Dada 117

I hadn’t thought of it like that before but I had to agree with him.

‘It’s true’ I said,’ otherwise what would be the punishment’

‘Now’ he said, ‘at least you understand how things are. The others don’t and they either find other things to do or it kills them before their time.’ Then he left.

‘You’ll be all right now’ he called out from behind the door.

There was also the issue of cigarettes. When I first went to prison, they took away my belt, my shoelaces, my necklace and everything in my pockets including my smokes.

Once inside my cell I asked for them back but I was told it wasn’t allowed until I had been processed. The first days were really rough. That got to me the most. All day long I kept feeling nauseous and I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let me have something that would do no harm to anyone else. I kept seeing the faces of those two white kids who in truth were not much younger than me but bigger with better clothes and white socks , the way Europeans generally dress.

As time went on their picture faded and I didn’t feel the weight of the slap anymore. It had melted within the other images of my ‘room’. It was around then I started to suck on pieces of wood I pulled off the boards of my bed. Later on I understood that the withdrawal of my cigarettes was also given to me when I had accepted part of the punishment but I had my tactics in place by then and I was used to smoking no more.

I used to take hours to shape a splinter from the board until it looked like a matchstick and then I used to pop it in my mouth and hold it there like it was the way I used to smoke my cigarettes and sometimes then I would remember what the sky looked like when I smoked, or the smell of an oleander tree when sheltering from the rain. Straggly or thin, fat or lumpy pieces of splinter they were all the same to me. 

Dada 116

There were people worse off than me. .It was Dada’s saying that anyone could get used to anything.  He always told me that when he’d got a bad ship or the Engineer was nasty and called them all Chinks, which he wasn’t anyway, and got as much bad stuff from them as he ever did from the whites, it wasn’t the point. You could always  get your own back somehow even if you only kept quiet and looked. Things settled down and you settled with them but you did not forget. He’d seen the older ones toiling under the Japanese soldiers on the river during the war and that was no picnic but he’d got on with it. Surviving was everything and swerving at the right moment just as important as the wooden staves they had driven into the septums of Japanese soldiers after 1945.

Most of the times I didn’t think about much at all and the first few months were difficult because of this. But when I woke up to what Dada was telling me I started to think different. During that time I was obsessed by the idea of having a man or woman, it was natural, I was young. It was strange I had never given it thought but now it occupied everything, it wasn’t particularly Mo I was thinking of but anyone!!!! They told me later there were sixty different ways of ‘doing it’ behind bars.

I thought so much about them that they became real again to me, all the men and women I had known and loved, I could feel their presence beside me, their faces arousing all my wants in my small cell. It upset me at first but it killed the time, then I thought if I can do this with my feelings of desire, I can do it for anything, the ships, the sun, the river, my life, my Dada’s life, even those people who became my parents life and all their grand thoughts of aggrandisement.

If you took it step by step  it all killed time, moment by moment and filled the room with pictures. It sometimes made me laugh, the wealth of it all, the way you could spend thoughts like shillings. I had not even started to think about my work on the dock or the transportation of fish.  

I managed to win over the head guard who accompanied the kitchen boy when he brought me my meals. Only the ‘specials’ get this treatment. He was the one who first talked to me about the need. He told me it was the first thing that everyone complained about even those who had gone without before. I told him I was the same and that I found it unfair to be treated this way. Surely there could be a way around this.

‘But this is exactly why you are in prison’ he said.

I asked him why, it had nothing to do with my crime and he said ‘exactly’ again.

Eleven

I looked forward to the daily walk around the prison yard or the visit from my lawyer. As for the rest of the time, I got used to it, I thought that if I had to live inside any old hut in the forest I would have got used to it. The window in my cell could bring me the sky. The blinding light or the passing clouds, just before the dawn could raise the smell of flowers opening to greet me , the rain falling down on the roof the dawning sun or the faint hum of the traffic roar from the city just at the time of my breakfast would deliver another portion.

These sounds and smells were associated with every meal I was brought, sound and smells from both inside and outside the prison. The ones I liked most came from the hooter of the passenger ships that would echo around the harbour and linger in my cell for hours. I loved that. I could have got used to anything in terms of memory, light or history. When you accept you are a prisoner things change. Knowing I was a criminal brought a whole new perspective to my life.

I looked forward to the sounds of birds or pigeons cooing on the prison   roof or the clouds drifting into one another just before the rains. I would enjoy that as much as seeing the different ties my lawyer wore each time he came to see me. Just as in another time, I had waited eagerly for Saturday and Sunday nights when I finished work, so I could press Mo’s body next to mine. That was no longer there in front of me but it did not stop me remembering the anticipation and the swollen easy times we would have together.

