#dearmok

[shazlinrahman]

Letter 18: What woke you up?

Dear Mok,

These pre-dawn moments are so deeply still, and so painfully quiet. It makes me not want to move and stir the air around me.

Perhaps solitude was what you craved. Those still mornings when you’d be the first up, putting on the kettle, heating up the chicken soup or fish curry or beef kuzi or whatever was left from when we broke fast the night before.

By the time I finally leave the warm cocoon of my blanket and shuffle sleepily into your kitchen, there’d be a pot of hot and sweet milky tea waiting on the table. There was always the unstated urgency before fajr when all eating and drinking had to cease. Still, plates and cutleries were placed as gently on the table lest they make an unwelcome clang that would jar the early morning air.

They say the most beautiful act of worship is the one that occurs without anyone’s knowledge. It means you’re doing it solely for God and no one else. Like the dawn prayer, when most of the world is still in slumber, most lights are still off and no one sees your bows and prostrations or hears your entireties and supplications besides the One.

Was it duty, love or habit that woke you up every morning?

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 17: What do you want for us? Dear Mok,

That this as good as it gets. I realized this a few days ago as I sat on the sejadah, legs folded underneath me and hands held up in supplication. In the same breath I thanked God for the numerous blessings I had been bestowed upon just on that day, and begged for forgiveness for all the ways I had fallen short, also on that day. I realized then, that there will never be a time when everything feels fine on all fronts. There will always be a vice that I’m secretly addicted to, a grievance I’d rather hold on to than let go, a loved one I’m neglecting out of my own selfishness—“I need to focus on me right now”—an aspect of being a Muslim that I wilfully abandon because the alternative is more fun/cool/popular/acceptable to others.

Did you have standards you would have liked us to live up to? Or dreams and aspirations for us? Where there jobs you hoped we’d do because you felt particularly fond of them? I was too young to ask you all this when you were around and lucid. You were too old by the time I realized I wanted to know. And now that you’re gone, I’m desperate for answers. If only I knew the mold you wanted me to fill. Was it enough for you to live long enough to know that we weren’t combing bushes looking for firewood as our mothers did? What, then, should we desire for our own offsprings?

[shazlinrahman]

Mok, look at us. Did you know? When you first carried a child in your womb—did you know that you were carrying the world within you too? . #hersarong #internationalwomensday #dearmok

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 15: You’re invisible here.

Dear Mok,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while, or as much as I’d promised. It’s been harder than I thought.

The distance is challenging—knowing that you’re so far away and that my mind tends to forget still makes me anxious. The cold is hard too; my mind refuses to go to those sunny places where we both existed.

But the hardest thing about being back is how you’re invisible here. I don’t hear echoes of the words you used to speak; I can’t taste the flavours you used to feed me with, there’s no sunlight filtering through palm fronds, no coconut trees swaying in the breeze, no sweltering midday heat forcing me out of the house and into the company of neighbours. I feel all alone here, out of place and not quite anywhere. And it’s so cold.

I’m trying to hold on the euphoria from moments when I discovered pieces of you to keep myself warm, at least long enough until I can return. I know there are reservoirs of them in my mind, my notebooks, the photos, in the sarongs I took with me, and most certainly in that mug of yours that I chanced upon. Maybe I should make myself some tea in it and drink from it. Maybe if I put my lips right where you put yours, the tea will turn into an elixir that will chase away all my demons.

Maybe.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 12: He arrived wrapped in a batik sarong.

Dear Mok,

Do you remember when Pak Li knocked on your door and handed you a bundle of fragile limbs wrapped in a batik sarong and still bearing a hint of newborn fragrance? He was barely a week old. By Mak Long’s estimation, it would have been around 1957, the year Malaya got its independence from the British, just before she started school.

Mak Long said he was the unwanted child from the family of one of your brother’s managers. Pak Li had heard about the young lady’s pregnancy and that her father, his manager, didn’t want to keep it. They needed it gone as soon as it was born.

So Pak Li took pity on the little newborn, bundled him up as securely as he could, and took him on the bus from Temangan where he was working at an iron ore mine to Kota Bharu where you lived. It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Temangan to Kota Bharu today. I imagine the roads and public transportation were much worse in the late 50’s; it must have taken them hours to reach you. How did Pak Li, a single working man, manage to make that journey with a newborn?

The hours on the road must have weakened the baby, because he became ill and died few days later.

What made you and Tok Ayah take him in? You can barely feed the three little mouths you already had. I imagine the mother in you saw no other option.

Mak Long says she doesn’t recall seeing the baby being buried. You were all living at Jalan Gajah Mati at the time, and he was buried at the cemetery in Kampung Kubur Kuda. Mak Long thinks you might have taken a rickshaw—Kelantanese call them teksi—with Tok Ayah and the baby’s body to the cemetery.

