Her Power Suit

The thought of pushing past thirty without the prospect of marriage scares her terribly.

It haunts her in her most vulnerable moments, the grim image of a successful technical manager, the typical career woman, single, haggard and lonely. During meetings and on minutes-of-meetings, she will be referred to as a "Miss" - a thirty-five year old lady in the dark power suit, the sharp cardboard shoulders, the treacherous 80’s hairdo. Her social life will be reduced to flirtatious mingling with balding pot-bellied middle-aged executives during coffee breaks and business luncheons. She will have to learn to endure their sexist jokes, sports metaphors, vulgar display of machismo, and foul body odor.

Her circle of friends will be her own staff, wet-beaked college grads in daddy-bought MyVis, a troupe of suckups and whiners, celebrating the boss's birthday, wishing her Stay Cool, Kak Ani! Hypocrites who make fun of her in the pantry over office coffee for trying to be hip with the yuppy in-crowd, What's up with the iPod? You listenin' to Bon Jovi? Her cheery friendliness will be mistaken for desperate attempts to net a man, a dismal seduction, an old maid’s playbook, a filthy disgusting wench, the destroyer of ideal happy marriages.

The thought of living alone in an empty apartment, dining-in in an empty kitchen, a living room devoid of life, scares her. A room without the screams and shouts of children - so hollow and frail, that little piece of Life inside of her, yearning for purpose, a provider.

She remembers a story about a succesful woman her age, alone in the big city. She slipped and fell in the bathroom, bled to death, a slow and agonizing death. Her neighbors complained of horrible odors emanating from cracks on the wooden floor, leeching putrid liquid, the smell of rancid meat. Dogs were barking rabidly, stark raving mad, for weeks and weeks, foaming in their mouths, famished for blood. The smell, so wretched and foul, had driven the dogs crazy.

Nobody knew she had died five weeks ago, says the news reporter. The corpse was so bad they had to use shovels and garden cart wheels.

The image of her sprawling lifeless on the cold cement floor, rotting flesh, eyes bulging, maggots crawling on the persian rug, brings her dreadful nightmares. It catches her and refuses to let go. As she lays down at night in the comfort of her bed, dead stillness of the dark arrests her, that fear of the unknown. The crushing loneliness bears a heavy, unsettling burden, as if drowning, stifling, suffocating.

She finds herself asking: Where have all the good men gone?

This was written in 2007 in Bintulu. The tone is nasty. I do not remember why it turned out like that. Probably I had written this during a horrible mental state (e.g. angry about something from work). This is not about anybody in particular. The sentiments conveyed here no longer represent my opinion about such issues. I am publishing it still because I want to capture that state of mind, and also to remind myself that this gift of writing can be a very dangerous and hurtful thing.

The Silhouette of a Man

Loo and I were walking back from Common Facilities after inspecting a few Utilities equipment which were on maintenance, when we came across the Rotating Group in the busy midst of putting back the top cover of a gas turbine.

We stopped and watched from afar, as the technicians manhandled the crane into submission, prodding and twiddling the knobs, the load gently swaying.

Imagine how many slaves were whipped to death to get one block of granite on top of the Pyramid, I thought. All in the name of some boy Pharaoh and his beloved cat.

I looked at Loo, wanting to crack a joke about Nefertiti.

But he was busy looking at something else at the far end of the busy activities.

Vivian's face was in some guy's neck. She looked as if she was nibbling his ears. She quickly pulled out, a huge giggly grin ran across her bright red face. Then it was the guy's turn and he sank his face into her neck. But as soon as his face reached her neck, their hard white helmets collided, and their bobbly heads bounced off in opposite direction, like some weird physics experiment. Vivian's head, being smaller, bounced off farther and totally independent of her loose footing. She tumbled sideways like a circus prop, as if she had been hit by a minivan full of clowns.

The couple adjusted their helmets and shared a ridiculously out-of-place laugh.

They were just having a conversation, I thought. An Office Technologist asking the Field Engineer about the manly manly job he was supervising, that was all.

Anybody who has ever been to a noisy plant would know that that is how plant people talk when they are in the field -- cosying up super-close into one's neck to shout from the top of one's lungs into the next person's eardrums, a maniacal howdy-doo.

YOU LOOK HOT IN THAT COVERALL! DID YOU IRON IT OR SOMETHING?

WHAT?!

YOU LOOK HOT!

WHAT?!

Loo kept looking at the two of them, unblinking, his body was cold and stiff with utter disbelief. He stood there, deep in his train of thoughts, oblivious to the high decibel waves of noise and the frenzy of activities that surrounded us both.

I remembered how, during the Oil and Gas Games and Conference a few years ago, in the closing dinner, Loo kept going back and forth, up and about, to the front stage to capture the best pictures of Vivian performing dances with her troupe. How then, after the ceremony had ended, he would go backstage and harass her with his camera, click after click, roll after roll, asking her to pose, to smile, to do something funny for the camera. He kept her alive with his praises, attention and adoration.

She obliged his every whims, happily, like a true friend would.