The ‘roaring crystals’ danced just as loud in my life and painted imaginary pictures of my time at sea like I could hear the waves rolling through the Dada’s stories. Shabela’s sea house was a single fateful diversion; a moment of chance. Our life was shared up and down the beaches out of the city and easy with dreams when I left the house of my ma and da and all the stuff messed up in my head was released into the space of the blue air of  Dada’s song ; the song of these unhappy islands. .

Dada 115

‘You’re father is a coward. He hit you when he did not have the courage to say to you what he needed to say himself’

I saw her pause and chew her lower lip. I recognised the moment. i could see it in myself when I was confronted by those things I did not like speak about; the moment when those who never dare, come forward; their thoughts arriving at the breaking of the dam, when the need to say something  becomes irresistible. What brings a person to it. Was my DaDa, dancing in her head like he did in mine ?  Was it fear, grief, anger or often just an immense weariness that she felt, the words spilling like coin when she gushed everything out at the beach house.

 My own father hardly spoke to me except for the rattan lash. Yet he had something in common with the lady in blue. His tears would splash afterwards and his words like hot ash run down the waterfall of my back.

In this situation I imagined the sound of the water and those little waves that broke upon the beach and of the vagabondi preying upon unsuspecting villagers that came down from the jungle; the sensation of water and chattels flowing over my boat while music played and the feeling of freedom this brought me and my men. It struck me just how much the walls of my prison cell had closed in around me but that feeling only lasted a little while. Afterwards, I had only the thoughts of a convicted man and adapted myself to the system here.

Dada 114

These were things I did not want to hear anyway. I shouldn’t really suddenly complain though because it was easier for me than some of the others in here. I kept thinking of the big Indonesian with the honest face. The guards give the big ones a hard time, they think they are all mixed up in gangs and drugs and the rackets. They give them trouble. How he must have suffered when he came down to greet his fat shouting wife.

At the beginning of my imprisonment what I found most difficult was that I had the thoughts of a free man – and what was worse, of wanting to sail the little boats upriver again to where there was plenty of trade and dreamed like the pirates of these islands, treasure and ease like my relatives and long lost ancestors who gave the White Rajah’s a run for their money until one of their sons fucked my great grandmother as part of the purge.

I was obsessed by the idea of wanting to be on the sea or sailing around one of those tiny islands, with just the sand and the palm trees and coconut milk for company. Give me a sudden blast of rock to blow through my veins and the music that I imagined would carry me across the sea and away to the southern Philippines or the pirate’s channel to the Molucca’s.

Maybe it was my Dada on the ships; maybe the way he arranged his cabin and bunk and made a palace of his own little cells with the occasional sprinkle of memento’s bought ashore in places like New York and Pernambuco or the roaring forties wharfs of Darwin and Western Australia, maybe that was the stuff that maybe kept us both afloat through the long stretches   when he must have wondered about where his real home lay. It was the same with me.

‘’ Is there anywhere we can call home here or do we have to go back and live on the sea ?’,

The woman in blue was speaking to me again.  

Dada 113

In the visiting room; the murmuring, the shouting, the conversation continued all around me, the only oasis of silence was the small young man and the elderly woman who sat silently looking at each other. Gradually the Kalimantan’s were led out. Almost everyone stopped talking as soon as the first one left. The little old woman moved closer to the bars just as the guard gestured to her son. He said simply

‘Goodbye mama.’ She slipped her hands through the bars and attempted to touch him in a little wave and sad goodbye. She left just as a man holding his hands together came in to take her place. Another prisoner was led in where her son had been and the two men started to talk excitedly. They spoke softly though as the room had quietened .They came to take away the man to my right and his wife shouted as if she hadn’t realised the room contained less noise and was going quiet, ‘take good care of yourself  ’she bellowed. Then it was my turn. I tried to mouth a kiss to Mo but he had turned away by then. 

‘Look after yourself’ he said.

Then he looked up at me and his eyes were full of pain but he didn’t move his face or crush it against the bars like a flower with the same, tense, distressed smile of the little woman. His gestures might have rang with those things inside himself but I guess he was embarrassed here. I don’t like to talk about our time together. He wrote to me soon afterwards, mainly about my Family, my Ma and Da and said that no one would forget Dada but he never said anything about himself or even the price of food and that was that.

Dada 112

‘Do you think so,’ I asked, mainly because I had to say something.

