Marital Inflammation

She was battering our kitchen's window with her palms. Her chest waved heavily under the thin fabric of her pajama. Panting. Her hairs were messy. Her meagre face looked pale under the hues of the kitchen's fluorescent light. There was a gold necklace slung around her neck, laying helplessly on her protruded collar bone.

I knew it had happened again. It was not the first time. Somewhere from the pitch darkness, a fierce voice of an old man darted into cracks of the wooden walls. I knew the voice.

She battered the window harder than before, crying and pleading for help. I barely understood her words since the turbulent emotion really took a heavy ride in her, galloped mercilessly in her chest. Mother and Father walked hurriedly from the living room to unlock the kitchen's door. But it was a hopeless effort. She disappeared as the fierce bark foreran the gentle click of the unlocked door.

It was her husband -- a skinny old man, tall, dark, but hardly stood ramrod -- back ache. Part of his silver lines on his apex were kept underneath a white kopiah (skullcap), therefore he was a godfearing man, because norm had it that every godfearing man wore it. He was armed with a supple rattan stick.

Mother told me that he was a retired eminent figure of Dungun’s political landscape. He belonged to a political party where men wore skullcaps and despised two towering specimens of the government named Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim. Our neighbour next door, Pok Cik Seng, joined his ship, except he was a mediocrity. And he wore skullcap too, all time.

Neighbours were gathering outside their house already and chattered with each other in a small group. Others craned their neck from the window, looked lost in curiosity of uncertain things in the dimmer rays of twilight, but later joined the swollen group of men and women before their sight that smelled of anxiety. They did not know of what would happen.

"Mok Cik Lah is being beaten by her husband and it's brought outside already!" as the self-chosen leader might had told to the curious ones.

I joined in to socialize with the kids, in another group swelled with wilder hypotheses. Among all the immature heads, we shared a common thought; that the old man was guilty as charged by the mature ones. Verdict; he's a bad husband -- the string of words that came out from eavesdropping at adults' conversation.

Marriage affair wasn't a part of our mental makeup. We neither articulate nor feel emotions connected to Mok Cik Lah. We did not capable of defining "a happy marriage". Unfortunately, we enjoyed the show! We thanked God that the trouble wasn't come from our families.

That night, we witnessed the whole event.

Nobody wanted to mess with other people's marriage problem. It's a taboo in our society. Mother could not do anything too when Mok Cik Lah suddenly appeared from the darkness, ran towards Mother, and cried out "tengok tu Bak nok katok Kak Lah! (look! Bak wants to beat me!)"

She had been running in circles. She had no where to go.

Mother said, "Sabor Kak Lah... sabor..." (calm down Kak Lah, calm down.)

I saw Bak walked swiftly to Mok Cik Lah. He raised his rattan stick into the air. He barked, "Maghi sining mung! Maghi sining!" (come here! come here!)

He pointed the tip of his rattan stick to Mok Cik Lah while repeating the same sentence. His voice turned louder and huskier as he did that. I could feel the sense of rage pressing around him. That stick was so magical that pointing at Mok Cik Lah with it had made her crouched on the tarmac. She propped up with her hands and cried helplessly when Bak approached her in his upsurging rage.

Futile neighbours watched Bak grabbed her wrist and dragged that puny woman back into their house. Each step he made, she resisted it. Bak raised his mighty stick and whipped his wife. Mok Cik Lah shielded the hit with her small palm. Bak raised the stick once again but he didn't hit because Mok Cik Lah had finally moved her feet, pushing the outcrops of the tarmac with her soles in a fading intensity of resistance. But it didn't set down the raging intensity from Bak. He shouted and jerked back her wrist now that Mok Cik Lah stood limply on her feet, hurling herself upon a man who was dragging her back to the house where brutal punishment awaited. She kept crying and shrieking her heart out until the dimmer light of the moon blotted by the eerie-looking night clouds.

*******

Bak died few years later. Aged 77. Mok Cik Lah later married her family's driver after they were caught in the act of indecent behaviour by local religious department officers in the same house she lived with Bak. All characters in this story have undergone 'namelift' for privacy purpose.

Going Out Fishing

Besides acting as a problem solver for the whole world crisis while watching news on TV, a true man goes fishing. So I went out fishing. Or prawning -- if this word does exist in the dictionary. I am in madness of catching fresh water prawns at a secret location where stars twinkle in resplendent yellow.

