“You said they’d brought in a bomoh already.”
She nodded. “I’m sure that’s one of the first things her mother did.”
“Well, of course,” the bomoh agreed. “I can’t just take over from another, you know. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Could you look together?”
He considered it. “I suppose I could, Cik Yam, if you spoke to the mother about it. Why don’t you do that,” he urged her, “and if she agrees, we can do it right away. That poor child.”
Maryam needed no more encouragement, and raced back to Kampong Tawang immediately, even though showing up at Mahgrib, the twilight prayer, was definitely not done. After all, it was not only prayer time, but dinner time as well, and an unannounced visitor arriving just then was assumed to be bawah perut kerumah orang: bringing her stomach to someone else’s house, asking to be fed. Maryam knew it was rude, and feared it might be misinterpreted. But she wasn’t hungry, so she would decline any invitations to eat and was sure that her mission would trump missing prayer. There was no time to lose.
She took her taxi almost to the bottom of the steps, and called loudly to Azizah. She came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel, clearly mystified to see Maryam standing there.
She frowned worriedly. “Kak, is something the matter?”
“I’m afraid for Aisha.”
“So am I,” her mother answered, still unsure why Maryam was standing at her steps, wringing her hands.
“May I come up?”
“Of course, of course, excuse me,” Azizah stood aside on the porch.
“Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking.” Maryam explained what she feared, and her conversation with Pak Cik Awang. Azizah nodded, saying nothing. “I know you feel the same,” Maryam concluded.
Aisha’s mother looked devastated. “What are you saying?”
“Mak Cik,” Maryam said urgently, “Have you thought Aisha may have been poisoned? That’s why she’s so…quiet. I don’t mean just jampi: maybe kecubong, or even opium! Something to make sure she doesn’t talk. Someone who thinks she knows something or she’s seen something. Tell me,” she put her hand on Azizah’s shoulder, “has anyone been over, bringing any presents for Aisha? Any fruits or candy, just for her? Please Mak Cik, this could save her life.”
Her mother started crying, burying her head in her hands and rocking back and forth. “My little girl!” She cried. “I can’t lose my little girl.”
“We’ve got to act,” Maryam was impatient, nearly shaking the weeping woman. “Come now, Kak, tell me!”
Azizah tried to calm herself and think clearly. “Abang Dollah, of course. He knows Aisha well, and he brought some cakes for her. Her favourite, that his wife baked.”
“When was that?”
“The day she moved in here. He’s been by a few times to cheer her up.”
The women looked at each other. “Anyone else?” Maryam asked.
She thought. “Well, of course, her friends here. The other boys who play in the orchestra and their wives. Fruits and stuff like that”
“I’d like to bring my bomoh here: he might be able to tell what’s wrong with her. If she’s been poisoned.”
Azizah began weeping afresh. “Yes, yes! Let him come. I just want to save my child!”
Maryam once again rushed into the taxi, and raced back to Kampong Penambang. She feared to lose any time and felt Aisha might be sinking quickly. It was night by now, but she didn’t allow politeness to deflect her.
“Pak Cik Awang!” she called, even before she had reached his steps. “Pak Cik! Please!”
He came out of his house and padded quickly down the stairs. “Well?”
“Her mother asks you come and see her,” Maryam was panting now, both from running and anxiety. “Can you come now? Please? I’m very frightened for her.”
Pak Cik Awang grabbed his bag, and clattered back down the steps. “Let’s go!” he ordered. Once again, Maryam was in the taxi hurtling toward Tawang, slowing down to avoid the ruts, which made Maryam grit her teeth in impatience. She fairly bounced on the back seat, willing the driver to go faster. Aisha’s parents were waiting for her on the main road, to more quickly take her to the house. The father was silent, his jaw set and clenched, while her mother sobbed openly as she pulled Maryam by the hand to the house. They nearly pushed the old bomoh up the stairs and into the living room, while the family gathered silently to watch him with hopeful eyes.
