‘… yet the world is brought to his feet’

It has been roughly nine months since E passed.

The reason I count the time this way is, perhaps, because I have been all this time. His old nutcracker soldier stands guard over me at work, and the message on the whiteboard by his colleagues, which has been there since that awful week nine months ago, still says ‘We love you, E’.

And each time I pass by it, I wonder if he knew that we do. I wonder if we, his friends, ever made it so obvious to him that he would never have to wonder. I only knew him briefly compared to the rest of the company, and yet I was so affected by his passing. Perhaps it was because it was seemingly unjust, that a kind man like him left this world before we did. Perhaps it was the shock. I thought about it a lot that first month, and I don’t think there was any way he could have left this world that would have seemed in any way better.

Perhaps because it was most jarring and most recent witnessing of the frailty of our lives. It was a reminder of mine, as well as everyone else’s mortality. And I don’t know how I feel about it anymore.

I know people who have left this world since then. Each person has been a reminder; their lives a mosaic of the way we live. How insignificant, how small. How mired in our own mediocrity we are sometimes. How we take it all for granted, more often than not forgetting that we only have one shot at this. And yet, how great their presence, that their loss is felt in ways we remember and forget only at intervals, because being constantly reminded would be too painful.

Now that I have felt loss, I cannot imagine going through it again, or to allow it to fall on anyone else I know. But there is only so much I can do. I stare at the people I love around me, and cannot begin to conceive what I’d do without them. I know I will move on, as I have since, but how much it will hurt is something I don’t want to imagine.

I have gone through the routine; let go of some friendships and gained new ones; tried to make a few changes in my life, and yet. I find myself in a bit of a rut. It pains me to say this, but I feel as though I need to move. As though I need something new. I have driven myself ill with worry, and worried myself with paranoia about how I live. I have been worried about my health, imagining awful things and consulting various doctors who just smile bemusedly and assure me that I am fine, I have always been fine (“although you do need to move a little more”). I have felt stifled, and I have felt lonely, and I have been tired of feeling this way.

And I wonder, am always wondering, if this is just me, reverberating the pain of E’s loss – if I never let go of the string that was struck when we lost him, and if I’m still playing with it still. If his mortality has reminded me of mine, and if I’m too attached to this world to accept that.

(He’d find that line about a ‘reverberating string’, and my tiring state of mind, both amusing and exhausting, I imagine.)

There was a time I felt spiritually prepared to let go of this world. I was conveninently in Melbourne, away from almost all of my family, and I had taken to heart the temporary state of this world. I had absorbed the Islamic teaching that my fate has been set, and that I am to live this life to the best I can, in the best way I know how, and to own up to the fact that I will leave it one day, make my choices based on that.

It felt so simple then. I don’t have the same answers now. I feel that I have been so caught up in thinking and not doing, that I have grown restless in my own skin. I feel that I have placed this world in my heart, and not just my hands, and that this aching is reminiscent of it.

My mother says that she never had time to worry about such things when she was my age. She says that our anxieties and neuroses are symptoms of people who “think too much and only about frivolous concerns, because you’re wasting time doing the wrong things and fretting over it”. She had no time for a quarter-life crisis, much less consider the notion. “You,” she said, “should busy yourself with things you want to do. Better yourself. Pray that each day will be better than yesterday, and just DO it.”

She makes sense. So I’m going to pick up where I left off, before I was shaken by the everyday (that day so unlike every other day), and try that out for size.

(We miss you, E.)

Snippets of the things we (I) say

“So, how did your job interview at ___ go?”

“How did you know that? I didn’t tell you that.”

“I just could tell from your tweets. You give out that vibe; you’re more transparent than you think.”

*

“It’s too late for coffee.”

*

“Well, that would be mean.”

*

“Hey, remember the time you told me you couldn’t imagine me wearing heels? Well guess what I’m wearing.”

“You can do anything you want to.”

“Awwww.”

*

“Come on, tell me about the drama as briefly as you can.”

“Well, the act of describing it to you would make me relive the drama all over again…”

“Okay, don’t then.”

“…which would be rather nonsense, which is what it is. Nonsense.”

*

“Speaking of reliving drama, guess who’s reliving the drama. I’m going through the same ___ ____ situation.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Yeah, it never was your fault; I just didn’t say it.”

*

“Oh, stop sounding like a fortune cookie.”

*

“Go to bed; I wanna sleep.”

