In 2020, I thought a lot about fire

Published on 18 December 2020

Fire represents many things depending on culture and context.

It is linked with destruction and damnation.
It is connected to enlightenment, renewal and purification.
It characterises lust.

In 2020, I’ve associated fire with safety, belonging and joy because it has been at the centre – quite literally – of a weekly ritual that grew out of five months of monotonous lockdown.

I’ve been preoccupied with the idea that flames forge; they create; they provide warmth. They cook our food. In 2020, in the depths of the first wave of the pandemic, the weekly barbecue became the magnetic centre for my lockdown family.

With it came a reminder of the primitive, primal, primordial, primeval – all of which are missing from our experience when we turn a knob or dial in the kitchen and a sterile stream of heat is emitted.

There’s a magic to the ritual of gathering the fuel for a barbecue – or ‘braai’, as my compatriots call it.

When it comes to the practicalities, persuading the first flames to catch and stay is an irrational science, or at least an imprecise one. Sometimes all it takes is a struck match thrown on firelighters or dried leaves to rouse a licking flame or two. Often, it takes 50 leaves. Some days, no leaves are needed at all.

Most of our lockdown fires have been charcoal-based. Charcoal is perfectly passable as fuel but the availability of matches and firelighters do make fire-starting rather easy. There is a certain romance to using wood, a process that requires the construction of a wooden tipi to protect the delicate lick of the first flame, like a wooden sculpture built in honour of Prometheus*. But even then, unless we fell the tree ourselves and chop up its limbs there is a modern-day ease to this method too.

Fires started from wood impart the best flavour for whatever food you place atop the embers. The fug of fire from the burning of wood is the most fragrant.

Our lockdown family spent hours gathering and preparing food before we came together to watch the flames, and draw in the smoke and smells. The fire is mesmerising and ethereal. In a world bereft of the ritualistic – something exacerbated by the pandemic, which stole the regular Sunday pub lunch from us – we cannot help ourselves.

We stand in awed silence as the flames twist and twirl, and we marvel as the sparks and smoke drift away.

Over the next hour or so the flames slowly expire, leaving a bed of coal over which food can be cooked quickly, or slowly. Crispy black, then soft and tender.

Spicy thai marinated steak straight on the grill and flipped quickly. Citrus and garlic-dipped asparagus. Foil-wrapped trout stuffed with lemongrass and coriander. Skewered coconut prawns. Indian-spiced cauliflower florets. Buttered, salted corn. Potatoes, onions and an open can of Heinz in the coals.

The hiss of the flames is universal – even if it represents something different to different people. There would be no modern world without our mastery of combustion. The paradox is that the sophisticated world that we inhabit was forged by fire – yet it is now dislocated from the very glowing embers that created it.

Around the braai, we drift away. Our brains connected to a bygone era, to something primitive, primal, primordial, primeval. In those moments, everything is perfect. And we probably don’t know it, but the weekly ritual of cooking over flames reminds us of who we are and where we came from – it reminds us of our humanity.

*Prometheus, Titan God of Fire