Once We Were There

by Bernice Chauly

  Once We Were There

  A Novel

  Bernice Chauly

  ISBN: 978-981-47-8517-4

  First Edition: June 2017

  © 2017 by Bernice Chauly

  Author photo by Daniel Adams. Used with permission.

  Published in Singapore by Epigram Books

  www.epigrambooks.sg

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Apart from the well-known public figures,

  historical events and locales that feature, all characters and incidents

  are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  “An exhilarating fiction with a breathless, breakneck pace, like the new Malaysia it lovingly and bitingly tells on, with corrupt, idealistic, greedy, confused, identifiably Malaysian ordinary-native-citizens-politicians-power-monger-dispossessed-resistant characters to usher in a generational shift in sensibility. A must-read for all who track Malaysian literature into the 21st century.”

  —Shirley Geok-lin Lim, author of Among the White Moon Faces, American Book Award winner

  “A love song to thwarted motherhood and the blunted dreams of the Reformasi movement, Once We Were There is as Malaysian as teh tarik—sweet, dark and a jolt to the senses.”

  —Mei Fong, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

  “Once We Were There is an exhilarating novel, capturing a Malaysia rarely seen in literature, of late 90s political activism and of KL's kaleidoscopic counter-cultures. Chauly also writes so wisely about love, injustice and profound loss, and how the human spirit endures and finds the strength to go on.”

  —Susan Barker, author of The Incarnations

  “Once We Were There is a timely and important novel. First it plunges the reader into the social, cultural and sexual environment of KL at the turn of the millennium. Then it tells a story which is both heartbreaking and gripping, and deftly illustrates the inextricability of the personal and the political.”

  —James Scudamore, Somerset Maugham Award-winning author of The Amnesia Clinic

  Also From the Author

  going there and coming back

  The Book of Sins

  Lost in KL

  Growing Up With Ghosts

  Onkalo

  For Tasnem and Leia

  Prologue

  My name is Delonix Regia. I am named after the most flamboyant of all tropical trees, the flame of the forest. My father, a well-known lawyer and an avid naturalist, had a particular passion for tropical flora and their Latin names.

  On the day I was born, he planted a seedling in our garden. Today, it stands taller than our house, where the end of the garden meets Gasing Hill, and where the red flowers fall onto the grass like a magical cloak. As a child, I once saw a black cobra weave in and out of the flowers, this glittery black slash easing the crimson cover left and right. I was struck with fright and watched it slither into the leafy green undergrowth and disappear into the jungle.

  I have long memories of rain. Soft tropical showers, majestic, thunderous storms, and itinerant drizzles, which would come and go for hours, days. The Malaysian monsoon is a vehement creature, powerful and glorious, yet tender enough to soothe one into the most delicious of sleeps. This is how I remember the rains. My childhood came with the rains.

  And this, my father’s garden.

  One

  Standing in the Eyes of the World

  Kuala Lumpur. KL. Kala Lumpa or Kala Lampur to the white man, the Mat Sallehs. City of sinners and sex. Sodom and Gomorrah. It was 1998, and the city was the “party central” of Asia. Of the world. Drugs had opened up the minds of this one-time placid society and bayed in a new revolution, in a time when people hungered for freedom from authoritarian politicians, from the police, from their mindless jobs, from themselves.

  Ecstasy had hit the town, in a way that could only be described as monumental. There were feng tau clubs in Bukit Bintang, Cheras, and Jinjang that catered to the Chinese riffraff, the ah bengs and ah lians who felt ill at ease in the posh, uppity bars like Museum and the Backroom Club.

  There were clubs for Indian gangsters in Sentul and Selayang; there were dodgy dangdut clubs on Jalan Ipoh and Brickfields, where the girls would dance with you, get high with you, and then go down on you; there were underground clubs that opened up after the other ones closed, then stayed open till people had come down from their highs.

  Dealers were raking it in. MDMA was on everyone’s lips and tongues. There was pussy and dick everywhere. Pink. Brown. Yellow. Black.

