The Version of the Story the Adults Won’t Tell Her

“The Request” by Sharmini Aphrodite

A man has died. The girl knows this because the news has spread through the kampung the way a snake makes its way through the lalang. She had heard it first that morning, smashing her teaspoon against her egg at the table, her parents murmuring over their coffee. They had balik kampung for the holidays, departed from their home in the city almost immediately after subuh, the sky still dark but streaked with dawn light already. She had fallen asleep again once in the cool cocoon of the car, awoken just as they broached the outskirts of the kampung. The familiar rise of the foliage, the press of the thinning jungle. Not even a jungle properly, she knew—just clusters of pokok pisang that grew this way and that, a gnarl of trees and brush.

They had done all the proper things upon their arrival at her grandmother’s house, the expected things. The girl putting her forehead to her grandmother’s trembling hand. The greetings and bestowing of gifts from the city, the visiting of the neighbours and the catching up on news and gossip. She had joined her grandmother and mother in the rest of the day’s prayers, her forehead to the mat, turning her head afterwards this way and that. Syukur Alhamduillah, her grandmother said when she had seen her again, clasping her face between her hands. Syukur. Her voice trailing in a request for the girl’s good health.

So far, things have gone as they always had. As they have for years—as many years as the girl has been alive. But today, she is hearing these whispers that arrived that morning about the death of a man, whispers that spread after the dawn prayers. What she can glean from her parents’ voices is that he was an old man, that her grandmother had known him. The other elders in the kampung had known him too. Might the dead man, the girl wonders, be an old friend of her grandmother’s? If so, she should think of a way to comfort her, but even as she is thinking this they hear the door of her grandmother’s room open, the stuttered cadence of her gait against the floors.

Her parents fall silent as her grandmother enters the kitchen. Her father reaches forwards at the table to prise the lid off a new can of condensed milk for her, her mother gesturing for her to sit. Her grandmother sits next to the girl and leans forward, placing her hand against the girl’s cheek. They look into the others’ eyes, and the girl notices how bright her grandmother’s eyes are this particular morning. She can see her reflection in them.

“Mak—” her father begins, “about . . . about what you said to us this morning . . .”

Her grandmother turns her head. “There is nothing more I have to say.”

---

The news continues to spread. The girl knows this because she hears more rumours when she walks over to the kedai runcit for a Paddle Pop, the bloom of a rainbow left behind on her tongue afterwards from the stain of the food colouring. An old man has died. He had not been living in this kampung, but he was from here. It is a pakcik standing at the kedai runcit counter who is saying this; the girl interrupts the conversation he is having with the shopkeeper, her hand outstretched with the shilling to pay.

They want him buried here, in the kubur. Where we have been burying our dead for so long.

They fall silent as she stands at the counter, switching the conversation to remark on how tall she has grown and to ask about her parents. But the girl wants to hear more, and so when she gets out of the kedai runcit, she circles it and crouches by the window behind the counter where she can still hear the voices of the men if she concentrates.

So he wants a burial? she hears the shopkeeper say. I thought he might have wanted to be cremated—like the Hindus are, like the Chinese. She hears the pakcik’s voice rise in response; she is taken aback by the emotion that is in it—No! They want him here, they want him to come home . . .

The girl saw a Hindu funeral once, saw the flames leap against a white shroud. The smell of incense rising through the smoke, the cloying perfume of jasmine. A body in there. A person. A body. She imagines this old man, who for some reason she thinks of as her late grandfather, a man she has only seen in photographs, smiling placidly next to her grandmother, his songkok at an angle. Suddenly she does not want to hear any more. She stands up and walks away.

---

When she arrives home, her parents’ car is no longer in the driveway. She climbs the set of wooden steps to her grandmother’s house and sees a cluster of slippers. Opening the door, she sees a group of makciks whose heads rise to meet her. Her grandmother sits in the middle of them, and for a moment there is silence; she knows instinctively that she must have interrupted some talk. She remembers what she heard earlier: So he wants a burial? Her grandmother calls out to her, and she knows what she must do. She wipes her hands—still sticky from the ice cream—on her baju before she goes around the circle of makciks, her forehead to their hands, and when the greetings are done, her grandmother says to her: Sayang, perhaps it is time for you to take a nap? Perhaps you should leave us for a moment—we are only old women, there is nothing that interesting going on here.

