Asking Eyes and Telling Eyes

By Prashant Joshi

Risking the future of her five-year old son in the hands of a hashish addict husband, an educated Indonesian lady, SULAIHA agrees to work as a maid in Kuala Lumpur. At the first sight of a physical abuse, she steals her own passport from her employer’s wardrobe and runs away to stay with her Indonesian boyfriend HISHAM. This relationship reveals the final days of student uprising against Suharto regimen and death of her younger brother RITZWAN in the street protests. But approval of Hisham’s political ambition means betrayal of RITZWAN and his martyrdom. Ungrudgingly, she dumps Hisham and walks away from him into the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Sulaiha succeeds in settling in a foreign country against all odds and begins a new life for herself and her family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796006155

Book preview

Asking Eyes

and

Telling Eyes

Prashant Joshi

Copyright © 2019 by Prashant Joshi.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019912854

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-7960-0614-8

                Softcover        978-1-7960-0613-1

                eBook              978-1-7960-0615-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The cover artwork is the author’s own painting.

Rev. date: 10/25/2019

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

794500

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

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32

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34

35

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38

1

When Abu Bakar was stepping out of my apartment, a magpie robin was thrilled in a mango tree by its own peeping. That winged thing didn’t want to see another bird in that tree. With the rising sun showing more and more ripened mangoes to the birds around, its nonstop tu-whit-tu-whoo—tu-whit-tu-whoo was getting more and more shrill. From the balcony of my first floor apartment in Kuala Lumpur, the robin didn’t look bigger than a little lady fist togged up in a black velvet glove. It had white snippets under its throat as if to highlight the source of its sharp voice that had been working for it so far in claiming the huge mango tree. The small birds like mainas and bulbuls wouldn’t dare fly anywhere near that tree. My friend Sumati knew all about monkey-business in magpie robin’s tu-whit-tu-whoo—tu-whit-tu-whoo. She gave me a grin and I smiled back at her. But look at Abu Bakar—he continued to slip his shoes onto his feet as if there were neither a mango-laden tree next to my first floor apartment, nor a robin claiming it all for itself, simply by gliding and tweetering in it.

"Sulaiha, I know one thing about you ladies awready. Walking down the stairs, he stopped and turned back. With his unblinking eyes, he looked at me, instead of looking for the robin in the tree. Abu Bakar had telling eyes—black and swift like the robin in the tree. Still he used a few more words to make his point, The smaller you come, the harder you ladies are to please, izzenit, Sulaiha?"

That morning, he had walked in upbeat to congratulate us, but walked out a bit let down. Not that I was rude to him. I did thank him, but in my own style. Not bubbling n’ fizzing with joy, nodding only once, I said, "Terima Kasih, Encik," and gave him a smile.

No woman my height—four feet eight inches tall—would like what the six-foot-tall Abu Bakar had said, and the way he looked at me in presence of my husband. But I didn’t mind. Not on that day. I quietly followed the retired Director of Immigration down the stairs. In front of my apartment house in Kuala Lumpur, there was no sea and no sand, like we had at my father’s home in Indonesia. But I stood by the entrance under the mango tree for a long time after he had gone. Instead of a broom like in my kampung days, I held the newspaper of my dreams in my hand, and on my face—a smile blossomed from Abu Bakar’s comment. Feeling the heart-deep root of that smile inside me, I watched him merge with the crowd flushed by the train departing Titiwangsa Tren Stesyen. His saggy shoulders, hunched and humbled under his brown silk shirt, looked like the sides of a fishing boat disappearing into the waves, and his white topi—like a sail.

My, what a lovely day!

Like the variety of chocolates in the gift box he had given us, Abu Bakar had also brought an assortment of newspapers from the train station. My husband Gunawan, Abu Bakar, Sumati and I had spent the morning reading copies of nearly all the newspapers one could buy in Kuala Lumpur—English, Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese, Tamil—you name it. As if reading those multilingual headlines three times awready wasn’t joy enough, Abu Bakar had been bubbling out loud, Oh, Sulaiha… oh, Sulaiha, look at this one… look at this one! And I looked—but said notthing. Even Gunawan was over the moon. But I sat in the cane chair like a timun, one of the cucumbers in the bamboo basket in front of me. I just pretended that everything that had happened, had happened according to plan-lah.

