“Kak,” she said, “Sister, please, I must speak to Zainal.”
“I am not lying to you,” Siti said with some annoyance. “I do not know when he will return. Sometimes he is in the jungle for days.”
Siti looked closely at the young woman. Perhaps a niece from the Trengganu branch of the family… yes, surely, there was a resemblance to someone. Siti opened the door wide and smiled at the woman. Then the woman held out the sleeping child and said, “I must talk to Zainal. Kak, forgive me, this is your husband’s child. This is Zainal’s daughter.”
Later Siti would tell me that she knew something like this was about to happen; she had felt it in the evil wind. Zainal, with his nafsu kuat, so strong his lust for women, and he so handsome, how could she contain him within a marriage? Nafsu, ghairah, goda, so many ways to describe sexual attraction without romantic love in the Malay language, and Zainal, oh, didn’t he know them all!
When Zainal had disappeared for two years during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya to work on the Death Railway, Siti had feared exactly this. She asked me, “Can we make something come true by imagining it over and over, Shapna?”
Whenever Siti said to Zainal, “I cannot share you with anyone,” Zainal would joke, “Then we get divorced, lah, and men will all line up to marry you again!”
Ah, the Kelantanese and their penchant for divorcees with their earlier sexual experience. Zainal would tease Siti with this sword often. But Siti loved Zainal beyond reason; she wanted only him. When she first suspected him of straying from her, she invoked the ancient tangkal pengasih, a love spell so potent that it would cure him of any love sickness in future.
Such preparations! Mushroom stones and precious sugar from a jemilang nipah palm, sprinkled with the tears of a mermaid and the essence of the undang palm, to be applied on the body. Siti ate hot chillies and rock salt as she memorised the charm for seven nights from the fourteenth day of the moon.
When the spell hardened, became pengeras, she wrote the spell on a piece of paper and drank the burnt ashes with a gulp of water. Thus the spell was in her, to be recited on three consecutive full moon nights. Siti held up her face to the moon, glowing, calling to Zainal’s soul Kur wai wait, which would ensure his final surrender. Then the spell passed from mother to daughter, through generations:
I use the charm of love, my love for you
To me
From you, your father’s semen is white
Your mother’s blood is red
You were in your mother’s womb
Nine months and nine days
Born to be a human
Thus, you love me
I use the charm of love
If it is aborted you will die in deprivation
If it succeeds you will enter my body
Kur wai wait Zainal your body
Enter my body
Like a string, like a fruit, your heart’s string is
Enter my body
Kur wai wait Zainal
Zainal always returned to her. When he returned after two years, alone, even after the Death Railway, Siti became complacent.
Then the girl and her child appeared that night, carried along with unwanted debris by the tempestuous wind. Siti became desperate. I heard the hysteria in her voice over the telephone although she had only said, “Come quickly!”
When I entered her house, Siti hugged me tightly, murmuring, “Why? Why does he do this?” Siti’s rage was a vomit of curses mingling with tears.
“Where is she now?” I asked as soon as there was a lull.
Siti wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know! Why should I care? She left.”
“Where?” I looked around the room quickly.
Siti shrugged. Her gaze was steady, defiant.
“What did you do, Siti?”
“I called Saiful to take care of her. He refused to take the baby.”
Saiful, who owed a blood debt to Zainal, and was fiercely loyal to Siti. In the distance I could see the long stretch of mangrove swamps with their thick fleshy leaves; the fiery api-api spread a blanket of orange and yellow flowers, covering the salty waterlogged mud which lay below.
“Zainal must never know,” Siti said.
“You are crazy, Siti!”
“Take the child so that Zainal will never know.”
I felt a greed growing as the live child stirred in my lap. “Saiful will talk. He will tell Zainal.”
“Never!”
“My god, Siti, how will I do this? My husband… He will never…” My voice was a whisper.
“You’ve tried… you cannot have a child! Take this baby and promise me you will never tell Zainal!”