*

But the thing that I forgot to say – which goes way up there in the long, long list of things I want and should say but do not – is that you will be good at whatever it is you do. And you will make the right decision, and even if it isn’t the right time, it will still lead you to where you ought to be. Time will make it look better when you look back, but you won’t see it that way until much, much later.

People change, and not necessarily for the better, but sometimes you can’t blame them. I’ll always tell you when you’re becoming one of them, don’t worry.

And you will do whatever it is you need to do until then.

And being lonely, I’ve been told, is a feeling that comes and goes. When it comes, it’s always a good indicator of when you need to drag out a friend to talk about things like menstrual cycles and how pedestrian life has become.

So sleep. Travel – pursue your wanderlust and that itch under your skin to move somewhere (anywhere) – and then come back and we’ll go have a local coffee.

And everything will look better in the morning.

Tags: conversations

We are always a little bit far.

There is this park, near where I live, that has always been there.

If you pass by the Federal Highway headed south, just before the new highrise apartments that block the skyline of my hometown, just before the train station that stands lazily and belligerently at the side like a stubborn child that refuses to have his dinner, there is a lake.

You won’t see much of it, because the trees there are the oldest in town, and huge and sprawling, branches and leaves aiming hopefully for the sky. You’ll see short glimpses of the water, usually still, green from reflecting the nearby shrubbery and the thick clumps of aquatic plants. It won’t seem like anything much. You might even mistake it for a sewage treatment centre, like the other ones placed thoughtfully alongside traffic-heavy highways.

But no. It is a lake within a huge park, and it has been there all my life.

It used to be a place for us, growing up. We would go there on weekends or on weekdays, and we’d lace up our shoes and gamely trudge along the walking pathway that frames the lake. We’d go as near to the water as we dared, but as neither of our parents fancied the idea of scooping their children from a cold, slimy lake, we were cautious. We used to ride our bikes haphazardly, struggling when faced with the 25 degree slope up the trail, and the joggers would move around us and occasionally give us a little push if we were threatening to glide backwards and into the lake. There was a restaurant on the other side called ‘Crocodile Farm Restaurant’, and the waiters would tease us with stories of crocodiles coming up to eat our kung pao prawn and yong chao fried rice.

Then we grew up, and we got caught up in exams and the daily humdrum of being Malaysian students, and somewhere along the way, going to the lake became a chore. It became something our parents did alone, when we’d be too lazy to get up for a brisk walk, and eventually it came to the point that they’d nag us to go. Being teenagers, we held our ground by slouching even further into the couch. And then I went overseas.

So I haven’t been in years.

Today was a restless day. It came on the tail of restless nights and a half-workday (on a public holiday) and meeting my old high school girlfriends and eating more candy that is advisable and feeling hit by a wave of inertia that I don’t want anywhere near my life. I was sleepy, tired, agitated, and close to tears.

“We’re going for a walk at the lake”, Papa said in his authoritative voice, which we usually ignore.

“Okay”, I said this time.

We went. My new shoes still felt strange on me (because they are MEN’S shoes) and I was dressed in strange colours. When we reached the lake, it felt like going back. I was the stranger reluctantly come home to an unchanged memory. The trees were in the same place, and they looked the same, and there were those people walking around with buckets and fishing rods. By the time we parked, rain had fallen. Papa made a comment about how the rain was the kind that would drop by unnoticed. “The kind that comes for a while, and then just stops.” I was staring at the lake ahead, taking it in, mp3 player at the ready. The plan was to walk with umbrellas, but my hijab would be cover enough, I reasoned. Besides, I’m too clumsy to walk and handle an open umbrella.

I tried not to feel too self-conscious walking around the circuit. I put on Tina Fey’s Bossypants audiobook, and it was some comfort listening to a person talk on end and airing out her thoughts about raising children and about how crazy it was to fret in an already privileged life. She is hilarious, and her game shamelessness encouraged my own. I ignored the fact that the same joggers had passed me twice in the same time I took to go one lap; I avoided staring at their proper exercise attire and comparing it to my own pink-and-purple striped thing that looked like I was getting ready to go to bed. I walked ahead. The path was getting to me, and so was the mud. To avoid the ongoing construction by the side, I walked onto the grass.

It felt smushy and nice. So I did it again.

Here is how my logic works: Walk in grass. Grass is slightly muddy and transfers some dirt to new walking shoes. Walk purposely and carefully into puddle of water to wash off mud stains. Proceed to walk into grass again for that natural feel. Shoes get more mud. Walk into bigger puddle of water. Shoes get soaked. Who cares by this point – puddles are fun, and so is the grass, and you’ll cross that shoe-scrubbing bridge when you come to it.

