Walking away (I’m the one who left, not you)

Just a random pic under the yellow trees in front of my uni mosque.

I had a friend that I first met when I was 16 in pre uni. We briefly clicked and hung out a lot. She was really good at finding good things in me, and that perhaps fed my insecure need for validation. Her quietness and passion to change things for the better awed me. Her parents were lawyers with interesting wild crazy all the way for the community ideas, fans of uprising and were perhaps very 60s. The kind of idealistic mavericks you love to read about but hesitate to talk to at parties because you know they will see right through you, into your spineless couch potato past and how you didn’t know or care enough. A few years later she kind of made it more and more obvious that I wasn’t somebody she wanted in her life. It was I who clung desperately for almost 13 years, in a way that became weird and unhealthy. I’d write long messages to her and try to be as interesting as possible to her and artsy, activisty, etc. I would leave room for her super liberalness in my brain always bending my views to try to be acceptable to her. I only realize now it was a way to make me feel open minded that if I impress her than I truly am one of the intellectual intellegent open minded species who successfully crossed the boundaries between the wild left and niqab wearers like me (of course there are wild niqab wearers too. Real wild).

I ended this friendship in early 2023. Terminated it, never to look back again. The thing that made me end it was realizing we never talked about ordinary things like what we did today or how we felt about tomorrow. Random exciting gossipy life events or family issues or small stuff like what our rooms looked like. Or movies, or books. It always carried judgement, was what I said tactful enough, did I reach her high moral standards or did I mention plastic using cafes again or meat (please don’t misunderstand if you truly are a plastic or meat free person, that’s great), did my words convey “repressed south asian patriarchal religious girl who needs to be freed” or was I ignorant and not deep and meaningful enough. Oh and no joking I’d remind myself. The last one in 2007 backfired spectacularly. I really want to message her but every time I think about it I feel sad. I think I do, no I know I do, I just don’t feel it.

It took me a long time to see that she doesn’t represent a polarity, isn’t the boundary of what’s right and wrong. That if she made me feel I had to squeeze myself and walk on egg shells and reassure her a thousand times over indirectly that I’m not some linear minded brainwashed conservative zombie that spends all her mind judging other people’s religious practice or lack thereoff, and she’s still backing off, takes my temporary silence as a good op to cut, well, maybe this friendship should be nicely shelved. I realized to my surprise I am not lonely without her and there are so many people who will look past my niqab, irregardless of faith or non faith and that is F*CKIN’ ENOUGH.

“I am a SAHM. Please leave me alone.”

Sometimes (tongue-in-cheek) I wonder when the demonstrations will start.

I think you’d know a dead relationship when you saw one.

When I look back at how things slowly became toxic for me with some people amongst my extended in laws I’d say at the heart of it was these people just never ever valuing my feelings, especially when it came to issues that involve me. One of the problems with coming across as a good girl, even with those whom my relationship is not toxic (and I work very hard to ensure that) is that people give you very little freedom in their minds or autonomy to choose. They will project their ideals and dreams on you, and talk about you and make decisions/promises for you without properly checking if thats what you really want. What if you aren’t even sure what you want yourself, except you just want your choices left open and not all filled up? Why did it have to be one or it had to be the other? Either I’m a woman who wants to extremely chase a very difficult busy elite loaded career but is facing complex limitations? or I’m an extremely ideological sahm? Or something in between? Why couldn’t I just be me drifting not sure not sure yet but just not wanting to be bothered by other people demanding I express an opinion or act on a beleif? I wasn’t good at setting boundaries and thus no one was properly understanding of my boundaries. However the difference between toxic and non toxic people was that non toxic people tried to listen and understand even if it was imperfectly, while these toxic people even tried to justify morally forcing me to work, that a good wife has to have a high end career, has to be chasing money and her money has to be spent behind whatever her spouse wants. Look, no matter which side of the coin you stand on, and both extreme views, as well as all the grey in between are rooted in good valid views (that have been distorted), it becomes toxic when you hurt the person it involves the most through your manner and behaviours, and fail to respect her heart, and how autonomy and choice is important for all hearts and also a heart doesn’t grow independent in this world, who she was before and how she grew up are things you can’t steal from her by force. Yes I grew up in a family oriented family, but part of my confusion lies in my family constantly indirectly wanting me to find a way to be family oriented and have a career too, do what they always wanted to do but couldn’t. So I would be using the terminologies of a hard core careerist but with sudden solid equally hard core turns to the family. But in my heart? I always wanted to be there for my kids. Yes I’m aware there are options to do both (those are the options my family wanted me to actively pursue, and are thus also a part of my confusion because they weren’t always things I wanted to do, or even if they were things I wanted to do my life seemed to revolve around it with no soul left to just drift and exist), but right now while they are tiny, I don’t want to. I just want to be here right now at home, a sahm, for them. Thats what my heart wants. And honestly I’m not speaking for anyone else, I don’t need to be a poster woman for all woman out there, its just me, I don’t need to justify me or what I want or where I am. As always I just want to walk under the radar, unnoticed and invisible and I will be happy then.

