The flow of magic

Growing up in Atteridgeville in the late 1980s I noticed that there was something similar in the way our shops were built. They were built with the same type of brownish greying bricks, they were like train coaches matorokisi except they had enclosed back yards. It didn’t matter whether you were lenyora la ko Oudstad, Ghost Town, Deep six, Ten Morgan, Mazakhele, Matebeleng or kleva ya Sabona, they all looked the same. This past winter when I visited Magic Tree Books Store in Villeria to pick up a few books that the proprietor had set aside for me, a flashback of how our shops use to look like was conjured-up. There was one particular row of shops that vividly flashed-by in my memory the instant I stood facing that row of shops in Pierneef Street, Villeria. It was a row of shops up Ramokgopa Street, in Saulsville, where the Mabena Café used to be.

It might have been the position of the weakened sun as its light gingerly hit trees, parked cars and the surrounding structures during that lunch hour that toyed with my mind as it cast solid shades. Once inside that bookshop, snippets of my first encounter with many books in one place at the same time reeled in my mind, bathed me in nostalgia and teleported me to my childhood. You see, we did not have bookstores ko kasi. However, we did have one little library tucked away near a police station. Atteridgeville Community Library nestled with the Child Well Fare offices and a Greengrocer Market, at the confluence of streets leading to Ghost Town, Mazakhele and Matebeleng. And there a busy roundabout with an apollo light at its centre had cars swooshing-flowing to and fro, to town, Matebeleng, Ten Morgan or to Sabona, Saulsville via Ramokgopa Street.

From the terrace of that little library; lulled by a pungent of a freshly manicured lawn whose pathway was lined with flowers; looking across the roundabout, you faced a continuously westward inclining neighbourhood sprawl. That would be Mazakhele. On your near right hand side would be an array of matorokisi coaches shops which consisted of a Hardware, Café, Diary Shop, Butchery and a shop that sold odds and bits you could find in the first three shops. These were the staples of what our shops consisted of in just about all the sections in ko kasi. But no bookshop. At the confluence where our library was located, there was also a municipal brewery and a dry cleaner. Opposite the dry cleaners on the other side of the roundabout, modestly imposing, was our community hall. And just to its right which would be your left as you stood facing west, was the Police station. Behind the police station Super Stadium loomed over the tableau with self-assurance. Pity, in such a neighbourhood of hyper activities only one library was expected to service the entire community.

One day, I had been reading a condensed version of Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Book worm bitten and curious I entered our community library for the first time. Although I recall the experience in a sepia tinged film as I write these passages a new world opened-up. Gripped by silence. I see the reception area, strangely though, I cannot see the librarian. There would have been one. Bespectacled or plain and beaming with world know how and all. How on earth would a place like that function without a librarian? I see the reading tables and rows and rows of bookshelves. A faint smell of books and wood waft its way about. It is clean. So, there would have been people whose work would be to keep that haven tidy. A generous number of windows allows natural light to flood in. I can see the traffic to and from town muffle by through Mareka Street which fed into the roundabout. And across, in an oblige profile, I pick-out Mokgethoa Cinema announcement board. That’s the snapshot. Enriched, I emerged into the world of clutter and chatter.

When the library was later moved several blocks away down Komane Street, pass the Greengrocer Market, to a tucked away Mohlaba Street, making way for a petrol station, I suffered inside. That part of the neighbourhood wasn’t the same anymore. And I grew up suspecting that just as I valued the library there would have been people who were negatively affected by its relocation. Patrons who borrowed books from the library, those who browsed and read the magazines and newspapers. Those to whom the library was a second home, a retreat or a stopover. Subjectively speaking, I think the books we read are eternally tied to where we encounter them. For readers, some of our fondest memories of self-discovery are experienced through texts because reading is intertwined with being alive. Imagine what regular patrons of Atteridgeville Library of yore would add to that adage.

Atteridgeville Community Library, not its relocated version which withered away into obscurity through the passage of time. The original, whose pathway, lined up on either side with shrubs of lilies and roses as you walked towards its portal, represents a short-lived haven, a trove of discoveries in my sepia tinged memory.

As I entered Magic Tree Bookshop on that midwinter lunchtime hour, leaving the swooshing traffic behind, bound with the world of the immediate demands, something nostalgic stirred within me. It must’ve been the smell of a trove of books and bookshelves. It is wonderful to be in a welcoming territory.