---

The afternoon is long and hot, and the girl tries to go to sleep. For a long time, she is in that strange place between sleeping and waking, where she is not fully conscious but is also aware that the world is continuing to revolve around her. She can see everything, sense it—as if she is merely on the cusp of this reality. She hears voices through the plank walls but cannot understand what they are saying. In the afternoon heat she feels the bedclothes, her hair, stuck to her damp skin. And somewhere in the midst of this all, she is aware that she is dreaming.

---

Eventually, she does fall asleep, and when she wakes the sky is heavy with the light of the late afternoon. After a while she peels herself off the mat and makes her way into the living room. Her parents are back. She hears her mother talking on the phone in the kitchen, her voice fussy and precise. She walks out into the living room and does not see her grandmother. Perhaps she is sleeping in her room too. When she was younger she would crawl onto the mat with her, be lost to the world as they slept. Now the thought of that old man rises to her again.

She walks to the window and sees her father fiddling with the car engine. He turns back to look at her and makes a face. She makes one back and feels calmed, emerging briefly from the fog of the day. With a renewed sense of purpose she leaves the window and heads to the door, barrels down the steps and into her father’s arms.

“What is it, sayang?”

She closes her eyes. She is not sure how to say what she wants to say—not sure that she even wants to say it.

“Is there something wrong?”

She unlatches herself from her father, takes a breath.

“An old man has died,” she says. She watches her father’s expression, observes how there is no shock on his face, only a sort of resignation. “I don’t think he is from here, but everyone seems to know him.”

She watches her father’s expression, observes how there is no shock on his face, only a sort of resignation.

Her father does not speak for a moment, only raises his eyes briefly to the open window above them before coming to settle on her. He crouches down so they can speak face to face.

“Yes,” he says, “That’s true. A man has died, and he was from here.”

“Will he be burnt, like a Hindu or a Chinese?”

“Burnt?” Her father is shocked now, she can tell. “What have you been hearing?”

She shrugged. “I went to the kedai runcit just now only, and I heard . . .”

Her father shook his head.

“He will not be cremated, sayang. He will be buried as is usually done.”

“Who is he?”

“He was just a man. His parents were from here, his family. Just like me, like your grandmother. Like your grandfather and her parents. Like everyone who came before them.”

She presses her heel into the dirt.

“Why did he leave?”

“Why did I leave?” her father asked. “Many people leave. It is normal to leave and come back. Dah, perhaps you should go back up—your mother told me just now she wanted you to help with something, go and find her.”

The girl understands that she is being dismissed, even if not unkindly. Her father turns back to the car, and she knows that what he has told her is not the entire truth, but there is nothing she can do.

---

Her mother has nothing for her to do in the kitchen. She is still on her call. And so the girl decides that she will go out and find someone to play with, perhaps one of the other children in the village. She says this to her mother who bites her lip and peels the phone off her ear for a moment. She has a city-dweller’s mild distrust of the kampung, having not grown up in one herself.

“You will be back before dark, okay? And use the bicycle. And don’t talk to anyone you don’t know. And don’t—”

“Mak . . . I know everyone here . . .”

“Wa, so smart, is it? Okay, go ahead . . . make sure you’re back before dark. If you end up at someone’s house get their mother to call, okay?”

“Okay.”

With that, her mother nods and the girl sets out. She takes the bicycle and makes her way down the dirt path leading off from the side of the house. This is her bicycle, and her father had tied some streamers to the handle for her the last time they had visited. Although the colour has faded from them over time, they still glitter now, pink and blue, beneath the last of the day’s sun.

The girl makes her way around the kampung, calling out to the people she recognises as she passes them by. The wind is in her hair, and the faces are familiar to her after so many years. It is still quiet in the day, and she wonders how many houses the news of the old man has travelled to. Who will tell her what she needs to know? Not one of the makciks or pakciks. This is not the kind of news she can get out of any of the adults her parents’ age. But then as she rides down a slight slope, parallel to a field from which a startled flock of birds now emerges, she sees yet another familiar face—a girl a couple of years older than her, a friend. This other girl is standing at the side of the path, holding a plastic bag that must have come from the kedai runcit.

The girl wheels her bicycle to a stop.

“You’ve come back already,” her friend says.

“Ya. You are going home now?”

“Ya. My mother needs these for dinner.” Her friend lifts the plastic bag, in which the girl can see some eggs.

“Do you want to get on my bike? I can send you home.”

The other girl clambers onto the bicycle, and together they cycle slowly towards her house so as not to hurt the eggs. The light is now turning fiery but soft—evening soaking into the sky.

“Kak,” the girl says—for her friend is a little bit older than her—”have you heard what everybody has been saying today?”

“Everybody?”

“Yes, wherever I go today I’ve been hearing about this old man . . .”