Apart from eerie trolls and goblins, this secret location promises good catch if the sun shines so bright all week long that it makes our dear prawns underneath this six-feet deep stagnant water going frenzy, thus, drooling over our bait. While the gullet of those poor worms bloated with the water from the pond, we were doing some charity works by donating our warm blood into the gullet of mosquitoes. They never thanked us. It takes a hard time for me to figure out that fishing trains patience. I cursed mosquitoes for all the skin rashes I received.

Too much of waiting, I scoffed when the grudging rains started pouring on us. We went back empty handed with an unpleasant sight of our flip-flops besmeared by mud. It's rainy season in Sarawak and prawns dislike rain. But we could see ourselves walking back to that secret location once the sun shines eagerly the next evening and it's a fat chance since this is rainy season. I have told you that.

No matter what happen, I'm gonna keep myself persistent with this prawn hunting activity. I'm sorry if I am some sort of in a writer's block mode. Don't blame me. Blame the prawns.

Business Matters

Mother makes karipap segera to finance my education. Note that I used "makes". That is perfect present tense. None of her parents were in business field. Grandfather once worked at Kuala Trengganu Town Board as an officer (until he, dressed in his full regalia, received a medal of honor from the erstwhile Sultan of Trengganu for a reason I do not know) and Grandmother was a good cook, just like Mother.

However her elder brother and three younger sisters share the same interest, where they had established businesses ranging from a small scale tailoring business favourited by the Toh Puans of Trengganu's royal families to a big scale tile suppliers for mega-construction planners. Sadly, this business trait will never get a place in my chromosome or being passed down to the forthcoming generations of mine. It will stuck there in Mother's, and will be faded by time like colours on a piece of kain batik left under the burning Trengganu sun for two weeks straight.

Back in the old days, Mother made popiah's (Chinese spring roll) skin layers for our dear late Mok Cik Gemok to be used for wrapping her chunks of chestnut, kangkung, bean sprouts, carrot, mashed eggs, and other mysterious ingredients until they turn into sticks form, each a size of an adult's toe before serving them raw or deep-fried for her customers. Mother made them by dripping her whitish concoction of flour, water, a pinch of salt, and Sanisah Huri's Aidilfitri song onto a preheated frying pan that was bigger than a truck's steering wheel. She organized them into stacks to be taken away to Mok Cik Gemok's popiahs' lair. After that, everybody in the neighbourhood of Taman Sura Gate teleported into the fantasy built Mexican air after having their bits of Mother-made delicious local tortillas, minus sombrero hat and flamencos.

That was apparently a good sign for Mother. She made more popiah's skin layers for the upcoming days until Mok Cik Gemok smiled from ear to ear. As a result, Mok Cik Gemok brought a huge bunch of black grapes for us that made me treasured such exquisite fruit of the faraway land by plucking one or two or three but fourth no more and kept the other remaining grapes for the morrows. But Mother told me off for that. She said they will get all wilted to the seeds and disappeared from their hiding place in the refrigerator if I did not eat them within two days.

The popiah feast went on for eleven months in a year and stopped when an old man dressed in Baju Melayu with the brim of his songkok stood close to his eyebrows declared the first moon sight of Ramadhan as projected on the bulgy screen of our Panasonic television. The nationwide declaration caused children happily scatter around our Taman and shouted "esok pose!!!" in the sweetness of night air that has been laden with magical sparkles of China-made fireworks and boomers of firecrackers to tell the slumbering chickens in their coop that tomorrow they will start fasting strictly from sunrise until sunset, even though they were the same old faces of the previous Ramadhans who were spotted licking icecreams in the afternoon heat at Surau Haji Bideng, near Kedda Bodo.

Still remember the night air's sweetness those children had been burning firecrackers in? Although fasting month declared the temporary halt of Mother's popiah skin business, Mother had a new plan to keep things going. She accepted offers to bake cakes and cookies for Raya, thus, the nights' air of Ramadhan were joyfully immersed with the sweetness scents of custards and doughs.

Mother made them into either crescent-shaped or rectangular with black forest topping or as crumby as a biskut mayat can be. But, in the matter of nomenclature, they were all made no difference for me. It may either be called "sekkuk bulang sabek" for its shape resembled a Ramadhan's crescent, or "sekkuk perahu" because it looked like a canoe. For others which defied description, I called them "sekkuk raya" instead. Meant, "Raya cookies", and no more questioning afterward when mouth is full at 2.00PM.

