The glass doors violently slam against the side of the building as Selym rushes outside, followed by three of the guards. He pushes against the crowd of protesters, some of whom give way to him as they recognize him. Looking around the busy night street, whoever the intruder is, he must have already gone, blended with the night, pass the protesting group and beyond, lost in between with the indifferent shoppers and citizens coming back from a long day’s work.
He must be long gone, if he can enter the Hilaga City Hall without any problems and leave it easily then it is only expected that he cannot and will not be found. Master Selym must have made a mistake. Perhaps he is tired. It is so easy to justify reasons to give up, if I want to. I turn around to head back to the building - away from this uncomfortably rowdy crowd. I hear Selym shouts commandingly, “The intruder is there”. He rushes off to the right side of the building.
We chase after him, along with the three guards who wish they had not turned up to work tonight. I see Selym, in his black suit, weave in between the crowd, going further away from us.
He’s fast - Selym is in peak fitness.
Selym runs after the intruder - a man in white, disappearing as they both turn right into Ramesh Street. A fateful street named after his father, Lord Ramesh the Fallen.
Please don’t die, Master Selym.
1st December
Nurul: Eagles
Location: Bumi
John, Adib and I are all in the car, as I sip my latte and somehow allow the smoothness of the steam milk froth sooth my mind off work, I start to reflect upon an oddity: how did we become friends, comrades when we have no common friends that connect us with each other.
I look towards John, a much older man than I am, his cheerful words truly reflect him the aged and cynical yet humorous Englishman stuck in the middle of nowhere but this tiny nation of rainforest, whose citizens seem to only care for cars and not the very rainforest that could be the nation’s next salvation when the oil runs out. On the other hand, I look at Adib, who is at least a decade younger than me, and he represents the few, the promise of a brighter future, and yet instead of being the beacon of hope of this society, he is chastised by our own fellow people.
What strange companionship we make!
I almost choke on the thought; we are each separated by an age gap of at least 10 years. The Internet and social media had changed the rules so much - you can become good friends with total strangers, based on a common interest, or a common cause.
The road changes from asphalt to a pebble road, low rumbling of pebbles in the background. There is a light trail of dust being kicked up by the car as it drives through this road. The green jungle on both sides of the road is dominating. There are no houses nearby and the sound of the buzzing of the jungle becomes insanely louder. At the end of the road, there is a worn out grey asphalt car park. Adib parks the car and we all wait patiently.
How long can we wait for? My paper cup is empty; I dare not throw it. How I wish I could recycle it in-situ!
“Adib, how long are we going to sit and wait here?” I complain, the heat becoming more unbearable in spite of the air-conditioning being switched on to full blast. I ask myself why we should leave the car engine running, whilst we wait in this car park. I stay quiet but my thoughts zip with deafening arguments. Why can’t I enjoy the comforts of being cool and comfortable and yet not worry about taking up polluting resources? Why do I have to think about it? Why can’t I just be like the others and take it for granted to keep the car engine running whilst we sit idle?
Adib responds, calling Fifie, but no one answers the phone. Adib frantically thumb-types into his mobile phone, sending his message into the airwaves.
Fifie replies, “Someone made us an offer and we have already sold the pangolin. My father needs the money. I am sorry.”
Adib doesn’t reply. I sense a surge of anger inside him, and as quickly as the surge came, the anger dies down and the void is filled with feelings of disappointment.
“How could she do that after what she saw, after what she now knows? Isn’t this country supposed to be wealthy? Why are there people who are saying they don’t have enough money? Why are there poor people in this rich country? “ He murmurs to himself, and curse mumbles unmentionables.
John recognizes Adib’s anguished look and attempts to console him, “Some days you win, and some days you don’t.”
Adib lets out a long sigh. Compelled and without thought, I reach out and embrace Adib’s shoulders, my arms having to be slightly raised to reach his shoulder as he is much taller than me. I can’t blame myself for being short, as Adib is taller than the average local man.
I pat him as how an elder sister would, reassuringly. “Don’t worry young man, let us not cry over spilled milk, and see what else we can do.”
“For one, we can go to the fish market I talked about earlier. In life, we should have no expectations. We do what we can, when we can. Right?” I grip his shoulder a bit tighter, it’s a bad habit. I do this to my nurses when I have something for them to do. I should really stop it but some habits die hard.
“I need to do something before we do that,” Adib opens the car boot and takes out a piece of plank. I am glad it is not a large heavy spanner to bludgeon someone. I could imagine doing something like that.
As he drops the plank on to the ground, I realise it’s not an ordinary short plank, but a skateboard. Adib hops on to his ‘wood-carved’ looking skateboard, with unusually bright red polyurethane wheels and glides across the car park. He sees a pedestrian rail on one end, and jumps onto it with his skateboard, as the skateboard glides on the pedestrian rail, Adib maintaining a gravity defying stunt for a few seconds, landing back on to the asphalt ground.
