Reality and Mirror

Ich glaube, daß fast alle unsere Traurigkeiten Momente der Spannung sind, die wir als Lähmung empfinden, weil wir unsere befremdeten Gefühle nicht mehr leben hören. Weil wir mit dem Fremden, das bei uns eingetreten ist, allein sind, weil uns alles Vertraute und Gewohnte für einen Augenblick fortgenommen ist; weil wir mitten in einem Übergang stehen, wo wir nicht stehen bleiben können. Darum geht die Traurigkeit auch vorüber: das Neue in uns, das Hinzugekommene, ist in unser Herz eingetreten, ist in seine innerste Kammer gegangen und ist auch dort nicht mehr, – ist schon im Blut. Und wir erfahren nicht, was es war. Man könnte uns leicht glauben machen, es sei nichts geschehen, und doch haben wir uns verwandelt, wie ein Haus sich verwandelt, in welches ein Gast eingetreten ist. Wir können nicht sagen, wer gekommen ist, wir werden es vielleicht nie wissen, aber es sprechen viele Anzeichen dafür, daß die Zukunft in solcher Weise in uns eintritt, um sich in uns zu verwandeln, lange bevor sie geschieht.- Rainer Maria Rilke

My dearest granddaughter,

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My own mother belonged to a race native of Northern Borneo called “Kadazan”. When I was young, visiting my own grandmother, I would be completely surrounded by the culture and the language of my mother’s people. While the culture is part of my identity, it at times felt foreign to me, mainly because I frequently visited Borneo, but have never lived there for long periods of time. I did not know the language, although through the years I have tried (and failed) to pick up bits and pieces. But I loved the stories and the legends of my mother’s people, and there is one that I love above all: it is the legend behind Mount Kinabalu. This mountain lies on the Crocker range in the heart of Borneo, and is the highest peak of South East Asia. Since the mountain and the surrounding forest have been turned into a tourist national park, many have since ascended and descended its peaks. I remembered that the recommended time frame for the hike would be two days for any given visitor, but a native living near the mountain, a Kadazan, can climb and descend that beast within hours and always within a day,  even with a loaded, heavy backpack. The legend tells us that there was once a Chinese prince who travelled far and wide in a boat to the land of Borneo in order to find the world’s most precious pearl. The pearl itself was rooted deep within the heart of Borneo, right in the middle of this mountain, and was heavily guarded by a ferocious dragon. Now, no man has ever tried to steal the pearl and yet keep his life, but many have died trying. This prince, however, sought to defy the odds and was determined to win the pearl for himself. Like all wonderful and mystical fairytales, the prince, with his mighty sword, engaged the dragon in a long, dangerous battle for the pearl, and with one great swift, he killed the dragon, and took the pearl for himself. Sadly, the legend did not pass to us more details regarding this mighty battle, but we are very sure of such an outcome. The prince decided to stay in Borneo, and here in this land, far away from home and all familiarity, he fell in love with a Kadazan girl. And she fell for him, too. Again, not many details on the unfolding of their love for each other – how they met or what troubles did they face, what more battles did he go on to fight for her and what passionate and brave deeds did she do for him – we do not know. But the legend skipped all of such things and went on to tell us that she fell pregnant with the prince’s child. And the whole fairytale attitude to this legend seemed to have taken a horrible twist by narrating to us that it was at this period, when she was with his child, that he left on his boat to return to China. He left her. Pregnant and alone. She fell into deep depression and longing for him. She yearned for him so much, that everyday she would ascend the mountain in order to look out for his ship, hoping that he has changed his mind, praying that he would come back to her. And on top of that mountain, she would cry and wail for him, for she loved him still and could love no other. She fell into such a deep sadness that she died on the mountain and turned into stone. When one looks very closely at the peak of this mountain, one can make out an image of a pregnant woman lying down. Hence, the mountain was named “Kinabalu”, “kina” being the Kadazan word for “Chinese”, and “balu” being the word for “widow”. Kinabalu. Chinese widow.

