From Tom Wolfe to Homeland, All Before Breakfast
From Tom Wolfe to Homeland, All Before Breakfast
Lamb Mince Dosa in Cape Town
The gods had decided that my life was in serious need of some Americana one Saturday morning.
I had recently discovered a new bookstore in Cape Town’s Woodstock district, an increasingly gentrified ode to bohemia. This hole-in-the-wall, located in one of the renovated steam-punk high rises, spilled over with early editions of lefty classics and other literary knick-knacks: Burgess, Lichtenstein biographies, the leather-bound collected works of someone fashionably obscure.
My eyes fell on a third-edition copy of The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. Closer inspection revealed that this particular tome had traveled, and how. Emblazoned across its title page was the typewritten imprint, “Eastside Street Academy, Monroe County Traveling Library, 115 South Avenue, Rochester 4, New York.”
Never has a book been so quickly snaffled, paid for, and bagged. I realized the compulsion to sit down and read, read, read! was winning out over the nagging pangs in my gut, which spelled trouble if not sated immediately. A Cape Town local had been imploring me incessantly to pay a visit to the Eastern Food Bazaar, and it seemed as good a time as any.
A four-minute Uber ride later, and I found myself in what could best be described as a cavern, gazing up at a dozen fluorescent menu boards boasting the specialities of Istanbul, South India, and China. Native chefs of these distant lands were huddled under each, braced for the breakfast run, swaying intermittently to a soundtrack that in other circumstances might have introduced a high-end belly-dancing recital.
The eclectic people of Cape Town’s Central Business District—Somalis, Pakistanis, Ghanaians, Cape Malays, and South African mini-market owners—were queued on the opposite site of the snaking counter, patiently waiting for their orders to be plated.
The regional spices floating and mixing in that heady atmosphere made choice a considerable challenge, and it was only after gauging the selections of other diners that I managed to arrive at lamb mince dosa. From a polystyrene container emerged a corpulent crepe barely restraining Ferrari-red masala mince, potatoes, and egg whites, an intimidating pleasure belying the hour of the day in every respect.
At that moment Tom Wolfe and his musings on mid-20th century America could go whistle, plenty of time for that later. I was greeting the day on the Ganges, filling my stomach with something only centuries could have moulded.
I had barely noticed that a young couple had taken the table behind me, such was my revelry. Their tones were low but convivial, another party looking forward to a huge portion of something wonderful.
“Yeah, I think it was Season 4. They filmed it here,” the man explained to his companion as I cast a nonchalant ear.
“What’s the woman’s name again? The blonde one?” she asked, allowing the steam and flavors to permeate from her own newly-opened delight.
“Claire something. Claire … Claire …. Claire Danes. Yeah, I enjoy that Homeland. I can see why they filmed it here; this place’s got a real Middle Eastern vibe. I think they used it as a location for Afghanistan or somewhere.”
“East and West, doppelgängers for both,” I thought as I reached for my Coke.