For his looks at me, I could only smile at Abu Bakar who had retired from the Department of Immigration the previous year—but not his eyes. His eyes were still working. With one look at me, he could judge me correctly—if not all the other women of my body type.

Allaahmah, if a retired gentleman could say so much about me with one look from his eyes, my own forty-three-year-old eyes should be even better-lah. If not, what’s the use of those reading glasses I bought for myself last week?

At my life, I need a second look—a cloooser one. And what I gather from that look might take a twist and a turn, and become a book.

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Nineteen years ago, my first day in Kuala Lumpur began with a slap in the face. The morning had been long like Jalan Pahang, the street under my feet. Both, my morning and the street under my feet had a beginning—but no end. Time had slowed down on Jalan Pahang. But I couldn’t. I was pushing myself along the hot sidewalk where above my head the sun was slowly separating its rays from the clouds in the sky. Where is he taking me? I had nothing in my stomach but my hunger, and I was panting while trying to catch up with the agent, who was walking a few steps ahead of me. He didn’t even notice the hawker stalls by the roadside.

I was so hungry… so hungry… that the dull white fish balls at a hawker’s stall attracted me more than the glossy white pearls, of nearly the same size, in a jewelry shop we had just passed. A bowl of steaming fish-ball soup would have moistened my morning. Just beside the fish ball hawker’s stall, a flower stall sold jasmine garlands that were dangling off nails on a wooden frame. The steaming fish balls smelled tasty even as their fragrance mixed with the smell of jasmine next door. I had to push my hunger aside and run to keep up with the agent, squeezing between the Jalan Pahang traffic on my right and the food and flower stalls on my left. I dragged myself after him from one block to the next, and then we crossed an overhead bridge.

By the time we reached a big gate in front of a tall condominium, I was so dizzy I couldn’t even stand up straight. The gate was made of iron spears jutting into the sky. The points of the iron bars could stab the life out of any man that happened to fall on them and send his soul straight to heaven. But the gate showed me pity. It started opening on its own as if it knew what I was going through. Looking at it, I smiled. Thank God; finished walking. And I closed my eyes.

"Cepat-cepat!" As the agent shouted, I felt a pat on my shoulder. Not one pat, but two—cepat-cepat. With a fright, I opened my eyes. The agent wanted me to hurry up, so I hurried. But the moment I tried to rush in, a big blue car came zooming out through the gate and almost took my shoulder away. Luckily, the side mirror of the car only whacked my shoulder bag. It went flying over my head but I wouldn’t let it go. I tumbled onto the sidewalk along with it, shaking in fright. I lay there holding my bag even tighter. How could I let my bag go? That was my only bag-lah. And I had brought it all the way from Jakarta, you see.

"Buta ka? Are you blind? The agent shouted at me, and instead of helping me to get up, he rushed through the gate that was about to start closing. Cepat-cepat! he shouted. Cepat-cepat-lah, you stupppid!" he shouted again when he stopped and looked back to see the gate sliding shut.

And without even standing upright, I shot through the gate like a sprinter at the start of a race. I ran only a few steps and stopped short. Was it a false start? When I turned back to look at the gate, its last bit was closing. It was making a creaking sound as if it wasn’t happy to see yet one more maid passing through.

I was panting away while standing behind the agent near the guardhouse. My heart was going daba-daba. I didn’t know whether to laugh, smile or cry. Through the iron bars of the gate, I looked for the car that had nearly crushed me, but it was way out of sight. The driver had no time to stop and look back.

Through a small window, the agent was looking for the guard inside the guardhouse. He must have been around somewhere. His motobaik was parked right next to his chair. The empty chair in the guardhouse made the motobaik look as if it were waiting to be stolen. On the corner of the table, there was a small fan blowing, only to dry the guard’s wet shirt that was hanging from the handles of the motobaik. The fan was moving its head from side to side as if it didn’t agree with the whole situation.