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I remember everything, including the memory of him leaving me.

I remember the sudden upheaval of sadness, like an arrow through my chest, with its force so great that I can’t help but fall into what seems like an unending abyss. It was a tsunami-like wave, the sadness and the tears. I remember physically gripping my chest, wondering why an emotional heartbreak can actually manifest and feel like an actual hole in my heart. I remember the whiskey and the wine that I drank in a manner so excessive, just so that my mind could sleep in order to forget, at least for a few hours, that he was gone, and he was never coming back. During those moments, it felt like I had lost myself, as I had lost something that I was so certain about. How could I have been so wrong? That was my constant question. Not unlike the Chinese widow, I waited, longed and wailed and willed for him to come back to me. He didn’t. And I never saw him again.

However, the wave, to my surprise, eventually passed and eased into a throbbing thorn, and the pain eventually became unconscious to me. The tears eventually dried up, and my mind started focusing the other aspects of my life, trying to return to some sense of normalcy. But I’ve never forgotten, because he has become part of me and my identity – he changed me, like how a guest that enters a room would alter its atmosphere. Not that the pain have passed or the memory forgotten, but rather they have joined themselves to me to a point where I can no longer extract myself from them – he is now part of my narrative identity. You must understand, dear child, that this does not mean that I have loved your grandfather any less, or that I’ve never loved him at all. On the contrary! 60 years of marriage – and one that remained miraculously loving until the end. If that is not love, I don’t know what is! But there are certain chambers, pathways and memories within me where I have not allowed your grandfather to go, because no amount of connection or intensity between two people can ever bring perfect union or understanding between two hearts. Till this day, when I see a white Mitsubishi van, or a German Shepard dog, or when I think of Oriental Parade, I would remember him, and secretly smile. As to why I cherish him, or at least, the memory of him, to this extent, that in my old age I still think of him – the reason is simple: you will remember the people whom you truly connected with, and the intensity of such a relationship is unforgettable.

What is the point in all this, you might ask. What exactly am I trying to say? I ask that you remember this: that if and when you have the joy of experiencing such a connection, take the chance. And if your heart should break, remember that the wave, as shocking as it is, would subside. Do not allow yourself to be turned into stone and permit the sadness to be your primary identity, but rather let the tears be part of you, and never your all consuming obsession. In the vicissitudes of our existence, I have learned that to arm my heart by heavily guarding it would also rob it of its spirited function; but to allow it to become chaotic would do exactly the same. Remember that the sadness are moments of tensions, of punctuations, but it is our inability to see past the wave that would cause us to be caught and drowned in it. I will not ask you to avoid troubles – that is impossible. Neither will I ask you to approach love with a heavily armed and overly cautious heart – all love carries risk. But I would ask you to master the wave, and remember that the tide must eventually go down.

And to end, let me narrate to you what he once wrote to me:

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Happy birthday. I love you.

Always,

Grandmama.

Author’s note: To write, and to write well, has always been a dream and a love of mine. After many years of leaving my creativity in silence, I’ve picked up the pen (or rather, the keyboard), and started writing again. The writer always lives in two (sometimes more) realities, as there are moments when the fictional creation seems to be taking a life on its own, and that was how it was with this particular piece of writing, and I’m guessing that is how it will always be with everything that my pen (or keyboard) produces. But nothing is ever purely fictional – one creates, but the core personage of the ideas, themes and suggestions in a fictional writing, even one as far-fetched (and I argue, beautifully imaginative) as science fiction and fantasy, are written out of experiences. Fiction is the creator’s experiences dressed up with different names, different places and different circumstances – a mirage of what once was (or still is) real. This thought process that I’ve suggested here, by logical argument, is of course not from me, but given to me by the character Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke in the movie ‘Before Sunset’. I know not of wars, or criminal espionages or investigative activities, because I have never experienced a war, or have been associated with drug ring-lords or joined the police forces. But I know that I am constantly in tune with my inner self – my emotions, my rationality, my spirit and my thoughts. And I know love – I know of it and have been through it, and still learning it. The best of my friends, particularly those that I share book-crazes with, will be able to inform you with certainty that I would always walk past the romance section in the bookstore, and God forbid if I ever pick up something regarding romances between vampires and  humans. But with the books that I’ve loved and enjoyed, the story of love is always set amidst varied elements of life – war, history, culture, family etc (Eg: books by Ken Follet such as World Without End, Pillars of the Earth and Fall of Giants, books by Wally Lamb such as I Know This Much is True and The Hour I First Believed, classics such as War and Peace, Les Miserables, Gone with the Wind, Anna Karenina etc. And who can forget the fantasy world of Middle Earth, particularly the love between Beren & Luthien, Aragon & Arwen). And I think the elements often give love within the fictional story a real sense of reality and beauty. Because when one loves, one must learn how to love within reality.