The hardest part of being caught in between is how I never had the language to express what I wanted to say. I felt I had to pander, to please both sides and all that grey, make it known I stand for all, when I’m exhausted and all I want is peace and not having to take responsibility for things that are beyond my ability to do so. Maybe my most political satement should be “I am a SAHM. Please leave me alone.”

Motorcycle passenger-hood

I keep looking at this scribble drawing and feeling it just isn’t it, those lovely soaring too tall trees that stand on the road in and out of Main Gate, at night, recoloured by the night and the street lamps. I don’t think I can capture it. I honestly feel I never experienced KL like this until I became a regular passenger on a motorbike, hey I know all the cool kampung-city girls from my old neighborhood would scoff at me but I just never had the opportunity before. Its been almost 5 years of passenger-hood, mostly around the area we live in, a few kilometres here and there, now with the three of us, and the taste of the night air, the wind in my scarf, the feeling of looking up to open dark tinted sky, looking up through branches drenched in twilight or around the lights, the long lines of modern shops in classic buildings, the stalls and endless food places, high-end to every day griminess- its like magic’s been weaved into the same old places. They feel new now. I can see the stones in the road and I feel grateful for every one of them.

The things they say

Just live your life well. They say that’s the best revenge.

Sometimes the things I hear about other people’s lives make me think about how nice and undramatic my growing up was. No aunties in our noses telling us we’re doomed, no uncles tattling about seeing us in the park too late doing whoknowswhat. No not so horrible things like snarky kids charming the hairnet off everyone around them and then when it comes to you, a suitable degrading meanness, like why do you wear such disgusting shoes? I’m telling. No horrible things like ugly hearted strangers in the dark. You’re too pretty, you’re ugly, you’re too ugly, you’re not smart enough. No lies that become like smoke for a fire to people you care about, no random bans from houses based on a ton of belief in lies simply because so and so said it.

No aftermath of mistakes, or becoming an item on the grapevine, doomed to be a wasted backslider who can only turn up dirt on the soles of her shoes or spout foolish non sequiturs, in perpetuity. Having people gossip about the mess in the cupboard in the bedroom or what I wouldn’t eat. No becoming a nonentity, with a I-do-not-know-you snub in the supermarket, Aisle 53, Fresh Vegetables over a cartload of eyebrow raising processed carbs. No having to say sorry even when it wasn’t you, no having to be nice with a super stiff face. No having your future robbed from you just because they bear a grudge. “Oh that girl? No, no. She’s too much, you’re better off alone.”

As they say, just live your life well. That is the best revenge.

KL life

When I doodle I often draw unplanned, direct pen, and never use erasers. The mistakes are incorporated into the picture. It’s not really confidence, more like a kind of laziness, like I just want a picture that I enjoy, no stress.

When I was a seven year old in SLC, Utah, a girl in the same grade came back after a year on an archaeological trip with her parents in Egypt. The family shared stuff about it all with the school, and it was all so exciting, far off lands and the magic feeling of something quite different from the sunny suburby laid back super outdoorsy vibe mixed with a spring or too of passionate politics and ideology that life seemed to carry in Utah back then. I think we felt ordinary and a little like man our white bread jelly and peanut butter sandwich culture is just so so bland.

