Whoever He Is

Dear Zahra,
The sight of your wedding card almost gave me a heart attack.

It was sitting on my desk, listing slightly over the edge of my laptop. I pushed it aside gently, trying not to look. I knew it was you. The card was in the shades of your favorite color, cherry blossom pink. The color reminds you of that family trip to Japan when you were about nine. All those cherry trees in springtime, blooming under the soft beam of noon, a sea of pink in various shades, touched your heart in ways you never knew. You laughed silly when you told me that. You said, pink is such a cliché for a girl's favorite color. A silly favorite color for a silly girl, you said. But you did not care. You love pink. You love pink because it will always remind you of that last vacation as one big happy family before your mom died.

I knew it was you.

From the far corner of my eyes, I could not see the name of the lucky man. I was glad I could not see his name. I did not want to know. I still do not want to know. My heart was racing at a thousand miles an hour at the thought of you in his arms, whoever he is. You would look at him the same way you looked at me when we first met - in the HR Lobby on the waiting room sofa on the first few days of duty. We sat next to each other on that sofa for a week before they sent us out to our respective departments. At the time, we hated every single moment of it. Having to wait to be picked up like bags of garbage by the roadside. No, we are a pair of abandoned kittens, you said, correcting me. Lost, hungry, innocent, and constantly craving for eye contact from those who passed by us. Stay positive, you reminded me. We are kittens.

I cherish every single moment of that, our kitten days. How you read through the business magazines and pretended to be interested in them. How you would say hi to everyone, and I mean everyone, who passed by us, and tried to introduce yourself to them, Hi, I'm Zahra! I studied Biomedical Engineering in New Brunswick! And then you struggled to explain where New Brunswick is, and why a lovely Biomedical Engineering graduate is starting her career with an oil and gas company, posted in Bintulu of all places.

"Are we in a staring contest?"

You smiled sheepishly.

I caught you staring at me, instead of listening to what I said about the natural gas market.

"If we were, I had just lost to the Grand Champion."

"How is that?"

"Well", you leaned back and folded your arms, "I also saw you many times staring at me."

I chuckled and looked away, trying not to make it too obvious.

"I was listening lah, Zahra. It's called being attentive."

"Aww, please. Ya lah tu."

I did not know where it came from. The strength and clarity to pursue you. Probably because we were just starting to know each other and had not yet transcended the formal, comfortable borders of friendship. So I thought it was not improper or too strong an advance if I take this flirt one step further, and I said -

"If you want a re-match, any time, any place, the Grand Champion is ready."

To which you laughed heartily, followed by a teasing, "Oooh, I'm so scared. Oooh."

So you found someone.

After a year since you managed to transfer out and land yourself in KL, you finally found someone.

I hope he's a good listener. An understanding man. A man of fatherly virtues you have been talking about, those you couldn't find in any man you know here, back home, or in New Brunswick. A responsible man. A man who adores you. A man who loves your friends and treats them like his own. I remember you said you would judge a man based on how he treats your friends, and not your family. I remember telling you that that is odd, to give preference to friends over family. You said, one of God's better gifts is the freedom to choose your best friends. Family, as much as you love them, you were born into them.

Over a cozy rainy day breakfast, I remember how we respectfully disagreed on this, and moved on.

The night of your twenty-sixth birthday, you came to my house unannounced and crying, trembling. You couldn't sleep and you had driven around town in circles trying to calm yourself down. It should have been a great joyous day for you. We threw a surprise birthday party in the office, there was a cake and sing-along, and we saw how you light up like firework and hugged all the girls like you had not seen them for years. In the middle of the festivities, you turned around and waved at me cheerily, discreetly mouthing, Thank You, I Owe You, and the crowd of girls mobbed you down with a torrent of congrats.

"What's wrong, Zahra?"

You became more teary-eyed from those three words than anything else either one of us said that night.

You didn't say a single word for the longest, most worrying five minutes of my life. You just stood there, leaning against my car, painfully recollecting yourself, and repeatedly failing, to utter a single word. You calmed down for a while, looked away, and tried to say something, but then you let self doubt settle in.

It was a mistake on my part, and I have truly regretted it to this day. But at the time I knew no other way to comfort you other than to place my arm gently on your shoulder, squeezing away some of that anxiety and hurt. To let you know I was there for you, that you could trust me to tell me your worry.

"I don't want to celebrate my next birthday in Bintulu."

You let out the heaviest sigh, holding yourself back from crying so that you could say some more.

"I don't want to be here", you said in a broken whisper.