When I reached the acknowledgements of the audio book, I switched to Yamandu Costa’s Mafua, which is a lovely ode to the 12-string guitar and to the senses of Brazil. It is magnetic and gentle, bewitching and familiar.  And that was when I really stepped back and took it in.

The lake – our Lake – is a beautiful thing. The largest, truest patch of the richest greens I had ever seen, in a lovely arrangement you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in town. It is small in comparison to older parks in the state, but it had the thickest grass and the most magnificent trees, and there it stood, unyielding and growing, as the world around it grew more greedy and more obsessed with concrete. The lush foliage helped us ignore the passing cars and the rising roads, each built on top of the other. The lake remained in the middle of it, feeding it with water and nutrients and life. People fish there everyday, though I rarely saw them successful. Perhaps the practice gave them an excuse to stare at the still water; perhaps it answered their patience with an inner peace.

In my last year of university, I lived at an apartment a little farther away from university. It forced me to walk for half an hour each way on the generous walking paths, shaded by huge pale trees that changed colours with the seasons. There was also an incredible amount of possum droppings, but we’ll have to ignore that. Whenever I felt frustrated or sad or anxious or restless, I would vent my thoughts to the trees, as if asking them what they thought and wanting them to pass some wisdom from their many years of standing by and watching us humans being silly with our lives. I could have a little cry as I briskly made my way down Elizabeth Street and they wouldn’t mind. I would look up and remember God and thank Him for creating all this. That, I miss most about my long walks.

One of my longest heart-to-hearts was with my senior and dearest Banoffee Pie, when we were lost on the hill in Wilsons Prom. As we negotiatied sharp branches and tried to read footsteps in the dirt, we talked and talked and I shared my worries and problems. She listened to me with her heavy eyes and would squeeze my arm empathetically at the right moments. She is now married and has just given birth to a son.

I wonder how the years escape us, even though we were sure we had looked quite hard.

But I know I haven’t been looking hard at all. If I had, I would have heard the creaking of the branches as they inched up the atmosphere; would have noted the seasons passing from unbearable sun to endless rain; would have known the day the flowers would bloom well before they did – the way I used to, once upon a time.

Today, I remembered how important it is to look, the way I did in the best time of my life so far. To look, rather than let everything pass me by.

O our lord, You have not created (all) this in vain. Glory be to You. Save us then from the torment of fire.

Não seja a vida sempre assim

Sometimes, I am afraid of writing. It’s a rational fear, if being scared of starting something you don’t know the end to was a rational thing.

I’m aware of how cowardly I am. It comes from years of being told why I shouldn’t do things and what happens when I do – my mind cannot but see a million possibilities, a million endings that I mostly do not want.

But I am always scared of writing. I am scared of being misunderstood, because I only truly understand myself in writing. I am scared of being too much substance or too much style, because I come from Extremistan (I did not coin that title; Taleb did it and with much more flair) and when I suffice in one I sacrifice the other, because that’s how I am. I am afraid of being unintelligible but frank, because then it would confirm that there’s something wrong with me. I know there’s something wrong with me; I just don’t want to see it in black and white.

But mostly I am afraid of getting carried away with writing, of getting carried away with words – I can feel the alphabet, different from that of either of my ancestors, crawl beneath my skin and infuse with my tissue these many words that taste pleasantly confusing on my tongue; I am not immune to the way they bind to my bones and pour out of me like a stream, on my high, whiny voice or through the first two fingers of both hands, padding out a pattern that becomes what you see right now. It is no stream of consciousness; it is a stream that escapes me and threatens to drown me, and if I lose focus for just one more second – for just one more letter, I promise you, I’ll let it take me.

I am afraid of being lost in the many probable endings, all of them too far and too real for me to see right now.

I could use a Ramadhan alliteration here, like ‘Ramadhan Rhapsody’. But I don’t think so.

Ramadhan this year, as it does every year, has passed faster than I would prefer.

When I was younger, this month used to be a bit of a bother. We couldn’t eat and couldn’t drink, and we’d interrupt perfectly good sleep to have our suhoor, our meal before dawn, which is technically going to sustain us until the breaking of fast at sunset. I don’t remember much about my childhood Ramadhans, except that we’d grumble and mope around a bit about being hungry and lacking energy (always a useful excuse when you’re meant to do chores) and that to stay up until Fajr prayers, I’d read an old Harry Potter to keep awake, much to my mother’s consternation (“You’re supposed to read the Qur’an, not some novel you’ve read ten times already!”). The days passed by longer, the weather wasn’t as hot, and we’d look forward to the end of the month, when Eid would come with all of its merriment and duit raya (Eid money; apparently other cultures give gifts instead).