I grabbed Loo by his shoulder. He snapped out of his deep trance, and looked at me unassumingly, pretending to be fine, trying to hide his troubled state of mind. I could see it in his eyes that he was heartbroken, that something inside had died.

"Life's unfair, dude", I told him, consoling.

"What?"

I smiled and leaned closer, perking his ear.

"C'mon, man, let's go and see that leaking boiler in Module One."

Loo nodded, feigning his interest. He quickly turned around and walked towards the general direction of the boiler, straight into a shifting voluminous cloud of relieved steam, unfolding right before his path, engulfing his entire being. The clumsy lines of his body were smudged into the gray and dull background of concrete, steel piping and twisted metal, slowly dissolving, never looking back.

Following from behind, all that I could see was the silhouette of a dejected man, walking pensively into the unknown, his figure becoming smaller and smaller.

This is a tribute to a guy named Loo, whose passion in life is cracking awkward jokes during serious technical meetings, and that leaking boiler in Module One.

Kites

Returning from work yesterday, Joanne, a friend from the Process Control Department, sat next to me on the B bus.

"Hi, Faizal. May I sit here?"

"Hi, yeah, sure. How are things?"

Joanne is seven months pregnant. From behind, she looks like a minivan. Joanne and I used to serve in the same section when we first arrived in Bintulu. She took care of the power generators and the electrical distribution network, while I handled the desalination unit and the boiler water systems.

Since moving on and joining the Process Control Department five months ago, Joanne has been busier taking care of herself than anything else. This is her first child, and she is handling it all on her own. Her much-older husband is in Kuching, his startup IT business is based there. Every other week, he would come down to Bintulu to visit her in her small rented room.

"When are you going for your maternity leave?"

"December the tenth", she replied. "I want to langgar Chinese New Year. My family is very excited, especially Ma and Pa."

"Are you also taking unpaid leave?"

"No, I am not. Maternity should be just enough."

She quickly got up and sat back again, adjusting her seat. The bus crawled to a stop, manuevered a bump, and picked up speed again. Up ahead, neighborhood kids were playing.

"Have you thought of a name?"

"Not yet. But my hubby and I have talked about it."

I nodded politely, a modest "u-huh", and casually looked away into the reflection on the mirror. I have never understood why girl newly-weds always refer to their dear husband as hubby.

The bus stopped at the junction of Taman Asian and "Pulau" --a small congregation of houses isolated on all sides by storm drains-- and unloaded half or more of the passengers. As they shuffled down to the door, Joanne, who knows each and every one of them by their first name, smiled and greeted goodbye.

The bus door closed slowly with a mechanical whimper.

"What's going to happen afterwards, Joanne?"

"Afterwards? What do you mean?"

"Well, are you going to bring your little baby here to Bintulu?"

Immediately, she looked away and became disconcerted and quiet. The healthy pink glow on her cheeks had all subsided.

"Well, my hubby thinks...", she was hesitant to continue on.

I looked away so as not to put her in a difficult position. I did not want her to feel compelled to provide me with an answer.

The bus turned into the housing area's playground where all the neighborhood kids come to play soccer, kites and basketball every evening after school. A cool spot to hang out, kids of all ages fill the playground even if there were no games that day.

That evening, the playground was packed with boys flying their simple homemade kites and the girls sitting around on the borders of the soccer field, looking up into the brightly colored sky, smitten and impressed by the boys' display of ingenuity. The landscape was bedazzling, full of light, loud with laughter and vivid with colors.

It felt like a carnival of some sort, lively and truly uplifting.

"I hate the thought of not being able to take care of my baby."

She spoke in a dire whisper, almost only audible to herself. The baby will be taken care of by her mother in-law, she explained, until she could get transferred out, or the husband's business has reached a comfortable point whereby she could resign from her position. In the meantime, every other week, she will try to visit them, husband and baby. She understood that that would mean a lot of sacrifices, but she said she has no other choices.

The bus stayed its course, due farther south. Joanne and I watched on as the kites floated by. They staggered up and down, struggling to keep afloat the strong evening breeze.

This is a tribute to all my friends who are working mothers, written in the middle of 2007.

Danse Macabre

In the car, on the way to Pak Long's house for Hari Raya, Ayah says that he no longer remembers the face of his mother, Mbah Kamsiah, who died when he was only four.

All of us at the back sit silently, respectful and empathizing, waiting for him to start bawling and crying his eyes out. But he does not show any further hints of emotion.

Mak then says matter-of-factly that that actually explains why Ayah was such a quiet and lonesome but temperamental young man when she first met him. A glut of jittery nerves. An utter wreck of a person. Such a difficult man to talk to and to be intimate with.

He grew up all by himself, without the nurturing love of a Mother, she says.

Ayah smirks silly.

I turned out okay, he says with a grin. Don’t you think so?





Pak Long says that Mbah Kamsiah died horrifically.

My three younger brothers, Ayah, and I listen attentively to Pak Long, while Mak helps Mak Long in the kitchen to prepare lunch. We lean forward and over the coffee table.