  Everybody was high.

  DJs flew in from all over the world to play to hundreds—no, thousands of people who swallowed pink, blue, white pills. Everybody wanted E. Nobody drank alcohol, water was the salve for the days and nights on sweaty dance floors.

  Ecstasy was prayer. Ecstasy was the new god.

  The great Asian financial crisis was crawling out. Billions were lost, millions gained. The ringgit had been pegged at RM3.80 against the US dollar. It saved us. Our ASEAN neighbours didn’t fare so well.

  The Petronas Twin Towers were finally complete. The towering phallic monstrosities had transformed the city. And there were stories that bled upon storeys for fodder. It was the topic of conversation at every dinner table, every mamak stall, every kopitiam between Bangsar and Cheras, how ugly it looked. How sterile, how un-KL, how Western.

  Aiyoh, so sci-fi.

  Like Gotham City.

  So ugly lah.

  Celaka betul.

  Celaka. Cursed.

  Cursed to never be built.

  Before the Towers, the site was the Turf Club. Built by the British because they knew the land was unsafe for any structure taller than a coconut tree. Underneath the turf was a network of limestone caves. To build the world’s tallest twin structures above hollow caves was an act of folly, of utter stupidity. It was a disaster in the making. Mahathir’s “twin pricks”, that’s what they were. A sign that Malaysia had come into its own. That “we” had arrived. That our quest to have the world’s tallest flagpole, its longest beef murtabak, and the biggest mall in Asia had succeeded—and that Malaysians had something, finally, something, to be proud of.

  These towers, designed by a New Yorker of Argentinean descent and built by rival Japanese and Korean engineering companies who had to pump millions upon millions of tonnes of concrete into miles of limestone caves, had validated our feeling that Malaysia had arrived. Never mind that it was built by thousands of Bangladeshi and Indonesian workers slaving away on meagre wages, some of whom had been crushed to death in hushed-up accidents. That they’d died senselessly like frogs, mati-katak, for another notch in our country’s race to become a First-World nation by looking like a First-World nation.

  The towers loomed over KL, a new symbol for the city, like the Sears Tower, like the Empire State Building. We had come to be defined by two eighty-eight-storey shards of concrete, aluminium, glass, and steel. Two towering octagons inspired by sacred Islamic geometry. From distant suburbs to the Golden Triangle, the Twin Towers rose above everything else, flanked by the KL Tower, now dwarfed and comical with its pink shaft. This was engineering at its best, this was the strongest steel in the world, capable of withstanding tremors, because its steel beams could bend under pressure.

  It was haunted, like every other building in KL. Yet the ghosts of the fallen would never be venerated here. Instead, people would flo
ck to Gucci, Bally, Prada, British India, Chanel, Dior and Aseana to proselytise the gods of haute couture.

  The newly built Bukit Jalil Sports Complex was sprawled out and ready for the Commonwealth Games. Malaysians were gearing up for the world stage, our time had come to show the world that we were capable, that Malaysia Boleh! Yes, we can! That we had arrived.

  In September, everything changed.

  On 2 September, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was sacked by Mahathir Mohamad, the dictatorial, authoritarian Prime Minister who had ruled for 17 years.

  On 11 September, the Commonwealth Games opened with no-expense-spared fireworks, pomp, and circumstance. Ella, the pint-sized Malaysian songstress, performed the theme song of the games, “Standing in the Eyes of the World”, with smouldering black eyeliner and poor diction.

  I hope you enjois!—to screaming multitudes.

  On 20 September, Anwar Ibrahim was arrested.

  On 29 September, he appeared in court with a black eye.

  Malaysia, the beloved country of my birth, would never be the same again.

  Run!

  The gas is coming again!

  The mosque!

  Get into the mosque!

