by Alfian Sa'at
“Why?”
“She sends her regards.”
“You met her?”
“Yesterday at the market at Hougang.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she heard about the death and she just wants to send her regards.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Suddenly, Jamilah remembered that it was from Som whom she had stolen the line about God’s love from. But she kept it to herself.
Maimon had been thinking about this Som woman since her husband’s death. There were two things, she thought, where life had cheated her. The first was the rain coming at the wrong time. The second was Som. Maimon could not bear to think that her grief for Abu Bakar could be shared by another woman who was once his wife too. Who might have even believed that if only Abu Bakar had stayed with his first love he would have lived a little longer. She wondered which of his wives Abu Bakar would choose to accompany him in heaven if God were to let him have only one.
* * *
“Look at all this. We were ready.” Maimon pointed to some opened suitcases on the floor. There were some books with Arabic words on them. There was also a lot of white cloth.
“He was packing up all this, and every day he asked me when I was going to pack my things. He was excited. I think the old man knew that he was going,” said Maimon.
“He had a lot of plans,” said Jamilah.
“He said that one of the things he wanted to do when we got to Mecca was pray for you. We wanted to pray for you and Azhar. We know you’ve wanted children for so long. You’ve been trying. We know that in Mecca, if you pray and your heart is pure, your prayers are answered.”
Jamilah turned away from her mother to inspect the things in the suitcases. Inside her a word knotted itself and grimaced: enough. There was an electric shaver, a portable iron and even an electric heating coil, for boiling hot water. There was also a box which Jamilah opened excitedly. She unwrapped its insides from a bubble sheet.
“Mak, he bought this?” Jamilah asked, holding up the video camera.
“Yah. Why?”
“Where did he get the money?”
“Your father was the sort who saved his money. He didn’t spend on things like snacks and biscuits.”
“How much is this?”
“Nine hundred, I think. If you want it you can have it.”
“Wow...” Jamilah started to play with the buttons. “There are batteries inside. Mak, I can see you from here.” Jamilah was peering at the bluish miniature of her mother from the eyehole. “Mak, say something.”
“Don’t want lah, put it away.”
“Say anything, Mak, don’t be shy!”
“You want it you take it. Don’t play with it here.”
Maimon reached out and took the video camera away from her daughter’s hands. She walked into the kitchen and placed it on the table beside a basket that held bananas. Then she walked back into the living room.
“When he bought it, I was really shocked. Nine hundred dollars for that! I asked him, are you out of your mind or what? But your father, he just laughed at me. Then he took out the strap and attached it to the camera. He slung the thing on himself and walked around the living room. He was telling me, it’s important to wear it with the strap because when we ride on camels the camera might fall off. He was talking about camels!”
“He was funny, Mak. Ayah was always funny,” Jamilah said.
But Maimon said, “Your father was a dreamer.”
* * *
It was evening when Azhar got back from work. When he walked into his living room he found his wife watching The Pyramid Game on television while eating chestnuts.
“You went to see your mother just now?” Azhar asked. “How is she?”
“She’s well,” Jamilah answered.
“That’s good.”
Jamilah passed her bowl of shelled chestnuts over to her husband.
“She’s got a video camera.”
“For what?”
“My father bought it for the Haj trip.”
Azhar looked at the television screen and munched slowly on the chestnuts in his mouth.
“Is the new host better than the old one?” Azhar asked.
“He’s okay.”
“The old one didn’t look too comfortable in front of the camera. But this one is better I think.”
“You know, just now, Mak said I could have her video camera if I wanted it. She wants to give it away.”
“You want it?”
“I don’t know. It’s expensive.”
“What do you want to do with the video camera? You want to make a movie? Send to America’s Funniest Home Videos? Send them one of yourself doing aerobics.”
Jamilah looked down into her bowl of chestnuts. “My friend has a video camera.”
“But really, Jamilah, what do we need it for? What do your friends use it for?”
“Birthday parties. Holidays. I saw this advertisement once. They said that if you had a video camera you can catch the first time your baby learns to speak, or to walk. We can catch a lot of first times on video.”
Azhar looked at the television screen one more time before he walked into the bedroom. Before he went off he said, “They’re all the same, all these hosts. He’s no better than the previous one. It’s a lousy show. Why do you keep watching? You want to see who wins, right? After that, then what? Wasting time!”
* * *
The next day Jamilah visited her mother again. When Maimon opened the door she told her daughter, “I was just thinking about you.”
“What were you thinking about?” Jamilah asked.
“Come in first.”
Jamilah walked into her old house and noticed that the suitcases were not around any more. In fact the place looked so neat and unchanged that she had to remind herself that the house had lost half its occupants. The sofa set with its wooden armrests and brown velvety cushion covers was still around. The television still had its crocheted white cover, and on the walls were the two white plates which her parents had bought from a bazaar in Malacca: one reading ‘Allah’, and the other ‘Muhammad’ in Arabic. The cuckoo clock hung above the television set, with its two pendulous handles. And on the floor was the linoleum which had spots of dirt at its edges. When Jamilah was a child, she liked scratching off those sticky bits of compressed dirt.