She was 21 years old. A beautiful young woman with fair skin, he says, sipping a cup of hot coffee. Sawo matang with flourishing black hair down to her broad shoulders.

She was truly a beautiful young woman, he says. Pak Long cuts several pieces of cloves using a very small scissors and then sprinkles and mixes them with his rolled tobacco.

I do not know how they met, what their love story was. But as best as I could recall, they were friends, or neighbors, or something, and had known each other for many years in the kampong.

Pak Long rolls the tobacco mix onto two pieces of paper and licked the edges lightly.

Too bad that your father and I do not have any daughters, he says. If not, she would very well look like Mbah Kamsiah. Pak Long sighs heavily.

I was six years old; your father was four or maybe five. Atuk was a rich young man with several plots of farmland all over Sabak Bernam. A few plots in Sungai Tawar and several more in Sungai Besar. Paddy fields, coconuts, and then later cocoa plants. All the orang besar and orang kaya in the kampong liked him. And because he was well off, some even wanted him to be their son-in-law. All the anak dara were naturally crazy about him, too, despite his average looks -- skin darkened by the sun from long hours and hard labor.

He was an honest man, a rich man, hardworking, polite and eligible.

Pak Long lights the rolled cigarette as Mak Long pours him another cup.

Just before getting married, Atuk bought a small piece of land up here, he points to the Northwest, where the River ends and the Sea begins, to build a house. Tanah tapak, not a tanah kebun, Pak Long clarifies. He wanted to build a house somewhere in the center of all his farmland so that he would be able to commute daily. You must remember that during those times the only mode of transport was the bicycle. So, he bought that land up there. The location made sense and it was cheap.

The one close to the benteng? Ayah asks.

The one where Mbah Jumri was our neighbor, he replies. Do you remember him?

Ayah nods ambiguously. No one is convinced.

There is something else about that land, I must tell you, Pak Long continues.

What about it?

Pak Long exhales loudly and a column of thin white smoke rises above him.

That land has a guardian, a penunggu, he says calmly to Ayah. However, at the time, Atuk did not know about that, Pak Long says, now turning his face to look at us children.

Is that why Mbah Kamsiah was so often sick? Ayah asks.

The story goes that the previous owner of the land had planted the guardian on that land to help him look after the house whenever he was away. And he was always away. He traveled often to faraway places because he was some kind of a pedagang, a wholesale dealer. He himself did not reside in Sabak Bernam. His wife and two kids lived in a rented house in the city of Klang. He got that land as an inheritance from his father who had passed away recently as a widower, and he was the only child. He did not want to sell the land, thinking perhaps to pass it on to his own kids in the future as an inheritance. So, he went on and planted a guardian.

Pak Long adjusts himself and stretches his feet.

During those days, it was common to do so. Many people did it. And not only were such sihir used to help guard land or house, they were also used to help kampong people clear forests and open new lands, or to build bridges and houses. More commonly though, they were used as weapons. I remember Atuk telling me stories of how in the very old days, Jawa people and Bugis people in the kampongs fought each other through such things. The Bugis would have their kerambit, a crooked dagger with jampi and poisoned edges. The Javanese would have their long parang, draped in the charmed yellow cloth. They would have the vendettas over trivial land disputes.

I remember the parang and the black vest, Ayah intervenes. One day while I was looking for my clothes, I found those things atop the grand wooden closet inside one of the rooms.

The black vest is some kind of body shield and power suit, Pak Long clarifies. It is embedded with Koranic texts, but people use the vest for sihir. I once saw it with my own eyes -- Atuk, whilst wearing the vest, clearing the coconut trees all by himself. I came by to deliver him lunch packed by Mbah Kamsiah and I saw that there was no one there with him. And yet, he cleared that land within tree days. By just using a few pieces of parang and an axe.

We are stunned to know that our dear Atuk was also a practitioner of such things.

What happened to the guardian? one of us asks.

Oh yes. Well, the landowner then died sometime after he had planted the guardian, Pak Long continues the original story. It was a natural death, I think, albeit a very sudden one. Some kind of sickness that he was having. But the bad news was that he did not inform anybody about the guardian that he planted. Neither his wife nor any member of his family knew about it. His wife did not want the land and her sons were all still very young; so, she sold it to Atuk, who was at the time looking for a suitable tanah tapak.

Ayah leans back and exhales anxiously. Pak Long smiles at him.

You were not yet born, he says to Ayah. Mbah Kamsiah was pregnant with you when we all moved into the land. She was perhaps a few weeks pregnant. But at the time, she was still healthy and strong. Those frequent sickness that you asked about had not yet occurred.

Ayah recalls how Atuk told him stories about Mbah Kamsiah when he was young, how his mother gave birth to him at night in difficult circumstances, how she fell sick with mysterious diseases after delivering the baby. He remembers how Atuk described carrying her at the back of his bicycle to get themselves to the jetty to go to distant places to get herself cured. They went from one bomoh to the next, having spent so much time and money, but getting so little in return. Sometimes she would return from such trips healthy and happy, but would then immediately fall sick again within mere weeks, oftentimes worse off than before.