  We ran, like thousands of crazed rats. Our clothes were drenched and I realised immediately that it was impossible to run with soggy shoes. My hand instinctively covered my camera lens. A wet lens is a dead lens. My feet slipped and slid inside my drenched sneakers. I did not need or want a sprain or a broken limb. Sumi grabbed my hand, her eyes wild.

  Are you okay?

  I nodded. Our slippery hands held fast. I heard screams as some tried to rub the tear gas from their eyes, giving in to instinct. There is nothing like tear gas to make you angry. Politicise you. Our politicians had no idea what they were doing. Revolutionaries were created on the street, that very day.

  The protest took place a few hours before Anwar’s arrest that night. We had gathered outside the National Mosque, getting handphone messages that he was going to be there. I picked Sumi up from her apartment in Sri Petaling and we drove into the city. The traffic jam was bumper to bumper all the way from Jalan Parlimen, cars inching up against each other, as we snaked along the road, all the way to Dataran Merdeka, Independence Square. A detour towards Central Market enabled us to find a spot in the parking lot. There were thousands of people already walking towards the mosque. You could sense the excitement, the anger. It was brittle, electrifying.

  Anwar was sacked for supposed sexual misconduct—specifically, adultery and sodomy. In a country where draconian laws still harked back to the time of the British, giving someone a blowjob or having anal sex was a heinous crime.

  The daily papers barked out offensive headline after headline, demonising Anwar.

  Sodomite! Adulterer! The Rise and Fall of Anwar Ibrahim.

  These words unleashed a national fury and Malaysians of all ages took to the streets. It was Reformasi. The Malaysian Reformation had begun.

  Mahathir’s regime had created a generation of Malaysians who were complicit and afraid. The Internal Security Act ensured that. Detention without trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You were always guilty. And even if you weren’t, you’d still be.

  Sumi was angry. We all were. She had studied law in the UK and we’d both been writers at The Review—“The smartest men’s magazine in town”—for two years. We liked each other from the start, we understood each other. We liked to drink and talk. We knew that what was happening was historic. And that it would change us forever.

  By the time we got to the mosque, we could barely see Anwar, who was perched on a makeshift podium. We could only hear him through the loudhailer. All around me, I saw faces twisted in anger. I started taking pictures.

  Let them do their job! The media is showing us who they really are! Dogs! Anjing! Liars! Penipu! They supported me and now they want to see me guilty. Guilty! Do you think I am guilty?

  The crowd roared. Some fifty thousand voices, all shouting in unison.

  No! HE is guilty!

  Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!

  Together our fists rose in solidarity.

  We who are gathered here in Kuala Lumpur pledge to defend the freedom and sanctity of the nation to the last drop of our blood… We resolve to revive the spirit of freedom… We will not suffer injustice and oppression in the land… We will not suffer the replacement of foreign oppressors with those raised from among ourselves… We oppose all cruel and oppressive laws which deny the people their fundamental rights and freedoms… We denounce those who corrupt our system of justice… We denounce corruption, abuse of power and the conspiracy devised by a greedy elite to blind the people to the truth in order to maintain their grip on power and wealth!

  The crowd roared.

  Reformasi! Reformasi!

  Anwar, voice hoarse and fist raised, continued.

  We raise the spirit of freedom! We are united against oppression! We are united in our resolve to establish justice! Long live the people! Give victory to Reform! We demand the resignation of Mahathir Mohamad!

  Sumi and I looked at each other. We grinned widely. The revolution had begun.

  Behind us, the Federal Reserve Unit trucks rolled up and the clanging started.

  As if out of politeness, the bell rang three times. And then jets of water hit us like a torrent of stones. A merciless pounding. Water bullets. We were getting a beating.

  We screamed. I fell against a man behind me. He fell against someone else and together we tumbled to the ground like tiddlywinks. Arms, legs, hair, everywhere. All flailing. We got up and we started running. Or tried to. There was panic, confusion. We ran into each other, smacking into arms, chests, elbows. No escape. There was water in my mouth, in my ears. My camera was under my shirt. Sumi had vanished.