This work is still incomplete at this stage, and will be subjected to many revisions, but here is a (draft) preview:

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Quand il me prend das ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose.

The intensity of their desire for each other started off with overwhelming ecstasy and passion, and much of herself was consumed by the yearning to have him, to be near him. In anticipation of their moments in being together, which can come only in minute interludes each day due to his day-time job at his exporter-importer company, and her night-time shifts at Minerva, she would want naught else but to be held by him, to hear his voice in whispers and to feel the gentle touch of his lips on her face, her skin, for him to tenderly run his smooth fingers through her hair. Whenever she was with him, in those budding and early stages of their love for each other, how she wished for the world to stand at a still silence, so that these stolen moments will not end, as it always does with rude awakenings. However, their relationship, at many immeasurable moments, were also overwhelming heated, with cutlery, pillows, and once, a toaster, thrown at each other in the midst of loud exchanges of words that both would always later on regret, as they fall and sob into each others arms, moments after the waning of their anger towards each other, apologising profusely, kissing each other deeply and promising never to fight again, because the sorrows of being apart from each other were just too much for their hearts to bear. She was 17 and he was 21, and both were only at the beginnings of their discovery of the world and the breadth of options available. They often talk about the future, not as a distant, discordant entity separated from their here and now, but they often discussed it with a sense of togetherness; that despite of their numerous differences – cultural practices, spoken languages, disparities between their pasts – they have always believed that the future, with its incalculable variables and infinite extrapolations, will hold one thing for certain: come what may, they will face the future and work through it together. Perhaps this innocence, almost naivety, was due to their youth, but for youngsters that age, they have already experienced and survived through so much, separately and together. She lost her parents from one night of nationwide raged-filled slaughter; he lost his father to the trenches in Bastogne, not by an American bullet, but by the enveloping, all-consuming winter cold that claimed both his feet through gangrene while at the same time, losing his sanity through the cries of terror, the sights of hanging and distorted limbs, and the shadow of death constantly hovering over his soul, taking the lives of his comrades who became his brothers, but always eluding him, like a cruel, sick joke. His father eventually returned to his cottage house in the outskirts of Hamburg, the house that he built, being a trained builder by profession. He came home in a war truck with his battalion’s captain as the driver. Upon reaching his house, his captain, with one swift movement, carried him out of the truck and into a wheelchair, the device that he would be bound to for the rest of his life. His mother ran out the door and kneeled in front of the wheelchair and tightly hugged the man whom she thought was her husband, and with genuine thankfulness she praised God for his return. But he was no longer her husband. Her husband, the man that she fell in love with, shared a home, a family and a bed with, already died in Bastogne, where he lost his legs. For 10 long years, as the nation struggled to build itself again from the ruins of war, his mother struggled to once again know and love the man that she made a vow to. It was a vow. A vow. War will not change that – that was what he often read when he was going through his mother’s diaries after her passing. 10 years after Bastogne, in 1955, the year that his mother was pregnant with him, his father pushed himself out of the front door and into a neighbouring field, beneath the willow tree where his father shyly proposed to his mother at the age of 18, and he took out his Luger and shot himself in the heart. On his lap were two letters, one written for his mother and one to him, who was still unborn. His mother, upon coming home and discovering the dead body, let out a deafening shriek which vibrated throughout the field. She knew not joy after that, not even with the birth of her son, because he, this little boy that she carried within herself, nourished and raised, showed too much resemblance to the man that she yearned for. She fell into deep post-natal depression, and was never released from this chain that twisted her heart, where living felt like torture, and dying felt like the right thing to do for her son. And that was precisely what she did. At the tender age of 5, he saw his dead mother’s body swinging from the ceiling, with a white cloth across her neck. From then on, he was raised by his uncle and his wife; not unlike his lover, who was raised by her aunt. They often share this aspect of their past with each other, more so than with anyone else, because there are certain types of sadness and anguish which others can only sympathise, but nothing more. The grief of losing parents as children is such a sadness – and within their embraces and their myriad differences, they found this sadness to be common to each other, and often found strength and calmness in the understanding shared.

