ADDICTED TO STORYTELLING
By Daniel Dercksen

If there's one thing Rayda Jacobs is addicted to, besides her fervour for life and living it freely and fully, it's writing.

"I have to have this release. I must write. I cannot never write. I will not be whole," says Rayda Jacobs, whose award winning novel 'Confessions of a Gambler' has not only received huge local acclaim - winning the 2004 Sunday Times Literary award and the prestigious Herman Charles Bosman Award - but her inspirational story was optioned by Executive producer Costa Theo, who identified the award-winning novel and was instrumental in securing the project and bringing the film to life.

Jacobs was not only approached to write the screenplay, but also sits in the director's chair and play the leading role.

Set almost incongruously amidst the Muslim community in Cape Town, Confessions of a Gambler tells the moving story of Abeeda, a pious Muslim woman who also happens to be a gambling addict.

"I didn't decide to write it," says Jacobs who ended up at the Grand West Casino by chance when her son, who is living in the States, came for a holiday here and she was invited on a night out.

"I'm so wrapped up in my little writing world that I thought it was a new restaurant," she laughs. "I have never been to a Casino and did not want to waste my money."

When her son gave her some dollars as a gift Jacobs tried her luck and was overwhelmed when she won.

"For me it was total magic. I really couldn't believe that this magic could happen," she says.

Inspired by this, Jacobs questioned "What would happen if a religious person or somebody very god loving comes to the Casino on a chance with a friend, spends a hundred, wins four-thousand-five-hundred, what would they do? Would they come again? Would they take the money because this is bad money, its dirty money? Or would they give it away? That was the question that was posed to me, that alone was what made me write this book."

She also decided to be truthful and based the character of Abeeda on herself.

As for playing the lead role, Jacobs wanted to do it "because I could not trust the sensitivity of the story in the hands of a non-Muslim. I could have a non-Muslim producer, he would do the mechanics of producing, and I am the boss over the story. The community is not going to care about that if the story backfires and they make the character do things she wouldn't do. I feel responsible for the sensibility in this film and so I had to be in control of the creative part of it."

Jacobs tried to fair "with the delivery of the story" and cast a well known actress.

"She looked good with the scarves and everything but she was very stagy," says Jacobs, followed by her intoxicating laughter.

"Can you imagine her in that Jacuzzi scene; she wouldn't fit. The women you can tell instinctively have a mannerism that is particular to Muslim women. You put a non-Muslim in that mix and they are now going to try and speak your language instead of speaking our language."

Jacobs considers herself an instinctive storyteller. She is also a documentary filmmaker who has produced, written and directed several documentaries about Islam and Muslim women.

"I'm not a storyteller who sits there in front of the typewriter and forced something on to the page that doesn't make sense. If it doesn't write itself, I don't write it," she says.

"With 'Confessions of a Gambler', people keep saying to me the same thing, that it is so real, the people are so real, the story is so real; off course it is real! If it wasn't real I wouldn't put it on the page."

Jacobs started writing when she was a child "lying on my stomach on my mother's bed with a book and a pen, fantasising, dreaming, writing down my thoughts."

"When I look at a picture of myself as a five year old, nobody noticed how sad I was," she says. "My parents were divorced and did not consider my emotional needs. My escape - that's how my writing came about - reading and writing; now I know it was a coping mechanism."

One of the many issues that the film deals with, is a mother coming to term with her son's homosexuality, and AIDS.

"I thought I would introduce the subject of Aids in the story as it is something the Muslim community has difficulty with. I would have my main character treat her son with love rather than disdain," says Jacobs.

"Over the years I have spoken to three imams about homosexuality; the best answer of which was that God does not condemn the feelings, but God wouldn't like you to act out on those feelings - the worst of which was that gays were freaks of nature. I was horrified. An imam who is supposed to teach love and compassion. He was saying that God created freaks,"

"I told him he was the kind of imam I would tell people not to listen to. He laughed and said, "Jy makeer 'n goie mantra." I said a battery of imams wouldn't be able to mantra me. If I'm ordered by God to follow the teachings of Jesus, Jesus would never have likened a human being to a freak of nature."

Does she have any advice for writers?

"Anyone who wants to be a writer, thinking they are going to write that big book, if you have it in you to be a writer, not for money, not fame but because you want to be a fiction writer, you must not give up," she says.

"I am writing my whole life," she says , "I do not write for money, I write because I am happy. Every morning when I get up, after my shower and hot chocolate, I go straight to my computer. I don't have to work for anyone, I do what I want, and I live in a complete fantasy world. I've lived in a fantasy world since I was a little girl, and I still live in this fantasy world."

When asked what she hopes that local audiences will get from watching the film, she said: "That we are all the same. That we are born into different faiths, but have the same struggles in life. That we are not a community to fear, and as women especially, we share a common bond. We all know someone who has a husband that cheats or a child that is gay or one that's on drugs. My film was to soften the image out there of Islam and to change perceptions of the Muslim women in South Africa."

For Jacobs, "Writing this film, after so many earlier books, was when I was ready to come into the community and say that I am a part of them, and this is who I am."

READ MORE ABOUT CONFESSIONS OF A GAMBLER

READ AN INTERVIEW WITH PRODUCER ROSS GARLAND

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Copyright © 2008 Daniel Dercksen/The Writing Studio
Published with premission in the Sunday Tribune, April 6, 2008