Then he said very quickly and very loudly that of course I would be acquitted and we’d be able to go swimming and cupped his hand s around an imaginary bowl that might have been a pipe. I remembered old Srino’s gesture in the room and was going to laugh. But I suppose all it could have been was a small rice bowl with all Mo’s talk of the price of food. I noticed he looked around before he did this. He need not have bothered because the fat woman was shouting that she had left a basket of food at the clerk’s office and how dear and expensive everything was now because the warehousemen and fisherman had won their rise in wages  but what about the ordinary family? Her shouting blocked everything out. Maybe the disease was spreading.

The young man next to me and his mother were still watching each other like little birds. The murmuring of the Indonesians below us was like the sea that continued to wash our legs with their sighs. Outside the light seemed to fall intensely against the window. I felt slightly sick and was relieved when I saw a worm of a cloud appear, the rain would come soon. Inside, the noise was painful. I wanted to stay with Mo and I wanted to leave this place and I wanted to stay with him as long as I could. I was losing my sense of balance. I don’t know how much time passed; Mo told me about his life at home and never stopped smiling. He was going to shop for lamb’s kidneys after he saw me he said.

 ‘We are a very fair minded but stern country’ I remembered my father would say.

His hand would rub my back and I would feel his oiled fingers. I didn’t remember much about the first time but soon realised the real danger was later; the soft footfall on the stairs, the putting away of violence and the almost tender touch on the skin.

Dada 111

‘Everything’ I said.

Excellent, he said. We fell silent and Mo kept on smiling. He would look down and then up at me and our eyes would briefly meet and he would look down again. The fat women was shouting at the man next to me, her husband was a big, light skinned man with an honest face  who could have worked down there on the ships if they  let him on the dock. She was continuing a conversation that they had already started.

‘Saba didn’t want to take him’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. ‘Right the man said, right’

‘I told her you’d have him back when you got out but she said you wouldn’t want to take him’ The man looked as if he wished he was sitting on the floor and just making light easy stuff with his hands, like the others, maybe Dada had felt the same way.

Mo shouted that Iskra said hello and I replied ‘thanks’ but my voice was blocked out by the man next to me who was asking ‘Is the kid all right.’

His wife laughed and shouted back and said, ‘never better, he has a job with the runners, the only ‘Manta they’d let near the water ‘

Something inside me shuddered and I felt a wild pain of longing for this boy I had never seen. Go swimming where I had swum or paint the side of ships or decks like Dada who said he grew up in the sea and that each time there came the sound of a distant siren from a tug, it would always remind him of home bound ships and the longing to be away. The noise of the water was to him like the Silk Road to the Europeans. He said it reminded him of Liverpool or San Francisco and the decent drink and nights he had spent dancing there.

The prisoner on my left was a small young man with delicate hands who never spoke. I noticed he was sitting opposite the little old woman in black clothes and that the two of them were staring at each other intently but I did not have time to watch them anymore because Mo shouted that I shouldn’t give up hope. I said yes. I looked at him and wanted to touch the  hair that had streamed out behind him but it was all tucked away now .He started to list the contents of food prices and how dear and expensive everything was now and the price of vegetables.

He did not mention Dade’s apartment nor how beautiful everything was in the water under the sun or on his shoulder when we were on the beach, or nights under the window in the rain and the feel his soft clothes that he wasn’t wearing now. I didn’t know exactly what more I could say to take him away from his vegetable list. Surely there must be a code to all this but maybe people don’t speak of the thing in question before them; maybe it was always about something else. Maybe that was what Mo meant because he kept smiling and all I could see were his bright teeth and the little wrinkles around his eyes and think of our time together.

‘You’ll get out and we’ll go to the market again’ he shouted again.

DaDa 110

There were about ten prisoners or so to my side, most of them Indonesians. Mo was surrounded by women and sat between two  other visitors, perhaps that’s why he looked so uncomfortable, one was a little old Indonesian woman with pursed lips and dressed all in black and a bareheaded fat woman who shouted everything while making lots of gestures like they do in Kalimantan. But it was the distance between us that made everyone shout.

The first time I came in, if felt dizzy because of all the noise, it was like returning to the fish dock on a Saturday morning when the left over weekend catch was sold and everyone out and the prices being driven down or the first time I saw the jury sworn in.

Between the large bare walls of the room and the sunlight pouring in through the windows it made the difference between the shade of my cell and this place all the stranger. It took me a second to adjust but then I could see each face clearly outlined against the bright light. I noticed two guards sat at each end of the corridor between the bars. Most of the prisoners and their families sat on the floor facing each other. They weren’t shouting. In spite of all the commotion they managed to hear each other clearly even though they spoke very quickly, almost in whispers but all seemed to join in. Their muffled voices carried like the calm of the sea and created a sort of soft background music against the wash and tides of conversation and occasional shout. The noise bounced and flowed above their heads and echoed from the walls.

