Spirits Abroad (ebook) Read online

  "Did you see the mak cik?" said Hasnah.

  Esther was fiddling with the projector: it wouldn't project. It took a minute for Hasnah's words to filter past her worry.

  "Mak cik?" She remembered a very old, very small woman in a dazzling baju kurung, wandering along the corridor outside the conference room. "The one with the pink tudung, is it?"

  "She's here for the forum!" said Hasnah triumphantly.

  "Kidding? I thought she was a guest at the hotel."

  "She's the founder of some women's NGO here," said Hasnah. "The Amnesty guy invited her."

  "Thank God for the Amnesty guy," said Esther.

  The program timetable meant that they'd only had a week and a half to prepare for the Pahang forum. It had been a nightmarish 1.5 weeks for Esther, whose job was to make sure they had enough delegates at the forum, while avoiding the steely gaze of the mainstream media.

  One night last week she'd woken herself up trying to invite delegates in her dreams. She'd lain dazed in her bed and heard a voice talking, and did not at first know it was herself: "... calling from API. API. The Asian Political Institute. No, not Bicycle, Political — yes, we're an NGO. We are organizing a forum on the position of minorities in Malaysia. Would your organization be interested in sending a representative?"

  Thank God for the Amnesty guy. Esther had found his contact details in an obscure corner of the Amnesty International website. She hadn't even known the guy before she phoned him up, but he'd dug up everyone with a modicum of civic sensibility in Kuantan.

  The result seemed to be a huge number of uncles in batik shirts, but Esther wasn't complaining.

  "We were chatting when she registered," said Hasnah. "She told me she's eighty-six years old."

  "So old already still want to talk about human rights," said Intan. Intan was a long, bony piece of irony, with uncovered short hair and bored eyes. She directed the local branch of a major international non-profit.

  "Eh, don't so ageist," said Hasnah. "Old people also should exercise their right to participate in civil society."

  "When I am old I won't care about this kind of thing anymore," said Intan. "Minority rights ke, religious freedom ke — all that, forget about it. I will be totally burn out. I'll go live in a fishing village in Terengganu and watch the penyu come out of the sea, and I'll never read the news."

  "If by then this country is not fixed then really no hope," said Hasnah somberly.

  Hasnah was technically Esther's boss, but sometimes she made Esther feel old.

  Intan pursed her mouth.

  "Still got time," was all she said. "I'm not old yet."

  "Ah!" said Esther. They all looked up at the screen.

  The first Powerpoint slide said:

  First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia.

  It was in English and Malay. Well, sort of Malay.

  "'Forum pertama tentang posisi minoriti di Malaysia'?" said Intan, outraged. "What idiot did that translation?"

  Of course Ming Jun came up just at that moment. Fortunately he was frowning at his BlackBerry and didn't hear her. Intan hit him on the arm.

  "Eh, you. What is that, hah? You call that Bahasa Melayu?"

  Ming Jun flicked his eyes up, still typing. He had the grace to look embarrassed when his eyes slid over the title.

  "I couldn't find my Kamus Dewan that week," he said. "And after that, we already use it for the first few forums, so have to be consistent."

  "Next time," said Intan, "go to bookshop and buy the damn dictionary."

  At two o'clock the delegates started filtering into the conference room, greased into contentment by the free buffet lunch. Kuantan wasn't as fun as Melaka had been, with the delights of Jonker Street just down the road, but at least the food at this hotel was decent.

  There were forty people today and five facilitators, which meant eight delegates per group — a good number for a roundtable discussion.

  "I only have three Malay guys at my table," confided Murni. Esther nodded. She'd only met Murni that morning, when she introduced herself as the press officer of a Muslim feminist group.

  "The Muslims don't like us and the feminists also don't like us," she'd told Esther.

  "How many feminists?" Esther said now.

  Murni laughed.

  "Haven't find out yet," she said. "There's one lady from the Women's Society of Kuantan, wearing this sexy baju kebaya. Very tight! I have high hopes for her. Are you rapporteuring for me today?"