This went on for many years, Mbah Kamsiah falling in and out of these sicknesses. Until one day when Ayah was three or four years old, she fell really sick to the point that she became bedridden for almost a year. She was oftentimes not able to walk or talk or eat properly and was constantly in a delirious state of mind. Her two children were then consequently always sent to houses of nearby relatives.

On the day that she died, Pak Long and Ayah were at home, running around in the open courtyard, playing normally as small children would. Atuk was at the nearby well, washing himself, preparing for Zuhur. Mbah Kamsiah had been feeling much better in the past two or three days, and was able to be left alone in the house, managing some menial and light chores. As Atuk was taking his wudhu, she called for him repeatedly. He did not answer her calls, but instead quickly finished his wudhu.

When Atuk reached the courtyard, she was no longer calling him. He quickly climbed the steps and entered the house by way of the kitchen, but she was not there. He looked for her in the bedroom, and there she was on the bed, lying down on her face, holding her stomach in dire pain. There was a long trail of blood and urine on the wooden floor. Atuk was so shocked that he did not realize he had stepped on it.

Pak Long recalls how Atuk then shouted from the top of his lungs from the balcony, informing the neighbors to quickly come and help him. The children, who were then had already wandered off to the benteng, came home surprised and confused to see so many of the kampong people, men, women and children, in their courtyard, in silence.

So, it really was true, Ayah says. She did die from that thing.

Well, I wouldn’t say it like that, Pak Long replies, his eyes glancing at us children.

She died because her ajal had come. God Almighty loves her more.





Ayah points to a large cluster of old unmarked graves, saying, She is here.

Which one? Mak asks, careful with her steps.

Somewhere here, he says. One of these ones. All these graves are her family.

Before Mak or any one of us children starts probing him further, Ayah immediately defends himself. In a calm voice, he says, clearly: I was a teenager when my father first showed me the grave of my late mother. At the time, he had already re-married, twice, one was a messy divorce. And between the three wives, there were fourteen children, all were estranged from one another. Unfortunately, we were caught in the middle of their petty divisions and arguments. At the time, Pak Long was serving in the military and I was in a boarding school in Kuala Lumpur.

The last time I was here was almost four, five decades ago.

Ayah stops talking, and finds himself beside a grave with wooden tombstones.

Her grave had a small tree growing on top and pearl white tombstones, he says rather loudly. He turns around and sees at least five graves that fit that description.

Mak is standing beside a grave that is fully submerged in water. One of her Raya sandals is covered in thick black mud. She is not happy, but she soldiers on quietly.

My youngest brother slaps a big mosquito on his neck. A blot of dark red blood is smeared on the collar of his baju melayu. Ayah, hurry up. Let’s get out of here.

This was written in late 2008 in Bintulu. It is a tribute to my father and my uncle and their tough childhood growing up without a mother. The details of this story are entirely fictional and have no relations whatsoever to the living or dead.

In the Belly of a Great Whale

The Sage of Omaha was awoken from his midday nap by his wife's gentle, persistent voice. She politely beckoned to him to relinquish his after-lunch slumber, an old man's pleasure. He rose, and saw two men in tight white turbans sitting on the balcony, looking away.

"They are here about a crime", the wife said, pulling out the pillow from underneath him. The Sage tumbled sideways in a languid daze.

"I have never seen these two before" --in the masjid in which he is the imam-- he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "From another kampong?"

"Yes, they are. That's why they are here to see you." She dusted off his back while he affixed the troublesome button on his robe collar.

Hearing his footsteps, the two men stood up and turned to face him. They exchanged greetings and salutations, shook hands, and the Sage invited them to come up inside. The wife will bring us hot tea and biscuits, he said. They thanked him, but very politely, they said no.

The Sage became very curious.

"Tuan Haji, a young male bachelor and a married woman were caught in a lewd situation in a hotel room in Pekan this early morning", one of them said. The Sage uttered a lengthy istighfar under his breath.

"We caught them red-handed", the other man quickly added.

"Were you doing an amar maaruf raid?"

"No, it was an ad hoc operation. We had received several reports from kampong folks who kept seeing these two together in the Pekan-area hotels and restaurants. Our imam asked us to see to it."

The Sage nodded knowingly, stroking his disarrayed beard.

"We have four witnesses. All are credible witnesses according to the Sharia. The police was also with us. They saw the acts from A to Z."

"We have material evidences: hotel register, CCTV tapes, the used condoms, good DNA samples, fresh, from the bed sheets, tissues."

The Sage took a deep breath and uttered a long prayer, asking God to forgive his sins and the sins of all Muslims in this world and in the Hereafter, and asked Him to guide them through to the True Path.

"Have you informed their ketua kampung? Their family members?"

"Uhm, well", he stammered. "That's why we're here to see you, Tuan Haji. Both of them are members of your kariah. Jalan Pisang Dua--"

--"Oh Allah!"

The Sage wailed in disbelief, a primordial cry of pain, his two hands scraping the callused skin of his face, bellowing, praying --"Oh Allah!"