I made soothing noises. “I promise.” Then I was silent, unlike the child in my arms.
Siti’s charms always work. She still has her Zainal.
And I? I had a baby to carry through the early morning into a fabled birth.
A fabled baby who would bear the offspring of her father.
Once Nikhil, in his usual miserable phlegm-filled state, had stuttered a Sanskrit verse, invoking the most misogynistic writer of the Vedas: Na sthri swatantryam arhati. No woman deserves freedom.
Nikhil turned out to be right about many things.
He didn’t live to see Shanti drink so much water that she would not have to breathe any more. Nobody expected the baby in her womb to survive either. When they brought Shanti’s lifeless body dripping from the water, and the doctors said that maybe the baby could be saved, it was a small chance, but she was almost full-term by then; my grief dried up. I ran to the only temple, a pagan ruin, to change destiny again.
Maheshbabu brought Jay to me, who, twirling Shanti’s pendant in his crazy loopy circles, confessed that he had told only Shanti and no one else. The Sylheti man that she had married by then didn’t know anything. I waved Jay away in disgust, knowing that Maheshbabu would take his devil child away to protect me, even as far as America, so that no one would hear of my shame. This would be goodbye.
Then I was chilled by the thought of my loneliness, all those empty years stretching ahead to my old age. I could only despair.
When Shanti’s baby became a possibility, I prayed hard. I was frightened by the time I reached the temple, imagining the consequences of the baby growing up, but that was still years away, and the alternative was worse.
The sight of the temple was not reassuring. Battered by the torrential rain, the kumkum stains from earlier prayers ran blood-red on the ground, and pieces of faded red cloth tied around the tree branches slapped wetly in the storm. A decorated idol on a rearing horse, fierce in a way that seemed more malevolent than benign, stared out at the world. Next to the idol, in a hollowed out cave, was the songkok cap of the guardian datuk of the temple, and that is where I went.
It was the merging of the Islamic and Hindu icons that gave this site its potency. Perhaps superstition is a stronger force than any religion in this country, but I had no time to think before I felt the priest touching my shoulder, and mumbling, mumbling, his eyes shot red and his breath reeking of something decomposing, and then the chanting became louder and louder until I fainted.
The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self, says the Bhagavad Gita. I knew that, for I had willed my daughter’s death. But I couldn’t, the death of my grandchild. So Agni was carved out of my daughter’s dead body, and I created a fable about her mother’s death.
And my granddaughter lives. Sweeter than the tree you plant is the fruit it bears. Gacher thekhe phol mishti. My granddaughter lives, and for that I am glad.
Abhik would give anything to be in Port Dickson right now. He looked around the vip lounge at the airport and indicated to his assistant that they had it set up just right. The leader of Hindsight 2020 was sipping from a cup of hot tea, completely relaxed. He was chatting with a journalist about the parallels between the situation in Malaysia and the African-American civil rights movement in the US as he waited for his turn at the mic.
Abhik’s mind was far way. It was his annual religious event, and he should be there with his whole family. Instead, he was waiting for the eminent Minister to start his speech so that they would get their turn soon. After this, Abhik promised himself, he would make the time to go to Bali with Agni.
He checked the monitor again. The Minister loomed large on the screen. He had marked more than two decades as the undisputed leader of Malaysia, and was about to retire. Despite his anti-Semitism and his irascibility, he was the Magician of Malaysia. He could do no wrong and his grandfatherly aspect was marked with the authority of success. His international triumphs had been spectacular, even the seemingly irrational pegging of the Malaysian currency to the American dollar.
Besides, thought Abhik, he liked the old man’s liberalism when it came to religion. Too many Malay politicians were belligerent
kris
-wavers, who promised to end dissent with a show of Islamic knives.
The stage was set, and the Minister sat luminescent, the arc lights focused. The press conference started with the gentle buzz of the swarming microphones, and then he spoke. “The decay of Malay culture has resulted in social problems in Malaysia, such as corruption and drug-taking.” He paused in between his sentences, looking gravely at the faces surrounding him. He knew the rhetoric well; he had plenty of practice.
