“You’re so black! You’re so ugly. Who would want to marry you?”
When Will the Good Apples Fall?
(1972)
PRIME Minister Lee Kuan Yew was sensitive to the country’s prevailing mood after the British pull-out. He rendered his New Year message in a much more rigorous and positive timbre. He projected an aura of confidence when he announced that the economy was growing and he was creating jobs for the 17,000 people who had been made jobless the previous year. His charisma could not be underestimated; he could pull the country through challenging times.
I did not share the country’s euphoria, inconsolable after Fatima left.
All her family’s household items and personal effects had been piled onto one lorry. Their possessions were meagre. I joined my mother and other kampong neighbours to bid the family goodbye. I had known them my entire life. Mak had made several packets of nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaves for their long journey up-country. She cooked for people not just to provide sustenance and a good meal but to spread her joy and express her love. Fortunately, I inherited this trait of hers. I was grateful that her legacy to me was much more inspiring and enabling than my father’s.
Fatima’s mother kept wiping her tears with the ends of her veil. The sight of her silent weeping made us want to weep too. We were so wrought with strong emotion that we could hardly speak, and we didn’t say the words that probably should have been said. Isn’t it always that way? My two elder brothers came back from their marital homes to say goodbye. They pumped the hands of Fatima’s father and brothers.
Because the chances of staying in touch were so remote, their departure felt more final. Of course, we were given their new address but how were we to communicate? Fatima and I hugged each other for a while. She had been uplifted by her wedding, but now that the end was near, she too was overwhelmed by our pending separation. I felt her heart thud under her kebaya. I felt her warm palms, now sweaty with sorrow as we hung on to each other for those last few minutes, her beautiful eyes watery. I tried to savour the moment and the sense of her touch, the smell of her hair, branding them into my memory. Then I placed the gold hooped earrings that I had once given to Parvathi but which she had returned to my mother the night before she died, into Fatima’s hand, and closed her fingers around them.
“But I have nothing for you,” she said, her voice breaking.
“You’ve given me all I needed all these years,” I said. “You’ll always be my special friend.”
The family eventually clambered onto the back of the lorry.
We shouted in one voice, “Selamat tinggal, selamat jalan! Goodbye! Safe travel!”
Abu and Zul shouted back in hoarse voices. The engine started. The wheels of the lorry churned up a flurry of dust. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, as if time was suspended. Then the vehicle began to roll out of the village, bearing the people we loved away from us. The family waved frantically. We waved back, fighting back tears, and continued waving till the lorry turned a corner and went out of sight. And out of our lives.
I kept passing Fatima’s family home, expecting to see her or run into her, so that the nightmare of her leaving would be just a bad dream. But when I saw the empty house, devoid of her presence and the sound of her laughter, reality hit me. She was gone from my life. Just as Parvathi had gone. As the fate of the village had already been sealed, there were not going to be new people moving into the house. It stood empty.
Those people who had the finances and opportunity to relocate were also moving out instead of waiting for the government to re-house them. I noticed that the Chinese owners of the big fish ponds which characterised Kampong Potong Pasir also looked as if they were moving out. The sight of the fishermen on their small sampans hauling out the nets of fish was becoming less and less frequent. What kind of occupation could fishermen have when they stopped fishing? How could they fish from the 10th storey of an HDB block?
Those of us who remained were hoping for some kind of compensation from the government. Without compensation and financial assistance, we would not be able to afford to buy ourselves a new home. We were told that a two-room HDB flat cost about $3,000 which would not be sufficient for us, as it meant there was only one bedroom and one living room. We needed at least two bedrooms, which HDB classed as a three-room flat. The living room was considered a room. It would cost up to $6,000, a sum we did not possess. Though it started as a trickle, the exodus slowly left more and more houses vacant, empty houses surfacing on the landscape of our village like gaping wounds.
The atmosphere in the kampong was altered. A pall of sorrow seemed to hang over us. We were more tense, less conversational as we worried about our future.
“Aiyyoh! I wanted to go to the Led Zeppelin concert but it has been cancelled,” Karim complained in February. “Jimmy Page and his group refused to cut their long hair. Why should they cut off their trademark tresses just to perform here? But all this nonsense is making our music industry suffer. When is all this going to stop?”
Certainly not in the near future. In March, the Bee Gees were to perform at the National Theatre. On their first night, they were forced to wear hair nets! After the first show, they got back on the plane.
I had other concerns on my mind. I couldn’t articulate my feelings to anyone about the loss of a friend who had been so dear to me.