The year before I left to study overseas, I had a bit of a spiritual meltdown, which resulted in me re-examining my faith and questioning every single religious practice I’d previously done by mimicry. That Ramadhan was a special one, where I tried harder than usual at praying and reading the Qur’an, though I was hardly consistent. We were also in the midst of exam preparations and us girls sharing the flat would take turns sleeping and waking up each other and calculating sums and chemical equations, fingers slapping the calculator keys hard and furious.

It wasn’t until my first Sha’aban in Melbourne, the month before Ramadhan, when I was introduced to the anticipation that usually accompanied it. “Ahlan wa sahlan, Ramadhan, ahlan!” (Welcome, Ramadhan, welcome!) they’d say a little self-consciously before grinning sheepishly, knowing how odd it appeared to others that they’d be so excited about a plain old month. My friends started setting targets early on, like wanting to finish the Qur’an or not listening to music at all or being very good about their sunnah (voluntary) prayers. Some girls talked about wearing the headscarf, some were talking about iftar menus, some started inviting friends over, marking dates carefully in planners so as not to double-book.

And then, just like clockwork, it descended upon us.

It’s difficult to describe the flurry of activity that takes place in Ramadhan in Melbourne, when everything is done so quietly and solemnly. The female prayer section was uncharacteristically quiet all of that month, the usual loud chatter replaced by the quiet humming of dozens of girls reciting the Qur’an (the men noted this lack of noise with some smirking), racing each other to finish it by the month’s end. We barely cooked at all, being invited to eat out nearly every night as our friends and neighbours tried to reap the reward of feeding the fasting. I broke fast with no less than 20 people each night, and we’d all pray together afterwards, shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, heads bent as we faced our Maker with empty hearts and full stomachs. Our voices broke in prayer and we’d end by hugging each other, our shared Ramadhan making us closer almost without us noticing.

And I understood then this phrase some used to describe Ramadhan – the madrasah of souls. It is a month made to prepare the heart for the rest of the year, to strengthen it spiritually so that it can sustain the other 11 months. The fasting is meant to starve the ego of its worldly longings, the abstaining a test of will and faith. It is narrated in prophetic tradition that the gates of Heaven are flung open for all of Ramadhan, that there are no barriers between the words of the earthbound and the Everlasting. Good deeds are rewarded 70 times over and people race each other to give alms and provide for others. It is a month of tremendous generosity by Allah, and it spills over into mankind unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

But we are still selfish, still self-destructive, still driven by our egos. Ramadhan is an enterprise for the willing, and we often fail ourselves by taking it for granted. After those first two years, I sort of spun out of track. I met Ramadhan twice again without much enthusiasm; I fancied myself seasoned by then, a bit more cynical and knowing. There were other concerns to address, other things to do in life, and I didn’t have the same hunger for God’s pleasure in Ramadhan as I did in those two years. I treated tarawih lightly and I got distracted by other things, simpler pleasures. And as I got a full-time job, the easy excuse was that I was tired – which was true, but hardly the only truth. What I refused to admit to myself was that I had lost touch – with myself and with God. I thought myself better than I was, and history, myth and legend will tell you that most downfalls begin thus.

There is no instant connection with God. There is no spirituality that comes from knowing more than you did before. There is no good that comes from the reading of things that should be done. All effort, all thought and all prayer culminates in the doing of it. The doing, and nothing less.

This month, I’ve been trying harder. It is by no means the best Ramadhan I’ve had – I try not to make an excuse of it, but a 9-hour office job doesn’t do a person favours during this hectic month. But I try. I’ve lost dear friends this year who will never meet another Ramadhan, but I have. In that respect, if nothing else, I have been blessed.

All through this month, each time I stand for tarawih, I am reminded of one memory – or rather, many memories infused into a single recollection – of my sisters, my friends praying alongside me in various prayer clothes and dresses and colours, pulling me into the line of prayer, holding me perfectly into position. Her (their) shoulder brushes mine, and as the folds of people before us bow and supplicate towards the open, welcome heavens, I am more at home then than I have ever been in my life.

And I pray desperately, If Ramadhan means anything to me, o Allah, then let it be that feeling, of closeness to them and to You.

“Oh you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you many learn piety and rightousness” (Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:183)

“…And it is better for you that ye fast, if ye only knew.” (Q 2:184)

Somebody hold me too close

I feel loneliest when I am in a crowd.

