Sajakkini

One day, a friend called me up, told me to wear the baju kurung and selendang to work the next day, because after Maghrib, we were going to visit a holy man. She had had a bit of a haunting recently, and it was affecting her marriage. While I digested the fact that she, a quantity surveyor and her husband, an accountant, actually believed in mumbo-jumbo, she turned up at my office and kidnapped me for the night. The holy man’s home was just an hour away.

It became more apparent to me, as we headed towards nowhere, that we were not going to meet a Datuk Harun Din type in a Darul Syifa setting. We were heading towards secondary forests and dirt roads. The fact that the trip had exceeded more than an hour made me nervous.

“Who are we visiting?” I asked my friend.

“Uncle Din.”

“And who is Uncle Din?” (more…)

Fathi Aris Omar : Tiada Noktah

‘Gelombang besar di pelabuhan’, terjemahan kepada bahasa Melayu, daripada dua kata Jepun, ‘tsu’ dan ‘nami’. Disebut pelabuhan kerana di sini tenaga air laut terkumpul. Ombak sederas 500 hingga 900 km sejam dari pusat gempa, menjadi semakin tinggi, boleh mencecah lima hingga lapan meter, apabila menghampiri pantai. Gempa di laut melebihi 6 mata di skala Ritcher cenderung, walau tidak pasti, menghasilkan tsunami.

Tergempar dengan kedahsyatan gempa dan ombak maha besar itu, ramai orang tiba-tiba condong merujuk kalimat-kalimat agama – tiba-tiba sahaja semua orang berdosa, layak direjam dengan murka Tuhan. Di tengah kebingungan akibat dahsyatnya skala bencana, agama menjadi semakin laris.

Sehingga akhir Januari, daerah-daerah Aceh dan Sumatera Utara mencatatkan korban lebih 100,000 orang, hilang (lebih 12,000) dan di khemah-khemah pengungsian (lebih 400,000). (more…)

Josh Hong

President Bush has begun a fence-mending trip to Europe this week, in the hope of assuaging the angst of some European nations that have been growing wary of the arbitrary behavior of the United States following the Sept 11 attacks.

However, as the president is all smiling to his European friends (and perhaps some foes too), his administration is burning bridges on another side of the globe.

After the end of World War II, the US sought to tame Japan, the perpetrator of the Pacific War, by first occupying the country and then putting it under US security aegis, resulting in the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 that allows for Washington to maintain military presence in Japan for the sake of the latter’s security as well as for the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East. (more…)

Hishamuddin Rais

Pada pagi Hari Kekasih (Feb 14) yang lalu, saya terserempak dengan seorang anak muda di perhentian SKR (sistem keretapi ringan) di Pasar Seni. Di saku belakang seluar anak muda ini terselit sebatang bunga ros yang terbungkus indah dalam balutan plastik kaca putih.

Kami sama-sama menunggu keretapi. Saya ingin ke Bangsar dan saya tidak mengetahui ke mana pula arah tuju anak muda ini. Saya tersenyum apabila ternampak kuntum bunga ini. Pastilah ianya akan dihadiahkan kepada si kekasih sebagai tanda cinta.

Saya gembira kerana saya sendiri yang kekurangan cinta, telah bertemu dengan seorang anak muda yang sedang bercinta. Dalam perjalanan itu, saya bayangkan betapa nikmatnya dunia percintaan. (more…)

3.00 am. We are standing in an alley that snakes like a river of piss and honey, she and I, facing one another. She sucks on the cigarette like it’s mother’s milk, and holds on to it like it’s a branch hanging over a bottomless crevice. Three stubs lie around her like acorns, their poison still drifting into the steamy air.

Her fingers are trembling and she’s gnawing her thumb into a stump. Her left arm presses her bag into her breasts like it’s a child needing comforting, the hand absentmindedly caressing her neck. Her furtive eyes actively avoid mine. Every question is met with a nervous giggle and a vacant “Yeah”. She must be new at this.

Her black satin slip looks more like what you’d wear at bedtime if you’re feeling naughty and you’ve run out of undies. Her stocking has a tear just below the right knee and I idly muse if she’d gone Catholic on someone in a street somewhere. She’s got dark wavy hair that cascades past her shoulders, framing a face so fine you know she must have one of those flowing names that sound like someone farting slowly through a silk bedsheet. (more…)

Saifullizan Tahir

Apabila kamu mendapat pesanan aku, pastinya aku sudah tiada lagi di dunia yang kamu diami ini. Aku telah mendahului kamu semua ke dunia yang lain. Mungkin kita akan bertemu lagi, tetapi itu bukan kuasaku untuk menentukannya.