I noticed all this very quickly as I walked towards Mo. He was already leaning towards the bars and smiling at me as brightly as he could. I thought he looked very beautiful and sad but I didn’t know how to tell him that.

‘Well ‘ he said very softly ‘Here we are. Do you have everything that you need.’’

Dada 109

What was the difference between me the Sea Dayak and the lady in blue. Who was she to tell my life’s history  from one brief moment at the beach? Merely by her presence as a gatherer of stories, the rush of her judgement, the sparkle of her dress did she think she could she drive me down her own path of driven footsteps; a lonely myth at the nation’s birth to her own sole creation? She would neither stand for the prosecution nor in my defence. Thank God.

The day I was arrested I was locked up in a room with several other prisoners most of them from Kalimantan. They laughed when they saw me. They asked what I’d done. I said I killed two white men with a knife and they  went quiet. But a short time later, night fell and they showed me how to set up the mat where I would sleep. By rolling up one end you could make a sort of pillow like they used to do on a seaman’s bunk. They need not have bothered. I knew this from the Dada but I let them show me just the same. It was an act of collective spirit.

Bugs crawled across my face all night long. A few days later I was put away in a cell by myself where I slept on a wooden bed. I had a bucket for a toilet and a metal washbowl. The prison was right at the top of the town and I could see the sea through a little window ringed with iron.  I thought I could even catch a glimpse of the outer docks and if not the water I could see the ships and very early in the morning you could hear the sound of the river and the bells of their engines. I could imagine where the fish dock lay but I couldn’t see that.

One day I was holding onto the bars of the window and straining to see. It was useless in the blinding light and better when the clouds came, just before the rain, when the sky dulled over and everything became green. A guard came in and told me I had a visitor. I prayed it would be Mo, I was right. Iskra must have fixed it.

To get to the visitors area, you have to walk down a long corridor then up a flight of stairs and finally down another corridor, it was almost like a ship with its alleyways of shade and brightness. I went into a very light, very bright room, lit by an enormous bay window. The room was divided into two sections by two large set of bars that ran down through the middle. Between the two sets of bars was a space of between ten or so feet that separated the prisoners from the visitors and a series of chairs in a line. Dada had told me about his time here after the strike.

I saw Mo sitting opposite me, his face was drawn and he was wearing dark clothes which were unusual for him. My first thought was to ask him why he hadn’t worn his striped white suit. He smiled and gave a little wave.

Ten

My case was progressing as the police put it. Sometimes when the conversation dealt with general matters, I was even included. I started to be able to breathe freely again. During these meetings, no one was unkind to me, everything was so natural, so well organized and so seriously played out that I had the ridiculous impression that unlike my friends on the outside I was one of the families of the law and we could all be great pals together.

A friend of mine was a very good footballer but sadly he busted his knee. When the physiotherapist saw him, my pal thought he was in the company of professionals but in reality he was just only another client.

‘I have learnt everything I know from football’ he told me.

I was just the same as him but it disabused me of such fancy notions. I was only a prisoner who was getting by, happy to share a joke now and then.

Throughout the entire eleven months of my incarceration it was a surprise to realise that the only times I had ever really enjoyed in company were the rare times when the detective would walk me to the back door, pat me on the shoulder and say to me in a friendly tone of voice, ‘that’s all for our little soldier today.’ He sounded like my Dada when he talked of ships and rivers and the Blue funnel line or of Iskra and me and Mo as ‘his little gangsters’. I would have tears in my eyes at such kindness when he passed me back to the guards.

Certain things I never like talking about are sometimes clear. He caught me there that old policeman. He came close. I realized after my first few days in prison that It wouldn’t do to dwell on that part of my life in my father’s house. Mo knew it and that was enough. He didn’t find it so very strange;

‘it’s like that all over this island’ he said.

This was new to me; it was like if someone asks you suddenly if you had a happy childhood? It wasn’t only Dada that fell into such huge rages. He could have been a doctor in them.

Later, such worrying no longer bothered me, it wasn’t necessary to wonder what might happen after Dada’s death. To tell the truth I wasn’t really in prison after the first few days. It was like I was transported back to another time, Just vaguely waiting for something new to take place like the fish dock raging with fire after someone set light to a Thai fishing boat  or to have days of unbroken sunshine. It was only after the first letter Mo told me they wouldn’t let him come because he wasn’t related to me, from that day on, I knew where I was. This cell was my home and my life would end here.