And it’s not about my individuality drowning in a mass of people, and neither is it a remnant of my childhood fear of physical contact. It’s about my awkwardness – how strange I feel with myself, and how strange I feel with others, trying to fit my body and its alien elements into my every interaction, and trying to have it come out normal. Natural.

They say all you need is confidence, but that’s not really it, because confidence comes and goes, like some magic I don’t know the rules to yet. At times I swagger as though with purpose, but then I open my mouth to speak and it goes, hiding away. I look in small corners where lost things are most keen to hide, but nothing.

And they say to be a writer, is to observe and understand people and their motivations. I used to watch people go past and not one of them – even the tall gangly teenager in deliberately shabby uniform, nor the somewhat piss-drunk person in unintentionally dirty clothes – move like they are out of place with the world. Sometimes I wondered (still, I wonder) if it’s just me. If somehow I’m destined to go through life a little out of tune, always out of step, a few notes too late, a stumbled cadence there. They say we never envy the less fortunate, but I do. What is living, if you don’t recognise yourself?

So I took a vacation from expectations, from people. It was easy back then, when routine was what I made of it, and I lived with young single women who had independent pursuits and only wanted you to come back and do your duty by them and cook dinner, as per the roster that was stuck stubbornly to the fridge. There was a time we were more like sisters, but people flitted in and out and you had to make do or be left behind. Nobody likes being left behind.

But those days I left myself behind. I walked alone, I sat alone, I had lunch alone (with the newspaper, if I was terrified, or staring at people, if I was brave). Mondays were made for being alone; the local arthouse cinema had tickets cheap before 4pm, and the faculty of music features its students in a weekly concert during lunch, all throughout semester. I’d buy an almond croissant, sit a few chairs away from an elderly person (looking at them, I found, they were perhaps the most sure people I had ever seen), and try to eat discreetly while some virtuoso performed. It’s hard to eat amid such talent. Harder than it is to eat alone, which is an act both vindictive and vindicative, and therefore easy to swallow. It feels rude to chew when someone is being so brilliant before you, for you.

And then I’d watch a movie. It’s a fair walk from the music hall to the cinema, and if I was early I’d make my way to the independent bookstore (I swear, I only fall into the pattern of a ‘hipster’ existence by the clumsiest of accidents) and talk myself out of buying books I’ll only finish reading in a few years. I’d choose a movie based on the reviews I’d read for about a week, which meant that I watched the most random things.

One of them was a semi-documentary of a Mongolian farmer, filmed like a labour of love in 35mm (or another kind of film, I wouldn’t know. It was the better quality film though, and ’35mm’ came to mind). A sheep giving birth, captured in a single, nervy, bloody, daring, unmoving take.

Another was a 3D movie – my one and only. Coraline, which I only watched due to my then-untainted admiration for Neil Gaiman. It was nice, but I was constantly reminded of being surrounded by the over-70 crowd clutching ice cream cones. Not that a crowd is the right word; it was more a smattering of people. I developed a taste for near-empty cinemas and pastries almost immediately.

And then there was Balibo, which made me discreetly wipe my tears away with my hijab, very useful in times like those, and if you intend to carry tissues but always forget to. I don’t usually watch movies like that one, but it was beautiful and tragic and haunting, after. It had a climax of savagery and blood, and as the tears started pouring and I hid my face in my headscarf, one of my hands clutching a small box of cereal, I felt this painful urge to hold somebody’s hand.

Lately, I have felt that pull I did in the cinema – that strong yearning to touch someone and  mean it. I don’t like to repeat all this Zen, new-age kerfuffle about energy and qi and wavelengths, although I can accept their existence. But I want to hold your hand and feel like I can implicitly understand you, even though I’m just imagining it. I want to hug you and feel our shared existence converge in an instant. I want to link my arm in yours and remember what it was like when we braved the waves together, the way we did when we would share each other’s breaths long past midnight, telling stories from our childhood in hushed whispers used only for the early morning. We greet each other by grabbing the other’s hand and arm, pulling them close and pressing our cheeks together, whispering wishes in each other’s ear.

Lately, that is what I think I need. Being alone prepared me to understand myself, but 6,000 kilometres away, years gone (has it been years? It feels so new, still) I feel lost again, near unhinged. I know what I want (what I think I want), but not what I need. I know I am angry and frustrated, and I know I can be alone, but I fear I cannot do this forever. ‘Forever is always changing’, I read, and once I looked forward to Forever, like it was something I deserved. Now I think twice.

