Dada 28

‘He’s stabbed me. He’s fucking stabbed me oh God ‘

I saw the woman in blue. I heard her whispering of my family.

‘ Do not judge all those born on the wrong side of the blanket.’

 Time after time, the weapon sunk itself into the fatal lines between destiny and history. One boy was laid before me, another by the door where he had tried to run towards the water. I was buried in a welter of arms and legs and the terrified, yet curious faces of the Malays, Dayaks and Chinese. I did what pirates  would always do, kill or be killed. Tables lay overturned. There arose a stampede of feet. The police were called. I was placed under arrest. They collected Mo and Iskra with me and took us all to the police station.

Dada 27

“What are you doing here May lay boy”, he cried.

The force of his words was like a crashing wave against my cheek. He rose from his chair, tall in yellow tee shirt, strong, beautiful and drunk. He laughed;

‘Do you know these islands? This is not your land.’

“May-Lay”, He said it as if he owned the word and knew nothing of us here. The sound of his slap on my face fell like a wave across me and washed deep against my insides on its own ignorant swell. The fabric of my being clung like canvas to my aching skin .It wriggled like a snake within a dry current reaching for me from this day's swimming.  The boy  leaned forward and slapped again into my physical world; a beat that was meant to obliterate and strike everything from my existence. The floor swayed beneath me.

‘Is Tibet Chinese ?’ he laughed.

The dark club beamed like a night sea. It heaved in my humiliation. From end to end it poured its luminous opacity down upon me. My whole body tensed.  I  I searched for the knife and clenched it tightly. I could feel the smooth shine of it fall away from the paper in my hand. It was then, with that first push in his direction that it began. I shook off the sweat and realized that I had destroyed the natural balance of the world, the exceptional silence of the night where it had once dwelled within me. The blade jumped from my hand almost with a life of its own. it seemed to make little trace at all. All I heard was a sound of laughing and crying and then a terrified scream in the darkness. 

Dada 26

All I had to do was turn around and walk away. But those brightened faces  within the dark shadows pressed against me and made me continue forward. I took a few steps towards the floor. The boys carried on their argument and were moving and jerking like puppets at their table. They seemed   still quite far away although it could have been my eyes and I could feel drops of sweat gathering above my eyebrows. It was the same relentless sun and pouring rain inside me as the day Dada was buried; the day my head hurt in the haze of cigarette smoke and the bitterness in my mouth of my absent  mother and father.

I could feel every vein throbbing beneath my skin. I was being burned alive. I could hardly stand it. I took another step . I knew it was stupid. I knew I couldn’t shake off the whole of this day or that woman by putting one foot in front of another. But I took it, one single step forward. And this time it wasn’t a Kalimantan but a white boy who stood up.

He opened his hand like a shovel. He balled his fingers  into a fist and raised the threat towards me, piercing deep into what had been searching for me all day. His fist followed my every movement. At that moment, the sweat that had gathered on my eyebrows suddenly rushed down into my eyes, blinding me with a warm, heavy veil of salt and tears. All I could feel were the club lights crashing like cymbals against my forehead, and the ring on the boy’s last finger , a burning disco mirror ball twirling towards me like a dragon fly its legs furious and clawing as a machine .

Dada 25

I walked slowly towards them. I could feel my forehead swelling from the intense heat beating inside me, as if trying to force me back. And every time I felt its hot blast rise up against my face, I clinched my teeth, tightened my fists in my pocket and, strained with all my being to engage with  the dazzling fire of the lights above me. My jaw tensed tightly every time a piercing ray strobed me from the ceiling.

A white seashell or another piece of coral broke away inside me. I was like one those jigsaw puzzles of my youth, each piece slowly being put together or taken away by my mother and father, the killers of my Dada.  I was walking on a glass carpet and my feet were bloody. It seemed I walked for a long time on this shining roll. I could almost see the dark little shape of my tiny steps like star fish in the phosphorous. In the distance the wake of a ship stole away in the night like the sinewy shape of the Indonesian fighters as they turned away from us. My own body shape was breaking up before me, surrounded by a blinding necklace of light and spray from the disco floor.

