Which meant he would have to find out what Colonel S was really doing. His mind whirled with possibilities: the street protests in Kuala Lumpur; the elections in a few months; deaths at the anti-corruption agency. Where was the next military application?
If Colonel S was insisting on his working quickly, it wouldn’t be long in coming.
This country was such a cesspool. He had forgotten all that suspicion of other races beneath the polite veneer, how quickly something became a problem and had to be countered.
His father, influenced by Shapna, had been the worst when it came to suspecting the motives of the Malay race. He had seen it all clearly during a trip to Bali.
Looking back at that trip, the adult Jay now realised that his father had been trying out his mistress as wife material.
Jay’s mother, Ila, had left for India. Jay couldn’t remember when or why she had done that – he had been too young – but he had woken up one morning to find her gone. Then his father had taken the two boys and Shapna to Bali.
Bali brought Shapna’s history books alive and transformed her. She delighted in the simplicity of Bali, even in the pesky barefoot children who wouldn’t leave them alone. They took a tourist coach and saw the volcanoes, and the terraced
padi
fields and, finally, they stopped at the 14
th
century Tanah Lot temple.
The Hindu shrine shimmered at the edge of the beach, high on a hill like a particularly glorious gem growing more beautiful with age in its perfect setting. Shapna sat on the beach, leaning on the tiny cave that the touts claimed was filled with serpents, and cried with sheer joy. When Jay poked a furtive hand into the cavern, he found nothing.
Shapna turned to Mahesh and said, “
This
is what I wanted to see in Malaya: the Shiva and Vishnu shrines that once stood on Kedah Peak; statues from the Gupta period in Perak.” She shut her eyes, and wriggled her toes into the wet sand of the beach in sheer bliss.
“We learnt about the Sri Vijaya Empire in school,” Jay offered his father this nugget of information.
Shapna blew the sand out of a conch shell she had found, and asked instead, “And what did you learn, child?”
Jay puffed up his chest at this chance to impress his father. Then he recited, “The king converted to Islam through a dream.
Recite the words of faith,
he was told in the dream. When the ruler replied that he did not know how, the person asked him to open his mouth and spat into it.
A taste rich and sweet
. When the ruler woke up, he saw that he was circumcised, and could recite the words of the Koran.
Tantaraa
!” He finished with a flourish, proud of his knowledge, but Mahesh’s eyes had narrowed into slits that glared,
You stupid halfwit
.
“Spat into his mouth?” Mahesh foamed, “And all this magic makes perfect sense to you? So much magic; is this what you swallow in school?”
Shapna had turned and absentmindedly begun to draw curlicues of her own name in Bengali in the sand. Mahesh raged, “History! Written when the splendor of the Malaccan court had declined, and Malay kings were harried by the Portuguese and Acehnese… when distortion became necessary, even though the claims were absurd.”
A strong gust of wind whipped Jay’s hair, slapping his forehead with a sudden sting. Rainclouds gathered over the horizon, at the edge of which balanced two little girls, pink and purple spades in hand. They laboured on a sandcastle with a black pebble wall, even as the sea rushed in stealthily, filling the sinuous moat. An empty packet of twisties whirled a jagged orange and green somersault through the breeze as his brother chased after it.
Shapna’s voice took over, singsong, rising and falling like the waves spitting white foam bubbles at their feet. “The Gujarati seamen came in heavy
dhows
loaded with tons of cargo, the timbers lashed together, unriveted by metal to avoid the risk of rusting. During the long voyage, the sailors rode these slippery logs with desperately splayed toes. Many fell to their deaths as the structures unravelled in heavy storms. Ah, child, this country was such a marvellous crossroad of cultures, such a mingling of bloods!”
In Shapna’s voice, Jay could smell the burnt incense, hear the bustle of the arrival, unloading and reloading of hundreds of ships. He saw the elephants, owned by the fat Gujarati merchants, lumbering between seamen.
But his father brought them back to the moment with the sharpness in his tone. “No magic here, just the cycle of history! I wish we could
feel
this history in Malaysia, but there are no Tanah Lots there, eh?”
Shapna said gently, “Ancient history,
tcha
, it is so easily forgotten!”
