I’m quite certain that it’s common practice amongst newly married couples to spend a certain portion of an allocated weekend to do grocery shopping together. I have found out by unsuspecting default that grocery shopping is a necessary pre-requisite in my marriage and perhaps an arduous ritual that I have no real alternative than to just accept and smile about.
Maimoonah requested that we try a new shopping centre on Sunday morning as a break from the monotony of the habitual Sunday drive to Pavilion. She suggested that we go to the Village Mall in Westville, as it is fairly small and quiet there and it would also be a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of the bigger shopping malls. Maimoonah’s suggestion could not have been more accurate. The shopping experience was quite pleasant indeed. There weren’t as many people at the Village Mall making both the shopping and payment incidents quite pleasurable.
Sometime during Sunday Maimoonah and I also found time to go to Willowton Butchery in Brickfield Road situated in Overport as well as to Bread Ahead in Greyville. The weather was quite dull and overcast so we decided to retreat back home where we could simply relax in bed and enjoy each other’s company in the privacy of our home. Everything that Sunday was going just fine until I decided to use my cell phone, log on to Facebook (a mobile picture email communications program that has become increasingly popular in South Africa over the past few months) and check if I had received any messages from any of my close friends or contacts. It was just then when I realized something that really disturbed me at the outset.
On my personal Facebook profile page, there are updates of all my contacts who have recently updated their personal status. Their updates could be either in the form of something which they may have written on their Facebook Wall or something which they typed just to inform their friends what they are currently doing in the form of a status update. It was my brother’s (Fadiel) most current status update which really sent a shockwave of unwelcomed sadness through my body. His status update read as follows: “Fadiel Aysen is hanging out with his familia, please do not disturb.” It seemed very innocent and quite understandable if you’re one of his millions of friends reading his status update but the disturbing part was that I am in fact an undeniable part of his family.
I knew that my sister (who is currently studying at Wits University) had come from Johannesburg during the course of the week and my parents were typically laying out the red carpet for her. She had received a similar dinner treatment from my parents on her arrival to Durban as what I had received for completing my Bachelor of Commerce Degree. Nevertheless, my loving sister had not forgotten me in the time it took her to enjoy her welcome back home dinner that evening. In the morning she had made it a duty to give my wife a complimentary Spur sweet and requested her to give me the sweet when I returned home that day (a token of loving good gesture).
It so happened that my parents had taken my brother and my sister out for the afternoon to watch a movie. Now although I was hurt quite badly by their negligent denial of including me as a part of their family social get-togethers, I understood why they conveniently forgot to mention anything to me. Firstly, I’m the only child who is married so they probably did not want to intrude on my marriage life with something as trivial as watching a movie. Secondly, as I do not have a television set in my house, they probably assumed that I do not watch any form of television and for me to spend time in a cinema would be a definite deviation from my established code of ethics (even though I watched the South Africa vs. Wales Rugby match with my father the previous afternoon). Thirdly, with my wife being fully clothed in Purda and a breach of her value system being quite easy so long as my brother was around, one understands why we weren’t even given a phone call after the movie for us to join them in doing whatever they were doing. So although I was feeling a bit down and out for being left in the dark with regards to my family’s afternoon “modus opperandi,” I’m not feeling too bad in retrospect when I think about what could possibly have caused them to leave my wife and I out of their plans.