  The crowd moved like a school of fish; it swayed to the right to repel a predator, then to the left to consolidate with greater strength. Right. Left. Right. Then another gust of water came and the configuration broke. I was in a sea of wet beasts, sweaty and angry in a swirling, hot sea.

  I heard the hailer again.

  Undur! Undur!

  Retreat! Retreat now!

  The crowd moaned. It was low, gurgly, like fish out of water, drowning in air. The water ceased. Bodies were exposed, stunned. Brown. Yellow. Black. Soggy eyes stared ahead at the figure on the podium. He was still there. Anwar stood strong and resolute.

  We will fight this. We will overcome this. Malaysians will rise, now! This is the time to rise!

  A tide of drenched people. We could smell one another’s unravelling scents: salty, raw, ripe.

  Reformasi!

  Reformasi!

  Reformasi!

  Tens of thousands of voices, screaming in unison.

  With our lungs, our hearts, our faces. Our bellies, our tongues.

  Then Sumi was there, by my side. She had blood on the side of her face.

  What happened?

  It’s okay. Run. It’s coming. Now!

  And then we saw it. A canister flying above us, a metal bird, wingless. Then another. We swirled again to avoid it, but the configuration was broken, the moment was gone. Too late. As it fell, slivers of gas escaped streaming out like thin white fingers.

  Then, it started.

  Your breath stops. Your eyes sting, like they’re being gouged out by an interning dentist. The nerves in your nose begin to explode. Panic. Panic sets in.

  I grabbed Sumi.

  I can’t see!

  I got you. Just hang on!

  Run!

  Lari!

  Run!

  To the mosque!

  Shit! The gas is in the mosque!

  We ran up the stairs. My slimy sneakers slipped and I crashed onto the steps. My knee hit the white marble floor. My camera fell, heavy; my zoom lens thudded, then bounced with a splintering sound. Then, darkness.

  My cheek was shoved onto coarse carpet. I opened my eyes, lungs heaving. I tasted gas in my mouth and
I raised my nose upward to breathe. Above me, the cloud of gas still hung like a grey shroud. Others were on the ground, retching.

  Loud weeping. Strangers vomiting. A large woman in a scarf sprawled on the floor, sobbing.

  Ya Allah, Ya Tuhanku, tolonglah kami.

  God, help us all.

  The bastards had tear-gassed the National Mosque. A sacred sanctuary.

  Fucking assholes! Fuckers!

  Sumi hissed through a dirty towel. Her eyes were wild.

  Here, breathe! It’s still damp.

  She took it off and gave it to me.

  Take it! You’re okay. You’re going to get a motherfucking bruise, but you’ll live.

  She managed a muffled laugh.

  I grabbed the towel and shoved it against my nose. Took deep breaths. It was pungent, sweaty, sharp, I almost gagged. Bile was threatening its way up my gut; I forced it back down.

  I looked up to the domed ceiling, and its stark, lean curvature gave me a shiver of comfort. I turned around. The floor was covered with men and women, some prostrate, some lying down, some curled up in the foetal position. There was a dull ringing in my ears and the heavy sounds of my laboured breath.

  You’re fine. You’re safe… Sumi muttered.

  I nodded. Everything hurt. The insides of my head felt scorched. Fried.

  Slowly we got up. Some rubbed their eyes in wonder, some were still in shock. Shouts of acute pain.

  The cloud had dissipated; the air was clear again. As the air conditioning kicked in, vents sucked out the angry gas. Many had started praying, prostrate on the ground. Soft murmurs surrounded me.

  I pulled myself up. Shivered. Everything was still wet and my knee hurt like hell. I turned and retched; out came clear yellow bile. I wanted a cold beer.

  Sumi nodded. She felt the same. We stumbled out, Sumi supporting my arm. All along the street, hundreds huddled up against each other. Hugs were shared, some brave smiles. I clicked again and again, my lens still intact, images of solidarity after tear gas. Weak shouts of Reformasi!