Maybe because there was so little room inside, the guard had gone out somewhere. Or else, he might have been thirsty and went looking for a drink. I would have liked one, too. After walking for an hour under the hot Kuala Lumpur sun, I had a dry chip in place of my throat. The bag in my hand wasn’t heavy, but my heart surely was. By the time I walked out of the lift on the sixteenth floor behind the agent, I could feel my heart trying to pull me back with every step I took.

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With one hand, the agent pressed the doorbell outside Madam’s apartment and with the other, he supported himself while leaning against the wall of the corridor. Before he had a chance to switch hands, the door opened, and a lady in her forties came out. When I peeked at her from behind the agents back, I forgot all about the dry chip in my throat. She was wearing a backless dressing gown with more of her outside of it, than inside. And when I saw her frowning in my direction, I forgot all about her pink and blue silky gown. Allammah! What did I do? Why’s she looking like theeeeese?

Maid for you, said the agent, letting his eyes wander between the thin front straps of her silk gown instead of towards her forehead with the frown. But the moment he saw her looking at him, he stumbled, Mm… Mm… Mmaid for you, Madam.

‘Made for each other’, I had heard before. But this ‘Maid for you’ was new to me.

Madam wasn’t able to take a proper look at me. Where got? She asked him.

"Here whaaatt!" He said and pointed his right thumb from over his shoulder towards me.

Madam was resting her tight left fist on her left buttock. When I saw her frowning at me, I held my bag even tighter. The furrows between her eyebrows were deep and thorough. She could hold my attention in its pinch and dangle it in front of her face. In all my twenty-four years, I had never seen anybody glaring at me as if I were the answer sheet of a student about to fail.

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I wasn’t standing at the doorstep of a stranger’s house for the first time in my life. I had done that before-lah, when I was eighteen and married Gunawan. On the day I married him and entered his parents’ house in a Jakarta suburb, he was still a stranger to me—only a little bit less strange than the other people in the household. Apart from his parents, his three sisters and two brothers had come with their spouses and children to bless us on our wedding day. When I arrived at their small house, I stayed cool even though everybody was staring at me.

But on the day I arrived at Madam’s house, I could feel my heart beating behind my ribs. It was going daba-daba, daba-daba. Tell me, how to stay cool like Ali Baba?

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Madam had been waiting for a ‘good’ maid all that month. If she wasn’t sure about me, she wasn’t going to take me. So she glared and glared at me for a long time. A few ‘bad’ maids must have been led up to her front door, but they must have been sent back like the rejected bulls returned from the market to the kampungs around Jakarta. People from our kampung often went along with Vikranto, a shrewd bull dealer from my town to buy or sell a bull. He knew all the rahasia, the secrets of the trade. While standing at Madam’s doorstep, I felt like a market bull—young and healthy, not beautiful but dutiful—and ready to do the job of ten bulls, even though I was tired and hungry.

Soon I came to realize that Madam knew the rahasia even better than Vikranto. She knew all about how to choose a ‘good’ maid. That’s why she kept glaring at me from my head to my toe. Her wary-chary eyes wouldn’t let me go. As she was looking me over from the middle of her door, I wondered, who am I in her eyes—a healthy bull or a lady-small-in-size?

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I was waiting for her green light, but all I could see was the orange of her doubt. I wondered whether she was going to send me back with the agent. Earlier, I had seen his boss slapping a maid in her face. When I was at the Wanita Goodmaid Agency an hour before, many maids had been brought into the office. At least fifty maids were herded into a corner. There were a few chairs in the office, but they were only for the employers. Standing there in the corner, we had nothing else to do, so we busied ourselves with our teetal-tattle. We all were talking, even though we didn’t need to.

Our faces showed everything. There were only three kinds of faces, for three kinds of feelings. Those who looked worried, like me, were about to start their jobs. Those who looked relaxed and were happily smiling away had just finished their contracts and were going home. But five or six faces among us belonged to the third type. They looked terrified. They had problems.

