Illustration by Anderson X. Lee
The tears hadn’t yet dried, but you had turned up at my front gate with a box of tissues, two sleeping bags, and a digital map to get us out of Kuala Lumpur.
We escaped the city in your beat-up Proton Saga with the wind-down windows from the eighties and the broken cassette player. I always thought you were a bit of a retro misfit, an old soul amid the polished sheen of 2020. I don’t know if you ever noticed, but I always tried to avoid riding with you when we were out with friends.
We climbed the misty hills of the Karak Highway at a steady speed, negotiating hairpin bends behind forty-foot-long trucks carrying oil to the east. We could have gone as far east as Kuantan and onwards to the Perhentian Islands if we wanted to, but you said broken hearts needed stillness, not a holiday beach resort.
You chanted along to Dave Matthews’ musical poetry on my Spotify—something about a love that would last a thousand years or more. An inconsiderate choice, I thought—it had been Irman’s favourite, too. I shushed you, wanting to erase the song from memory and delete the playlist forever. You said it would be a shame to cancel Dave Matthews just because of a nincompoop (there you go, being old-school again!)
I had to laugh despite the tears and agreed with you. Irman had nincompoop-ish tendencies; I suspected it during our three-year relationship, but the proof only surfaced when I discovered he had cheated on me with another guy.
Even though I was eager to push on, you insisted on a stop in Kuala Lipis for gas and lunch by the Jelai River, which cut through the main street of the sleepy town. How are you familiar with these small towns which the new highways often bypass? It made me realize, a bit regretfully, that despite our years of friendship, there was a whole lot about you—what you liked, what was important to you—that I never knew. The fermented durian and chilli flavours of the patin masak tempoyak, a specialty of the area, lingered on our tongues long after our bellies had been filled. And when we brought our fingers to our noses that night, we could still smell the lunch sambal on the tips.
When we reached the Kenong River jetty and boarded the little boat to take us deeper into the heart of the peninsula, we felt like we’d gone back to being ten—two scruffy friends fleeing detention for accidentally pushing a boy down at the canteen.
The three of us—you, me and the other boy, Ucop—were going for the last packet of nasi lemak. The generous use of coconut cream in steaming the rice made it such a sell-out every morning. Its tempting fragrance stirred our little bellies awake, inspiring a queue to form long before the canteen lady was ready to serve it.
Ucop got in the way just as we were about to reach out for the packet, tripped on my foot, and banged his head on the wall. The blood wasn’t a pretty sight, and I was struggling to hold back from gagging. I thought he was going to die and that we would be doomed to jail for this crime. You were equally stunned, I could tell, but just for a second. Then you just dropped to your knees and cradled Ucop’s head, using your white school shirt to wipe the blood away.
Sir Puvan, on canteen duty, saw the entire thing, instructed Ucop to be sent to the clinic, and ordered us to see Ms. Subashini, the saree-wearing, cane-toting headmistress we all feared. As we rounded the last corner to her office, you grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the school gate instead—nasi lemak in hand. I followed your lead, as I always did, and found myself at the local clinic. I pulled you to escape in the opposite direction, fearing the doctor or the teacher from school would catch us and send us straight to the police lock-up.
But you stood your ground. And so we just crouched behind a parked car outside the clinic until we saw Ucop emerging with a small bandage on his forehead and a lollipop in his hand. You cradled your palms in prayer from our hiding spot and instructed me to do the same. “Oh God Allah, thank you for not making Ucop die. Thank you for saving me and Alia from the police. Ameen.”
We followed Ucop home from a safe distance. After all the adults had left, you approached the house cautiously and left the nasi lemak packet for him at the front door.
*****
The Kenong jungle swallowed us into its thick green walls, silent and watching. As we glided along the dark waters of its river, the old world we had come from seemed to disappear behind an invisible portal. It was just as well because I didn’t want anything from the other side to seep in.
Hours stretched into days and weeks. It felt like we were the only two individuals alive in a world of eight billion people. We walked among the dipterocarps, explored the ancient caves where elephants used to rest, and kayaked down the dark river tunnels. We swam in rivers that sparkled back the light from the canopy above. And when the water washed away the last grey from my skin, that’s how I knew I was going to be okay.
