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A bottle of Sprite. Custard with caramel.” Luckily my tastes hadn’t matured much since the
age of thirteen, so I tucked right in.
While I was eating he got up and went and picked up this book, an oversized photo
album, and brought it back to the table. “I’ve been following you,” he said, and he opened it
up. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done, every time my name was mentioned in a
newspaper, everything from magazine covers to the tiniest club listings, from the beginning
of my career all the way through to that week. He was smiling so big as he took me through
it, looking at the headlines. “Trevor Noah Appearing This Saturday at the Blues Room.”
“Trevor Noah Hosting New TV Show.”
I felt a flood of emotions rushing through me. It was everything I could do not to start
crying. It felt like this ten-year gap in my life closed right up in an instant, like only a day had
passed since I’d last seen him. For years I’d had so many questions. Is he thinking about me?
Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of me? But he’d been with me the whole time.
He’d always been proud of me. Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my
father.
I walked out of his house that day an inch taller. Seeing him had reaffirmed his choosing
of me. He chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. I was wanted. Being
chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.
Once we reconnected, I was overcome by this drive to make up for all the years we’d
missed. I decided the best way to do it was to interview him. I realized very quickly that that
was a mistake. Interviews will give you facts and information, but facts and information
weren’t really what I was after. What I wanted was a relationship, and an interview is not a
relationship. Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe
them and interact with them, and you come to know them—and that is what apartheid stole
from us: time. You can’t make up for that with an interview, but I had to figure that out for
myself.
I went down to spend a few days with my father, and I made it my mission: This
weekend I will get to know my father. As soon as I arrived I started peppering him with
questions. “Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Why did you do this? How did
you do that?” He started getting visibly irritated.
“What is this?” he said. “Why are you interrogating me? What’s going on here?”
“I want to get to know you.”
“Is this how you normally get to know people, by interrogating them?”
“Well…not really.”
“So how do you get to know people?”
“I dunno. By spending time with them, I guess.”
“Okay. So spend time with me. See what you find out.”
So we spent the weekend together. We had dinner and talked about politics. We watched
F1 racing and talked about sports. We sat quietly in his backyard and listened to old Elvis
Presley records. The whole time he said not one word about himself. Then, as I was packing
up to leave, he walked over to me and sat down.
“So,” he said, “in the time we’ve spent together, what would you say you’ve learned about
your dad?”