“Not forgotten. Erased. If we all pretend it never happened, maybe it didn’t,” said Mahesh.
Shapna sighed deeply. “Until the river floods and the silt uncovers what should remain hidden.”
Jay had looked at her quizzically. He was about to ask her which river was going to flood, but the tour guide hurried them back into the bus.
It would be too many years before he would find out exactly what Shapna had meant, and by then it would be too late and his life would have changed forever. In this cesspool of a country, too much was covered up by muddy rivers that did not flood.
But Colonel S? He had been a father figure for Jay, when his own father had given him the crumbs of his attention, or whatever was left after Shapna had finished. Depression and mood-enhancing drugs plagued his years in America until Colonel S had found him a place in that lab in Seattle. Then science had given his life such a meaning and validity that his human relationships paled in comparison.
He could never turn against Colonel S, no matter what happened. He always had the option of leaving if things became too uncomfortable again.
First, he would have to ask some oblique questions, digging into the specifications of the research but also reading much more into what was left unsaid. Until then, there was all this work to finish, until late into the quiet night.
Agni and Rohani turned into Desa Hartamas, a hip yuppie kingdom where Japanese and Mexican restaurants competed for customers with the nostalgic Malayan
kopitiams
from the Fifties. A parking spot seemed impossible until a
jaga kereta
squeezed them in between a Jaguar and a Proton Perdana.
“Make sure no one scratches my car, okay?” Rohani dropped some coins into his palm. He nodded automatically, shifting his gaze to the cars coming in.
Rohani had enveloped the car in the essence of roses and minty mouthwash. She indicated the
jaga kereta
boy with her head and said cheerfully, “The doped-out dregs of KL, but still useful!”
Agni felt cheered just looking at Rohani. She had on a romantic rebel outfit, a frilly soft muslin shirt with pants studded with zippers, and some serious shoes. Agni envied the way Rohani’s skin shone with a milky translucence. “You look so right for this place,” she commented wryly. “In my antique
sari
, I look like your auntie,
lah
!”
“Don’t be silly, Agni. No one’s looking anyway. And be careful with that beautiful fabric; you’re trailing it on the ground!”
Rohani was mistaken; they were attracting quite a bit of male attention. Agni glared at the moony drunkard sitting in the corner, and lit a cigarette as soon as they sank into their seats.
Rohani blurted out. “I got the offer letter –
MBA
, Wharton.”
Agni squealed in delight, “Congratulations! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“It’s been pretty crazy at work, yah?” Rohani shook her head, “And you were so busy with the employee clearances, worrying about Abhik and Hindsight… Didn’t seem the right time to share the good news.”
“Sorry,
lah
! But this is great news, and you’ll be with Sven again!
Aiyah
, but you’re doing so well here, major media star and all – I haven’t had time to read the piece, but there was some magazine article last week?”
“Oh, that rubbish? Nothing much – one of the Malay women’s magazines just did a spread. Crusader Sister or some such headline, about my work with the Sisters in Islam.”
“Oooh. I haven’t picked up a Malay magazine in ages, but I’ll have to see this!”
Rohani stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t bother. They have a butt-ugly picture of me. I think they didn’t know whether to do a prodigal daughter story or a black sheep angle.”
A waitress appeared. “
Minum
?” she asked, swabbing the table with a stained grey rag.
“
Teh tarik?
” Rohani asked. Agni nodded and, as Rohani placed an order for two drinks, Agni listened to the gentleness in her manner of address.
Kak
, she called the waitress, and her voice lilted in entreaty rather than command. Such small courtesies refined over centuries of civilisation resulting in such gentle dignity; Agni was charmed by the musicality of Rohani’s manners. Rohani’s family traced its roots to a Malaccan court. When a throne fell vacant, the Bendehara were the kingmakers, often providing consorts for the king from their own eminent family.
“God, I’ll miss this place!” Rohani sank lower into her seat.
“You’ll come back. You’ve done it before!”
“I don’t know, Agni.” Rohani drew a long breath. “My brother, you know, the politician, the one I’m staying with now? His wife bothers me all day with
haram
this and
haram
that. I’m finding it hard to be myself in my own family now.”