The two men waited for him to compose himself.

"The bachelor is the son of So-and-so, whose daughter suffers from cancer. The woman is the wife of So-and-so, the Air Force pilot."

He knew those two. One, a pensioner who, after the heartbreaking news of his daughter's terminal illness, began frequenting the masjid. The Sage approached him and offered special prayers --the Prayers of Yunus, the prophet in the belly of the great whale-- so that the man would be able to draw strength from God during his tribulations.

The Air Force pilot, a young man with a sturdy build, was the son of an army veteran who died in a freak drowning accident a few years ago. The Sage was not fond of the pilot or his late father. Neither were masjid-goers. Only the casual Eid prayers or akad ceremonies. He had adviced them repeatedly, bayan and tasykil, but to no avail.

"Also, Tuan Haji. This woman --we have not yet confirmed this with her family or her husband or a doctor-- but she says she is pregnant."

The Sage's eyes bulged in trepidation. "Did she say who fathered it?"

"Her husband, the pilot."

The Sage called out to his wife who was in the kitchen, telling her he would be going out for a short while. The wife acknowledged him from behind the partitioning drape. She reminded him to take along his black-and-white kaffiyeh. He grabbed the cloth, threw it across the length of his shoulders, closed the door behind him, and followed the two men to their jeep. He tucked himself at the back.

His lips wetted with istighfars, the Sage asked that they take the long and winding road instead. "Through Paya Duri', he told them.

The men were baffled, but nonetheless, complied to the request.

As they rode on the pickup, in his head, the Sage began formulating his judgement for the case. His chest felt heavy. The air surrounding him seemed to be thinning out with each drawn breath. Alternately, he sighed, prayed, and muttered fragments of verses from the Holy Book. The Sage was deeply distressed with what was needed to be decided. The lives and future of so many people were at stake, each would be touched, or scarred, by his edicts; fateful and foreboding.

He felt as if he was trapped inside the darkest and the most hollow of rooms, and could not help but recite the Prayers of Yunus again and again, drawing His strength and guidance, the source of Light--

There is no God but You!

Glorified be You!

Truly, I have been one of the wrongdoers!

This was written during the weeks prior to the National Election in which PAS won and took over Kuala Selangor, my hometown constituent. I wanted to tell a story of an alternate future in which Sharia Laws, namely Hudud, reigns. But as I was writing it, the story took a different turn. I found myself attracted to the inner struggles of the imam, which is a close reflection of my own personal struggles with understanding and accepting political Islam. The name 'Sage of Omaha' is chosen randomly so as not to offend anyone or associate it with any particular person. The texts in italics at the end of the story is a direct translation from the Koran. That's indeed the Prayer of Yunus a.s, the prophet in the belly of the great whale.

We Use Different Rulers

The OPI guy is really enjoying this, isn't he?, I signaled to Sarah. She raised one of her eyebrows and wiggled it curiously, not sure of the message that I was trying to convey to her.

This is torture, I tried again, mimicking a knife running across my palm.

Sarah smiled in her familiar sinister fashion. She pointed to the 5 Quality Principles booklet, gently tapping her index finger on the lines--

2. Prevention

She was saying: You know what this OPI Twelve Modules is all about. You could have easily gotten yourself out of this mess. You are from OPS Department, man. Your excuses would have been the word of God. Plant trip. Production loss. Equipment failure. No one would have said, No, you can't go. You could have avoided this spine-twisting, mind-numbing, life-killing boredom corkscrew from Hell.

I smiled, and we returned to the OPI guy. He was drawing a PDCA cycle on the flipchart, trying to convince the class that this was the ultimate tool, "the only tool" he said, that would ensure Quality.

It was quarter past two and everybody in the classroom was dozing off. The training coordinator from HRD kept knocking his forehead on the Mesra mineral water bottle he was using to prop up his chin.

Lunch was nothing extraordinary. The Regency Hotel in Bintulu is a global champion in the "least desired, much to improve" category. The company would never usually arrange for training in this kind of shithole. But once in a while, ParkCity Everly would get fully booked, and a few poor buggers would end up spending a week in Regency's foul-smelling, pee-stained "conference room", undergoing training on HSE, ISO 9001 or Quality. Parking space is limited, the air-cond is weak, the surau is a big joke, the list goes on and on. The only good thing about The Regency is that it sits right in the middle of Bintulu town. At the very least, you could sneak out for a few minutes and go to the nearby bank or post office during tea break.

The OPI guy flipped the chart and began drawing a Pareto diagram.

I felt something pricking me. Sarah had written a note on a piece of hotel legal pad and was flicking it from across the table. She wrote:

I think Nani is the scribbles scribbles prettiest girl in the company

Sarah has the worst penmanship for a girl, that was my first thought. I turned to look at her. She was busy pretending to pay attention to class because the OPI guy was looking around for a volunteer to do something in front. He was trying to elucidate a point, that in this business, all levels of personnel within the organization are bound by the requirements as specified by the customer. He wanted to drive this point across with a little role-playing exercise. Any volunteers?