Dada 108

Her story nagged at me like an obstinate pain. If Dada could defy and outwit all the rulers and Tuns and Sultans on this blighted island who was I to give up on the story ?.  The strike  may have brought together all the cards of those who wanted to control this island but the DaDa must have seen how it would crumble. Why did he carry on peddling the dream that was to become part of him when everything else was lost ?

During the days that followed I saw the policemen often. On each occasion my lawyer was with me and we had no more trickery with the beads or other heavy symbols of faith. Questions were limited to examining points made in my previous statements. Sometimes the policeman discussed the charges with my lawyer and his prosecuting team but to tell the truth they didn’t take much notice of me during their talks and saw my case as more or less closed. The chief examining detective didn’t ask me once about Allah or God or Buddha and I never saw him get as worked up as on that other day. As a result our meetings became more cordial. After a few questions and a bit of discussion with my lawyer, the interrogations would come to an end. I would return to my cell and they would go to their homes in the suburbs.

Dada 107

Head bowed, I nodded again. The policeman sat back in his chair, the sweat ran away off his face like it had gathered like in small rivulets from his forehead through to the delta of his cheeks.

He looked very tired. He sat there in the silence of the moment and gathered his jacket around him, while the clerk, finishing off, completed his work in silence.

The Detective looked at me intently and with a little sadness,

‘I’ve never met anyone with such a hardened attitude as you’ he said softly,

‘Every criminal who has stood before me has ultimately recanted their sins when faced with such symbols of suffering.’

I was about to say but they were criminals but then I realised I was one also. It was an idea I was having trouble coming to terms with. I had only tried to live my life. The policeman stood up as if to indicate the interview was over.

He asked me then in a slightly weary tone was whether I regretted what I had done. I thought about it and rather than going over the whole ground again I asked him did he ever feel like being a pirate? Weren’t his ancestors the same in accordance with the history of these islands and before the silver thread of the white Rajah’s law became sacrosanct? He looked a little like the lawyer. As if he didn’t understand ; as if someone who was totally beyond him.  He shook his head. Nothing more happened that day. 

For the week  that followed my arrest I had hesitated on how best to interpret the gush of  the woman’s words  at the beach house. Each time I tried all I could see was a picture of iskra slapping his woman about or Mo letting down his hair or changing his shirt, his proud chest thrust towards the open window and the sea.

Dada 106

I heard the clerk shift behind me. I told him that in my opinion, that was none of my business what gave him meaning. From across the table, he launched himself at me, the beads in front of him. He was screaming like a madman, his skull turned down in a paroxysm of rage of someone possessed. I turned around to the clerk but his face was down as if the keyboard was his holy book and would give him no reason to look up.

‘How can you not believe that they suffered for you’ the policeman was addressing my whole life.

 I felt or I was about to say that I had suffered for someone else’s beliefs and actions but thought it best to stay quiet. An image of my ma and da rose before me and I thought what trouble they might still bring to complicate matters further. After my initial shiver, it was starting to get hot; soon the pavements would be steaming. This was my time. As always whenever I want to get rid of people my head turns down or away and I nod in agreement; to my surprise the policeman stopped shouting. He stopped everything and remained quiet as if his thoughts were also closing down, drifting away like a ship suddenly released from the port to dance on the tide.

There was a confidence in his voice.

‘You see.’ He said. ’You see?

‘You will put your trust in those who suffer for you’

Dada 105

Just as the policeman seemed to sink in the silence, up his voice would rise again like a noisy bird and the beads would whir like a flock of gulls across a rice field. He simply could not understand why I had paused with the knife not once but twice. It was useless to repeat to him again, that I was wound up, then out of breath, then affronted that the second boy was getting away, then breathless, then momentarily furious at the slap that linked my history like a coral necklace that circles these islands. The slap reached out to me like a wave lands to the shore. They say a wave never returns to its same source but this one landed smack in my history with all its good, evil and immeasurable consequence.

I told him that it was wrong to keep on going on about this, that it was the same with me in terms of my feelings it simply wasn’t important. He had the story, he knew the facts. It was just what happened. He stopped me then and drew himself up to his full height. He demanded that I believe and if I believed, I would be saved.

‘These are two different things’ I said.

‘Do you believe?’ he asked. I nodded to keep him quiet. The hammer and chisel might come out next and I did not want that. The Malaysian police can only retained their humour for so long

‘Even those who turn away still believe’ he said. This was within the core of his being he said. It was his firm belief and if he fired his anger at anyone it was to help and release them. If anyone said different they would be lost and his own life would have no meaning. It would have no meaning because he would not have tried sufficiently to understand them.

‘Do you want my life to have no meaning’ he shouted. 