I thought about the cool water and the ‘mantans behind the rock and in the shelter. I wanted to return to the soft sound of the stream, wanted to escape the sun, wanted to find peace once more in the shade, away from everything here but the boys’ faces were fiercer now and they raised their long white arms and their voices came towards me. I wanted them quiet.

 ‘We have our own ways here,’ Iskra  said.

I turned and saw the eyes on my table before me, the eyes from every table in that place and then suddenly clear the look of one of the white boys, his gaze as deep as disturbed liquid as he peered at me as if from the bottom of the sea. 

Dada 24

The boy’s shouts continued. They seemed to be looking over at us as they crashed between tables. Was this what they had come for; their journey around our islands ? We had seen them before but they were drinking and shouting at each other as if we did not exist. They looked at us from dazed eyes that were red and tired from the inside out. They looked as if they had been working long hours before their plane journey from Europe or Australia and then went straight to the bottle. InsideI felt calm but the dazzling explosion of the blazing sun and the mocking faces of the Indonesians, their features translucent amidst the rain and the sea, drifted towards me like an ominous cloud.

Iskra said he would deal with this. I held up his bandaged arm and shook my head. I found myself gasp inside my lungs for breath as if I were under water. My heart sent rapid little waves to wash over inside me. Rain danced on the matted roof. It would soon be gone. The lemon light of the sun would come again. Shabela’s pipe passed between us . Iskra had taken it with him in an act of rage at his honour so cruelly ripped and not properly defended, no matter what he said.  Shabela would not mind. He would say ‘and with the grace of god’ and laugh.

‘Everything they pull is pulled from us’ Iskra said. He grimaced in a tight smile as he smoked and made a fist of his face. I could hear my Dada. It is a paradox that lives deep within us and keeps us revolving around our own deceptions. His white shirt seemed whiter and whiter, his skin darker along the forearms. Somewhere in the course of the day he had lost his gangster cap...

The white boys were a nuisance. They would stand and then suddenly sit down; or rise again and roar with laughter, near to tears, like ferocious two year old twins. They put their hands up like make believe fighters. They were intent upon creating uproar in the face of our silence. These sacred moments came at the end of our day when our uneasy lives are swept clean across the South China Sea; the catch brought home by the boats from Thailand with all their illegal crews, the fish, girls and  constant supplies of ya bang.

Dada 23

We danced in open bars and closed ones. When they closed we followed our plan and went back to the Chinese quarter that stayed open all night and obeyed its own laws. Here we lived on in the hope of pirates, adrift between the seas that surround us and all the islands of the greater Sunda.  Our home as sea Dayaks, as sea pirates, gave us these waters. We are not people of   the jungle, the mountain or plantation estate.

 ‘Let me sooth you’ Mo said. He was dancing, his arms rising in slow rhythm until one hand hung above his head. He leant his body into a warrior pose that he didn’t keep but moved in the shape of a butterfly in his slow movements across the floor, his hair flowing down. He was beautiful.

The music rocked and shattered me at the same time. We blasted high and then fell slowly like a moon burst of sea snails, inexorable as a clutch of silver stars cascading down onto the beach. A journey without fear opened out before us, without borders, without guards, just like our straits and seas and long twisting rivers. Maybe that is why the white rajahs controlled us for so long, because we are an easy bland people lost within our own dreams. Perhaps they knew we could not imagine ourselves as pirates forever. The power of life no longer exists beyond the railings of a ship. If you go away your place is no longer in bondage to the State. Dada was always a traitor when they were building the suburbs around Kuching.

The white boys continued arguing. They had followed us as surely as the Kalimantan’s in their flowered shirts had followed to the beach. Our club was molested by their shouts and screams. The place we normally sit solemn. The nights slide away from us here just as the following mornings finds us at work. That was hard enough. Our silence was being transgressed just like the young Burmese women are kept low in the bowels of the dirty Thai trawlers until the hour before the dawn when they are brought ashore. 

Dada 22

I had eaten enough. We broke the crystal there and then. It can leave you hungry. If you are hungry to begin with it leaves you hollow. There was no point in losing the rush by searching for food. The music was my being now and made me think of the markets and the mountains of fish that need to be distributed tomorrow, a mountain of silver, streaked with red waiting for me on the morning tide. We spent long hours in the bars and coffee houses talking and laughing and then joked about going back to the waterfront where we could stay all night without disturbance.