“Oh, the one who passed away.”

“Ya.” The girl feels a thrum in her chest. “The one who used to live here. Do you know who he was?”

“I can tell you,” her friend says, “But you are not allowed to say it, or to tell anyone I told you. Understand?”

“Understand.”

“He left because he was an unbeliever.”

“An unbeliever?”

“Ya. That is what my grandmother said. He was a young man when he left only. Still during British times.”

“What else?”

“I know this only.”

“That’s all?”

“Ya. That’s all.”

---

The girl drops her friend off and then cycles back home, feeling suddenly weary. The sky is a dusty blue now, and, sure enough, she hears the azan for maghrib wind through the air, wrap itself around the trees, rustle through the grass, dance with the last of the light on a stream she is passing. Her mother usually does not say this prayer as she typically makes her way home from work at this time, but the girl knows that she will be praying next to her grandmother now, just as her father would have gone to the surau for this particular one.

She arrives home as the azan trickles to a close, leaning her bicycle against the wall and running up the steps. The light has been turned on already, a sizzling strip of white fluorescence, but it is still bright outside. She has obeyed her mother’s instruction, to return home before it is dark. She wants to bathe before dinner, and while her mother and grandmother are closing the prayer, she rushes to the outdoor washroom, dousing herself in pail after pail of water. The water is shockingly cold, which makes it pleasant afterwards to wrap herself in her clothes that are somehow warm. She is still shivering when she returns to the house, where her mother and grandmother are puttering about in the kitchen. Her father has said he would buy nasi lemak from outside the surau for dinner, so they are only preparing the drinks—coffee for her parents, and searingly hot, milky milo for her and her grandmother.

She helps them pull out the plates and answers their questions. No, she did not go far. Yes, she met so-and-so and greeted them.

“That’s all?” her mother says, placing the drinks on the table.

I heard about the unbeliever who still wants to be buried, she wanted to say. But of course she does not.

I heard about the unbeliever who still wants to be buried, she wanted to say. But of course she does not.

Her grandmother settles down on the chair next to her and pulls her glass of milo towards her. The girl has seen one photograph of her grandmother as a young woman. She is wearing lipstick that is dark grey in the photograph, and her eyes are gleaming—her youth preserved on the photograph paper. She thinks now about that young woman laughing with a young man. Because she has seen a picture of it once, in a school textbook. She imagines the Union Jack rising from a schoolhouse. Maybe the man was a teacher, she thinks, when he was younger—when he had lived here. A teacher like her grandmother had been. She imagines him walking through the streets she had ridden through earlier, imagines him watching the light play on the water like she herself had done, feeling the evening wind blowing his hair back, his hand raised to greet whoever passes him on his way.

---

Her father comes home, and they unwrap the nasi lemak, digging in with their hands. He puts the television on in the living room, but only at a low volume so that the sound of strangers murmuring is comforting without being obtrusive.

“How were things at the surau?” her mother asks as her father tears off a chunk of his chicken for her.

“Same only.” He pauses for a moment and then raises his head, looks up at all of them, then at his daughter. For a moment, it appears as if he is thinking of something. The girl watches him, her hand hovering over her rice.

“But they were talking about whether they want to bury the old man—”

The girl sweeps her eyes across the table. Her mother looks wary; her grandmother’s expression has not changed, but she opens her mouth and says:

“It cannot be done. He was an unbeliever.”

“Mak . . . he was not an unbeliever. Until the very end he was a believer. He said his prayers five times a day. He has never touched pork, not a bite—”

“How can you know?”

The girl sits there, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, worried that anything she might do, any sound she might make, would betray her presence there—would break this bond that seems now to exist only between mother and son, the two at this table who knew this kampung most intimately. Just as the old man, the dead man, must have once had.

The girl’s mother now looks askance at her, but something in her face has changed. Her mother will not ask her to leave the table. She will let her hear everything. And in so doing, she will allow her to understand more fully the land and the history from which she comes. This is the pact they are making. There is a bond here now, between mother and daughter. An understanding that something is going to be revealed at this table that there is no turning back from. That even if this knowledge has nothing to do with her, it will change everything.

“He was not an unbeliever, Mak. I knew him. You knew him.”

“What was he doing in the jungles? You think we forced him to leave? He left us first. He allied himself with those who wished to take our God away from us.”

“Mak, that was not what he was doing. That was not what he was fighting for. He was not an unbeliever. I remember being a boy, I remember seeing him at every prayer.”

“That means nothing.”

“Mak, if it means nothing, why does it make you happy when I go to the surau for maghrib?”