Dada 104

I didn’t know what to say. The policeman wiped his forehead and repeated the question in a slightly quieter tone.

‘Why, I must insist you tell me, why. ‘I remained silent and felt the slight breeze; it is always like this before the rain.

He stood again suddenly and went to his desk at the other end of the room. He opened a drawer and there was a rustle. I thought he had gone for the knife that the prison guards had told me would be covered in a cellophane plastic to keep the evidence free from contamination. Instead he took out a set of holy beads and brandished them in front of me as he came closer. In a completely different voice, the notes almost a quaver in his throat he asked.

‘Do you know what these are “ 

Yes of course’ I said.

Before I could finish, he was shouting, ‘’these beads are the symbols of the faith of all the religions that have crossed this island.’ He told me quickly and quietly that he believed in the great and worshipful Buddha, the Christ and the Prophet Mohammed and he was positive that no man, no matter what his source could not ask nor seek forgiveness; but in order for that search, a man must repent, must bow his head and become once more like a child who soul is bare. He must prepare himself to accept the judgements of the world. His entire body was leaning towards me over the table. The beads were almost directly above me, they smelled like sandalwood and the colour of the day, I saw the light s in the waterfront club, the disco ball, spinning through the darkness.

Behind me, in a great silence of anticipation or fear I sensed that the clerk had seen this show before. His presence was like a wall behind me. The policeman was holding the beads above me like a child holds a necklace before a prostrate grandfather. His almond face was no longer calm.To tell the truth, I had great difficulty in following his reasoning. He asked if I had anything to say, anything different to his accusations.

I was hot and yet a shiver of cold ran through me as it always does with the coming rain. I remembered the walk at Dada’s funeral when I was so jumbled and furious inside myself. There were flies in the office that circled above me in the heat and with the beads dangling and clacking together. I was losing a sense of coherence. The detective was starting to scare me, the machine behind me had ceased to click and even the whirr of the fans seemed listless and dull. This was ridiculous. I was the criminal, the accused not an appellant at confession before God.  

Dada 103

‘What interests me is you! There are certain things about you that I cannot comprehend.’ He added that he was sure I would help him understand what I had done for the reputation of this island.

I said that was very simple. He encouraged me to go on, what I had done that day, at the beach, the coming  back to the city in the rain, the club, the drugs wearing off when we were  all coming down,  happened by chance one fateful Sunday. Did the fight start then, among the light, the darkness, the loud voices, when all you wanted was a little peace after your sailing away with the drugs.’ He asked.

‘Is that how it started’ he wanted to know... ‘Did you sail away with the drugs ?’

After every statement he would say, good, hum, good, hum, like a prayer. When I got to the part where the two bodies were laid out on the floor, he nodded in approval put down his pen and said, ‘so that’s it.’

I nodded. I was tired of telling the same story, over and over again. I felt like I had never talked so much. Even at the markets with the shouting and roaring all day never made my voice or my head feel as swollen and fatigued as this.

He stood up. There was a moment’s silence. The policeman said he wanted to help me, he really did. He found me interesting and with God’s help he could do something for me. First he wanted to ask me a few more questions. Without pausing, he asked me if I really loved Dada.

I said ‘yes, of course, ‘like everyone else.

The clerk at that moment must have made a mistake because he muttered and sighed and had to go back to his original place. He must have eaten early because I smelled onion on his breath.

After his corrections there was a period of quiet before we carried on. Then for no apparent reason, the Detective asked me why I had kept on using the knife even when both bodies lay motionless before me. I thought about it and explained that I had used the knife only the once, the rest was just a reaction like when you cut off a fishes head and it still wriggles about until the nerves die. It was the same with my hand. I was about to tell him what happens at the market; the frenzy of blood and silver seeping through the wicker fish baskets just after the dawn but he did not seem interested.

‘Why did you wait between the second and third time you used the weapon’ the policeman asked.

I told him that I was breathless when I caught the second man and the knife was all part of the same action. I didn’t stand a moment to catch my breath and then proceed to stab him. Funnily enough, I could see it now as a film, the beach, then the rain, the music of the night, the little explosions of delight in side me, with the darkness and the shouting, then the slap, the lightning slap of those in command of our history or jurisprudence. But this time I kept silent. I didn’t reply nor offer an opinion during this entire silence.Tthe pressure of the day after the flooding of light and morning calm kept my tongue still. You could feel the clouds gather on the skyline and begin to come lower over the trees but I still remained quiet, calm even.

 ‘Why did you stab a man who was already dead?’ 