“And, although Islam seems to have a greater hold among Malays today, it is merely in terms of appearances rather than substance. Although they have been reminded repeatedly, our culture is still on the decline. In the past, my political party was clean of money politics.” There was a pause, timed just right, a gentle shake of a weary head, then the tears in his eyes. “It is not any more now. We explained. I pleaded, I cried, I prayed, I did everything. It didn’t change.”
Now his voice took on an edge of indignation, as he became the
Datuk
, an irate grandfather speaking to his wayward clan.
“My government is baffled as to why there seem to be more social problems despite the government providing schools with religious teachers. Why does it involve only the Malays? Why not the Chinese? Those with
AIDS
are Malays; drugs also involve the Malays; rape and murders… Name anything bad, the majority is Malays.”
As he held their complete attention, the silence deepened. Then, suddenly, the interview seemed to meander again in its unrehearsed way. “It has become part of the Malay culture. They like it easy. That’s why we have a huge number of foreign workers – because we like it easy. When the Chinese and Indians migrated to Malaya, the Malays withdrew. They searched for something easy. If the Chinese had sought independence then, we would have become a country like Singapore. In Singapore, the Malays are the minority.” He dropped the singsong intonation and enunciated with emphasis, “When we become the minority, we would lose our status completely.”
There was a significant pause.
“It’s quite possible that I could drop dead tomorrow.” He touched his heart, a subtle reference to his triple bypass surgery a few years ago. “I have been unwell, but never irresponsible.
I did not want to sack anyone, but people do inappropriate things.”
He seemed sad as he indicated that his speech was over, leaving the audience to ponder over what was left unsaid. The organisers began to clear the forum for the next speaker. The Hindsight 2020 leader, led by Abhik, walked towards the podium.
They crossed the Minister on his way to the door. The camera panned Abhik, then focused on the Minister, hoping to catch a spontaneous moment that would shed some light on the person behind the legend.
No one paid much attention to the young man in the wheelchair making his way towards them at the same time. The wheelchair cleared the expanse of the room swiftly, and a bodyguard bent down to hear a whispered request. A slight corridor opened to let the wheelchair through. The wheelchair clicked to a stop in front of the Senior Minister.
The Senior Minister turned around and smiled, reaching out his right hand for a brief clasp of fingers before touching his hand ritually to his heart.
The cameras continued to whirr as the explosion ripped through the young man’s body with a ferocity that levitated the wheelchair briefly. Then the area was covered by smoke and screaming people and, just before the screen buzzed and distorted, there was the sound of the Minister’s voice murmuring,
Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!
Sitting in a small room on the outskirts of Ampang and watching the broadcast by cnn a half-hour later, Colonel S also called on God, but with gratitude. They played that same footage over and over on all the news channels. The body count so far was six dead, eight critically injured.
The Malaysian Prime Minister’s voice shook as he spoke about his shock at the assassination of the Senior Minister. He said this was a terrible time for all Muslim nations, and that it was such a wrong message to send to a moderate Muslim country like Malaysia. The flags were flying half-mast; there would be a national mourning period.
Moderate Muslim country my arse
. That the bomb had gone off on Deepavali should tell them all something. The original plan was supposed to be two weeks later, but the timing seemed perfect with this Hindu troublemaker coming back on Deepavali for a press conference, and the Chinese now agitating about their dead man at the anti-Graft agency. If the other races decided to fight back, well, bring them on. More reason to exterminate the vermin from this land.
Colonel S glanced down at the building plans, zoning in on one section of a page. The operation had been executed perfectly. The Minister had approached from here; the Hindsight group was placed here… which meant the media had shifted, perfectly, into this corner.
They already had the necessary employee clearances, and had entered through the exit leading to the secondary isolated aircraft parking position. Then the warrior had waited, until it was his time… here.