After what seemed like an eternity of uneasy silence, a young QMI technician held his hand up. The entire class felt utter relief.

Sarah turned around, and saw that I was waiting for her. What do you mean, I asked, pointing to her note. Where did this come from. She rolled her eyes in disbelief. She pointed to where Nani was sitting, her lips forming a sharp arrow, and she repeatedly tapped the cheek bone under her right eye, saying, C'mon dude, look, look, just look at her.

Nani was sitting at the table where all the old ladies were sitting. She was trying hard to stay awake, chewing on candies and mints, massaging her thin pencil neck. One glass of water became two, three, one whole bottle, two bottles. Then finally she would get up to go to the ladies, walk around the hallway and come back again.

I kept looking at Nani until Sarah interrupted me again with another ugly note:

gigi dia cantik

hidung dia mancung

big strong eyes

well-defined eyebrows, not too thick/thin

nice scribbles bone structure

muka dia perfect

takkan ko tak perasan smiley face

An elderly guy from Area Three called for a five-minute cigarette break. The class Penghulu, on behalf of the disadvantaged ladies and non-smokers, instead suggested that the tea break is brought forward by half an hour. The OPI guy heavily resisted the suggestion, arguing that they would not be able to finish the syllabus in time since there were still some training modules to go. But half the classroom had already marched out; lounging at the coffee tables, taking a refreshing dump in the toilet, calling friends to set up a dinner date, mulling over family plans for the weekend -- Leaving the OPI guy arguing by himself, effectively ignoring him or the hint of authority that his position might have carried.

Sarah continued her banter over Nani from where we had left it off.

"Don't tell me you have never noticed them. You see her everyday."

I smiled cheerily, dismissing the whole thing.

She grinned and rolled her eyes back, fully knowing the conversation would not go any further than this - a series of friendly exchanges of apathetic smiles and frustrated sighs over a cup of hot tea and biscuits.

Nani returned from the lobby after making a phone call, a light trail of condensed radio signal vapors followed her to the coffee tables.

As she walked passed by us, Sarah looked at me looking at Nani. In a glimpse, I could see all the traits she had listed, proving Nani's ultimate magazine beauty.

I turned to Sarah, who was waiting for a sign, and I signaled her a No.

"Faizal, you are blind and stupid", she said, as she dove into her cup.

"We use different rulers, Sarah."

This is a true story, but the details are highly fictionalized. The events did take place, sometime in 2006 or 2007. Sarah and Nani are colleagues from work. Today, Sarah is in Carigali KL and Nani is on maternal leave, expecting her first.

'No' is a Complete Sentence

"Of all things that drive men to Sea, the most common disaster,
I have come to learn, is women."
Charles Johnson, Middle Passage.


Asking a girl out is a new thing for me.

The experience is a whole new bag of emotional highs and lows. It is exhilarating, tiring, confusing, satisfying, titillating, frustrating, embarassing and incapacitating - a nerve-wrecking ball of bouncing, bubbling, shape-shifting expectations, of pull and push, full of the rare wonders and mysteries of the genders, of boys and girls and the long chase from here to there, of playful preys and persistent predators.

It is the feeling of the coquettish, the cunning, and the cowardly. It is the adrenaline rush of the racing heartbeat, the falling anvil, and the churning, twisting, bile-boiling, rollercoaster ride from hell.

When you ask a girl out, her answer is always never a clear Yes or No. It is often a hesitant Hmmmm, or a long-drawn Ngaaaa, or a fleeting Hoo hoo hoo, or the worst: the eyes bulging, jaw dropping, pupils dilating, the echoes of her head, pinging, pinging, pinging, the soft thudding of trapped gases hammering the walls of her veins, the screeching stop of all electrical signals in her brain - the nonverbal siren, the cannot-compute, cannot-compute, Holy Jesus Fuck Me He Said What What?!

Or her answer could also be, and in my case, often is, Hahaha jangan nak buat lawak lah, Faizal. Kita kan sepupu. Mak ayah kita kan adik-beradik.

Today, a first, I asked a girl out.

She kept cool, she was calm, I was calm, we were cool. She thanked me in the most polite manner for asking her out, that she appreciated the gesture and the thought.

But she said she would have to decline.

A solid punch to the jaw, pow.

I took it nicely, thud, ouch that hurts, and I felt only slight pain. I was still up and standing. That's good, I thought. I started to move my feet a little, do a little dance, hop hop I am a butterfly baby hop hop hop. Oh, I see. She was wearing those kiddie boxer gloves. Very nice, very soft. She got that ruffle-ruffle thingies hanging from around the edges, the colors matched quite nicely with her hairband...

Okay, concentrate.