While poking the tip of my tongue through holes on the molars, attempted to dig out cakes of grind "sekkuk raya", I saw Mother sat on a black leather-bound secondhand office chair which was given by Pok Cik Rozak from the nearest videotapes' rental shop. It creaked most times whenever she swiveled the seat to pick up her scissors and a ruler which resembled the shape of a Samurai sword, hiding its blade under a heap of colouful cottons and silks on the table of her west. Northward, there was a machine with a word "Singer" engraved on it. That was the time I thought it was the actual spelling for "singa", which means, "lion". But how did a lion contribute to tailoring?

She might had munched a lot of her hand-made Raya cookies while sewing countless fabrics between the jaw of the lion and sometimes halted for tediously attaching labuci glitters onto silks while watching emotionally boring Malay dramas on television. Curiously, I learnt to lick the tip of a sewing thread for it acts as an aglet to be poked into the hole of a needle. And I learnt to fix my lose button all by myself, just like Mother who learned to fix our life all by herself. As time moved swiftly, she had to say a good-bye to munching and making Raya cookies when tailoring had contributed a rough income about one thousand ringgit per month. In a particular year, she even made it two thousands. Big money means big effort to carry on. Big effort subsequently means a pain in the back after sitting for too long on the constantly creaking leather-bound chair given by Pok Cik Rozak.

Nowadays, Mother realized poking a drenched tip of a thread into a needle's hole is as hard as catapulting a flying bird. I might be able to teach her to hold her breath for a moment to avoid trembling her hand while doing it but "cataract" is a term Mother has been deeply understood and she can rattle it off as good as a professor can be.

I do not know that I will be able to show you women (especially the pretty ones) that I'm gonna be all teary down to the core when it comes to writing about her sacrifice for our better living so that you (the pretty ones) can give me a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. But I'm sure I can't help but blotting my watery eyes after she texted me about her new karipap business that it needs no explanation to tell me that she does that for me to ensure my well-doing in this faraway land called Sarawak where I just need to spend a few more months before graduating as a tiny man with a small brain but with a big degree in Biotechnology.

The Point Where It Began

Kampung Sura Tengah (circa 90) was nothing but an image of a huge coastal land supporting an eye-stretched coat of tall grass, bushes, coconut trees, acacias, and clusters of wild ‘kemunting’ berry shrubs grew at random spots here and there. The kemuntings had been a part of the sweetness of our childhood memories. We would fold the front flap of our t-shirt to make a temporary pouch and collected the kemuntings in there. Then, we would bit them one by one to suck its sweet and tiny delicate jelly-coated seeds until our teeth stained purple.

There was a huge cluster of kemunting shrubs grew nearby a big cashew tree where a baby cobra was spotted passing through on the lead-coloured soil and finally disappeared underneath fallen twigs that structured the rusty-coloured linoleum made from bed of senescent leaves.

And we had spotted quails a few times swaggering around the tall grass metropolis which insisted Father to scatter ground traps so that we could dine ourselves with the sweet flesh of deep fried ‘burung puyuh’ but Father never did. And we had woodpeckers – which were impossible to catch. Squirrels too! Musang pandan, a civet cat its pee produces hard pandan scents within fifteen metre radius, a reason our kampong's children were afraid of going outside at night because folklore had it that was the smell of the apparition of ghost before it will turn unpleasant like smell of a rat carcass – the latter was an exaggeration invented by the adults as a reminder for their children – the genius way. We also had monitor lizards. Cobras and non-cobras. A pair of white-beaked hornbills sometimes, and a wild pig its tail was curly like curly fries. There you have it – a mini safari.

The land had turned itself into a rapidly growing neighbourhood when house developers started dividing the big piece into fractions now that each of it had a new name which was spelled ‘lot’ on paper. To our tongue, ‘lowt’ wasn’t a hard word to pronounce.

Coconut trees were uprooted – luring uninvited village children who burned their eyes not to blink over the green clusters of coconuts that each of them encased a jugful volume of heaven-made juice which wept their burning throat to ‘aaah...’. All the tall grasses were shaved down to the ground. Dried acacia trunks were used to ignite bundled parts of coconut tree trunks, together with sprigs of kemunting shrubs, dried coconut husks, and everything else that mattered. Mini safari closed down.