Dada 102

The next morning came hazy with sun and rain, pewter coloured clouds and a yellow light that streamed through the cell. A while later I was once again taken down to be questioned by the police.it was two o’clock in the afternoon before I was issued into the interview room and this time the prosecutor’s office was flushed with a different light before the afternoon rains of the summer monsoon came again.

‘The light is like our history the way it switches across this island’ he said.

It was very hot, the detective wiped away at his forehead and his face had lost some of its almond calm. He very politely told me to sit down and said that my lawyer could not be there due to unforeseen reasons’ but that I had a right not to answer any of his questions. I said that did not bother me and that I could answer anything he wanted of me on my own.

He pressed a buzzer on his desk and a young clerk came in, a Malay, and sat down very close behind me. I could picture him shopping on Sunday with his wife, maybe they would come down to the fish dock to purchase their weekend merodowsal or special dish anniversary. Maybe they would have children with them, laughing amongst the river crowds. I could not see him as a pirate, with his mortgage and little car and happiness spread all around him.

We both, the policeman and I sat back in our chairs and the interrogation began. I could feel the Malays breath against my neck but then I ignored it, just like I did my lawyer’s collar of fat. It must be easy and yet very hard to be suburban knowing everyone is watching you for a slip, like my father thought everyone watched him and so he watched me. It was only my way of thinking but that doesn’t mean it didn’t count. I had the Dada to thank for getting me out of that mess.

The first thing the police told me was that I was being depicted as a taciturn and uncommunicative young man and he wanted to know my reaction to that. I replied that I didn’t have much to say, that was all and so I generally kept quiet. He smiled as he had that first time and I saw some calm return to his eyes.

‘Sometimes that’s best’ he said, then he added, ‘in any case it's of little importance’ he fell silent, then he looked up at me, and then said very quickly.

‘What interests me is you! There are certain things about you that I cannot comprehend.’ 

DaDa 101

‘There’s much wickedness on this island I told you that. Your great grandmother was no half wit but a cheerful girl and merry as could be. She was a woman at fifteen when the sea Dayaks rose up. When he put them down, the rajah took her to work in the house but it wasn’t long before he had her beneath him. Nine months later you could see the result. She was of the mix so they couldn’t give her back. They  got the Chinese to marry her, to look after her and the baby.

‘Blood thicker than water?’ don’t you believe it,’ she said.

‘Your Dada was no more Chinese than anyone, that’s why they hated him on the ships and treated him like shit. His blood was the same all over this scabrous island,  maybe that was why he won them over, why the seamen followed him, because he was some kind of hybrid. All blood is mixed below deck. I  pictured the Dada’s words flowing from our balcony. He was a kind of hero to them.

‘It was never about the seaman ; more’s the pity ‘she said.

The Dada would bellow and rage and beat his chest and I would have to go and calm him  before the detectives would arrive once more to our door. 

‘There is much wickedness on this island,’ she said.

My lawyer thought I was ignoring him. He left looking very angry. At one point I was going to call him back and tell him I was wrong. But in the finish I didn’t bother. I didn’t need him as a friend; I had friends of my own. I didn’t want his sympathy either, just so as he could defend me better. Maybe  it was natural for him to feel that way. I had made him uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do that. It’s just that he wanted to act as if he was a friend of mine, just like the ones I smoked with but when all was said and done, he wasn’t. There wasn’t much point in him pretending either that the great dome of the Federation would protect us all. The door slammed after him. It did not bother me too much because it all seemed like too much frustration. And anyway what would he know of jail? He had never opened a pay packet in his life; even if they’re guilty, people like him can always buy themselves out of trouble.

Dada 100

 I said I was tired and when I could be bothered thinking about it, I hated my ma and da and everything around me because I was tired and people knew it, where I worked, where I lived, when I saw my dada haranguing people from our balcony and the straggly line of seaman outside of the dock gates following his example at our nation’s formation. That was all I felt. Is all you need to be traitorous  to come from a messed up family; that way half of these islands would be in the firing line.

He looked at me strangely. As if I disgusted him with my absences and my sudden spurts of talk. The way of his glance (with those soft yet darting eyes) was as if he was seeing someone who doesn’t quite ‘get it; like watching a rookie trying to roll a joint for the first time and chattering like a monkey.

He told me rather maliciously that in any case the director and staff of the home would be called as witnesses  and things could turn very nasty for me then.

I pointed out that the funeral had nothing to do with this other business but he flared and said, ‘that’s where you’re wrong.’ You’ve never had any dealings with the police and judiciary system here. They’ll twist anything just to get a grip ‘ he said.

I tried to remember  the sequence of what the little woman told me.

‘He’s done his penance’  she  said.