I clap my hands in awe, John shouts out “Nice one, Adib.”
Adib skates back to us, drops his skateboard back into the car. Who would think one small acrobatic act could invigorate him back to his usual self? I make a mental note to learn how to skateboard. Of course, I would have to make sure I would have ample protection, like wearing the thickest knee-pads, elbow pads and most importantly, helmet. A fall would hurt me. Maybe. I should be braver and stop worrying about possible consequences.
We hop back into the car, and drive off to our new destination. Everyone starts to realise how bumpy the road is.
Driving through to a small town, the car moves to Jerudong suburb, sometimes colloquially referred to as the ‘local’ Beverly Hills, where some of the rich have made rather large mansions here. New money gives people new ideas. The roads are clean, smooth and still has the new asphalt on them - thanks to regular maintenance from the Public Works Department.
We drive pass one large mansion after another where tall palm trees, imported from distant lands, have been planted on both sides of the road and around the gates. Someone had thought it would be a good idea to emulate a Beverly Hills mansion, large white gates and large white pillars. A few exotic German cars are parked inside.
These mansion owners’ sub-consciences must be screaming: Announce your prosperity to the world! It must be the secret theme of this place.
I look out the window towards a row of houses. A rush of memories and emotions overcome me. In the past, I had done my best to avoid driving through here.
“Adib, hold on. Can you please stop the car here? I need to stretch my legs.”
I hobble out of the car, un-cramping a nearly cramped leg. Hopping onto that leg to stave off the ‘pins and needles’, I look out at the housing development area, a small suburb and yet full of lost meaning and memories. Adib gets out of the car, leaving the car engine still running and humming gently.
John does not get out of the car, he refuses to leave the cool air-conditioned comforts of the car.
“You know I used to live here as a child, and back then, there were only 3 houses here.” I point to a right corner of the horizon, indicating where I used to live.
“This used to be all but jungle, really giant trees wi
th these large long dangling vines crisscrossing across them, and I remember they used to be these white-bellied sea eagles soaring in the sky above. This was their nesting ground.” I bite my lower lip, the pain of the memories of loss subside and I stop myself from screaming in anger.
“But then everyone wants a piece of ‘happiness’. Eventually, everything got wiped out to build all this. I was just 8 years old back then. The trees that fell were so large, it took them a few days to burn all that wood. There’s no place for the eagles to nest, so those that moved on, moved on and those that didn’t, just died here. I sure miss those eagles.”
As if to remind myself of the pain, I mutter to myself: “Eagles used to soar here.”
There are so many stories I would like to share with Adib, like how my father’s house had been sold off, to fund the building of a larger house in a different part of the district, but somehow I could not find the strength to share with him my family secrets.
“Everybody wants a larger piece of ‘happiness’.“
Adib smirks, as we both agree on the cynical value of happiness.
“Conservation activists understand each other. Whenever I tried to share my feelings about unsustainable and destructive development, no one seems to understand, and I can hear their thoughts out - what’s wrong with you? Why can you conform? Why can’t you try to find ‘happiness’?”
“Adib, there never seems to be enough happiness,” I reply back, realizing I am still clutching the empty paper-cup.
Am I going to throw it here, by the roadside? It might decompose - looks biodegradable. I step back into the car, still holding on the paper-cup and we drive on to the fish market.
1st December
Selym: Shadow
Location: Ramesh Street, Hilaga City
A white man runs down Ramesh Street pushing aside the thick night crowd. Takeaway food hawkers happily selling their grilled food, sizzling and the light smell of burning embers of charcoal fills the room. Mothers holding their children's hands unaware of the gravity of events that is unfolding. It is supposed to be noisy but all I can hear is my heart pounding and the sound of my own deep breathing. As we reach towards the end of Ramesh street, the crowd thins and it’s just you and me now, he’s so near I can almost touch him.
As he turns left into an alley, I do a banshee jump, jumping on to the right side wall of the alley and springing onto him. He is shocked to see me flying towards him, I see his face as both our heads smash into each other, my right fist swings out to his left temple, connecting and knocking him down on the ground as we both fall. The hard cobblestone alley makes contact with the both of us as a single mass of confusion and anger, tumbling down and then separating.
Standing up, I look him in the eye. This man Adib shows no fear, does he not know who I am?
Slowly, from my right thigh pocket, I reveal to him my weapon named 'Susila'; a short version of a 'parang' that has been passed from my own late father - and now I am on a street named after my own father. I thought “how ironic killing a human with my father’s blade and on a street named after him. The 12-inch blade does not glisten in the streetlight, it is dark and stained with the blood of mankind and my own kind. Today, I will strengthen Susila with a taste of human blood. My opponent notices the blade and with such subtleness looks away from the parang and half smiles at me. All of my cold hard intent produces an intense throbbing sensation in between my eyes, and at the tip of my blade Susila, an impatience to plunge into the softness of human flesh.