Bungalows sprawled within a short period of time, now that the empty land had been filled with huge and stout concrete mansions owned by the rich and famous. Ours didn’t have the authority to carry those titles because it was just an ordinary wooden house built on concrete stilts above the ground, sharing the prickling heat of afternoon sunlight with a swarm of termites as our worst enemy somewhere in the subterranean kingdom down there.

Father held a customary practice called ‘kenduri naik rumoh’ as we moved into our new house and stayed there for a month thereabout. It was believed to be the most decent party on earth. The was a set of rules: invite the whole neighbourhood, ask a pious man to lead the spiritual part of the ceremony, then feed the whole guests with delicious food such as curry rice and air bandung with selasih seeds that looked like frog's spawns in the pond of pink.

Grandpa was the man in charge to lead the spiritual part of the ceremony. He recited lengthy verses taken from the Koran and chanted various kinds of zikir that kept everybody in the living room rocking back and forth while muttering ‘amin’ every time Grandpa halted for a few seconds for a breath uptake. At the same time, cooking utensils clanked every now and then in the kitchen – the sounds of Mother and cousins were preparing dishes, added beats to the baritone of haunted orchestra hummed by men in Baju Melayu and kain pelikat. Grandpa was clad in Arabian white robe. At the end of the ceremony, when everybody had their belly swollen real good, I made myself sprained in the cheek when forcing myself to smile like a deep-fried siakap fish while handshaking with the greasy hands of those curry eaters.

That was the way how I knew our neighbours – Pok Cik Rohing the man who loved red (he had painted his entrance gate, his Toyota Corolla, and veranda; all in red in the brightest hue), Pok Cik Rosek the quiet executive bank officer, Pok Cik Romli a young divorcee who fond of playing his boombox with Hari Raya songs in highest volume even though it was still five months away towards the day of celebration.

And we had Pok Cik Zulkifli whose daughter had a fair complexion like a typical orang putih soI dreamt of marrying her and live together happily ever after, Haji Hasang the newly-wed pious man living next door, and a cat named Chicky; Pok Cik Rohing’s pet cat that visited our kitchen with its innocent look in the eyes, meowing the chorus of ‘gimme that, now’ when Mother was cutting half a smiling fried mackerel.

A few weeks later, I squatted and crawled beneath the house with a pencil in hand. On a wood plank supporting the living room’s floor I jotted down the date we moved into the house. It was still there when I crawled back to the same spot few months ago. I smiled.

This is my kampong, let me tell you about.

The Song, The Melody

There's a fat chance that I could pick up a guitar and play a song or two in a Sunday evening under a coconut tree along the beach when the wind blows as soft and comfortable as the melody that goes by. And there's a fat chance too, to have a beautiful lady that would sit there adoring my ever lovely tunes as the strings flicked into a celestial song that would stop any flying birds passed by.

How much I adore the guitar playing know-how so bad as if this is the last thing I would do before I die. The man named Andy McKee deserved the authority to teach me how to play this manly musical instrument until I am able to pluck every single note flawlessly half of an eye. How sweet if that beautiful lady would bashfully turn to smile.

"Pandainya!!! Suka!!! One more! One more! He. He." Begging the swain to comply.
"I'm sorry dear, this is the only piece I ever known." Yes, I'm just a perfect sly.
"Please... I really wanted to listen to your angelic voice so bad... Please... sobs... sobs.."

"Oh my dear, thou shall never cry. Heaven knows this is just a white lie. Covering my hopes on you that have already brought to the sky-high. Please wait for a while."

And so I will begin to reposition the guitar on my lap to comfy. Plucking the chords gracefully like flying birds in the sky. Weaving vowels between the words beautifully like sweet memories during the days gone by.

Maybe I didn't hold you,
all those lonely lonely times,
and I guess I never told you,
I'm so happy that you're mine,
little things I should have said and
done I just never took the time.

You were always on my mind,
You were always on my mind.

Oh what a meaningful song from an ordinary guy. All I know that love is priceless to buy. And so she'll begin to get my shoulder to lay on and smile. I will watch up to the sky and promise never say goodbye.

Now I know a guitar can make me to be a perfect guy. At least, for a while.


P/s: What a drama. Wooooohooo!!
P/s#2: Willie Nelson's Always on My Mind.

Testimonials

I really appreciate sincere testimonials and appraisals of my writings left by my loyal readers. May the spirit of keropok lekor be with you.