Pak Cik Awang knelt next to Aisha, who hadn’t moved since Maryam saw her last. He pulled her into a sitting position, waving her mother to sit behind her, supporting her. He tipped back her chin, stared into her eyes and tried desperately to have her focus on him: calling her name, even tugging gently on her hair. He looked inside her mouth and at the tips of her fingers.
He sat back on his haunches and regarded her for a long moment, while Aisha lay limp against her distraught mother. He shook his head and looked up at her father. “She needs to go to the hospital – or to a doctor,” he said. “I can do a few things to keep her safe, but I don’t have the medicines the doctors will have. She should be taken right away.”
Aisha’s mother fainted behind her, falling back against the wall. Her brother picked up Aisha’s limp body, and slid into the taxi with Maryam and Pak Cik Awang. “To the General Hospital,” Maryam ordered. “Hurry!” She watched the kampong roads streak by in a blur. This time there was no slowing for potholes, and the car seemed to take flight over the larger ones and land with a bone-crushing thud.
They stopped abruptly in front of Kota Bharu’s sprawling General Hospital. It had more of an atmosphere of a county fair: the road leading to the entrance was packed with hawkers selling food and snacks, soap, shampoo and towels. As Ali carried his sister behind Pak Cik Awang, the assembled crowd murmured their concern, whispering their own diagnoses and shaking their heads that such a young girl should come to this.
“Go tell them,” Pak Cik Awang gave Ali a push toward the admitting nurse. Nothing in the Emergency Room seemed to count as an emergency: prospective patients had set up camp in the room and resigned themselves to never getting closer to an actual doctor than they were now. Whole families sat on the floor around their sick relatives, plying them with tea and Panadol while they ate their dinner.
Ali leaned over the nurse’s desk in a way that Aisha was almost laid out full length upon it. “My sister!” he cried. “She’s been poisoned!
Help me!”
The nurse looked up at him as though he were an apparition come to haunt her. “There are forms,” she lifted a languid wrist towards a table at the other end of the room. She regarded Aisha with distaste. “You can wait…”
Maryam barged in around Ali. “This girl is dying,” she boomed, leaning in toward the nurse. “Do you want to let her die here? How can you be so heartless?” The other encampments quieted down to hear the discussion. The nurse suddenly appeared uncomfortable. “Now Mak Cik,” she said, nervously turning her head. “We have rules.”
“Rules! She’s dying, don’t you understand?” Maryam saw a pair of doctors walking behind the nurse. “Doctor,” she shrieked, surprising herself with the pitch and volume of her scream. “Help me!”
The doctors turned to her. Patients did not shriek in the hospital waiting room. Patients and their families remained patient, gave themselves up to fate and waited their turn. They did not look as though they might jump the nurse and hold the doctors hostage.
“What’s the trouble?” one asked.
“She’s dying,” Maryam continued at top volume. Ali watched her, both admiring and aghast. “She’s been poisoned. Help her! Please!”
A doctor moved the now clearly sulking nurse out of the way and began to look over Aisha’s lifeless form. “Do you know what it is?” he asked.
“I think kecubong,” Maryam answered, decidedly more quiet now that someone was paying attention. She gave the nurse a triumphant look. “She’s been getting worse every day.”
> “Take her in,” the doctor said to Ali, who scooped her up and followed the doctor to the exam room. Maryam sat down with Pak Cik Awang in the waiting room, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
Pak Cik Awang looked amused. “I didn’t know you could scream like that.”
“Neither did I,” Maryam admitted. “But it worked,” she added with a touch of pride.
Aisha’s parents burst into the room moments later, and Maryam pointed them to the room where she lay.
“What did you think?” Maryam asked the bomoh. “Did you think poison?”
“I did. Did you see her eyes?” he asked. “Kecubong, maybe mixed with opium. Someone wants her more than just quiet, Cik Yam. I think they wanted to make it look like she was falling into madness and would then die of it, but her death was their objective. I’d put money on it.”
“Where would you get these poisons?”
Pak Cik Awang shrugged. “You can always get it if you’re really looking for it.”
“Opium?” Maryam was doubtful.