I could see one of such problems being sorted out behind the glass door in front of us so that the Wanita Goodmaid Agency would have fewer problems in the future. Standing beside me, Maymuna, my friend from Jakarta, was doing all the talking with the other maids. I only watched-lah.

In a small cabin inside that office, the owner of the Wanita Goodmaid Agency was listening to an employer who was sitting in a chair opposite. Her maid was standing next to the table between them like a criminal would, in a court of law. After listening to the employer’s story, the owner stood up, swung his right shoulder backwards and roundly slapped the maid in her face. Staggering, the maid was trying to hide her face behind her thin forearms. Her pale hands were sticking out like two branches of a tree that had lost everything—even its bark.

I couldn’t just stand there and watch. I flung the glass door open and screamed at the owner, "Apa masaalah? meaning, What’s the problem?!"

Startled by my screaming, all the maids in the corner turned to look. They stopped talking, and for a few seconds—even stopped breathing. They watched another agent hurry in my direction. He grabbed me by my arm and dragged me away from the glass door. The maid who was being abused peeked at me from between her forearms. The agent was pulling me out through the door, but I kept looking back at her. Behind the glass I could see her twisted face melting away in her tears.

While being dragged along, I looked for Maymuna who was standing with the other maids in the corner. In a flash, I could see all one-hundred eyes in that corner looking like dotted ping-pong balls in a basket. All of them were frightened and staring at me as if I were about to die—in the grip of that agent.

The agent didn’t let go of my arm. He towed me from his office all the way down the staircase. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, with one hand he pulled me along, and with the other, he tugged out a hand-phone from the pocket of his saggy-baggy jeans to make a call to his boss, who was still sitting in the office, probably abusing some other maid. Seeing him busy pressing the numbers, I freed myself with a pull and stood four feet clear of him—only because I had nowhere else to go. "Jalan Pahang-ohn? Heritage-ohn?" He asked someone on the other side of the phone.

Ah-ah. I could hear the clank of his boss’s voice coming from inside the phone.

What’s the number again? the agent asked.

"Dua, lapan, enam—satu, enam—satu." The clinking and clanking was a set of numbers, 286-16-1, indicating Madam’s apartment.

"The same lady from last month-ohn?"

Ah-ah. Inside one of the envelopes piled on his table in his office, his boss sealed my fate. He didn’t care to find out before sending the official letter of agreement by mail, whether Madam might be a suitable employer for me. At the bull market in Jakarta, every bull had-to follow his buyer after the deal. Likewise, maids followed their employers in Kuala Lumpur.

The agent switched his phone off and turned to me. He poured all the anger in the world out through his eyes and onto me as he shouted, "You-ohn! When he saw my eyes, cold like hard-boiled eggs from the fridge, he spat out, Follow me!"

Holding my arms out from my sides, I coolly looked at the sky for some help. As there was nothing coming from there, I looked at the ground. I could see the agent’s saggy-baggy jeans hanging over a pair of shoes with a tick mark. And I followed those tick-marked shoes between the Jalan Pahang traffic and the hawker stalls in the Chow Kit area of Kuala Lumpur, all the way to house number 286-16-1, in the neighbourhood of Setapak.

Ninteen years ago, my day had begun with a slap in the face. Even though it was not my face, the pain I felt was real. And the face of that unknown maid couldn’t simply melt away from my eyes—as did the pearls, the fishballs and the jasmine.

2

When I finally freed my eyes from Madam’s frown pinch, I looked back and forth between her pointed and painted toenails and the agent’s tick-marked shoes. I was trying to figure out which way to go. I didn’t want to go back with that agent. Following Madam’s pointed and painted toes was a better choice.

But Madam wasn’t sure. She continued looking at me as if she was hiring a slave for life. I had to go through a long jim-jam.

"You-hon, open your bag-hon, can or cannot? While talking, her tightly clinched fist was firmly rested on her buttock. Her pointer poked out of her other tight fist and dangled between my bag and I, Youuu-hon, open your baaaag-hon."

