Dada 173

What difference could they make to me ? The ‘Malayaness’ of my parents and their obedient child, and on the way how my half Dayak, half White, Chinese Dada had become ignored and butchered by their thoughts. Thoughts that hardened into habits and institutions of blood and matter instead of scattered in freedom across the sea. Who were Dada’s real killers ? Was it himself ? What difference could it make now ?,The Dada’s love, the holy one’s words or the love of a man and a serial crime. Whatever way you look at it, the way you choose to live has nothing to do with justice. He used to shout from the balcony, ‘You who are so far away from us have been brought close . We are the peace between you, between Chinese, Malayan, Melenau or Iban. The union makes us peacemakers and breaks barriers they use to keep us apart; broken by hostility, caused by rulers, decreed by shipping laws from across the sea. They bind us no more, those islands of repression where the queen sits with her brigands and pirateers, colonies and rajahs. The union unites us in peace. Peace to you who were so far away and peace to those who come near us; its spirit guides us all.’ He could close his book now. It seems to me that you do not choose fate, it chooses you; like the way time runs through us, we do not run through time, it is not ours, we merely take from what is around us, the thoughts of millions who call themselves my ‘brothers’ even if I am not theirs. The holy man could see that every man or women is privileged, not just the castes or the races, the ‘ons’, ‘’ans’ ‘asians’ or ‘ese’ of these nations. There is only one class of human, the privileged class, those lucky to be alive, the party people and the quiet, the drug users and the eaters of good food. All with the gift of life, all condemned to die; the preacher was quite right about this. But what difference would it make if he was executed because he did not weep the same tears or in the same name as me? It was all the same in the end. What did it matter if at this very moment Mo was kissing his new boyfriend and eating lamb’s kidney’s ?. Was he to be executed for that in accordance with the laws of this land? As a condemned man himself could he not see, nor feel that dark wind blowing up from the south or rather remember the smell of his lover’s perfume?