My Malaysia

“Pergi ke hulu menjala ikan          Belayar sampan ke Tanjung JatiMasa lalu jangan ditangiskan    Masa depan jangan ditakuti”(Pantun berkait)
“Go upstream to catch fish    Take a boat trip to Tanjung JatiDon’t cry over the past   Don't worry about the future”(Old poem)

Malaysia, my Malaysia, the place where I lived the longest after Rome.

I have visited it three times, in crescendo; the first time in 2016, for a week, then the second time in 2017 for a month, and finally for a year and a half from June 2018 to November 2019.

I have the worst fault of becoming too attached to people, things and places. I am methodical to the limits of obsession, I like to have a routine that goes from the objects I use to the roads I walk. In psychology, it's said that to contain inner chaos, order outside of us is needed.

And I'm deeply mimetic, like a chameleon; if you put me on green I become green and red on red.

When I attended the Filipino community in Rome, I was one of them, so it was for many years that I visited Jakarta where I was Kang Stef, an Indonesian brother, and the same for Bangladeshis.

In Malaysia I was Pakcik Stef, the affectionate way to call older people in the villages, far preferred to Tuan, as an adult man is very formally appealed, but Tuan is also what Lord is called, therefore I, who love to fly low, always thought I was called Pakcik.

Malaysia has been the country where I have done more photography workshops, many more than in Italy, since the first time in 2016. That was one of the workshops with the highest number of participants in the Media Karangkraf complex in Shah Alam, the Publishing Group that collects the largest number of magazines, newspapers and editorial groups in Malaysia, thanks to my friendship with the Boss of the Publishing Division Puan Sri Diah Shaharuddin, that time, one of my best friends, with whom I have shared many workshops together over the years on writing and photography.

And it's thanks to these lessons that I met those who will later become my best friends, and former students. And it was also the way to arrive, in 2018, to live inside the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, one of the most famous and prestigious universities in Malaysia to hold lessons on photography and make the photo book for the 50th anniversary of the university, with the Penerbit USM publishing house, now directed by Puan Awatif Ahmad, another of the most dear people I have there. Indeed, it is thanks to her that I have been able to enter university; since we met in 2016 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, our love for books and Malaysian  traditions have made the dream of making the most important USM book come true. I still remember the excitement and embarrassment when the King of Perlis, who is the Chancellor of the university, officially presented the book. It doesn't happen every day to talk to a King.

I would have imagined, and it should have been, to continue living there, and still many of my things are in Penang. It hurts a lot.

So I fled to Dhaka, to forget the pain of having been torn from what was my second home.

By now I don't remember which is my home and my land.

I had, and still have, a project for a second book that follow the traces of my first book in Indonesia, “Kampungku Malaysia”, on the traditions that are fading with progress.

Malaysia runs fast.

In two years I have bought many books, listened to many stories and seen with my own eyes. I know this is a profound urgency.

But it's not up to me.

For now I can only try to tell, as I did for Bangladesh, my Malaysia. Although this time it is much more difficult. Ten photos are too few, and I've been there three times.

Many aspects will remain out. But this is the idea: ten photographs for ten stories, and then I will try to put more photos into it than I can.

Of course, I loved Indonesia viscerally, and Jakarta is still one of the cities that I love the most, as well as the Indonesian people.

But Malaysia was my home.

Penang my island, my Ithaca.

Therefore, jom! Let's start...

From today the journey begins.

Me and Siti Nurhaliza/ Penang, 12 October 2019

Italian version