The Palace of Love – Part One

 

Makcik. Kampung Alor Ganu, Anak Bukit, Alor Setar. Kedah, December 2017

Mak* Saodah woke up at 5.30, like every morning, looked at the empty bed, and got up to go to the bathroom. 

She wore brown and red kain* batik with a long light blue blouse with blue flowers, and her short hair, more white than black, was tied behind the neck.

Before praying, she went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. She had already cut the leaves of ulam* the night before; Mak rinsed them and made the daun pegaga which was her husband's favorite breakfast, Pak Mohammed.

She added the sambal, the hot sauce and some white rice.

Mak set the full plate on the dark wooden table and walked slowly to their room.

From the side windows of the large wooden house came the first light of dawn and the singing of birds from the vegetation that surrounded the house.

 

She did the ablution in the wrought iron basin on the white floor of the small bathroom and went back to the bedroom. Mak took the worn white telekung*, wear it on for prayer. Near the wall lay the small carpet folded in two, she spread it out with its green and gold colors and Mecca at the top.

After praying, the old woman arranged the carpet and telekung in the same place, where she had kept it for decades.

She went back to the kitchen as the first rays of sunshine and the noises of the chickens were saying good morning.

She sat down in the wooden chair and ate some of the vegetable breakfast with her right hand.

She then took a big portion and put it on a white plate. She left it on the table with several sauces and a bowl of dried anchovies, covering it all with a hard plastic mesh basket for flies.

Mak walked to the door while she wore an indefinite color hijab, between cream and yellow, worn by time.

 

She went out into the courtyard and immediately looked at her husband who was sitting on the bench made of bamboo canes.

In his green sarong, white shirt, and kopiah, the headdress used by Muslim men, Pak smoked his thin wooden cigarette, rokok daun.

Saodah gave him a smile as she walked in front. 

“Breakfast is on the table, I go to feed the chickens,” Mak said in a hoarse voice a little shrill. Wrinkled hard-skinned feet swayed in sandals of a larger number.

As soon as she turned the corner of the house three chickens walk to her. She took seeds from a jute bag and started throwing them on the ground.

The sun was now level with the canopy of the trees.

Mak Saodah made the noise of the chickens as she bent a little forward, with the left hand held her side. She straightened up with a grimace of pain as she stroked her hips behind the back.

The old woman looked at the house and, from a distance, her husband sat smoking.

It was over eighty, that old house. It had belonged to her husband's family and they had moved to live there after their wedding.

She was still a girl, they had married when she was just sixteen, between them there were six years of difference, but she had immediately loved that man chosen by her father.

He, too, had always loved her. Of course, the passion was now a distant memory, but they had had seven children: four girls and three boys.

By now, all the children were married, some still lived there in Kedah, some in the same kampung Alor Ganu, in Alor Setar, some in other kampungs, while a daughter lived in Perlis. The only one further away from her was the daughter Maslina who worked in Kuala Lumpur.

She was a happy grandmother.

“Saya punya 26 cucu, tahu kan!?”* mak loved telling her friends at the market.

She went to sit in a green plastic chair to the left of her smoking husband, under the broad trunk of a tree.

Mak looked at the Malaysian flag hanging over the window and thought about her wedding.

They were married in the Alor Madi Mosque, the only concession to a simple marriage, with few people and the feast of kenduri* at his family's home.

Mak watched Pak's wrinkled face, small eyes set beneath thick eyebrows behind red-rimmed glasses, and cheeks dotted with a wisp of white stubble.

He squinted as he sucked hard on the rolled wood.

They had never left that kampung, only once he had taken her on a two-day trip to Cameron Highlands.

Had she been happy? For Mak Saodah, her happiness was that life, her habits, and having created a large family. Her children came with their families for Eid and she was moved to see all those little children playing in the front yard with bicycles, and then the photograph all together with Raya's dress of the same color. She would cook for everyone two days before.

Pak Mohammed coughed, and she looked at him sternly.  “Hmmm.....,” she scolded him with a throaty sound. Then Mak pressed her hands to her thighs and slowly stood up.