  Esther shook her head. "I'm with Ming Jun. You know how fast he talks. I'm the fastest typist, so I'm the one who has to have hand pain."

  Ming Jun's voice drifted over to them. He was talking to a grumpy-looking Chinese uncle in a green batik shirt. Ming Jun spoke fluent textbook Malay, but he'd studied eight years at the University of Minnesota before coming home, and it showed in his accent. Combined with his ultra-formal diction, the effect was outlandish.

  "Sounds like RTM kan," said Murni. "Like the newscaster on the TV."

  "Radio Televisyen Minneapolis?" whispered Esther. They both giggled.

  "OK, tuan-tuan dan puan-puan," said Hasnah. "Thanks for coming. Just to confirm, yes, we are awarding certificates for attendance ...."

  Something funny was happening at Esther's table. She couldn't work out what it was.

  It had taken a while for the discussion to get off the ground, because the mak cik was at their table. Ming Jun had scarcely finished asking the first question on the list ("How would you define 'minority' in the Malaysian context?") when the old lady's hand shot up.

  "Tuan Pengerusi," she said. "Mr. Chairman."

  Esther smothered a shout of laughter under a coughing fit. Ming Jun blinked.

  "Uh, yes, Datin Zainab?" he said.

  "Assalamualaikum and good afternoon," she said to the table. She spoke the beautiful precise Malay of the school teacher: her cadences were a wonderful thing. "Thank you for inviting me to speak today. The chairman has asked a question. I would also like to ask a question. My question is, what is the meaning of 'context'?"

  "Told you 'konteks' wasn't Malay," hissed Esther.

  But apparently the question was rhetorical.

  "When I was an MP near Raub in 1965, what was my context?" said the Datin. "My constituents were simple villagers. We had only one small primary school, no secondary school. The closest secondary school was miles away. I used to wake up at 5 am and my driver and I would pick up the bright, ambitious children, and drive them to the secondary school in town. After that I went straight to work and I worked until 6 pm. Then I went home and cooked dinner for my family and helped my children with their homework. At 10 pm I went to bed, but then I would be woken up again. One of the villagers would come: 'Datin, my wife is ill, please can you send her to the doctor.' What was there to do? Who else had a car? I could only get the car out, wake up the driver and go out again. And the next morning, up again at 5 am.

  "That was my context. To me, it was nothing hard. I didn't think I was suffering. It was my job. Now the politicians say they are very busy, oh, so many important things to do. But if they say they are too busy to help their constituents? I don't believe. It's whether you want to or not. That is what I believe."

  Ming Jun's face was a sight to delight the heart of the wicked, but the seven other faces around the table were solemn and attentive. Polite murmurs rose in response.

  "That's right."

  "True, very true."

  Ming Jun cleared his throat.

  "Uh, thank you, Datin," he said. "That's a valuable contribution, thank you. But maybe we can focus on the issue of minorities, the definition of what is a minority."

  Datin Zainab seemed pleased that he'd brought this up. She said,

  "Mr. Chairman, do you know what women are?"

  "Um—"

  "They are a majority! How many people in this world have a mother?" she said. "How many have a grandmother? All these mothers and grandmothers are women. Yet how are women treated? In m
y organization, we support women who need help. The ones who are too poor to buy their children milk. The ones whose husbands beat them. Women are treated like this. They are not a minority, but they are treated so badly. But women have an advantage that true minorities don't have. Women have the advantage of numbers. I believe if that we use our advantage and help each other, women can overcome the way society treats them. That is why I set up my organization."

  "Nowadays seems to me women are treated better. Men are the ones who are bullied," muttered a man from St. John's Ambulance.

  Datin Zainab put on a pair of spectacles that made her eyes enormous. She peered across the table. "What did encik say?"

  The St. John's Ambulance man fell quiet.

  It was the patience that impressed Esther. They'd had forums with Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus sat around the same table. They'd had representatives from every political party going, including ones Esther had never heard of before. They'd had opinionated old judges, belligerent doctors, self-important businessmen, and earnest students bearing downy new mustaches and sociology textbooks.