Sondheim wrote, matched to music and chorus, ‘But alone is alone, not alive.’ I am practical, and I cannot beg you come home. Even if you do, I don’t know that we will ever be near enough to hold each other for a moment, still with purpose, as though gaining strength through osmosis. And I am practical and cannot leave here to go.

But I miss you, I miss you. I miss people and places that aren’t here and I wish I didn’t have to. I miss time I no longer have but we grow up and away and we’re forced to.

TRAVELING LIGHT :: Mustafa Davis | Amir Sulaiman from Mustafa Davis on Vimeo.

I cannot erase your messages, the only scraps of your life I have with me, in fear you’ll leave again, and too soon.

Backpacking across years.

She is an old friend, although I’ve known her not long at all.

I cannot pinpoint the moment she became such an important part of my life, but she is a gentle, strong soul, and she helped maneouvre me back when the Melbourne wind blew a bit too strong for me to see clearly. She, who was at least half my size and looked half as young.

But she is older, and in the brief moments when I do forget it, it is striking how time seems to have given her a miss. As if to make people pay extra attention to this tiny, precious thing. I cannot understand anyone who doesn’t like her, who doesn’t want her to hold onto, like an anchor (like a sister). When life got a bit too messy for me, she held me fast to the ground, fed me normalcy. Listened to me with those big wise eyes that have seen more and understand more than I do.

After two long years, we met again yesterday. We messed around with pronouns, time having made our conversational pattern a bit fuzzy. But having her near reminded me how much of home she had become for me, in those trying months when I was thinking too much and doing too little.

We have something new in common now – a homesickness for a place that never quite became Home. The day seemed to slow down, as days often do when you’re around her, and I’d forgotten to become distracted by all the small things that had come to define my life. I’d forgotten what it was like to focus. To slow down. To look at something and not try to condense it in 140 characters or less.

This is what it was like, I thought. This was what I’d missed.

What she means to me is exploring museums on rainy mornings. Trudging puddles to get to warm coffee. Languid walking down wide paved streets. Marathon eating trips while talking about life’s annoying mysteries, figuring out compromises together. Making pictures out of everyday. Looking for the pretty. Trying to define the beautiful. Asserting our individuality in a place that had far too much of it, and sometimes too litte.

Yesterday, without our familiar city in the backdrop – us present instead in the rush of the new, familiar hectic – we looked and felt lost and tired. But at least she was in my Here and Now. And so was I.

More today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.

I miss you.

I miss the coffee I’d get from that one cafe — brewed fresh from a cacophony of preferences and served by biceps too huge to have come from lugging roasted beans processed by fair trade workers — and how I’d sit under one tree and watch you pass by.

I miss the grass at the reservatory, that poorly-kept secret everyone assumes is their own; the view is amazing and the air musty enough for one to imagine that nobody else knows. I don’t know the name of the flowers that bloom large, almost obscene, from low dipping trees in the middle of a sea of brick and mortar and steel, but they add to the charm.  A sandwich and the grass and the air and the cold and a sweater laid out because you don’t breathe in oxygen this strong anywhere else.

I miss you. I miss how we used to fight all the time, smiles on our faces, pretending that we’re not secretly pissed off at each other. I miss how we’d miss each other’s point and not let it go until someone sighs, tired. I miss how you and I argue while orbiting each otherconstantly, as though afraid that the first to let go will be the one to win. The first time we met you wore shorts and a gangly patience. The second time we met we became fast friends. We argue over boys and what they mean, and people and what they say, and the Middle East Crisis (in capital letters, because we’re sad that way), and I introduced you to rendang and you make fun of me and it isn’t the same when we try to pull it off away from each other. We’re just tired and upset. You taught me how to physically threaten people in your first tongue. I miss you.

There’s faint music coming from that hall, and you go in quiet and alone, with maybe a pastry in your hand. You lean back and let the music sweep you in. It’s free, you think, so you can’t give it up, and you always go. But how can anything so wonderful be worth nothing? This is charity. You seek it.

I miss your sweeping dress and the way your eyes never hid away from your heart. You’d sweep me up in a hug and a laugh and tell me how the days have passed, although really, it feels like there has been no time between then and now. I think maybe I use you and forget you easier than I should. You always come to the mind unbidden when I see height and grace and a loping gait.

I miss the unreality that was you. It was intoxicating and untrue, and I swam in every inch of it. I made up this person I wanted you to be, and the reality was harsher, but less crushing after I’d been pushed away. I don’t think I’ve forgiven you, but the heart is foolish and wants foolish things and that image of you is as close as it gets. I hear of you now and then, and see pictures of you, and it’s not hard to remember how or why I built you up in my mind as I did. There is so much regret between us, and so much pain.