“Will you ask me to let my granddaughter marry an unbeliever next?”

The girl holds her breath.

“Mak . . . that has nothing to do with anything. We are talking about this one man, this man whom we knew—whom I have prayed with, celebrated with . . .”

“How can you say it has nothing to do with anything? You unravel a thread, and the whole cloth falls to pieces.”

“Mak, his son came to the surau today.”

“His son. So he has a son.”

“He is a young man, still. Not yet married. He came to the surau and he said maghrib with us. And afterwards, he asked us—”

“I can imagine what he asked you!”

The girl swallows. Her grandmother’s voice is sharp, in a way she has rarely heard, but she can hear it trembling, like her hands are now trembling, like there is a waver in her eyes, her throat.

“It is a small request, Mak. It is only for a man who has died and who wants to come home. All we have to do is spare a bit of earth. You know the time for burial is short; we have only a little time left.”

“There are certain things you cannot turn away from.”

“Mak, I do not believe this is true.”

“He betrayed us.”

“How did he betray us?”

The girl’s mother reaches over and touches the girl on her shoulder. Her father’s eyes follow that movement between his wife and his daughter, and for a moment his expression, too, wavers. But when he speaks, his voice is strong.

“He betrayed no one in this kampung, Mak.”

“He was working with the Chinese. He turned his back on God.”

“Just because that is what you have heard—just because that is what you have chosen to believe—does not make it true.”

“He will not be buried here. I hope that is what they decided at the surau just now.”

“It was what they decided,” the girl’s father says. “It was not my will, but it was what they decided.”

With that, he finally turns his gaze away from his mother, and in silence, aside from the hum of the light and the low rumble of laughter from the television, the meal continues.

---

After they have washed up, the girl expects that her mother will prepare her for bed, but instead her father asks her if she wants to go for a drive. He asks her mother if she wants to accompany them but she shakes her head, says that it is a good idea that someone stay here with the grandmother, even though she has already retired for the night.

And so the girl and her father get into the car. The radio comes on almost immediately after he switches on the engine, some silly pop song to which he turns the dial so that the volume is reduced—like the sound of the television earlier—to a mere hum. He flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror as he reverses out onto the road, the gleam of headlights thrown back briefly into the car, against the tasbih that has been looped around the stem of the mirror.

“Shall we open the windows? The air is fresh here.”

“Okay.”

He turns off the air-conditioning and pulls down the windows. A rush of wind enters the car, and the girl has to brush her hair off her face. The darkness outside is gelatinous, aside from the flare of the headlights, the occasional streetlamp. All this makes the night—where the light falls away—even more intense. Although this place is familiar to her, it seems vaguely different now, as if it were wearing a different skin.

“I need to explain to you,” her father is now saying, “what all that was about. Because one day you will attend history lessons, and you will open the history books, and you will have to be prepared that not everyone understands what has happened here the same way.”

“Okay.”

“Sayang, you are familiar with the story of Si Tanggang, kan? About that man who left his kampung and became a prince. He came back with a princess for a wife, but he would not recognise his mother; he turned his back on all he had known. And so for this betrayal, he was punished with a storm and turned into stone. Sayang, I promise you that this is not that story. One day, you might remember that you were sitting here in this car, that I was telling you this, and you might want to come to me to ask me again about what I cannot tell you now. And when you are older, I will tell you everything.

“But what you need to understand tonight is this: A man from this kampung will not be buried in this kampung. He will be turned away from us in death for fighting for us in his life. Even though his son came back and asked it of us. I am telling you this story because I do not know what else I can do to make up for a sin such as this. I am telling you this story because this is all I can do.”

---

The next morning, the girl hears her parents wake up next to her for subuh. It is still dark outside, although there is a faint glance of the oncoming day’s light. She will be allowed to sleep for this prayer as her parents and grandmother unroll their mats. Later on, she knows, her mother will want to fry some keropok, and so she will help. She will not be allowed to touch the stove yet, the belly of hot oil, but she will look at what her mother is doing and perhaps learn from it. So that one day she will be able to do it on her own, without supervision.

The day will continue just as the days have always continued here. But she will know that something has changed, even if she cannot now understand precisely how. The girl wipes the sleep from her eyes and looks outside the window. It has begun to rain. A very faint rain that will churn the earth and make perfume out of the soil. Somewhere, she knows, a son will bury his father, and although it will not be in this very soil, it will be a burial too, in the earth. And no matter where that would be, the rain would come, and it would drench the earth, melting into the soil, becoming a part of it, and this would repeat itself—on and on, until the end of time.