  Consequently they'd had noisy forums. At nearly every one, people had started talking over each other after the first five minutes had passed and they'd forgotten their manners.

  But this table was dead quiet while Datin Zainab went on — and how she did go on. As the delegates listened in respectful silence, she told them about the work her organization did, just stopping short of sketching out their timetable and listing their daily meals. She recounted tales of the joys and tribulations of the women they helped. She discussed what it had been like to be a female MP in the '60s.

  "R u getting everything?" Ming Jun texted Esther. "Gr8 stuff! Social history!"

  Esther tapped the dictaphone and nodded. Fortunately Datin Zainab spoke slowly, in passionate separate syllables, like a debater. Unlike normal people, she did not speak in fragments, but in whole considered sentences, exquisitely formed.

  But when the Datin started to talk about the year she had been lost in the forest and her family had given her up for dead, Ming Jun's conscience seemed to trouble him. He turned to the man sitting next to him, a lawyer with an outspoken blog.

  "What is encik's opinion? What do you think the government could do to protect minorities' rights?"

  The lawyer had skin the color of sandalwood, a high-bridged nose, and deep-set eyes hooded by heavy eyelids. He opened his mouth and said in a strong Chinese accent,

  "Protect minorities' rights? First thing is to identify who is the minorities. In this country so many people complaining: I am the one who is bullied, no, I am the one who is suffering. Actually you know who is suffering? It's the invisible minority!"

  Esther checked the delegate list. The man was named Abner Ignatius.

  The rest of the table also seemed taken aback. But Ming Jun perked up. Sexuality rights hadn't come up in previous forums. People had been too busy arguing about race.

  "Correct, correct. That's a very pertinent point," he said. "The minorities people cannot see. They are forgotten."

  "The invisible minority also needs support," said a representative from Islamic Scholars of Pahang. "Just because our needs are not obvious, it does not mean the government should so easily ignore us."

  He also spoke with a Chinese accent. In fact, his voice was exactly the same as Abner Ignatius's.

  "Farid?" said the other representative of the Islamic Scholars of Pahang, staring. Farid ignored him.

  "Where I live, the electricity supply is terrible," said Farid. "So unreliable! Like everybody else, we also like to listen to the radio. In the forest, the connection is so bad, only one channel is available! Hitz FM. This channel is for the younger people. If you don't like Rihanna, what are you going to do in the evening? Can the government tell me that?"

  "And another thing," said Annabella Lim. Annabella ran a breast cancer support group, and spoke in a growly baritone. "The Internet is impossible! Cannot even watch one YouTube video before it dies out. Then you must wait half an hour before it comes back on. Today we are living in a knowledge economy! How is my community going to participate in the economy without Internet access?"

  Ming Jun and Esther's fascinated eyes moved along the table to Datin Zainab. Her pink-scarved head was drooping. She had fallen asleep.

  "But most important," said the secretary of the Pahang Consumer Association next to her. He was an elderly man, with fluffy white hair and skin so dark it was almost blue. His voice was the same as everyone else's at the table: a middle-aged Chinese man's voice.

  "More important than anything else," he said. "My community does not have any schools. Puan Zainab talks about the school in her village. But we do not even have a primary school. We parents have to educate the children ourselves. The government should consider setting up special schools for our children. SJK (B)."

  Datin Zainab stirred.

  Esther had gone to a SJK (T), though attending a Tamil-medium primary school for six years hadn't helped her much — her Tamil was still terrible. She knew Chinese schools were SJK (C).

  "What does the B stand for?" said Ming Jun.

  The Datin had woken up and was looking around wildly.

  "Chor Seng?" she said. She blinked, rubbed her eyes and woke up all the way. "Who called me Puan Zainab?"

  Ming Jun looked worried. It would never do to offend an ex-MP.

  "It's Datin Zainab, not Puan Zainab," he told the consumer association rep.

  "Beg your pardon?" said the rep in a pleasant tenor. He didn't sound in the least Chinese.