I miss that you and I have only met a few times in our lifetimes, and yet we have become each other’s anchor in this mess we wade through with the pretense of comprehension. I miss how we talked and how we still do — long lines, long long lines of symbols and laughter and inside jokes and sorrow and tears at three in the morning and not sleeping until late and after our hearts are spent. I learned a lot about heartbreak from you — our heartbreak shared and dissected and analysed within an inch of their lives, away and apart. You hold as many secrets and as many worries as I can give you and only rarely do you spit it back at me. I feel like I’m losing you to life and the pace you’ve chosen. We talk all the time but I miss you, I miss you.

I miss how little space we had between us. I lost you to insecurities, and you to time, and how much have we lost in between? It’s hard to say. And I cannot promise you anything although I still say the word — ‘Promise’ — and hold onto it like it’s the only thing keeping you from going away where I cannot follow. I miss our late nights together, laughing and dispensing secrets and advice in odd intervals, and how we’d walk down empty streets hand-in-hand as though into a sweeping tide. I don’t know when we let go, but we have, and there is not one day that passes that I don’t miss either of you or either of those moments or how we felt.

I miss you. We used to talk beneath that doorway, between those sliding glass doors, and between locks that threatened to trap us all within. You have an accent that grew on me eventually, but that didn’t stop us, did it? We went on and talked and you usually laughed and I’d make you and you’d always give in. She loves you more than you know, but until then, we are stuck in between knowing and pretending not to. Despite our glaring stories, you are one of the truest friends I know and love. There was that night when we worried about growing up and taking on more than we were ready for, and I wish we’d talked for longer or that we’d spent more time together. There is so much left to be said, and I wish we had words enough and time.

I miss you. And the words are only a symptom of things I wish I had more words for. I miss you although it never seems enough.

These miles have torn us worlds apart

I lost a friend in a car accident six weeks ago.

He was a colleague and friend, and we were part of a group of people with nothing much in common, except that we’d lunch together almost every day. He was tall, skinny, quiet, and at first meeting, very shy. And he was a wallflower by choice, because he would reason, “Why would anyone want to be the center of attention anyway?”

And so I don’t feel comfortable revealing too much about how he died, except that it was sudden for us and completely unexpected. The result of that is a pain the likes of which I could never wish upon anyone.

I’d only known him for slightly over a year; nothing compared to how long the rest of our group has known him. Yet he became something like a big brother at work — he was gentle and kind and let me get away with almost everything. I used to — and I remember this because it’s one of our more recent memories together — I would kidnap the toy soldiers he used as Christmas decorations at his cubicle. He’d tease me with a hilarious yet quietly-delivered one-liner, and I’d grab a soldier and hold him ransom for a few days.

The last words I said to him were a prolonged goodbye, when I returned one of his knick-knacks I’d taken. I’d thought it was an umbrella — it was really more of a pointy ceramic tree, and when I’d told him my first impression of the thing, he said, ‘Oh my God, Syaz”, eyes rolled slightly in exasperation. “Are you serious?”

Nothing really fazed him, except for lousy customer service, rude people, and my bimbotics.

I cried everyday for a month after he passed.

Died.

I still can’t use that word in the same sentence as his name without feeling like my heart is being pulled tightly apart. I can’t even write about him in the past tense without it sounding strange. He’s no more.

The climax of my grief came towards the end of that first month. I’d broken down while talking about him with my team leader, and she — who is perhaps the best boss I’ll ever have — let me cry and talk about him. I remember watching an episode of Oprah when I was so much younger, and she called the crumply-face, wrenching-sobs bit the ‘ugly cry’.

And a few days after that, I picked up Gayle Forman’s If I Stay.

I’d remembered it from the weeks before I left Melbourne, and I spotted a book with a simple title and a depressing blurb. I remember it strongly because the plot was similar to something I’d written 10 years ago, when words had come pouring out onto my keyboard. My short story was clunky, had too much descriptive prose, and had no subtlety. Forman’s novel, on the other hand, was succinct, poetic and heartfelt. I’d felt a twinge of envy when I put it back down in the bookshelf at the bookstore. I thought, ‘Well, I know how it ends anyway.’

Three weeks ago, I picked it up and almost immediately I began to cry.

