Disassembled Mind

Mat Jeng didn't look like other passersby. His hairs were tangled like hairs of a demented ghoul. He walked about the row of classrooms, wore ragged shorts with and a t-shirt once white. He was holding a bottle of soy sauce for a reason we never knew. He mouthed some uncertain murmurs, poked his head into the entrance door of ours and shouted "arghh!!!". He dragged us out into temporary haywire. We screamed our heart out like he did, but the difference was; he did that with enjoyment while we almost had our heart explode.

He walked away a few paces, paused, glanced back at us with his contented chuckle, revealing his severely decayed teeth, and off he went to somewhere he never thought of going. Teacher, a local lad, looked calm. He knew Mat Jeng -- a mad man.

Mat Jeng was a famous figure among several other weirdos who roamed about our little town Dungun when I was still a boy. Rumour had it that he was a genius scholar when he was an altogether man. Many sad things happened to him then. I did not know what the sad things were. My friends at school told me, Mat Jeng read too many books, which finally led him into the state of disassembled brain. That got me thinking about it the whole week. Another rumour I heard was – he had involved in an accident; a stone was hurled at him (which came out from nowhere and no one knew who did that) and hit his head, resulted an obvious swelling on his forehead and you could see the swollen flesh from a long distance. He lost his mind ever since.

There was another mad man named Pok Arab. He had another nickname; Orang Salamualaikung, known for his weird everyday outfit -- putting on Arab's headgear and a sunglasses (even in night darkness) and his tendency to greet "Assalamualaikum!" at every single person he met, hence his name.

He cycled alone about the town, and sometimes traveled the whole district from Sura Hujung in the south to Kuala in the north. In his never-ending journey, he smiled and greeted "Assalamualaikum!" at every single person he met. He would pause his journey at certain places, stood there still, buried his hands in his pockets, recited a few holy verses from the Koran and Hadiths (the sayings of the Prophet) and started giving out religious lectures occupied with hand gestures which perhaps, an attempt to describe something indescribable by strings of words like heaven and hell. Unfortunately, no one was willingly listening to him.

I’m not sure I can write Pok Arab’s history in good depth. Too many rumours evolved into variations of exaggerated stories about this mysterious man. But the most famous one I’d heard about Pok Arab was about his journey during his younger days. It was told that he had been too obsessed with mystical part of religious teaching the wrong way. He spent the rest of his life thinking of matters beyond his mental ability, such as, How God looks like? or Who created God in the first place? However, there was one thing I loved about this man -- which was the way he lost his mind in searching for truth.

In 1999, a strange man was given a weird nickname, "Mat Boggel", became a part of daily talks among coffee shops' morning dwellers around the town. Mat Boggel was a man who wore nothing but a long piece of cloth wrapped around his loin area, only covered part of his belly and his butt. When it was blown by strong wind, God helped him, that sight wasn't suitable for minors. One fine day, when the wind was as cruel as people around him, he was taken away to a mental hospital in a place called Tanjung Rambutan.

I haven't forgotten the moment I asked Mother regarding those unfortunate people – “Mok, orang giler masuk syurga dok?” (Mum, will a crazy man find his way in heaven?).

She said, yes.

Do I have to be crazy to go to heaven, Mother?

Ha! Ha! What a naughty boy. Keep yourself accompanied by good deeds everyday, and there's a big palace for you there.

I wanna go to heaven.

Haven't you missed your Zohor prayer today, son?

***

A Dungun man from Dubai named Kamal Musa had posted a comment about Mat Jeng. He said, copied verbatim:

"Mat Jeng passed away before his mum perfom the Hajj. Glad, his mum was not worried about his late son while she's in Mecca... knowing that no body will take care of Mat Jeng mkn minum sakit demam dia. Mat Jeng is lucky enough to have wonderful mother.."

Thank you Mr. Kamal Musa. Al-Fatihah to Mat Jeng. May he found peace in Jannah!

Deleting The Past

I have taken out my old posts as they turned out to be a joke for me right now. I laughed at myself. If it wasn’t about the bad grammar, then it was actually about the way I think back then. I was a tortured soul embodied by a fine-looking skin. Tortured soul acts more like a devil than a wise brain; it is pleasant to look at but deceiving. It means business. I am mad. I am a psychopath. I admit. That’s because I feel things deep. I am deleting the past that I hardly let go. I am not trying anymore.

Catfish

While slurping a cup of warm bitter tea, right after having the last bit of irresistible spicy ikan keli masak sambal for lunch, I was teleported to the other world where snippets of my childhood memories paraded in mind like grainy moving pictures projected from an old dusty cinema film projector.

I saw Father jerked back his fishing rod sidearm a few times. It bent down half moon like a grass blade blown by sea breeze. His muscle-rippling arms fought hard the resistance relentlessly and aaah finally, the divine relief – as if he was having a glorious pee after a long morning assembly.

“Ah! A fish, finally!” said Mother.

Father grinned.

“Is that ikang keli? It has whiskers,” I said.

“Dok ahu gok (I have no idea),” Father said.

“Ikang keli mana dudok dalang laok (No keli ever live in the sea),” Mother explained.

“Ikang duri kot (That must be ikang duri instead),” Father suggested. He was still holding the fishing rod. That poor thing, still got its mouth hooked, was laid on the ground that it flipped and flapped and quacked like a duck.

“Ikang dukkang tu! (That’s dukkang fish!)” said a man who was approaching us. His very thick moustache wagged as he spoke. He was thin on top, dark-skinned, and smelled so hanyir, which is the smell of the nearby wet market. I saw him fishing near us. He had stood there a lot earlier than us already, probably missed his garek (early evening) prayer intentionally, as Mother speculated. He generously handed Father his baits. Smelled like rotten fish. Because they really were. He taught Father to cut the flesh into bigger bits because dukkang liked it so much and off he went.

That night, Father caught many dukkangs. Mother marinated them with salt and turmeric. Fried. I didn’t really like the taste. The next day, I told my friends at school about dukkangs we caught that night. “Semalang ayoh aku dapak banyok ikang dukkang! (Last night my dad caught many dukkangs!)” I said. They laughed. They said, dukkangs eat shit.