We joked about the events of the day. Iskra said his honour was redeemed and suddenly I felt fine.  Even Dada’s death and the wake and funeral that followed him did not disturb me.

We saw the white boys trying to make it with the women. We ignored them. We were safe in our cocoon of the city. Fuck those Indos, always coming here causing trouble. They shared our island but not our home. Iskra had the pipe out again and Mo held the sticks and rice paper across his fingers like a grill. It provided a cushion for the holy rock that burned on its blanket of silver paper. What would the tourists know of our lives. The rainbow shone  within me; a  symmetry restored whose arc had been shattered by the events of the day. What was in my Dada?

Dada 21

Time passed and my mood got better. Sunday drifted into night. We laughed and smoked and sang to the moon and early stars. Shabela came down and we got out the pipe and smoked at the edge of the sand till the darkness came down like a curtain over the beach. We looked at the moon and stars on the water. They calmed me but I suddenly I seemed to be slung between the notes of the harmonica and as restless as the waves on last night’s crumpled sheets. Something of both rose and fell inside me. We said goodbye to Shabela and his wife. She told Iskra that she would bring the woman in blue again.

‘She says more than her prayers but she is a good friend.’ She said.

‘She knows you’ I nodded.

‘Does she like you’ she asked. I said nothing.

‘You must bring these brave boys again’ She said. ’ We don’t get as many as interesting as you around here’

Iskra  laughed. We paid Shabela .  Iskra laughed again. Shabela’s wife swam in and out of my vision as she waved.

The rocks were as light as the silver paper they came wrapped in; safe as lightning in my pocket. Shabela waved us goodbye beneath the moon. Iskra seemed happy. He sang as we drove all the way back to the city. We took a ride around the waterfront bars and decided where to return to later. A café’ here, a soft drink there in the brown bars where the women from Burma lay down in the back rooms all added to our mood. We burned the Crystal in a big bar with a karaoke room full of music and love flowing from every one of its aisles. The smell of jasmine where it had once been smoke rolled in on the breeze from Kalimantan and we sucked in deep. I should have felt good but instead I felt hot and cold at the same time in sudden uncertain spasms that had afflicted me since morning.

Dada 20

We headed back. Iskra seemed to feel better and talked about what we would do later. I walked with him to Shabela’s house and while he went up the wooden stairs, I stopped at the first step. My head was throbbing from the day and I was put off by the effort it would take to climb them and to deal with Mo. Enough had happened.

‘Let’s just get going, ‘I said again.

 I put the knife into folded newspaper and straight into my back pocket. Even with the rain the heat was so intense that it hurt to stand motionless beneath the blinding sheets that poured down like yellow silver from the sky. Whether we stayed or went made no difference. There was something vague within me that I have grown to understand; maybe it was the Dada telling me of all the ports he visited, San Francisco, Montreal and Liverpool, a yearning somehow.

‘They had Malayan clubs and Chinese clubs but they were not like here or the peninsula. Anyone could use them, dark or fair skinned.’ He said.

 ‘They love their power too much here’ the Dada said, ‘ the way they loved their white Rajahs who ruled for a hundred years . It is in them to be loved and dominated.  The Chinese were an afterthought. The Dayaks do not count at all. ‘This is why they hate me so much’ he said.

He laughed when the detectives came for him. To my Ma he would quietly say 

‘Who is my family in  this game of chicken ?’  She would be quiet and give no answer.

Dada 19

‘For over four thousand years that the Chinese have poured over the Sunda and you say the world has misunderstood the world of the Dayaks  and pirates. I say we must maintain our Malay identity. It is the only curse left to us ‘

‘Everything gets eaten or beaten here,’ the Dada  would say . He was very different from my father.

 His laugh would brighten a room, as great as the stars in heaven or  grains of sand on the shore. I wasn’t afraid of the Indonesians. Some might have said they were only poor immigrants but fuck it, I would have killed them if they moved against  us. The girl’s brother in his flowered shirt melted away in the silence. 

 No sun hovered in the sky now, only two hours since it had cast anchor in an ocean of molten metal did the ship start to move away from the port. Towards the horizon the small cargo boat passed on its way and I could see its dark smudge across the South China Sea.