  "It doesn't matter," said Datin Zainab. She was looking — not at the consumer association rep, but at the empty space between him and Ming Jun. Her gaze was focused, almost as if there were a person there.

  "That's what he called me when we first met," she said. To the air, she said, "Chor Seng, I'm a datin now."

  The Chinese man's voice said:

  "Bunian."

  The voice came from no one's mouth. It came out of the air.

  "What?" said Ming Jun.

  "He said, the B stands for bunian," said the Datin. "You know orang bunian? They are a magical people. They live in the forest but you cannot see them, can hear them only. That is why they are called bunian. From bunyi — means sound."

  "Ah, that makes sense," said Annabella Lim. Her voice was a normal throaty auntie's voice, more English educated than Chinese school. "I was wondering why everybody has the same voice."

  Murmurs of agreement from the table. Everyone was looking relieved to have the mystery solved. Ming Jun looked bewildered.

  "But orang bunian aren't real!" he said.

  "Can tell you are a city boy," said Farid. "If you live near the jungle, you will realize that what is real and what is not real is not always clear. In the forest there is not a big gap between the two."

  "Of course, it's all heathenish superstition," said the other Islamic Scholar.

  "Khairul is right," said Farid. "It is all heathenish superstition. People who truly understand religion will not believe in this kind of thing."

  "But you seem to believe orang bunian exist," said Ming Jun.

  "Ah, it is very hard to have a true understanding of religion," said Farid reflectively.

  "We are still working on it," Khairul agreed.

  "This is ridiculous," said Ming Jun.

  The air snorted. The Chinese man's voice said,

  "Oh ya, young man? Then my voice is coming from where, please tell me?"

  Ming Jun glared at the delegates as if he thought one of them might be a ventriloquist. Of course, that was more likely than the idea that an orang bunian had actually turned up at their forum.

  But the hotel did abut a jungle. Everybody knew what the jungle was like. It was not safe. There were mosquitoes and leeches, which were bad enough; there might be tigers, which were even worse; but worst of all — jungles were full of spirits.

  "Why? I am not allowed to attend this forum, is it?" said t
he bodiless voice. "Aren't orang bunian also a minority? Don't we deserve the chance to fight for our rights? Nobody ever did a survey of our opinions. Nobody wants to know what we think. We are being marginalized!"

  "But why are you a Chinese?" said the St. John's Ambulance man.

  "What's that? First I'm not allowed to stand up for my community's rights. Suddenly I'm not allowed to be Chinese also?"

  "No, my learned friend has raised a very good point," said Farid. "Orang bunian is a Malay folktale."

  "We live in the same Malaysia as the rest of you," said the invisible man. "You look around you. Does everybody look the same race to you?"

  "I am Chinese also. But I always heard that orang bunian are supposed to be devout Muslims," said Annabella Lim.

  "This is what is wrong with our country!" Datin Zainab burst out. "You younger generation do not know how to accept. You don't know how to live together. In my day, whether somebody was Chinese, Malay, Indian, Orang Asal, Sikh, Kristang, anything — we didn't care. When we went to school together and played on the playground, do you think we chose our friends based on race? No. Muthu sat with Ah Ming, Ali played with Jaspreet. There was no division.

  "Now people have grown intolerant. They only want to see their own race. The state of the country has become bad, very bad. I remember when I was a child, I used to play in the village with my friend Miriam, she was a Christian, and I would eat my lunch in her home. Yes! My parents didn't worry that they would serve me food that was not halal. We trusted her family and they trusted us. That was what it was like in the old days."

  "That's right," said the lawyer. "Things were better then."

  A haze of nostalgia settled over the table.

  "I remember when I was young," said the consumer association rep. His eyes went dreamy behind the thick lens of his spectacles. "Us estate kids used to play by the road after school, and the Malay boys would come up from the village on the bullock cart. They used to buy bags of kacang putih from the roadside stall and give them to us to eat."

  "You young people don't know what it was like," said the lawyer to Ming Jun and Esther. "You see what we have come to—parading cow heads and attacking churches. In the '70s, our country was so beautiful."