You found an old-looking coin in the riverbed. What luck for you, I said. For all my treasure hunting in life, I never found anything precious.
“Maybe you were looking in all the wrong places,” you said.
You offered me the coin in your outstretched hand—the hours spent in the cold river had wrinkled our fingers up. As you handed it to me, I couldn’t be sure if this whole trip was your attempt to make me forget Irman or to make me remember you.
*****
The campsite was dark, with just the roar of the nearby river and the occasional owl hoots breaking the silence. Under the midnight sky, our words just flowed. It was easier to be honest in the dark, wasn’t it? Lights out meant I couldn’t see your face and was emboldened to admit some truths. Perhaps you even drew them out from me.
I told you about leaving my job and my boss, Malik Irshad. You laughed in disbelief while I cringed as the old man’s pockmarked face appeared in my mind.
“Are you serious?”
Yes, I’m serious.
“But you’ve been at that job for ten years!”
And I don’t think I can stand another minute of it under his evil leadership!
We were silent for a while. I was contemplating my fate upon resignation.
“You got something else lined up?”
Nope.
“So you’re just taking off…like, no parachute, safety net, nothing?”
That’s when I looked at you, and I saw the ten-year-old scrawny kid pulling me by the hand to deposit the nasi lemak at Ucop’s front door. The next day, as we were sitting across from Ms. Subashini with the cane in her hand, I couldn’t stop trembling. You noticed and shifted closer, discreetly touching your knee to mine as you took all the blame for it—including the ten lashings on the palm for pushing Ucop down.
Six years later, you did it again. This time, it was my father you protected me from. You had willingly accepted Apak’s tight slap on your cheek—a slap that would have landed on me and Tan Choong Kit if you hadn’t covered up for us. Apak would have killed me if he knew the truth. It just wasn’t acceptable—a Malay girl should not be going out with a boy late into the night, what more, a Chinese boy from the pig farm across town. It was shameful. Oh, what would the village folks say. . . But you convinced Apak that I had been with you the entire evening.
So, yeah, maybe at the moment, I had nothing, as you said . . . But I got you, didn’t I?
You laughed this big, spacious laugh that seemed to ring out forever on that cold night. And when its echo finally faded, you pulled me close. “Yeah, you got me,” you whispered after all those years.
And you stroked my hair, touched my cheeks, and kissed my lips. And I let you.
That night, you sat down with me as I wrote my final goodbyes, one for Malik Irshad and another for Irman. With just some words on paper, I let go of everything except your hand.
How could we ever imagine that weeks later, when we emerged from this cocoon of lushness and childlike adventures—exhausted, sunburnt, sweaty . . . and with a heightened fondness for each other—that the outside world would be in a state of panic.
The streets were empty. The world was silent. People were getting sick and dying. We were locked up in our homes, too scared to go out.
But you weren’t. You were fearless. You put on your superhero white coat and attended to wheezing patients at the hospital.
Were you fighting for air, too, in your last days, my love?
I know I was when they broke the news to me. I shivered in that empty room. Air as cold as the Kenong River rushed over, and I almost drowned in my shallow breaths. My mouth was frothing, my shoulders heaving, my knees buckling, and my body shut down as though it was the end even for me.
I saw us treading water in the chest-deep river, the Kenong sunlight dancing on our faces. The old coin was in your outstretched hand. And just as you passed it to me, it dropped into the river, carried away by the current.
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palm, willing myself to wake up, wanting to hold on to something.
But this time, I really had nothing.
Anis Rozalina Ramli is a writer based in Malaysia, where she grew up as a Malay Muslim within a multi-racial and multi-cultural society that was colourful and constricting in turn. Her writings are inspired by childhood experiences of growing up in the exciting 70s and 80s, the urban setting of Kuala Lumpur, where she worked as an adult, and the quiet solitude of rural life in Janda Baik, Pahang, where she now resides with her family.