“Excuse me?” Agni raised a disbelieving eyebrow, and took a sip of the hot tea.
“You have no idea, obviously; you can do as you want. One Muslim woman might get caned for drinking in public, yah, so what does that do for those of us who like pubs? I’ve had it up to here trying to figure out what
might
offend someone next… too much tension.”
Agni sighed. “I try to keep out of all this and just concentrate on work, but Abhik makes me feel really selfish.”
Rohani laughed. “Oh, I just love Abhik!” She leaned forward conspiratorially, “How’re things with you two, eh? You may not be telling me, girlfriend, but something’s going on there, yah?”
Agni smiled mysteriously. Rohani grabbed her arm and made a face, “So tell,
lah
!”
Agni began the story with the kiss in the waters of Port Dickson. The rain poured noisily down while the streetlamps, murky yellow spills in the blackness, lit up the spray like ghostly sprites dancing in the air. They watched the wind picking up the dust like a carpet, flinging it onto windshields and the trees.
“So that’s all, nothing much to tell.”
“Yah, nothing much to tell!! Congratulations!”
“Actually, it’s all too new. I don’t want to talk too much, okay? Not yet.”
“Okay. Got it.”
There was a contemplative silence. “So how about you? What’s next with Sven?” Agni asked her.
“Let’s see. I’m going back to the States, even if it feels all fucked up there sometimes. It’s saner than here, you know. Easier to have desires.”
“Unless you’re gay in certain states,” said Agni. “But they did just legalize gay marriage.”
Rohani smiled naughtily. “No king-sized mattresses being hauled into courts there!”
Agni reacted to her flippancy. “The Anwar case wasn’t about sex! It was politics that only you Malays could talk about. The rest of us just sat in front of our TV screens and watched with our mouths shut.”
The silence grew as the smoke from Agni’s cigarette whispered past the neon sign flashing
LAW HAIRDRESSING
, and hung suspended for an instant around the gaudy green light. Then the thunder and lightning pierced the world. A shrub writhed in the wind, its leaves tickled and convulsed in delight – until the darkness shrouded it again.
“Actually, I reacted to the sex more than the politics in the Anwar case.”
“What?” Agni stared at her.
“Well, homosexuality makes me uncomfortable.” Rohani shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know why, it just does.” She held up a hand to stall the interruption. “I just don’t believe it’s okay for all consensual adults to have sex. Let’s draw out the parallel. Is it okay for adults to have incestuous sex? Like brother and sister, mother and son? Let’s say possible pregnancies are taken out of the equation. So if any two adults have consensual sex, is it okay?”
“Incest is never okay. You can’t compare like that!”
“Well, incest was okay for the pharaohs… and the Mughals too. For me, gay sex is eeeeww. So it’s all quite relative, pun intended.”
The TV, droning on in a corner of the coffee shop, caught their attention with a news flash. “Anyway, at least the political players are changing now. Probably the filthiness in Malaysian politics will get better.” Agni said.
Rohani grimaced. “It will get a lot worse before it gets any better,” she said grimly, “
especially
with the Indian agitation.”
She wiped her grimy fingers on the edge of a napkin, carefully folding the greasy part out of sight. “My parents were open-minded, very liberal, yah? Wanted us to mix with all races, study abroad and all that; be globally Malay. But you know why I went to an international school?”
“Same as me, I guess,” said Agni, “to get an English education?”
“No,
lah
! Nothing that simple. I was considered un-Islamic in my other school, for things like wearing shorts during hockey practice, and not wearing a headscarf, everyday things.”
Agni started to laugh.
“It wasn’t funny to my parents. My mother went to complain, you know, about the ridiculousness of it all, but when she parked her car, the
ustazah
heard
Hotel California
on the car radio. She was so angry; such music is
haram
we were told, like taking drugs.”
Agni looked at Rohani steadily. “That was
one
crazy teacher you had.”
“Agni, you have no idea. And it was just the beginning. My niece was told off for using chopsticks, so un-Islamic, how can – ! My parents think it’s just getting worse.”
Agni ground her cigarette and waited for Rohani to continue.
“So,” said Rohani quietly, “everyone thinks Malays are too stupid to be dangerous. And we get quietly hijacked by the radicals.”