I was different from most of the other kids, being brown with Bangladeshi roots. But I was also then very much just another SLC kid. Desperately trying-too-hard so. We moved to Malaysia soon after that, and even though its been more than 20 years and I’ve met and known people from many more countries and cultures than I ever dreamed possible in SLC, my KL life still feels like that wonderful fresh dream of far away warm tropical places and richness (of the soul, food, trees and people) that never ends. I think, now, if I were to walk again on those sunny streets around Utah State, I’d stand out a mile, physically, mentally and spiritually and not be able to connect with anyone without feeling like I’m undeniably different and irrevocably changed. Its like whatever of the SLC kid I had in me became the roots of a tree that just turned out unexpectedly unpredictably different from where it began.

I wouldn’t want it any other way. My heart is in KL, always.

The best tastes

There’s this thing we used to do as kids, semi-fight over who gets to wipe the chicken/fish/vegetable pot clean with rice. It tasted better than the same food ladled out normally. There was this covert thing about staying up late, enjoying a read or a bit of Age of Empires, with the pot and rice all to yourself. Or eating an early breakfast or a really late one when everyone’s already gone off and you’ve been left behind for some reason or other. Perhaps you were a bit of a rule bender and had requested a day off from life, needing a bit of time to catch your breath. A sleep-in and then that stronger flavor of the heaviest slightly burnt spices on the floor of the pot mixed with the ever-cushioning rice.

The Arch

Until the emptiness becomes so huge that one has to search for the truth again.

Time and that one platform game

Inspired, just a little, by my childhood memories of Aladdin, Nasira’s revenge

A few years ago we stumbled across Aladdin, Nasira’s revenge, again, the PC platform game that gripped us as young teens. Unsurprisingly it was a bit like, what? Why did I like this so much? Its shoddy. And why is it so hard? And the graphics seemed pretty terrible, but that’s just due to the age we live in. Yet… I can still remember that beautiful hot sunny excitement, almost like this dear little secret only we were in on, as we rushed home, tossed our bags and sat around the PC, waiting for the eldest to play (none of us really could play it besides her), all of us cheering her on, even my mom. I’d panic and rush up and down the living room making frantic prayers for her to succeed during the difficult parts that took life after life. The bursts of fear, romance, desert calm, adrenaline rushes and the journey that seemed too real of Aladdin through the city, the palace, imprisonment and then various desert and oasis settings-they haunted my dreams at night. It was like we were all rooting for or in love with Aladdin and it was us, not him, flying on the carpets or sliding down the impossible ice slide in the cave, or swinging from vine to vine in a later count down level. No PC game, not even Neverwinter had the same living effect on me. Sometimes I feel the world inside the game will always exist in me. Yet, I never actually played it much. I just watched from the sidelines and hoped she would play just one more level, just one more. Perhaps my elder sister got sick of it as the years went on-it took her years to finish.

Riverside picnic in the tropics

I’d be sitting on a checkered wool blanket I’d borrowed from my mom, with bought food, the kind that felt mall-ish yet poetic to me then-vanilla ice cream with some modernized exaggerated topping, hot coffee and a cinnamon bun, perhaps a roti boy bun. It would be shady and hot, and I’d pretend I was having a little picnic in the temperate parks of the fiction world where mosquitoes, flies, giant lizards, and too many huge ants and other questionable insects (all of which would intrude on my artificial calm every now and then) do not seem to exist, at least not so close to people. I think I’d hope unconsciously that the too hot sun would warm up the coldness in my soul, and the attempted replication of some Enid Blyton picnic would make my self whole as I used to be back when I thought her books were worth devouring in the school library during lunch. They had a miserable little collection of a few of the Deputy Principal’s old books- the ones she could bear to part with- and the Enid Blyton section was unsurprisingly large. I really don’t know how I fit all that- blanket, food, notebooks, novels, in my over strained bulging sling bag, or how I took the bus with such a heavy load. I was likely a messy, frumpy, in-denial walking adage to loneliness.

Fifteen minutes before lunch

What really did go on, they wondered, in those four walls, of the house, and also, of her mind, in those hurried furtive moments just before lunch had to be started? Was it emptiness, or was it scandal, or was it just a little of something else?