He nodded. “Not in Kelantan, but you could in Thailand. And kecubong … well, if you didn’t buy it, you could find it in the jungle. It grows there.”
Maryam shivered. Aisha must have seen something, must know something. Maybe she didn’t even know what she’d seen, or she knew, but wanted to keep quiet. Maryam sat quietly, hoping for good news.
Chapter XX
Johan, Faouda’s new husband, was not pleased to find himself in the Kuala Krai police station. He slumped scowling in a chair, complaining loudly about wasting his whole day at work, if not more, for what he considered police bullshit.
Osman had ushered him into a small room equipped with a table and four scruffy chairs. He sat away from the table, willing himself to fade into the walls. Johan swung his legs and kicked his chair rhythmically. It was incredibly annoying.
“Who are you? I’m thirsty.”
“I’m Mak Cik Maryam…”
“You’re the one! My wife told me about you.” He leaned forward on the table, stretching his arms in front of him. “Tell me, what’s your problem?” he continued. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m working to find out who killed Ghani,” she answered equitably.
“Well, I didn’t,” he announced. “And I don’t know who did. And I don’t care, either. Get me something to drink,” he added sullenly. He turned to Osman, who held his hand up as if to ward him off. “Talk to Mak Cik Maryam now,” he said, indicating her chair with his chin, and Johan slumped back down into his chair.
Maryam turned to Osman and mouthed “Drinks?” He opened the door and asked a policeman to get some cold drinks. “So,” she began, looking Johan over. She didn’t much like what she saw. His hair was tousled and greasy, and he wore a grimy white T-shirt and jeans. His face was wide and square, with small eyes and a wide mouth. As one who hoped to soon become a grandmother, Maryam could not help speculating on what his and Faouda’s children might look like: the eyes were going to be tiny and the face wide. It didn’t sound like a recipe for beauty. She forced herself back to the present. “I hear you went to Kota Bharu to get married.”
He scratched his chest extravagantly and yawned. “Is there a law against it?”
“No.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“I just want to know where you were while you were up there.”
“Sightseeing,” he smirked. She longed to smack him.
“How long have you known Faouda?”
“A while. Look, where’s my drink?”
“It’s coming. I get the feeling you’d rather not talk to me.”
“You got that right.”
“Would you prefer to talk to Cik Osman? He’s the Chief of Police in Kota Bharu.”
Johan cast a contemptuous eye on Osman. “No, I’d prefer not to talk to anybody.”
“That might not be possible.”
“Try.”
Maryam rose. “Suit yourself,” she muttered softly. She left the office and Osman followed her. “I can’t do anything with him. Do you see how snotty he is?”
“Can I help you?” one of the older policemen asked
“He’s impossible,” she told him, rolling her eyes.
“May I, Cik Osman?” he asked politely. “I’ll take care of it. Stay here for a moment.”
“Thanks,” Maryam said, standing at his desk while Johan was being convinced. There was a sudden report, like a pistol shot, which startled Maryam and sent her jumping into the furniture. “What was that?”
The policeman came out of the room and stood gesturing for her to enter. “He’s all yours now, Mak Cik. I believe he may be more cooperative.” He smiled at her and then at Osman and sat back at his desk.
They went in to find Johan with a bright red cheek and a small trickle of blood running down his chin. He was patting it clean with the hem of his T-shirt.
“I guess I’m supposed to be more polite.”
“It would help,” Maryam replied. “Do you want to talk now?”
“OK.” He settled back into scowling, but at least he now had a reason for that, Maryam thought. She had little sympathy for him. The side of his face was beginning to swell. Osman took in Johan’s face and walked out of the office: he was speaking to someone there, but while she could hear the sound of his voice, the words were indistinct.
“I’ll start again,” she began. “When did you come up to Kota Bharu?”
I dunno. Thursday, maybe.”
“And when did you find Faouda?”
“Friday morning, at the taxi station.”
He and Faouda had coordinated their stories at any rate. “Where did you stay that night, before you found her?”