You were dead calm when your father called you on the phone to wish you happy birthday. There was no trace of sadness in your voice as you thanked him for his thoughtfulness and kind words. I couldn't tell the reaction from your face when he tried to make you laugh. When he called you by your childhood nickname. When he retold intimate anecdotes from when you were a mischievous little darling. You were strangely somber; there was something in his voice that drained the colors from you. You were pensive and silent, looking out the car window, long into the darkness of the night, lost in thought, disengaged.

"Pa, I miss Mama."

Under the trestle of your door, you turned towards me and desperately tried to put on a genuine smile.

"Thank you for taking me home", you said, listless. "I'm sorry about tonight-"

"Zahra, I promise you - I will help you all I can to get you out of here, okay?"

You nodded quietly, unsure, with your eyes cast elsewhere. "Good night."




I waved at you with both arms raised as high as I could.

"So?"

As soon as you saw me at the other end of the long hallway, you darted in a heartbeat and ran as fast as you could towards me. The brightest, most ecstatic smile was splattered across your glowing face. Right before you were about to crash into me, you jumped and threw your arms in joy, stomping, exploding-

"They said YES! April First!"

All that intense lobbying had worked. All those heartfelt memos and letters and emails and phone calls. All those weeks of persistent nagging, harassing, poking, hinting, arguing, crying, complaining, whining, begging, grunting, sighing, throwing of arms, stamping of feet, rolling of eyes, miles of walking, running, hours of standing, talking -- all of those. It took us all of those effort to get our Management to say, Yes.

You should have seen your face, Zahra. As you twirled, spun, and pirouetted in delirious excitement. How your hair tussled about in the air as you danced gleefully in the Main Office hallway, shrieking, laughing. How you were flushed with vibrant colors again. That sparkle in your eyes - Stay positive, we are kittens.

As you made promises to buy me the most expensive and elaborate dinner that this town could offer, the world around me started receding into silence, into this horizon of black and white. The living daylights began to fade, deep into the quiet recesses of my heart. I could see you, but you were slowly fading away.

She's leaving. Zahra's leaving.




Don't you think it's funny that the person you first met in Bintulu is also the last person you saw when you were leaving?

I couldn't wrap my head around that fact, still. I couldn't help but think that Allah had planned this to end like that all along. Maybe He meant it to be that way, for us, to mean something. Or maybe He was being funny. I don't know. The thought of that always make me smile. Who are we, but pawns, to have our say in divine things like that.

Who are we, indeed, but pawns.

I remember the bewildered face you had when you asked me why we needed to be at the airport so early. The flight was not going to be for another two and a half hours. I lied, and told you that there was going to be a group of people from the office who would be there, waiting in surprise for you, to say their farewell.

"I don't want to see those jokers! I've already said my goodbye at the office!"

Then you realized I was kidding, and smacked me with a rolled up magazine.

I simply wanted to have you all to myself.

I wanted the final hours you would be spending in Bintulu to be with me, just me. So that we could talk. About us. About the good old days. About you. About anything you wanted to talk about. I wanted to be able to talk to you without a busload of people between us. I wanted to find an empty, quiet corner somewhere so that I could sit close to you, and be with you, and have a good long look at you while you talk about something silly. About the moody, tempestuous weather. About the taxi uncle sleeping in the car with his belly exposed.

I wanted to be able to share a hearty laugh with you, from jokes that only the two of us understood. I wanted to be able to struggle through another awkward moment in conversation with you. I wanted to see your beautiful, angelic face freeze comically from a pregnant, misplaced pause as you take your breath at the end of a long sentence. Or when you mispronounced a simple word. Or when you wrongly used a peribahasa. I wanted to be lost in your web of metaphors, where you hide all your true intentions.

I wanted to sit next to you again for the last time like we sat on that sofa in the HR waiting room, waiting for some miracle to happen. I wanted to have that re-match. I wanted to sneak a longing stare at you and to catch you do the same to me. I wanted to settle this once and for all and agree on who was staring at whose eyes first three years ago. Who made the first move and flirted. And who was being helplessly and hopelessly smitten.

I wanted you to lie to me about being interested in oil and gas and spot cargo and the volatile winter market. I wanted you to tell me stories about your life in New Brunswick, how you spent your summer break in the concrete wilderness of Toronto and Montreal. I wanted you to tell me about your friends, your family, your favorite color, your first trip on an airplane, your love for Mama, your dreams and ambitions, your ideal home. I wanted you. I wanted you. I wanted you. I wanted you...




As you rose from your seat, to finally leave me, I reached for your hand.

