito apparel, dunno, just a hunch.

A few little factiles that I also gleaned about the history of Mayfair was that it was in this place that Nelson Mandela had first met and urged the young Thabo Mbeki to get out of the country.  Ostensibly to further his studies free from the disruption of the then ruling nationalist (there is an irony) regime. Bare in mind that by “disruption”, they meant that the young Thabo’s life was actually in danger. This was way back in 1961, the very same year that Govan Mbeki, Thabo’s father, was involved in establishing Umkhonto We Sizwe (Mk) the spear of the Nation.

It was also in Mayfair that a group of twenty five women entered a Mosque with the then hair, gall, ire and eyebrow raising (of their bearded brethren) insistence that they too would pray there. After much yelling, again by the bearded ones at the woman’s temerity for leaving the house, let alone entering the holy of holies, fortunately the bravado, bullishness and let me be kind here, boisterousness of the men did eventually fizzle out. I imagine it didn’t take the men long to figure out the pros and cons of the situation, after all who would like to return from the male ridden holy of holies, to the female hell of hells on the domestic front.  The women were allowed to pray within the Mosque, though with some conditions. Firstly they were not allowed to pray in the front rows and had to stand at the back and pray behind the men.  Not a decisive victory to be sure, but certainly a sweeping one (no pun intended). Now where was I – oh yes, printer cartridges.

Driving through Mayfair is in itself an experience that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who doesn’t have nerves of steel or at least an advanced driver’s course under the belt. It was easy to spot others like me, who had both inadvertently taken the wrong turn and ended up in the mayhem. Or, eschewing common sense, had steeled their resolve to attempt the traffic of this interesting, if not too pretty neighborhood.

The other non locals were readily identifiable, they were the ones who mirrored my white knuckled clasping of the steering wheel, a ready surrogate for the visceral feeling that we were hanging onto a precipice by our fingernails. Their clench jawed toothy grimaces of fear, frustration and ‘oh for heavens sake-ness’, as they dodged, veered and careened around the local maniacs, who by all appearance were following a set of road rules that could only apply on a planet with less gravity, two dimensions and inhabited by octopods with eyes all panoramically placed about their heads.

Yet strangely these malevolent Mayfair motorists, looked just like the rest of us lesser endowed human beings except that they were navigating through this mayhem with the aura of sublime serenity, even as they performed the most death defying acts of driving. All this while applying make–up, picking their noses, jabbering away on their cell phones, and if my eyes didn’t deceive me, there was a chap driving with his feet whilst to all appearance busy perming his hair. And why the hell was that truck driver wearing a gorilla suit?

Mayfair, situated just to the West of Johannesburg City is a neighborhood that, run down as it is, is an area that is not without its own interesting, if not outright arresting historical moments. As recently as 2002 Mayfair established its own football club. The club has a strong emphasis on youth development and by all accounts is well received within the community.

Walking through the area today though would do little to belie the fact that anything significant could have or will ever take place here. Mayfair is certainly not a place that could ever be accused of being modern or progressive. Don’t get me wrong here, the business proprietors know how to make money; it’s just that they don’t spend vast amounts of it on smart veneering of their establishments. There is a certain grittiness to the character of the buildings and business that appear to eke out their existence on this patch of land.

Although traditionally a very cosmopolitan suburb with many different nationalities calling it home, ranging  from a large Jewish community to the Irish and British inhabitants influence with their mission school of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy in the early 1900’s. Today the Muslim influence on the area is displayed visibly on the shop fronts and Islamist reconstructive architectural leanings. The focal point of Mayfair is its Mosque, an edifice that can best be described as utilitarian. Interestingly enough the very building that now houses it, was in a previous and by now very distant incarnation, in fact,  a Dutch Reformed Church. Ironically from whose original pulpit one could readily conceive many sermons at odds with the present day way of things.

The businesses range from your standard half neglected corner cafe’s, spice merchants furniture and electronic stores, to Halaal butcheries whose derelict exteriors and dimly lit, unpopulated interiors make them seem more aversive than inviting. I Imagine there will be some exceptions and that there may be tucked between all the scruffiness a cleaner carcass cuttery, to which the local s flock, explaining the strange desertedness of the more visible ones.

The street front business’ housed in crumbling early turn of the last century buildings are not what one could call even ‘strip mall’ standard. This is not to say that the latest fashions are not available behind their cluttered windows, but by latest I imagine late 1970’s. This seeming time bubble effect on the recency of fashion is offset by the fact that prices are also trapped in the bubble too. Mayfair is certainly a great place to go bargain hunting whether you are looking for wool, car parts, no name electronics, furniture or as was my case on this day, printer cartridges.