She continued by further explaining why. She is not yet ready to go out with guys, she needs some time and personal space, she needs to think what matters in her life now, her priorities need to be straightened out, she thinks all this is too fast, too rushed, it should just happen naturally, like chemistry. She repeated the not-ready part again, ok, ok, I heard you the first time lady, I was listening, I was listening. I didn't know where this was going, she had been--

A Disclaimer! She is citing a Disclaimer! Oh my god, how did I not--

She continued by saying that although she is not yet ready to go out with guys, she hoped that we could still be friends, and that we would still be cool if we were ever to stumble upon one another in town or somewhere, shopping at the Mall, having lunch or dinner with other people. I nodded politely, ahah, ahah. Where is this going? She said although she is not yet ready to go out with guys, she does go out with some of her best friends, who happened to be guys, like [dropped a guy's name] or [dropped another guy's name].

I nodded understandably, ahah, ahah. Hey, wait a minute, those two-

You are blowing me off so that you could hang out and have dinner with a soon-to-be-married coworker and a closeted in-denial gay?

Why?

I mean, you can't mean to say that I am that--

In that exact moment in time, somewhere down in the basement of an old and run-in commune factory in China, a dim light bulb was lit.

Faizal, I would rather date a married man or a wuss.

The light bulb flickered for while, flick, flick, flick, and then poof.

Upon this divine revelation, I staggered to find a nearby chair and I slumped into it like a deadweight stopper, gasping for air, reaching up to the surface, swimming as fast as I could to shore. Reeling from the pain of rejection, terribly shaken, all that I could think of then was, "Oh God, no wonder a lot of guys join the Navy."

After full fifteen minutes of silent pathetic pondering, reflecting on past mistakes, painful regrets, failed jokes, bad cheques, wrong passwords and other such milestones, I leaned back into the chair, popped open an imaginary can of spicy mexicano Pringles, and I imagined that I was in a cinema with my best friends, watching the best film of our generation, The Story of My Life, in DiGi IMAX.

This had caused a lot of rumors in the office. This story is purely fictional. I wrote this after watching a Judd Apatow movie.

Kitchen Sink Drama

The husband comes into the kitchen to find his wife pouring over work papers that he has brought home from the office. Behind her, a few cut pieces of fish and mixed vegetables are sizzling noisily in a greasy pan.

"Do you find them interesting?"

The wife looks up, her curious face contorted. "Is this some kind of financial evaluation of a major project? Are you building something somewhere?"

He smirks and pulls a chair. "Something like that."

She flips a few more pages, glossing over various charts and tables and projections of profit. She looks at one particular table for a few seconds, flips the page over, stares at a long paragraph, and returns to the first page, back and forth, digesting the figures.

The husband looks on. "What's for dinner?"

"Fish in hot sauce", she says, all humdrum.

He walks over to the freezer and gets himself a tall glass of fruit juice.

"Well, what is it?"

She turns the fish over. The pan sizzles louder. The piquant aroma of the hot sauce rises and fills the kitchen. She slows the fire down to a gentle flailing blue, and let the fish simmers in the sauce, now a reduced light stock of bright orange hue.

"What is?"

She sits down and draws the papers closer, showing much interest.

"The project", she points. "This thing."

"Oh that", he scoffs, sipping the juice.

"It's nothing. Plastics."

The wife puts away the spatula and starts thumbing the pages. The husband looks on amusingly, drinking his tall glass of juice. She reads on, sometimes vocalizing the words to herself, trailing the sentences with her index finger, moving from one paragraph to the next.

The husband looks on.

"Plastics is so 1980s", she says, suddenly. "You will no longer break-even within five years like you used to. Not in today's crazy market. What with China and all."

The husband giggles.

"What? What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing." He tries to be subtle and graceful, and stops laughing, but fails miserably. He snorts and giggles. "You're so cute."

The wife rolls her eyes back. "You're being patronizing."

He giggles awkwardly.

The wife turns another page, and says sternly, "I am not cute!"

He stops giggling, knowing that he has crossed her.

The wife turns over a page, pretending to read. She is hurt deep.

The husband commits the grievous mistake that all husbands commit when they find themselves in these kinds of situation. He opens his mouth and he tries to explain, to reason, to give excuses -- when he should have said, "I am sorry, sayang", and lied to her about her looking pretty and sexy despite her age, "Macam anak dara!", or how he always thought of her while in the office, her scent on his work shirt.

The husband should never open his mouth and enters himself into an argument that he knew, against all wisdoms, he could not possibly win. An argument that would only end with Mister Smarty Pants sleeping on the couch, or returning from the office everyday to find a block of chicken sausages left to be defrosted in a metal tray in the kitchen sink. A post-it note on the freezer, scribbled in cold frigid text:

Please clean the microwave after you've used it

The wife throws the report onto the table, gets up, and smacks the fish around all over the greasy pan. The hot sauce stirs violently.

The husband exhales in disbelief, sighing. He does not need this now. He is simply hungry and tired. All he needs is some grub to calm the pangs before he hit the sack. All he needs is warm comfort food so that he could then signoff and logout.

The wife keeps silent, stirring the fish around unnecessarily. She is waiting for his apology. She is waiting for that bastard of a husband to beg and plea and wail.

But instead --

The husband finishes the tall glass of juice with a final satisfied gulp. He smacks his lips, rolls up the tight knot of his kain sarong, and marches toward the wife:

"Angry make-up sex, here I come."

