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.