Ia juga bermakna, ia telah berjaya melakukan apa yang sepatutnya ia lakukan lama dahulu. Sebelum itu, jika kamu biasa mendengar cerita tentang hamba yang menjadi raja, tentang raja yang menjadi hamba kepada sahayanya, kamu tentu dapat mengaitkan diri kepada cerita yang bakal aku sampaikan ini.

Telah berbuih mulutku cuba meyakinkan kamu semua, namun kini semuanya telah terlambat (terlambat bagiku). Sekarang terpulang kepada kamu semua untuk meneruskan perjuangan (pun jika boleh dikatakan perjuangan).

Selama ini aku digelar Don Quixote lengkap dengan pacu dan perisai berperang sendirian. Menentang gergasi yang hanya muncul di mataku sahaja. Aku ditertawa, aku dianggap paranoid dan gila. Berhalusinasi tentang benda yang tidak wujud. (more…)

If you want the sanest, most sage and also bonkers advice on love, life and religion, talk to a cab driver. They come in all shapes and sizes: you have the kohl-eyed drivers with serbans who can tickle your funny bone, you might come across a graduate driving a taxi because it’s more lucrative and of course an Indonesian immigrant trying very hard to pass off as a local, despite lapsing into Javanese as he careens his way through the traffic and asking you from time to time, the directions.

Taxi drivers are the same everywhere; they know the beat, the pulse of a city and empathise with the heart of a country. So they should, ferrying all sorts across town, cities and villages. While you can’t generalise the drivers, most of them are men (and women) that know what it means to eke a living in an unsure economy. Malaysian cab drivers can be the most ornery service providers in the world, but nothing’s perfect.

Almost 90 percent of the cab drivers that have brought me from point A to C and then Y have been Malay, and chatty. I don’t exercise the NEP when it comes to hailing cabs, but it’s rare that I get a non-Malay Muslim driver. And every one of them had something to say about the state of our country. (more…)

She is reticient. Her scarf is tied loosely around her head, for she is at home and not expecting any visitors. She is wearing a loose kaftan. He is smartly dressed in a shirt and trousers, and is raring to check his durians at his dusun. She looks away a lot, and seems to search for something at a distance. He is almost hyperkinetic; his thoughts run from his speech. She says she is happy. He is happy. View this union as a metaphor of the Malaysian landscape.

They were once idealistic. When they met in the 1980s, they had been working in Kuala Lumpur: she was in advertising and worked side by side with a few illustrous names that headline theatre performances today, while he was a professional with dreams. Together, they decided to go back to their homeland, bring up a family and turn Terengganu into their paradise.

Today, she seeks peace in prayers and the many religious classes held in town, and tells her family and relatives that she has found contentment. She is so adamant that she has found it that it makes others wonder, whether she truly has. He is still a working professional, with a dusun and a few small enterprises, because these days in Malaysia, everyone’s a businessman. They have four children, and they have to make ends meet. (more…)

Josh Hong

On the day the two Germanys became united, I was the only person who went euphoric in the house - the rest of my Malaysian housemates in London simply couldn’t care less. Watching the live coverage of the reunification celebration at the Brandenburg Gate on October 3, 1990, with a can of German beer in hand, I nearly wanted to ode to joy, as the background music, written by Friedrich Schiller and composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, was being played.

It was a reunification that manifested the spirit of freedom and joy - freedom from the Communist yoke, and joy for the German nation that had stood divided for four decades. Most important of all, it was a reunification eagerly and willingly sought by the East Germans, not by coercion of their brethren from the west (eh, I am not referring to the sabre-rattling China vis à vis Taiwan here.)

But not all Europeans were enthused by the prospects of a newly united Germany. The Poles were sceptical, Mikhail Gorbachev found the Wessi’s takeover of the Ossi abhorrent, and Francois Mitterrand was reputed to say: “We cannot declare war on Germany to prevent her reunification.” (more…)

Idlan Zakaria

Dear Dina,

The Guardian ran a special feature on Young Muslims in Britain recently, and their struggle in finding an identity as a British Muslim, or a Muslim Brit, whichever way they defined themselves. I’ve read and seen many calls upon British Muslims to stand up and be counted as a British citizen, both in newspapers and on TV, questioning whether their loyalty lies first and foremost with their nation or their religion; and these have come fast and furious post September 11.

I often wonder why these two points on the spectrum need be so far apart, and whether there is space for reconciliation. It is perhaps different for me, growing up in a country whose government proclaims itself to be a Muslim nation; and if we fail to find a consensus on whether this is true or not, we can at least agree that for all intents and purposes, as per the constitution, our official religion is Islam.

Islam advocates that we follow the law of the land we live in, insofar as those laws do not contravene Islamic principles and values. From this perspective, the question of whether ’should I (as a Muslim) report my Muslim neighbour whom I know is a threat to national security’ should be answered in the affirmative; in the same way one would report a non Muslim neighbour who may be comitting the same offence. (more…)