You squeezed in kind and held on to my hand, as a dear friend would. And then I spoke to you using words I had never spoken to anyone. I spoke to you not as a friend. I spoke to you in sacred vows. I spoke to you with tears welling in my eyes. I spoke to you about the truth that had been alluding us. I spoke to you as a man whose heart was entirely yours.




Some people say Bintulu has one of the most beautiful sunsets by the sea. It's the way the sky collapses into long strips of blue, red, yellow, white and grey, all at the same time. It's the way light is reflected and refracted by the clouds. It's the way the horizon moves away at glacial speeds, spotted with cargo ships and long haul tankers, bound for the vastness of the ocean. It's the way the morose wind howls in pain when crashing into jagged rocks and rough hillsides. It's the way the low ebbing tide clings to the sands of harbor, refusing to let go, refusing to forget, coming and going but never truly leaving.

I remember looking out into the sunset after sending you away at the airport that day, and all I could see then was a smudged painting of a wonderful memory, best forgotten.




Dear Zahra,

I am not sorry I told you how I feel about you. I meant every single word I said, every single grasp of hand, every single flinch of eye, every single teardrop that fell.

I am sorry, however, that I told you I love you.

You had every right not to reciprocate that love; so, don't feel that you had wronged me.

You hadn't.

I pray to Allah that your life shall be blessed with joy and happiness with this lucky man, whoever he is. I pray to Allah that he shall love you and take care of you better than I had, and that you shall deserve all his best.

Thank you for letting me be a small part of you, even for a short while. For that, I am ever grateful.

Goodbye, Zahra.

Author's notes:
This short story is a section to a longer story that I am working on, titled “The Man My Daughter’s Marrying” – a story about a girl named Zahra told from the personal viewpoints of great men in her life.

This section was written between late November 2010 and early January 2011, late at night.

“Whoever He Is” is the story about Zahra from the viewpoint of the man she left behind.

The transition from best friends to lovers is more difficult and painful than simply starting off by flirting with a stranger. That’s the whole point of this story. Often times, romantic gestures between best friends are mistakenly thought off as just something “friendly and nice”. Rarely would we question the true motives.

It would be unfair to characterize Zahra from this story alone. You would have to wait for me to complete the entire story. You will understand her better. You will fall in love with her. You will so envy her.

The hardest part to write, emotionally, for me is the "I wanted you. I wanted you. I wanted you.” I locked myself in my room on the night of January 4, 2011, and poured them all out, weeping, lying still on the cold floor.

What do you say to a girl you’ve been secretly in love with for years, and now she’s leaving, without you telling her how you feel? What do you say when she’s also your best friend, your only true confidant?

I wrote down sixteen paragraphs of things I wanted to say, from the poignantly touching to the superbly idiotic: I wanted to do ballroom dancing with you. I wanted to go to your little brother’s kenduri kahwin in Kg Parit Haji Zin in Muar and do a skirt-splitting tango with you right in front of your parents. I wanted to be chased out of the kampong with you by an angry mob, carrying cangkul, screaming “Blasphemers!”

I used Yasujiro Ozu’s style of filmmaking when it comes to showing intense, private moments between two people – I simply moved the camera away as far as I comfortably could. Like in Sofia Coppolla’s film, “Lost in Translation”, when Scarlett Johanssen and Bill Murray hugged in the final scene and then they whispered into each other’s ears, but we could not hear what they were saying. Sofia purposely did that to us!

I also used a lot of “blinking” – scenes shifted from one place and time to another without transition. You are reading about Zahra crying, and then they are together in the car, and then they are at her doorstep saying good night. This is also typical of Yasujiro Ozu's films.

Zahra's character is based on Zara from another short story I wrote, called “The Breakfast Club.” LINK

“Whoever He Is” is written in the style of a private letter or a diary entry that is only symbolic, and not real. Zahra would've never read or known any part of this.

The photo used here is of the actor Mohd Shafie Naswip from Yasmin Ahmad’s film “Mukhsin” (2006). Quite possibly one of the more promising, talented young actors in Malaysia. He reminds me of Marlon Brando when he was young and just starting out (“A Streetcar Named Desire”). Even if you are not a fan of Yasmin’s films, it is simply delightful to watch Shafie’s raw talent oozing out, that brooding angst-ridden stare.

Some of you are gonna think that the guy is a coward and he deserved it. Some of you are gonna think Zahra should have said Yes, even if she were leaving. The truth is, none of us has any say on what transpires between two people in the realm of their emotions. If you love a girl, tell her. It's not important what's her reply is going to be. The important thing is that you asked. She'll be happy that you did.

My resolution this year is to forget about work and focus on my passion, writing.