“Look at this,” Maimon said, handing her the video camera.
“Why?”
“What’s that red light?”
“Oh, it means... wait, Mak, you got the manual?”
Maimon gave her daughter the manual which had a Japanese section, a Spanish section and an English one.
“Oh,” Jamilah said after reading the manual, “It means battery is low. You didn’t switch it off from yesterday.”
“Is it spoilt?”
“I don’t know. Mak, do you have the big cassette converter?”
“What is that? I don’t know, I just pass everything to you, you take what you want.”
“Okay.”
After half an hour of reading the manual and trying things out on the video camera, Jamilah figured that she now understood how to use it. While her mother was sweeping the kitchen, Jamilah slotted the video cassette into the player that was on the shelf under the television.
“Don’t want lah, put it away.”
“Say anything, Mak, don’t be shy!”
“You want it you take it. Don’t play with it here.”
“Smile!”
When Maimon heard her voice, she walked out into the living room to find her face on the television screen. All the wall mirrors in the house had been turned over to face the wall during the funeral out of superstition, and Maimon had never felt the need to restore them to their proper positions. For the first time in a week, Maimon caught sight of her many white hairs and was convinced that her grieving had caused many more wrinkles to appear.
Then the screen showed the came
ra hovering from the living room to the kitchen. It showed from the level of the dining table: the kitchen cabinets with the Milo tins, the ketchup bottles and even the woks and aluminium pots on the cooker. The screen was still for a long time. Jamilah reached out to press the fast forward button.
Very soon a figure walked into the frame, and Jamilah eased her finger off the button. The figure was taking out a match to light one of the cooker hobs. It moved slowly, placing a pot over the hob. With one hand, it stirred the things in the pot with a red ladle that was lying on a pink towel on the cabinet. The other hand the figure placed on its hip. Then suddenly, the figure stopped stirring and put both of its hands to its face. The video camera caught what sounded like sobbing. Then the figure pulled the front of its clothes up to its face and the lower part of its back could be seen. Then it continued stirring, faster this time.
When Jamilah turned back to look at her mother she saw the frowning expression on her face.
“That’s me,” said Maimon. She was leaning on the edge of the sofa, a frail right hand gripping the armrest.
“Yah.”
“Jamilah, I have something to ask from you.”
“What?”
“Today don’t go home so early. Teach me how to use the camera. And also the video player. I want you to teach me.”
When Jamilah finally left her mother’s house it was already dark. She vowed to herself not to visit her mother so often. She also regretted not being able to bring home the video camera. But she soon forgot all about it as the scent of roasted chestnuts reached her, and the throaty voice of a Chinese man hawked it at ten dollars per kilo.
* * *
It had been a month since Jamilah visited her mother. Within the time she had been busy organising a potluck for the members of her aerobics group. She had also managed to lose three kilograms.
Azhar still worked at the post office and sometimes brought home souvenirs like a calculator-cum-digital alarm clock that commemorated his “Ten Years of Outstanding Service”. When he showed it to Jamilah she said, “Good, we can use it the next time we go on our honeymoon.” Of course as usual Azhar had nothing to say in return.
Within that month, Jamilah never missed an episode of The Pyramid Game, although sometimes Azhar pointed out that the people who won weren’t going to share their prizes with her. Jamilah also tried each night to love Azhar more than the previous night, but on some nights she would stop. That was when she started thinking of how it would be to video themselves in bed to see what they were doing wrong. There was one night when the thought entered her head and she had to stop suddenly.
She clutched Azhar by his shoulders and told him, “Azhar, we cannot go on like this. Tomorrow I will see the doctor.”
* * *
Jamilah was ticking off names on a list when the telephone rang. She thought it was going to be one of her aerobics friends but it turned out to be Maimon.
“Milah, when are you coming to visit me again?”
“You want me to come down?”
“I’m just asking. It’s been one month.”
“I’ll come down later today.”
“I have something to show you.”
In the afternoon, Jamilah took the train down to Choa Chu Kang. When she looked around the carriage, she saw an Indian woman who had her son sitting beside her. He was sleeping on her shoulder with his mouth slightly open.
When Jamilah settled down at her mother’s place, Maimon made her sit on the sofa while she got out a glass of rose syrup. Maimon then took out the video camera and slotted a video cassette tape into the video player.
“I have been playing around with this thing,” Maimon told Jamilah.
“My mother wants to be a director. Can go Malaysia and make movies. Like Yusof Haslam.”
“No, you see what I did with it. You just see.”
The television screen flickered and then showed the living room. There was no sound except that of passing cars. A vase of flowers appeared on the screen, the plastic violet ones that Jamilah had bought for her mother for Hari Raya three years ago. They were dusty and scentless, but their colour had not faded. The camera panned, and Jamilah recognised the sofa she was sitting on. It was unoccupied.