I was about to say, "Excuse me, Madam, my name is not ‘Youuu-hon’; I’m Sulaiha." But I didn’t.

"Can’t you hear-ah? I said oppppen-mah!" She repeated.

I didn’t want to, so I kept looking at her toes. I wondered whether I had brought along a small parang—a weapon, in my bag by mistake. Or I must have looked like a parang myself, like Ritzy once said, "You are a WMD, Ka—maybe not a weapon, but surely a Woman of Men’s Destruction!" How could I forget my Ritzy?

Madam didn’t know this. She wanted to see what I had brought in, and surely she would have checked again when I was about to leave her place. They do that, you know, Sulaiha, my friend Maymuna had warned me a few times making her eyes round like bottle caps. If something is missing from their house, that’s it. She shook her head from side to side and stopped, as if the world had truly come to an end. They check the maid’s belongings at any time of the day or night, evening or afternoon, again and again, and again and again. And she kept swaying her head from shoulder to shoulder, and suddenly shot a question at me like a pecking hen, Haven’t you heard of Rica?

I said, No! and shook my head like a hen that had just been pecked.

Happp—ennned! In Pee—nnang! It was Maymuna’s way of telling me to believe in a true story, written in newspapers. Happp—ennned! In Pee—nnang! Her employer said, Rica had stolen money from him, you know. What else could she do? Maymuna had asked me, but she gave the answer herself, Rica panicked and jumped from the apartment on the 25th floor in Penang, and killed herself. The words written about Rica in the Star newspaper had slipped from Maymuna’s mouth like a frozen fish from the chopping board. Yes, we panic and jump, don’t we Sulaiha? If someone accuses us of stealing, we simply panic, and simply jump and kill ourselves. Maymuna didn’t want to wipe her tears. She let them dripping on her bajus.

She was right. The world had come to an end that day. It was Rica’s small world that she had carried inside her small bag she had brought along with her from Jakarta. On checking her bag, her employer said that he found 52 Malaysian ringgit, an equivalent of about US $14, inside.

But I’m lucky, Finally wiping her tears to her bajus Maymuna continued, my Madam doesn’t check my bag.

Maybe I would turn out lucky, too. Who knows your luck in a big city like Kuala Lumpur?

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"You-hon, open your bag, boleh, tak-boleh? Can or cannot?" Madam could only take boleh-boleh for an answer.

And I answered boleh-boleh only because I had to feed my five-year-old son, Jaz, back home in Jakarta.

Normally, the way we say ‘boleh-boleh’ in Indonesia and Malaysia is very polite, you see. We often say ‘can-can’ twice, in case you didn’t hear the first one. But our boleh-boleh has nothing to do with the can-can dancers in France, you see.

So, nodding away I said, "Boleh-boleh," and squatted between those ten painted toes and two tick-marked shoes. I turned my bag upside down and inside out and showed her everything I had. I showed her my only set of clothing, called baju, which was formal and casual at the same time. I also showed her the only towel we had at my home in Jakarta, which had been shared by me, my son Jaz and my husband Gunawan. (He told me he would manage with a torn bed sheet as a towel for a while.) I showed her my toothbrush, my toothpaste and my spare pair of panties and bra, too—in front of aaavrybody! I showed her aaaavrything!

Well, almost everything.

I didn’t want her to see my photo with Jaz and Gunawan, so I hid it under my baju. Why should I show my heart to someone so mean, who was pointing a finger at me like a rusty dart? Why should I show my people to someone who’s making me bring my panties and bra out of my bag in front of everybody? Of course, by then her husband, Apa; her five-year-old son, Maza; the agent and her neighbours; all were watching-lah! And all had their eyes jumping at me like corns inside the popcorn machine.

As soon as she finished her inspection, she screamed, "You pergi dalam-mah! As if she had pushed a button on her back side with her left fist, her right pointer went in through her front door, pergi dalam," She screamed. I must have passed my entrance examination because she was telling me to go in. But I couldn’t follow her direction. Stunned by her look I stood there—frozen.