“At a hotel in Kota Bharu.”
She waited.
“The Hotel Tokyo,” he finally specified. “It’s on Jalan Temenggong, on the second floor. That’s where we stayed the whole time we were here.”
“And you left on Monday morning, early?”
He nodded. “Had to get back to work.”
Maryam felt she was getting nowhere with him. She tried to order her thoughts to make them more effective.
“When did you find out Faouda married Ghani?”
“Right after it happened, I guess.”
“Did you want to marry her?”
Their drinks had arrived. Johan gulped his while Maryam continued her questioning, trying to keep her momentum. “Well, did you?”
“I did, and she knew it.” He gingerly wiped his mouth. “I asked her already. I thought she’d said yes.”
“And then?”
“And then I heard she married this musician guy, so I went to see her. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked her. ‘I thought we were getting married.’”
“Had you asked her before she was divorced from, I forget his name …?”
“Yahya? The older guy? Well, nothing happened.”
“Of course not, but did you?”
He nodded. “I told her, ‘Faouda, get out of this marriage. It isn’t going to work. He’s an older guy with kids your age. He doesn’t want children, and besides, give his wife a couple of months and she’ll have you run out of town.’” He crossed his arms.
Osman slipped back into the room and sat in his chair against the wall. He watched them both like a spectator at a tennis game.
“Good advice,” Maryam told him.
“It sure was. Besides, I didn’t like her living with him. It wasn’t right,” he scrunched up his eyes. “I mean, anyone could see it wasn’t going to work, so why drag it out, right? I was taking a load of lumber to Alor Setar, the west coast, so I was gone – maybe a week, maybe a little more. When I come back, guess what? She’s divorced and she’s married! I was stunned, no kidding. What happened?”
“What did she tell you?”
“What was there to tell? She met Ghani, she says they’re in love. They got married. She’s the second wife.
“‘For God’s sake, Faouda’ I t
ell her, ‘Another second wife? And now he lives up near Kota Bharu? When are you ever going to see him?’
“‘Don’t worry about that,’ she says, all pleased with herself. ‘He’s crazy about me. He’ll be here all the time. He can’t get enough.’
“Wrong! I knew right away, ‘cause I’m a guy and I know how guys think, he’d already gotten all he wanted. She’s very trusting that way.” He nodded to emphasize just how naive Faouda really was and took another long pull at his tea.
“So to prove her point, she goes up to Kota Bharu to be with him. And naturally, it doesn’t turn out the way she plans. I knew it,” he took another swig of his teh beng, sweet iced tea loaded, as were almost all beverages in Kelantan, with sweetened condensed milk, “so I went up to Kota Bharu right after her. I thought, I’ll be there when she gets divorced and we’ll get married right away. And I was right! It happened just like I told her it would. She shows up, the wife pitches a fit, Faouda’s divorced. It took hours, I tell you, just hours before she was out on her ear.
“I found her at the taxi station, sort of drifting, and was she surprised to see me! She throws herself at me, right in the middle of the station, all these people around and says, ‘You were right! I can’t believe I was so stupid. Can you ever forgive me?’”
Maryam thought it sounded like a soap opera, but it clearly worked on Johan; he positively glowed.
“I took her to a coffee shop, let her clean up her makeup and stuff, and said ‘It’s time for us to get married.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she says. ‘Right now!’ So we went over to the khadi, but it’s Friday and we can’t do anything. It’s closed. So, I thought, we’re so near Sungei Golok, we can cross into Thailand and find a khadi there! Not so strict, you understand.”
He waited for her to acknowledge what he said. “We just wandered into a kampong and found one. He was having his lunch, but when we showed up waiting to get married and happy to pay, he got right on with it. No waiting there, I tell you! I paid him, and we were married! Just like that. Great, isn’t it?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “It’s legal.” He gave her a sober look, daring her to say it wasn’t. Maryam sat silently; everyone knew anything and everything was for sale in Sungei Golok, a wide open border town just across the river from Kelantan. Why not marriage?
Shadow Play Page 14