You all named him Rahimi. Do you remember him?

Pictured: Mok with my cousin Intan Salwani. January 5, 1980 at Taman Jepun, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. Archival photo courtesy of Hasiah Kadir.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 5. Your body never moved, but I couldn’t find you. Dear Mok, Where are you? I thought I’d be able to instinctively find you, but I was wrong. The mosquitoes were out in full force while the sun was starting its descent, but the day’s heat hadn’t relented and drops of sweat started trailing down my back. I became more and more desperate as I went from grave stone to grave stone trying to find your name. Some were covered in moss, some were buried in wild undergrowth, and others had been chipped or eroded by sun, wind and rain. None of them bore your name. The sweet-smelling bunga tanjung tree that shaded Tok Ayah’s grave was no longer there so I couldn’t find him either. I assumed you’d be buried together. Pak Cik Pandi told me later that that wasn’t the case. I realized that I was hoping this would be a reunion of sorts for us, and that I would get a sense of closure since I never got to see your body being laid to rest. The sadness, grief and shame came at once, so I just stood there and cried. Have I wandered so far that I can no longer find you? I’m so sorry, Mok. Photo by Asad Chishti.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 4. When the rains come. Dear Mok, You should have seen the thunderstorm we had yesterday. For about two hours scores of lighting struck quite a show. I can now check-off “thunderstorm” from my list of things to see here. The connection was touch-and-go when I called aunty Maimun to say I’d be visiting her when I go to Kelantan next week. She said Kota Bharu has been getting a lot of daytime downpours lately. Naturally, since it’s December. I have to remember to get myself a pair of galoshes, and I’m hoping I’ll get to use them, to be honest. I wonder how much these annual torrential rains and flooding shape the character of east-coast states. I always thought their lag in development and growth compared to the rest of the Malaysia is the result of our colonizer’s legacy—favouring and developing states on the trade route like Johor, Melaka and Penang while neglecting east cost states like Kelantan Terengganu. Sometimes, though, I feel Kelantan lags behind the rest of the country because Kelantanese have developed an extraordinary level of resilience and capacity for withstanding adversity, like the annual onslaught of the monsoons. Virtually all farm work grinds to a halt, and only the most desperate of fishermen wander out to sea. I often hear stories of families surviving on boiled cassava—or tinned sardines for the more fortunate—until the rains abated and the markets can open again. For weeks, roads disappear beneath muddy waters and even sturdy bridges sometimes give in and swim away with the currents. Maybe that’s why, regardless of where I am in Malaysia, I’m bound to run into entrepreneurs with the gentle lilt of Kelantanese to their diction, or who can trace their families to Pasir Mas, Gua Musang or Kuala Krai.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 3. Paper boats in flood waters.

Dear Mok,

Remember how we used to plaster your yard with paper boats? Our annual school holidays had the misfortune of coinciding with the monsoon season on the east coast, so we’d be cooped up in your house for at least a week every time we visited. The whole village would be submerged in flood waters—one or two feet around your yard, higher in other parts of the kampung—and we’d have to try our best to entertain ourselves indoors.

When all the colouring books were filled and all the math exercises were done and all the puzzles had been solved, we’d turn to making paper boats out of pages of our exercise books. There were the triangular paper boats for novices and there were the more intricate and sturdier sampans that were harder to make but stayed afloat longer. I always felt compelled to make both types, although I favoured the latter. The trick was to try and land our boats upright; that’s no easy feat considering we were dropping our contraptions from your living room window to the waters six feet below. I loved discovering which way the water flowed by watching where the boats go. If our boats landed sideways or facedown, we’d make another and try again. Usually we’d have one or two extra boats ready just in case, which we’d drop in the water too just for fun. Sometimes they’d go as far as the back road about 20 yards away before they get soaked and sink out of sight.

When the flood waters receded and the afternoons were no longer drenched in rain, your yard would be plastered with tired and muddied paper boats. I don’t recall ever hearing you complain or reproach us for the mess we made. I know how much pride you took in keeping your yard neat and tidy, free of weeds, garbage and leaves fallen from the mango, coconut or rose apple trees that shaded your house. You’d patiently sweep them all up along with other debris brought about by the flood with your trusty old “penyapu lidi”—a broom made out of the veins of dried coconut leaves. This would be in the late afternoons when you had done your asr prayer and we’d all have had our tea. After about an hour or so, you’d have all the garbage piled in one corner of the yard, ready to be burned in one glorious garbage fire. We’d get excited about the fire too, having little to no exposure to open fires in the suburbs where we lived the rest of the year. We’d poke and prod the fire with sticks, scrounge around the yard for more garbage to burn and throw in different things to see if they’d catch fire.

To this day, the smell of smoke on my clothes always takes me back to those late afternoons when the monsoons finally left and we could go wild around your yard again.