The intruder Adib does not falter, I lunge forward with my left foot ahead first, raising Susila to my head and swing hard towards him. Instead of falling back, he steps forward and grabs my right wrist, whilst bringing himself even closer to me. Before I could react, he shifts his weight to mine and throws me across his back. I fall hard on the floor, shocked but Susila is still in my hand. I jump back on my feet, gripping Susila even tighter as my knuckles turn white. I lurch forward again.
The hidden blade remains hidden.
As I swing my parang in my right hand down on him again, he prepares for his counter-move. I have already prepared my hidden blade, my Kurambit dagger in my left hand, a clenched fist that looks like a missed punch but the reversed blade strikes Adib in the face. A slash to teach him about confronting me, a Master in Hilaga. He should feel honoured for this lesson. If only he really knows who he is fighting with.
Adib is in shock but I don’t stop, my parang strikes him on his left shoulder and as I pull Susila back. I will make him bleed, red. The man bleeds on his face and on his shoulder. I step back, as I prepare myself to enjoy his pain and the anticipation of the beauty of the sight of human blood dripping down on to the ground. The red blood does drip down, instead it turns into a fiery vapour. I can hear myself gasp.
This cannot be. He is not human; he is not Adib.
“You are one of us. You are not human. You must be Adib’s shadow, his Karin.” I pause and adjust my grip to both my weapons.
“Karin, why are you not with him? How can you turn your back on your people? Why have you abandoned your life mission?”
The Karin smiles, “I was once blind, but the Truth has set me free. The path of liberty is the path of resistance. This is the path for you too.”
“You are a traitor, the lowest of all beings. Karin, your path is supposed to watch the human and deviate him, not join him!” I shout and then spit at him in disgust.
“Why are you so blind, Selym? You are the son of the most noble of all our leaders who had sacrificed himself for the humans, and he...”
“NO, you liar! How dare you dishonour my father’s memories! It was MAN that lead to his death!” Fury overcomes me as my vision blurs red at the edges. “Now die you treacherous Karin”
I strike him down again with Susila on his wounded and bleeding left shoulder, but the deathblow is not to be, the blade merely passes through him.
“Selym, how can you, a blind fool, kill me?”
I do not know how to react to him, the fact a Karin had just mocked me and that my blade should have killed him, but instead did nothing. He is like the thin air. Am I imagining this?
Loud fast footsteps approach us, it is Azilah and the guards. They are too late to do anything other than watch in astonishment the Karin fade away right in front of us.
“Everyone’s born blind until they start seeing within themselves,” the Karin smiles whilst half wincing, half disappearing.
One of the guards desperately throws his dagger towards the shadow that was the Karin, but there is no more Karin and now no more shadow.
Azilah walks towards me and I can see from her puzzled and shocked look, she has a serious question to ask, but too afraid to ask. Too afraid to know the truth and the consequences to everything we know. My rage seeps into confusion as a thousand questions fly through me, eventually dying down to the one important question…
Can any of us really travel to other worlds without MATA?
1st December
Adib: Turtle
Location: Jerudong Fish market, Bumi
The Jerudong fish market was built in the 1990s before the ‘Asian Financial Crisis of 1997’ and before the subsequent national financial scandal, involving a particularly large construction company owned by the lustful ‘Prince’, pushed the country into an economic recession. Before this, the fish market was actually a small cove with a beautiful coral reef – a hidden snorkeler’s paradise. But money had to be made in the name of progress, so the cove was reclaimed and the coral reef was destroyed in the process. Now, there is a small sandy beach, protected by large grey granite boulders, laid out in formation, so as to absorb the power of the relentless seas whose waves are always the ones who choose to take away or to give. Up ahead in the protection of the same granite boulder formations, there is a small landing and ramp for fishing boats to be put out to the shallow sea.
The fish market sits right before the beach. The smell of raw fish, crabs and prawns fill the
air, even from inside the car. After parking the car, the three of us walk away from the fish market and head instead towards the beach. The doctor decides to bring her pink bag, worried about risks of the compulsive theft.
There are several families who have decided to setup their own stalls and booth, selling fruits and animals. This is where some poachers try to sell their illicit catch. Walking from one end of the beach-side stalls, there are many kinds of birds for sale such as ducks, geese, pigeons, hens to tiny ‘pipits’. All of these birds are inside small homemade wire cages. The poor geese have it worst - they have no space to stand in the small cages. The geese have no choice but to lay down and be still until the end of the day, when they are released back to their pens. Some families try to sell tiny brown quails whilst others try to sell green canaries or budgies. The high pitched squeaking sound of these canaries rise above the background of every other bird’s sound.
John grins satisfyingly. “Well, at least no one is selling eagles or fire pheasants today.”