‘I know Dada was one of the Rajah’s illegitimite sons’ I said

‘As you say and worse than that’ she said. 

Dada 99

When I said that death was part of life again, the lawyer cut in and seemed suddenly disturbed.

‘Don’t give them that’ he said, ’Please don’t give them that’’ and made me promise to definitely not say anything like it  in court or to the almond face police officer, handling the investigation.

‘Tell me again why you were furious. I’m here to listen ‘he said.

I explained that one of the characteristics of my personality was that physical sensations often got in the way of my emotions. The day of Dada’s funeral I was very tired, I had worked nearly sixty hour on the fish dock and it was only Wednesday afternoon that I got away . Much of what went on the day of the funeral had gone by me and I had to drink lots of coffee just to keep awake. I would have preferred it if Dada had not died at that time of the week .I could say that but why bother. It was like the talk you got off the boss. My lawyer was not really pleased with these comments.

‘That’s not good enough at all ‘he said. His neck seemed to go rigid because the dancing, fat wrinkles suddenly stilled above his collar. He thought for a moment and then he said,

‘Could we say that you  were very worried about this strange relationship and that is why you appeared calm, in reality you were raging inside but you kept your emotions tightly under control that day?’

‘You could say it ‘ I said but it’s not true ‘

Dada 98

’We could we just sit here quietly together ,’ he would say.  

Tolerance would fill the room after my beatings, the contrition and then after that, his soft footsteps on the stairs.

The policeman had a scalp almost shaved like a Buddhist monk and soft almond skin. He came across as very reasonable and actually quite kind in spite of sometimes the darting of the eyes or the fact that I had killed two young white men.

The next day a lawyer came to see me in the prison. He was short and chubby and looked as if he dined well. His hair was carefully slicked back and in spite of the heat (I was wearing a tee shirt and shorts) he was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a blue tie. The tie and the collar looked damp, the way his neck folded over it.

He put the briefcase he was carrying under his arm down on the wooden bed introduced himself as Mr Ramallah and told me he had studied my file. My case was a tricky one he said but with the right application he was sure we could make the best of it, if I put my trust in him.

I assured him I would and he nodded and said that the investigating officers were very reasonable men. I nodded and he said,

Let’s get down to business.

He sat on the bed and explained that that they had obtained certain information about my private life. They found out that my Dada had recently died at an old people’s home and that I took drugs. They had made enquiries upriver. The prosecution learned that I had appeared very calm on the day of Dada’s funeral and I was seen with Mo the day afterwards. Here, he fluttered at his sleeve and suggested that we were acting in an illicit manner and contrary to the laws of this country. 

‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this’ my lawyer said ‘but it is very important. And it will be a key argument for the prosecution if I have nothing to counter it with.’

 He wanted to help me. He asked me if I had been upset that day. Although I found the question surprising, I told him that I had been furious and he immediately brightened up

‘Because of your Dada’s death?’ he asked and I replied’ no, not at all. Death is a part of life. It was the absence of my Ma and Da and me having to travel all that way into the jungle, all heat and the fate of my Dada, of a love almost lost but not quite because something worse replaced it. I was furious. I hated their obsession of being correct Malaysians’

He looked embarrassed for having to ask the question but more embarrassed for me. I told him that since I had out what I thought was the secret I had finished with my studies and went to live to with Dada. I didn’t analyse my emotions any more. I just put one front in foot of another with each new day. It was difficult to explain. I loved Dada very much but that didn’t mean anything now. Every normal person sometimes wishes the people they love would die and  the ones they hate even sooner.

No Country for Old Men

As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the Suez crisis (July 26) it seems England has learnt nothing in terms of Imperial drum beating. I feel particularly sorry for the majority of the young who voted by a considerable majority to remain in Europe in the recent referendum; sorry also for those old industrial communities who voted to leave in such huge numbers. For them it will be the maxim, ‘for those who have least, so too will they fare less’

Their decision means that Brexit is a victory for the far right and has been welcomed as such by those parties across Europe, whose hatred also stemmed from the incubus of the early Common Market after Suez exposed such Imperial illusion.

My greatest ire however is for those on the left who voted ‘No’ on an ‘anti Big Business, EU, IMF Austerity ‘ ticket, amongst whom, if left to himself, would have included Jeremy Corbyn. 

History is littered with such actions whose believers think they can ride the tidal wave of reaction and then pursue a national social agenda. They have all without exception been washed away, either by draconian law or military tunic.

Suez brutally exposed this. France read the lessons and made a bond with Germany which still remains today. Not so it seems for England and its Principality, the flower of a faded Imperial dream sixty years in the making.