Dada 123

When the guard had gone, I looked at myself in my metal dish. It seemed as if my reflection appeared grave even when I tried to smile. They say it’s always like this when people think a lot. Even if you’re happy, you don’t look it because you’re wondering why you’re happy. I remember my Saturdays with Mo. I stretched my face about a bit in front of me and tried to smile but my features still had the same, harsh, sad frown. The day was ending and the hour was approaching that I don’t like to talk about, that nameless time when the sounds of the night rise up throughout the entire prison and you can hear groans and sighs and other sounds where placation or repentance are deemed necessary to express themselves in other machinations of the soul. Then the footsteps away, slow and rhythmic and the cortege of silence died towards the small hours. An occasional cry reminded me of my father’s footsteps on the stairs of the family home.

I walked over to the little window and tried to study my reflection once again but the light was gone. Instead I could see among the dark patterns, the same small serious face that gleamed back at me from the dark. Why should it not be when I was serious as well as my situation? It was all serious. My face could not lie. At the same time though for the first time in months, I could clearly hear the sound of my own voice within me.

It was chiming like a bell and rang, saying, hang on, hang on. Do not deny yourself  anything.It was saying, you are full of richness and spirit.  This experience could serve me as a pirate; a voice strong and resonant, a manner to which I was not accustomed. I recognised it as the voice that had resonated deep and strong within in me throughout my days of remembrance. It was like I had been talking to myself. I realise now what the Dada was saying to me on one of the visits to his nursing home.

He had suddenly sat upright on his bead. He had been lying there as part of his afternoon rest. His eyes were bright but far away,

‘Take comfort, take comfort my people’ he said, ‘your hardship will not last, and neither will you waste away in sadness. Do not let sorrow seize you nor fear that you will not be saved’

He looked straight at me and caught my eye. ‘These are the prayers of every leader ‘he said.

‘They put me in jail after these words. Don’t they know we are all strangers to each other even though we may sing the same song? 

I remember he once had an Indian lover of Arabic descent. She was very beautiful, an older women like him but beautiful; more beautiful than the woman in blue. She was writing a history of caste and practice and the love of Islam in Malaysia. She was saying that Islam runs like a jewel through our history in these islands.

‘Not as pronounced in Sarawak’ my Dada said, ‘We are all in the mix here that is why we wear the colour blue, those high with the fundamentals hate it. It is the colour of muddied blood; the blood of the virgin mother.’