This was written this year, sometime in January. I was driving home from work when this one struck. That night, I wrote it down on a piece of paper, just a simple draft with the main points jotted down. Like the wife is hurt but pretends to read or some action that follows a dialogue, like husband rolls his kain - makeup sex here I come. This was when I did not want to return to the blog and write it proper. Instead, I just put it in draft form and leave it as it is.

House of Cards

Siti refuses to be persuaded by her housemates.

Mizi is not the right man for you, they keep telling her. He is simply a technician; you, a college graduate with a first-class degree in engineering, a soon-to-be high-powered executives, a high-flyer. No matter how you spin it or how you package it-- Siti, your marriage to him will be a house of cards. It is bound to crash; it is destined for the floor. It will not last. You will suffer. This is not some story book fairy tale marriage.

She keeps silent.

The television blares on. Her housemates, all three of them, a group of close friends since their first days of college, a clique, watch on as she fiddles around with the remote, browsing through the many channels. A Korean soap opera about a lovelorn librarian, the house favorite, is about to begin in a few minutes. She puts down the remote and tugs a plush cushion close to her chest. Her housemates sigh in a mix of emotions. The tension eases. One asks for the chocolate tidbits, another picks a nice spot to lie down.

In front of the television, the house begins to heal again. There shall be no rift in our friendship that cannot be cured, no differences that cannot be bridged. We are sisters, you and I, in this Life and the Next.

The theme song plays, charming actor Lee Dong-gun appears from a corner, and the house falls silent in awe at the lovelorn librarian.

This was written in 2006. The names Siti and Mizi are randomly chosen. I just like how they rhyme and how generic and simple they are. There is no such soap opera about a lovelorn librarian starred by Lee Dong-gun. I just made that up. But all the details come together in this story and highlighted the plights of the characters. I particularly like writing this because it is so compact and direct, but packs one hell of a lasting image on the reader's mind.

We First Met in Salzburg

We first met in Salzburg, your mother and I

We were then from two different parts of Europe.
One touristy summer, we ended up in Salzburg
In a cheap hostel for pilgrims and student backpackers.

I saw your mother’s name
A peculiar name
A familiar name
A common Malay girl’s name
Juxtaposed against a backdrop of tedious Eastern European surnames.

It piqued me, your mother’s beautiful name
On the hostel registrar
On the yellow crumpled paper
Your mother’s name, it piqued me greatly
It sent shivers
Cold, sharp shivers
For some reason I have yet to fully understand.

A Malay girl
Of all things dear and holy and precious and fine
Of all places
Of all kinds of circumstances and states of being
A Malay girl
Here, in Salzburg
In this hostel
In this young man’s journey.

I just had to see her
I just had to see her
With my own eyes
That such a girl, a Malay girl
Existed.

Oh, God Almighty!
That such a girl - existed!

Later that night, I waited for your mother at the dining hall.
I sat across the central stairs
A spot across a field of chairs
Through baroque walls and mason pillars
So that I would be able to see her coming down from her room.

I looked at every single one of them
The ethnic details of their face scrutinized.

How is a Malay girl a Malay girl?
She is hard to define, but you can tell.

As I moved from one face to the next
I adjusted the limits of her profile.
I made room for infrequent scenarios;
She may be of mixed parentage
Her father a white man, an Irish bricklayer,
Her mother from Penang, the daughter of a nasi kandar restaurateur;
She may be of Lebanese descent
With blue eyes and blonde curls;
Or maybe a Dutch teen named after an exotic Javanese dancer
In an art film, whose character her mother found truly inspiring.

I waited until people started leaving
And the nuns had stopped serving food.
But there was no Malay girl in the dining hall that night.

There was only this deranged, lonesome man
Frustrated,
Duped,
Haunted,
By a Malay girl’s name.

Taking comfort over cold hard unleavened bread
Dipped in bland lentil soup.

His body
His mind
Ravaged
By the trekking across the Altstadt, the Old City of Salzburg
And the search of meaning
Along the blue icy calmness of the Salzach, the Great River
That carries with her
The summer tears of the Alpine Mountains.

The disconcerting noise of spoons, forks and ladles
Clanking against wooden bowls and metal plates.

I was pulled back down to the cold hard floors of reality.

I was exhausted
I was hungry
I was malnourished
I smelled like fish
I had not had a proper shower since Munich three days ago.

Forget it, man.
It was a nice warm thought,
A fleeting joyful remedy,
A thoroughly fantastic hope.
Now
You need to get through this and leave
You need to get over the girl and live.

Honestly, I thought that that was the end of that;
That in fact there was no such Malay girl staying in that hostel;
That there was no point in going on with this foolish ghost hunt.

That Life
As was the panic at the Residenzplatz
Is random
Like the many foreign faces that I saw.

She was merely a name.
Your mother was not there
She must have been somebody else
In Salzburg or elsewhere.

This entry is a subsection of an epic poem which was initially written to be a novelette (a short novel). Written in Bintulu in stages between July 2006 and February 2007. This entry is a condensed version, published for this weblog.