 ‘Do the deal with Shabela and we’ll get going’ I said to Iskra. He seemed relieved and nodded.

Dada 18

We stood dead still, as if everything was closing in around us. We were staring at each other and everything stopped, caught between the sea, the rain, the river and unusual silence of the water. At that very moment, I thought about giving the knife back to Iskra  but suddenly, the Indos inched away along the wall and scuttled away from us. They hid behind the outcrop.

When I went closer, I saw that one of them had left the scene. The one in the flowered shirt was alone stretched out on his back, his hands under his neck, his forehead hidden by the shadows, his whole body loosened by the clouds that sucked in the heat. His clothes were steaming. I was a little surprised. As far as I was concerned, the matter was closed and it was just by chance I`d ended up here.  

As soon as he saw me, he raised himself up a bit and put his hands in his pocket. I instinctively felt for Iskra`s knife. Then he leaned away again, but he kept his hand in his pocket. I was quite far away from him, about ten metres or so but  I could see him looking at me. Every now and then, his eyes closed. But most of the time his face seemed to flicker before me like a charred light in a stack of embers, a curtain rising and falling before me.

The sound of waves was more restless than the languorous calm of midday. It was the same relentless heat but without sun, a heat that chills you; a watery yellow light fighting periodically across the sand.

I never stopped watching the Kalimantan but something broke inside me. Suddenly I was lessened. I don’t like to talk about these things. I thought about the rivers and seas that connect our island and the sound of the rattan lash within our house. I heard my own cries and my father’s bitter sentiments. 

Dada 17

Iskra took a knife out from his pocket. The Kalimantan’s didn’t move. They kept tight to each other. I noticed that the one playing the Harmonica had bent on one knee and had spread his toes out very wide as if in a kneeling crouch, the way you see fishermen or miner’s use or anyone who works in cramped conditions .

Then without taking his eyes off his enemy, Iskra asked: “Should I kill him?” I thought that if I said no, he`d get all worked up and would certainly do it.

All I said was: “He hasn’t said anything to you yet. It wouldn’t be right to stab him like that”.

We could still hear the soft harmonica notes against the rain and the deep silence was only, broken only by the chug chug of the ship’s engine. Iskra said:

“All right then; I’ll swear at him and when he answers back, I`ll stab him”.

I replied: “Right. But if he doesn’t take out his knife you can`t stab him first.

Iskra started getting all worked up. The other one kept on playing his tune and both of them were staring at us, watching our every movement.

“No”: I said to Iskra. “Take him on man to man and give me your knife. If the other one joins in or he pulls out his knife, I’ll go for him. When Iskra gave me his knife, the rain dripped in silver drops off the tip of it. I could still smell the sweat and essence of orchid and oleander that he used as Cologne and the plants that were raised in my Dada’s garden, all red and green and yellow like the beak of a jutting Hornbill. It was just before the time that he got ill and I came to live with him. 

Dada 16

At about four-thirty, Iskra came back with Shabela.  His arm was bandaged and he had a patch over the corner of his mouth. He was trying to smile if you could call it that.

The doctor had told him it was nothing but Iskra looked pretty  gloomy. Shabela tried to make him laugh but he refused to say anything. When he said he was going back down to the rocks, I asked him where he was heading. He replied that he wanted to get some cooler air. Shabela and I said that we`d go with him. Then he got even more angry and swore at us. Shabela said it was best not to upset him. But I... followed him anyway. 

We walked along the beach for a long while. The rain was beating down. Its light crashed and scattered the sand in little pockets, like bullets ripping away over the foreshore and peppering the sea. I got the impression that Iskra knew where he was going, but I probably was wrong. Shabela stayed at home.

 At the very end of the beach, we came to a little hut. Behind it a stream flowed down into the sand from behind the large outcropped rock shelter where Iskra said swimmers used to change. It was there that we came upon two Indonesians again. They were stretched out by the corners of the stone. They looked quite calm and almost pleased. Our presence didn’t seem to bother them and their expression never changed.

The brother of the girl who`d attacked Iskra looked at him in silence. The other one was blowing into a little harmonica, playing the same three notes he could get out of it over and over again while watching us from out the corner of his eye. All this time there was nothing but the splat splat of the rain on the roof and the silence, and now a passing ship, broken only by the soft sound of the flowing water and the musical notes from the silent host.