She remembered one particular Sunday, when they were in Langkawi Island for their first holiday together. It was almost twilight, and the beauty of that particular night outshone the day as they walked in-hand-in on the golden, warm sands, with the full moon radiating her light, holding at bay black-pitch darkness, but instead illuminating the sky with dark, almost bluish lights. The stars hung across their heads in the vast expanse, complementing the moon, and twinkling as they swirl in each others’ arms in a playful dance to an imaginary waltz. They then laid down on the sands, with the coconut trees swaying above their heads, in silence, with her head resting on his stomach. He touched her face gently, and asked her what she was thinking of. After shedding one drop of tear, she took his hand, kissed it, and mumbled about how much she misses her parents. He continued stroking her face, and softly asked her on how they passed. She gulped down the rushing ball of tears that was rising through her core and cutting through her throat, and narrated what happened to everyone in her family on 13 May 1969, the day when Malaysia went into a frenzied blood hunt, where men fell and instead became beasts as they slaughtered their own and did so on the basis of only one criteria – race. Her whole family, immediate and extended, were in a cinema which they silently surrounded with sharpened parangs, ready for their hushed and cowardly slaughter. It was only by a stroke of fortune and slight greediness that her and her aunt escaped their hunger for blood through the knife. She was begging her parents beforehand for a large bottle of orange juice, pulling on her mother’s skirt and holding on to her father’s waist, shouting and screaming until her father gave out a defeated sigh, held up his crying daughter and handed her what she wanted. She drank it all in one swift gulp. Halfway through the movie in the cinema, she was fidgeting in her seat, anxious for the bathroom. Her aunt, who was sitting beside her, brought her to the back of the cinema where the bathroom was. Not 3 minutes after they were in the ladies did they storm in and started cutting everybody’s throat. Her aunt noticed the janitor’s cupboard and saw that the door was slightly ajar. Her aunt immediately covered her young, crying mouth in attempts to hush off her voice, and carried her into the darkness of the cupboard, where they stayed for what seemed like eternity. Only when the screams and roars of spineless victory deadened down to give way to the eeriness of the passing of souls from temporality to infinity, did her aunt let both of them out of the cupboard. Immediately her aunt rushed into the cinema, and with trembling fingers and croaking wails, rocked her dead husband and son in her embrace. Her parents were beside them, laying on each other’s shoulders with warm blood trickling down, staining her father’s white shirt and her mother’s blue blouse, their eyes still wide opened, their senses capturing not the embrace of their only daughter at their ripe old age, but the image of their killer who had taken their lives at its prime. She, at 12, came walking towards her trembling aunt, and saw her parents. And at 12, she suddenly realised the realness of mortality, because she knew that her parents were no more. More tears trickled down her face throughout her narration, and he continued stroking her face gently as she talked. When she finished, she could not hold back the grief, and let out a moaning cry. He sat up, pulled her close to his chest and felt her tears soaking through his shirt. He did not know what to say, and in fact, he knew not to, because there are no words that can balm that pain, and so he just held her, tilted her head to kiss her lips, and told her, for the first time, that he loves her.

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