It is the story of a soul in limbo, who watches helplessly as her parents and little brother die, while her body lies in a coma. The story told was all about the life she had had with her family, all of whom had gone. Died. Forman writes with such incredible honesty and such heartbreaking sincerity, that I felt myself reliving the pain of losing my friend all over again. It reaffirmed what I only thought I’d accepted — that E was gone, and would never be back again.

Towards the end of the book, just before the ending, I impulsively wrote to Forman — a long, rambling, grammatically lacking email where I thanked her for writing as she did. I shared with her, with more detail than I had told anyone, my own memories with E and how much I missed him and how much it hurt when he’d died and how I’d broken down in the elevator and how much I’d cried reading her book because it was exactly that, all the feelings and the memories all fighting to be remembered.

She wrote back almost immediately and told me, assured me, that it was all right to grieve. That I couldn’t expect to get over him in a month, and that remembering him will keep him alive forever.

Today, E’s sister had written and asked us, his friends, if we wanted something to remember him by. He was incredibly close to his family, and this gesture emphasised how generous they were, even when they had lost so much more than we have. I don’t know how fair it is to take one more thing away from them, but I would like to have a toy soldier to remember him by. Nothing else would ever quite remind me of him and the steadfast, loyal, gentle friend he was, and the inspiration he still is to me.

Innalillahi wa innailaahi raaji’un. From Him we come, and to Him we return.

…With my heart hanging out.

This post is dedicated to Bukhari Ramli (who hates this kind of return-to-blog-after-unannounced-hiatus post, but demanded I come back anyway) and to Lubnaa Belwael (who’s reminded me that before, I used to write to find myself, and I should stop doing things the other way around because it’s. not. working). You’ve both waited long enough.

Hello.

So.

Where have I been these past eight months?

[Hiding.]

I remember coming home in high spirits. I remember being proud of coming home with barely any tears. I remember getting into an argument with my brother, my first car ride home from the airport, as if reminding myself that things never change.

And then I got a hissy fit for the next eight months, precisely because things never change.

I came home riding on the wings of macho, because no tears at the airport, see, and everybody who’s watched Love Actually KNOWS that it’s an almost improbable feat. I came home thinking that I would glide over the humidity with the secure awesomeness of knowing who I am, finally, after years of living away from family and gaining more independence than I’d ever had, all my years in Malaysia.

First of all, let me tell you, the heat nearly killed me the first two weeks I was back. Crossing timezones and climate patterns in the middle of Ramadhan is insanity. My bones ache all the time, and I feel faint pretty easily, and I’ve had a flu that turned into a bronchial congestion, almost three weeks now.

I should meet Sarah Palin and other climate change-naysayers, because I’m proof.

And secondly, I spent three months being a bum, stalking my Melbourne friends on Facebook and silently resenting how they’ve moved on so quickly after I left. They were still in their certain routines of going to classes and sitting for midterms and finals and having little student soirees, while I was stuck here, no other Melbourne-leaver with me, and trying to figure out whether I was going to study or work.

(As it turned out, I’m now doing both. But that’s another story.)

And after that, I spent about another four months secretly resenting that I’m not doing what I really want to – that I’m getting used to a new job, and trying to fit in my studies at the same time, and making new friends, and trying to figure out what a social life means, because boy is it a whole lot different than when you’re all students and bumming together, as opposed to people you only see around 8.5 hours a day.

I spent most of that time being envious of other people, and how easy they had it.

I’m not going to overdramatise my situation and say that it’s hard. In fact, I suppose part of the resentment lies in the fact that it’s relatively easy – maybe not the most convenient, but hardly worthy of a reality TV series. My job is easy enough and pays well, and its flexible hours give me time for night classes at University Malaya. My classes in Philosophy of Science are finally something I’m enjoying (and getting).

Maybe it’s the heat that got me. Got me bad.

Or maybe it’s the way Malaysia has disappointed me in so many ways. Maybe also the way Malaysians have surprised me since I’ve returned.

But perhaps the most telling Maybe is the fact that in my thoughts, I saw myself in a singular category, and every other Malaysian in the other.

Judgemental? Yes. Unhealthy? Also yes.

Good thing I have parents who don’t take bull and who are consistent in the kicking it out of their kids.

So here I am, eight months gone, one semester over and four paychecks in, and only now beginning to seek out the rest of the world. Because you can’t venture across the universe if you don’t know where home is.

And I think I’m starting to figure it out.

P.S:- But seriously, and I know that we’re a merry Jom-Heboh pesta-pesta cuti lot and all, but what is WITH all the fireworks? Don’t you need an excuse for explosives, even the non-destructive kind? Aiyoo.