“Mak, you got nothing to do ah?” Jamilah asked.
Maimon was smiling to herself.
“Last time your father lost his IC.˚ We looked around the whole house, cannot find. But you found it behind the cushion. There. If we lose things in this house it’s usually you who can find it. And your father used to say it’s because of your big eyes.”
The camera moved to show Jamilah’s old bedroom. There was a cupboard with one of its hinges broken that was fastened with raffia. A hand appeared to open the cupboard to show yellowed magazine posters of Cliff Richard and Tom Jones pasted on its inside doors. Then the camera moved to reveal the bed. It moved in to show one of its legs, propped up by a folded-up scrap of newspaper.
“Your father loved you. You remember last time, when we had those lucky draw tickets? He always put your name down, even though you were just three years old. Jamilah Binte Abu Bakar. He said you would bring us luck. Then when you learnt to write, he let you fill them up by yourself. Because of that, you always remembered your birth certificate number.”
The camera then moved into the kitchen, and it lingered on a shot of the table.
“When you were small, we would put you on the table. You were not so heavy at that time, and you liked to play with the dish cover. You opened and closed it like it was an umbrella. We fed you at this table. But when we went away you started to cry because you didn’t know how to climb down.”
Jamilah became conscious of her own body and thought how ridiculous it would be to want to sit on that table again. And all those lucky draw coupons. She remembered filling them up, but why had she never brought her parents any luck? There were all these prizes that were promised, three-day-twonight holidays to London, luxury cars, gold watches; whatever happened to all that wishing, all their laughable hopes?
She thought of what a terrible woman her mother was. How could she show Jamilah these shots? What was she trying to do? It all pointed to the fact that a house with no children had no memories. When Jamilah looked at the empty house on the screen, she saw toys spilled onto the linoleum, she heard footsteps, a baby’s faraway cry. She regretted coming to her mother’s house. She regretted having a mother, and she regretted not being one. But when Maimon spoke, Jamilah realised that she was the cruel one for having such thoughts.
“When I look at all this,” Maimon said, “I know he is around.”
Jamilah looked at her mother.
“I know he didn’t go to Som’s house. He’s decided to stay here. He loved me more. He loved us more, you know, Milah. You see.”
In the next shot, there was Maimon sitting on the floor, doing crochet. Sunlight was falling in from the windows and bouncing off her spectacles. When her crochet needles moved, they caught the light and sent out glimmers.
“He’s looking at me while I’m working. He knows I am thinking of him.”
Jamilah reached her hand out and pressed the stop button. Static roared on the screen. Maimon stared at her daughter.
“Mak, I have to go.”
At the door, Maimon pressed the video camera into her daughter’s hands.
“Take it,” Maimon said. “It’s yours.”
While walking through the void deck, Jamilah was seized with a sudden urge to sit down. She found a park bench and placed the video camera by her side. She tried to recall why she had not allowed the video to keep on running.
As she was watching the screen, she had sensed how there were actually four people in the living room. Both mother and daughter felt it and felt themselves shudder with the knowledge. They were watching and, at the same time, being watched, by a child who was not yet born and a husband not yet gone. They were in the company of ghosts.
A cold wind was seeping through the trees. From far away,
Jamilah could hear an MRT train urgently pounding the rails. She stood up to leave and left the video camera on the bench. After a few steps, she turned back and switched it on. The video camera whirred and its red light started blinking. On its viewfinder was Jamilah, walking towards the direction of the MRT station, becoming smaller and even smaller.
ORPHANS
“I can feel myself happy now,” said Karen, looking at Teck How who was at the wheel. “I realised that you’re never really happy until you say it. I’m happy. When I say it I really start feeling it.”
“That’s good,” said Teck How, his eyes on the road signs.
“Look at all this. Look at the radio. It’s got BBC˚ programmed on it. Was that what you listened to before you met me? Was it?”
“Not really.”
“What’s on BBC anyway? Do they play songs? Or is it just people talking?”
“Sometimes there’s songs and sometimes there’s talking,” said Teck How.
Karen paused and looked out of the window. She caught the look on her face in the side mirror. In the afternoon, outside light burst through the branches of the trees as they slid down the expressway. The sky was a light blue with no clouds.
“I was just thinking,” Karen suddenly said, to nobody at all.
“Thinking about what?” Teck How threw a glance at her.
“Is the radio on this station because you know I like it? Some men don’t like love songs. Did you just tune it to this for me?”
“Well, I think so, Karen.”
“So you don’t really like it, but it’s there because I’m here?”
“Well, not really, I don’t mind the songs.”
“You don’t mind them, but do you prefer something else?”
“I don’t care. I just listen to the radio while driving because it’s relaxing. You know what I mean.”
“Yes I know what you mean,” Karen said, before pressing the number ‘3’ button that changed the channel to BBC.
“When I was in school my teacher told all of us to listen to the BBC because it would help us speak better. But I didn’t know how to tune my radio to it,” Karen said.