“I'm going to the market, Abang*. I want to see if there is any good fish,” she said going to get the old silver bicycle leaning against the house wall.

The spokes of the wheels were already rusted and the saddle leather was pierced with the material that came out.

“See you later, Abang, and eat....,” Mak said. 

He muttered, nodding.

Mak got on her bike, smiling.

 

 

Her husband had always spoken little, but he had been a hard worker. It was he who renovated the house when the wood was starting to give way.

He bricked the lower part of the house, that was previously empty under the raised floor. They were old, solid houses, but time made the wooden pillars fragile. He also bricked up the rear and reinforced the roof boards.

They had worked in the fields, collecting everything that grew in the dense vegetation that embraced the house: mangosteen, rambutan, belimbing (Averrhoa bilimbi fruit), mangoes, once there were also durian trees.

As long as they had the energy they went to sell the harvest at the market. Pasar pagi Nat Ahad in the morning and Pasar malam* in the evening. Always together. It was a simple life but they never demanded anything more. 

Mak thought as she pedaled the squeaky bicycle to the edge of the lane that ran alongside a small creek that led to the river behind the house.

The market was already crowded. She walked slowly holding the handlebars of the bike to her left as she carefully looked at the fish on the ground and the stalls of fruit.

Mak greeted everyone. Everyone had known each other for years, they knew their personal stories and most of them had attended weddings or kenduri parties of their children.

She chose thin, silver fish as she smiled at the man who was putting them in a plastic bag.

“Tonight I want to roast them for Abang!” she said satisfied. The man handed her the envelope, nodding with a serious face.

Among the fruit stands, she met Mak Rokiah, her closest friend.

“Assalamualaykum, Mak. I'll see you later as usual at 5pm at the river,” Mak Saodah said, while the friend a few years younger than her nodded, “Insha Allah.”

They hadn't skipped a day in the last decade or so – the fishing date was their time to be alone and think of nothing.

 

 

She went home.

Pak Mohammed was still sitting on his bamboo throne as he tried to grind the teeth of an iron rake.

She stopped in front of him and showed him the bicycle.

“Abang, the brakes are starting to stop going. Can you take a look at it?”

He looked at the bike and nodded with a grunt. Mak leaned the bike against the wall and in the meantime as she entered the front door she saw the old man go to his tool shed and come out with pliers and a screwdriver.

She smiled, took off her hijab and sandals in front of the door and went into the house with the bag of fish and fruit.

Mak noticed that the plate was still full on the table and gave a snort of annoyance.

Already after the marriage of their last child, Pak had started suffering from high blood sugar but he was stubborn and absolutely did not want to go to the doctor or to the hospital. His children had also tried to convince him, but he had nothing.

“Better go and pray!” he would say with his brown prayer rug under the arm and the kopiah planted firmly on his head as he paced toward the surau*, a hundred yards from home.

Mak tied her hair tightly and began to clean the fish on the wooden table, with the black and white cat smoothing itself on her legs.

She turned on the radio that was next to the table and started humming an old hit by Uji Rashid. 

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

* Makcik, Pakcik, are the appellations used in front of the name to call the elderly in Malaysia.
* Kain, is the fabric of various designs used by Malaysian women tight at the waist to cover the legs.
* Ulam, is the traditional salad made with wild herbs, vegetables or fruit that can be eaten raw or cooked in hot water.
* Daun pegaga, Centella asiatica, is eaten with anchovies, salted shrimps and spicy sauce, typical of Malacca and a classic vegetable dish of the villages.
* Telekung is the garment consisting of a top and a long skirt that leaves only the face and hands uncovered, used by Muslim women to pray.
* “I have 26 grandchildren, do you know ?!”
* Kenduri is the wedding reception with food and drink that lasts up to half a day to celebrate a wedding, in the villages it replaces lunches in the restaurants most used in the city or in the upper classes.
* Abang is the way wives call their husbands.
* Pasar means market, pagi morning, malam evening: they are markets open every day that are dismantled at the end of the sale, one only in the morning and one only in the evening. Then there are the big ones on Sundays that last all day.
* Surau is a smaller mosque, usually used by the inhabitants of a single kampung.

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