Dada Two 15

Chapter Two

It was annoying to have to explain everything to Mo and Shabela’s wife. They told me the little woman in blue was leaving. She wanted to see me before she went away.

‘I wouldn’t speak of your Dada before when they kept putting him in jail but now he’s dead, it’s different’ she said.

‘God rest his soul. It’s different. He’s done his penance in time for the world to know what it’s like to be a sea Dayak in this fugitive territory’ .

I didn’t say anything. I imagined Srino’s missing bird flying over the water, too high or too low with its scaly wings his oiled carapace cheating disease or death until the sun would rise higher and consume him.

The woman reminded me of a little bird that continues to sing its way through life. Her mouth rose and fell like a beak as the stories cascaded out of her in little hurried starts. The explosion was over as sudden as it had begun. She looked exhausted as if she was already beyond her time. Her face sagged.

‘Remember,’ she said, ‘it’s what is on the inside that counts’

I watched her crawl away across the foreshore like a crab.

Dada 14

Srino lives in a room in our building with his parrot. He hates it and the bird hates him. They are both scaly with age and wear, just like any couple who get to be like one another. One day the bird goes missing, hops out of its open cage at the fairground and goes free. It could hardly walk let alone fly. The sun would kill it. Did it just want to get away from him or the labyrinth of its life around its owner; whatever way Old Srino is devastated. I drew on my cigarette. Maybe the bird just took a chance. The cage was always open for him. That day he might have thought, ‘this is the time I get a chance to go free.’

 The thought distracted me as I looked out over the sea and listened to the occasional choking sob coming from the house. You can’t escape anything like this when chance forces itself upon you. Someone like that can’t tell your fortune.

Dada 13

Shabela leapt forward but the other Indo got up and was standing behind his friend with the knife that pointed quietly  in our direction. We didn’t move. They walked slowly backwards, staring at us, keeping us at distance by wielding the blade from side to side. When they saw there was enough distance between us, they ran away very quickly. We remained pinned there under rain that had suddenly started to pour; steam  rose from the rocks like from a pan of water.

Iskra was holding his arm that dripped with blood.  Shabela immediately told us there was a doctor up on the ridge that spent every Sunday there. Shabela wanted to go to him right away. Every time Iskra tried to speak, blood from the gash in his mouth formed a little stream of spittle that ran down the side of his bottom lip. We held him up and went back to the house as quickly as possible. When we got there, Iskra said that the injuries were superficial but that he would go to see the doctor anyway. 

He left with Shabela and I stayed behind with Mo to explain what had happened. Shabela’s wife started crying and Mo started to cry as well, but I told them to fucking shut up. They were as bad as old Srino and his missing bird.

Srino lives in a room in our building with his parrot. He hates it and the bird hates him. They are both scaly with age and wear, just like any couple who get to be like one another. One day the bird goes missing, hops out of its open cage at the fairground and goes free. It could hardly walk let alone fly. The sun would kill it. Did it just want to get away from him or the labyrinth of its life around its owner; whatever way Old Srino is devastated. I drew on my cigarette. Maybe the bird just took a chance. The cage was always open for him. That day he might have thought, ‘this is the time I get a chance to go free.’

Dada 12

Shabela looked swollen over the rock of his protruding stomach. Hair was matted down his strong legs. He looked very black. We walked steadily forward towards them. The rocks and pebbles

getting closer and closer, until the Indo’s were just a few steps away from us. Then they stopped and I slowed down. Iskra walked straight up to his man. I couldn’t make out what they said to were soaking, and we were sweating with weed, with food, and the heat of the sky like a damp cloth held tightly to our foreheads.

We were with him, but one of them made a menacing gesture as if he was going to punch him in the face. Iskra hit him first and immediately called out for Shabela, who went over to the second one and hit him twice with all his strength. The Indo fell face down into the water and stayed there for a few seconds, little bubbles rose to the surface around his head. Meanwhile, Iskra hit the other one again whose face was covered in blood.

He turned around to me and said:  “Just you watch what I’m going to do to him.’

I shouted: “Look out, he`s got a knife!”  But by then, Iskra’s arm was already cut and his mouth slashed.

