Before Three Sisters: A Road Interrupted, A Heart Opened
We left Johannesburg in the early light, bound for Worcester — a journey that would return me not only to a familiar valley, but to a story still unfolding. I climbed into Deem’s bakkie at 6:20am. The air was still soft with sleep, but the weight we carried was real — a dinghy boat hitched behind us, and cement bags packed into the back to balance the load. Deem was heading to the Cape for another transport run, as he often did — ferrying cars, boats, bakkies, golf carts, whatever needed moving.
He kept it steady, slow — 80 to 90 km/h. The road hummed low. We started talking.
Mostly about our children.
His sons, his daughter. Now grown. Their paths, their beliefs, the choices they were making in a complicated world.
“I worry, bru,” he said. “About their Islam… their qibla.”
I nodded. And gently shared my own truth:
“We’ve already planted the seeds, Deem. Madrasa, school, life. The goodness is wired in. They’ll find their way to the Divine — maybe not how we imagined, but still. They’ll find it.”
We sat in that silence — the kind that listens.
Faried and the Detour
Just before Three Sisters, Deem got a message. A friend of his, Faried, had broken down with his family. We rerouted.
And just like that, our quiet bakkie became a car of five — Faried, his wife, and their daughter now in the back seat. I stayed quiet. This wasn’t my space to speak.
But something had shifted. The stillness that had carried us through the early part of the journey made way for the unexpected warmth of company, for laughter, for memory. What had begun as a private ride between two companions was now a shared passage — a reminder that some roads widen not with tar, but with presence.
The wife was chatty, warm, full of stories. She and Deem started talking about Deem’s drivers. One in particular: Archie.
“Archie’s solid,” she said. “Kaaps, maar sharp. Always shows up.”
A few kilometres down the line, just past Beaufort West, almost in Worcester, Deem turned to me and asked:
“You know what Archie’s real name is?”
I smiled.
“My eldest brother — Allah yarhamu — was Fuad. But everyone called him Archie. So… is he also Fuad?”
Deem laughed.
“Nai bru… his real name is Abdul Qahhar.”
We both burst out.
“Qahharjie becomes Archie! Allah!”
The Bend in the Road
The road narrowed into the Hexrivier Valley. Dark by then. But not empty. The headlights caught a curve.
“You see that corner?” Deem said.
And then he told me:
His father — Omar, also known as Amie, known to my kids as Dada — once took that very bend too fast. Racing from farm to farm, moving fish, goods, deals. He missed the turn. His bakkie flew into the river. He survived. And fished out his own worker, too.
“I was a laaitie then,” Deem said. “But every time I pass this spot, I remember. Dada was tough. A real survivor.”
I stayed quiet. Because what do you say when the road opens memory like that?
To Worcester, With Love
And then, as the road opened wider and the mountains made way for valleys known in name and marriage, I found myself returning not just to a place — but to the people and stories who made that place feel like mine.
Worcester wasn’t just a destination. It was memory incarnate.
When I married Sadia, I stepped into her family’s legacy — the Fakiers and the Majieds. Worcester was theirs. Her childhood. Her community. Later, her battleground — she became a unionist, fighting for dignity across these valleys.
Back when I was still courting her, I’d drive my light blue VW Beetle 1400 — my first car, bought from Deem — all the way from Cape Town to Worcester and back. About 120 kilometres each way. For love.
So that night, when we came through the final bend, the boat still hitched behind us, the road folding into familiar curves… I realised:
This wasn’t just a road trip. This was return.
To family. To love. To the people who carried us before we even knew their names.
Closing Blessing
As Shaykh Jamiel Abrahams said, in response to this journey:
“Many a person with shaggy and dusty hair, dusty and driven away from doors… if he was to call on Allah ﷻ, Allah would surely answer.”
Some roads answer us back. Even in silence. Even before Three Sisters.
And maybe, if you’ve followed this far, it means you too have travelled one of those roads — or carried its dust in your shoes.
Adli Yacubi 