Dada 11

The cloud had cleared and the sun was beating down on the sand; its brilliance reflecting off the sea was almost unbearable. The beach was deserted now. We could hear the clinking sound of cutlery and dishes from the little houses along the ridge that led down to the water.

The heat rising from the rocks and the ground made it difficult to breath. At first Iskra and Shabela talked about things and people I didn’t know. I realized they’d known each other for a long time and had even shared a place for a while. We headed towards the sea and walked along the water’s edge. 

Every now and then a little wave that was longer than the last one wet our shoes again and again my mind became blank because all that heat on my bare head was making me feel drowsy. I seemed to be swimming. Just then Iskra said something to Shabela that I couldn’t make out. At the same time, I noticed the two Kalimantan’s, one wearing the yellow flowered shirt and the other, blue workman’s overalls coming towards us.

They were at the other end of the beach, still quite far away. I looked at Iskra and he said

“It`s him again”.

We carried on walking. Shabela asked how they`d managed to follow us all the way here. I realized they must have got on the bus after seeing our beach bags loaded into Iskra’s car, but I didn’t say anything. Even though the Indos were moving slowly, they were a lot closer to us now. We kept walking at the same pace, Iskra said to Shabela,

 “If there’s a fight, you take the second one, I`ll take care of mine”. If another one shows up, he`s yours: ‘ I said “Yes”. 

Dada 10

His wife was joined at the house by small, sharp little woman in blue. I somehow knew this was going to happen. This was my surprise. She was dressed entirely in that one colour. She looked at me closely.

‘I am a gatherer of stories,’ she said.

She wore a series of little silver encased jewels about her dress. She made me nervous. She knew Dada, she said. 

I had seen her once at the house before he got ill and the Detectives stopped coming.

‘You’ll come to a bad end’ she said suddenly.

‘I’m with friends. Shut your mouth’ I said .

‘Come out to the back place’ she said.

‘I have something to tell you.’ She fumbled in her bags as if searching for something to give me but seemed to forget it and instead searched me with her eyes.

‘ It’s natural to protect your own family even those born on the wrong side of the blanket,’ she said.

Mo came out. He looked embarrassed. He said he would stay and help Shabela`s wife with the dishes.

The little Singapore woman said we men had to leave. She, her friend in blue and ‘the little kitten’ she called Mo would clear up. The three of us went out, Iskra, Shabela and myself. 

Dada 9

A little while later, Mo came out of the water. I turned around to watch him walk towards us. He was covered in a film of salt and was holding his hair back. He lay down, gently pressing against me while pretending to look away. The heat from our two bodies and the sun behind the clouds made me feel drowsy. Mo gave me a shake and told me that Shabela had gone back to the house because it was time for lunch. I got up right away because I was hungry and Mo whispered that I hadn’t kissed him since that morning. That was true, but we had to be careful.

‘Come into the water,’ he said.

We ran and splashed through the shallow little waves. We swam for a while and then he pressed his body against mine. I felt his legs wrapped around mine and I wanted him as I wanted him last night beneath the window under the tap tap tap of the rain.

When we came out of the water, Shabela was already calling us. I said I was very hungry, and right away he told me his wife said that she liked me.

‘I have a surprise for you’  she said.       

The meal was good. I wolfed down my fish. Then we had some beef and fried potatoes. We all ate in silence. Shabela drank a lot of Juice and kept filling up my glass. By the time we were having coffee, my head felt heavy and I`d smoked a lot of cigarettes and what I hadn’t smoked I’d rolled.

 Shabel, Iskra and I talked about how we might spend the month of August together at the beach, sharing the expenses.

 Suddenly Mo said “Do you know what time it is?” It`s only one thirty: we were all surprised, but Shabela said that we`d eaten too early for dinner, but that was natural because the time to eat is when you’re hungry. I don’t know why that made me laugh; I think I may have had a bit too much weed. Then Shabela asked me if I wanted to go for a walk on the beach with him.

“My wife always takes a nap after lunch. But I don`t like to, I need a walk. I keep telling her it`s healthier. But in the end, it`s up to her”. 

Dada 8

He wanted to go swimming. His wife and Iskra didn’t want to come along. The three of us went down to the beach and Mo jumped straight into the water.

Shabela and I waited a bit. He spoke slowly and I noticed he had the habit of ending everything he said with “and with the blessing of God”, even when he was actually adding nothing that changed the meaning of what he`d already said. Mo remarked about his wife.

 “She`s terrific and with the blessing  of God”.

It was a joke but Shabela didn’t see it. Then I stopped paying attention to this little life mannerism because I was thinking about how wonderful it was to be out in the sun, how the clouds were building and even if it wouldn’t be long before the rain came down in the purple laden blankets , it didn’t matter, even the rocks were  warm under my feet. 

Despite my eagerness to get into the water, I resisted for a while longer but Shabela finally said “Ready?” I dived in. Shabela walked slowly into the water and only started swimming when it was too deep to keep walking. He was doing the breast stroke, and rather badly, so I left him on his own and went to join Mo.

The water was warm and I was happy to be swimming. Mo and I swam far out, moving in harmony with each other and glad to be away from my Dada’s death.Once we were out in the open, we floated on our backs, as I gazed up at the sky; the sun dried away the last of the water that trickled down my face into my mouth. 

We saw that Shabela had gone back onto the rocks to stretch out beneath the sun and clouds. Even from a distance, he looked enormous. Mo wanted us to swim together. I got behind him so I could hold him around the waist and he swam forward using his arms while I helped him by kicking my legs. The gentle sound of the splashing water in the yellow morning light stayed with us for some time until I got tired and the bitter taste in my mouth returned. Then I left Mo where he was and swam back at normal pace, taking deep breaths. I stretched out on my stomach on the beach near Shabela and rested my head on the sand.

I told him “It felt good” and he agreed. 

Dada 7

He was a tall man, enormous, with very broad shoulders and a big stomach. He told us to make ourselves at home and that they were frying up some fish they`d caught that very morning. I told him how pretty I thought his house was. He said that he spent Saturdays and Sundays and every day off  out here.

“My wife gets on very well with people and has lots of friends;’ he added.

Just then, it was perhaps the first time I realized I was  going to get strung out again and I thought how strange my life had changed from being a student to a market worker on the fish dock. It was when these sudden surges of energy ran through me at the closeness of the water that I thought I could live like a pirate like our ancient people. I would hold fast whilst the wind would lash me robbing all the way up and down the Malay peninsula. Shabela could have been a captain like Loh Seh’s the great Chinese pirate who ran a hundred ships with her captains as her lovers. But he was  Malay and had forgotten his history.

Dada 6

I looked away. Surrounding the river were the forests that rose entangled on both banks of the river. To get stuck in there would be worse than any maze; to think of exotic flowers was exciting but what if you were lost. Fuck that. People get lost and die in the forests .Twenty five years ago my father could not wait to get away from his village. He wanted to work in the city and live in the suburbs. Dada used to say the only people who die in the jungle are tourists or those who used to live in them. 

‘We’re heading for our own rocks,’ Mo said.

‘Do you mean getting stupid’  Iskra said. He meant our crystal dice. I laughed.

From the steep slope leading down towards the sea, we could see that a few people were already in the water. Iskra`s friend lived in a little wooden hut on stilts at the other end of the promontory. There was a little space out on the back deck like you used to see in the old days. The house was  near the rocks but its supports at the front were already below water level. Iskra introduced us. His friend was called Shabela.

Dada 5

We got out in the suburbs. The beach wasn’t far from the car park by the docks. But we had to walk across a little ridge that looked out to the sea and then dropped steeply down to the beach. It was coloured in yellowish rocks and white daisies that stood out sharply against the relentless clouding and unfolding of the sky. The rain was coming back. All dead flowers would rise again especially here with all our constant wetness. Mo thought it was fun to scatter their petals by swinging at them with his bag. We walked through rows of little houses with green or white fences; some of them had verandas and were hidden by tamarisk and yellow pineapple bushes. Others stood stark amid the rocks in the lemon light.

Before reaching the edge of the ridge, we could already make out the still water that led from the South China sea to Sulawesi and further away, an enormous deserted promontory in the clear water. We could hear the distant sound of a motor through the quite air. Then we saw a little trawler in the distance, inching its way towards us over the purple and luminous water.

‘Them Thai fuckers’ Iskra said