"Pergi dalam-mah!" Again she roared. And I stumbled.

Finally, I walked in like a pawn of a queen. And maybe, I looked like a small question mark myself.

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We maids don’t choose anything, you see. We simply end up with something, mostly with our choosers.

I wouldn’t be there, showing my spare panties and bra like that, if my Gunawan wasn’t thrown out of his job in Jakarta. I wouldn’t be there at all, walking behind that hungermonger, the agent in his saggy-baggy jeans, if my Jaz could go to school every day, and there was enough nasi at home to eat. I wouldn’t be there if my brother Ritzy was still around in the first place.

"Ka, once I find a job I’ll support you to go to the university where you can learn to become a lawyer. Then you join politics with me. Ka, I want you to be our Margaret Thatcher, you get it?"

My Ritzy couldn’t think of anybody less. He never liked my Ma spending most of her time in the kitchen. "Our Megawati is still better-gan, my mother would say without coming out of the kitchen. Why do you want to go after this Margaret Catch-her?" My father, who was sitting next to me on a rotan mat, had his eyes full of tears from laughter.

Just catch her, and don’t thrash her, my father said and wiped his eyes with his hands. My father had done the best he could. He couldn’t send both of us to the university. It was only fair that Ritzy wanted to pay for my education. Didn’t I support him for his, through my hours at photocopy shop? So, he wanted to pay me back.

And instead, there I was—standing in front of a question-mark queen, born with a crown of a frown on her forehead and her left fist glued to her left buttock. I was waiting for her to say, yes or no. Instead, I heard, "You-hon, can’t you hear-ah, go inside, can or cannot?"

After all the junter-munter, once again I felt like saying, Excuse me Madam, my name is Sulaiha—Su-lai-ha—you get it?

But I couldn’t.

Exactly a week before I came to Kuala Lumpur, I was still living in my home—my Jakarta home, you see. I was worried, but hopeful. Gunawan had gone to his factory to find out if he still had his job. While waiting for him, I was cooking nasi for Jaz. The moment I came out from the kitchen and saw Guna walking up and down inside the house like a bear in the zoo. I knew he had lost his job for good.

Hugging his half deflated muddy soccer ball, Jaz ran upto Guna who tried to snatch it by forcing Jaz’s arms open. Gunawan kicked it out of the house and kept looking at it as if that muddy deflated soccer ball was his own image getting kicked out of the job. The soccer ball went up and came down with a sound—dhabbb—right in front of Maymuna’s house. It stayed where it landed, as if that squashed up soccer ball was made of dough. Jaz had jumped up trying to stop the ball from going out of the house, but he couldn’t. I saw Jaz jumping up, turning around and running out of the house all in one go. He had a lot more bounce in him than that soccer ball. After he disappeared from the house, Guna turned to me and said, "No luck-lah. What-to-do?" I suddenly remembered that there was only one last fistful of uncooked rice, beras, left at the dark bottom of the tin box in my kitchen. I wanted my Jaz to keep his bounce. So I had to feed him. Guna had done his part. From then onwards, it was my turn.

That’s how I came to be standing at the doorstep of a strange lady in the completely strange city of Kuala Lumpur, among completely strange people who were eager to see what I carried in my bag even though they didn’t know my name.

I wanted to shout ‘Nobody Knows My Name’ like James Baldwin, one of Ritzy’s favourite authors. When shouting, Mr. Baldwin had a small plus over me. In shouting from the page, at least he had a voice.

I’m kidding. My younger brother Ritzy had the bad habit of reading—not me. He would read, read—and read; and then talk, talk—and talk. If I sound like him, you know who is to blame. I wanted to tell Madam all about my Ritzy—right from the start and from the bottom of my heart.

"Excuse me, Madam, I’m Sulaiha; Ritzy’s elder sister—his Ka Sulaiha. My brother Ritzy shared everything he had. He would not mind giving everything, even his life, to others you see. And while doing this, he neither stared nor pointed fingers at others. If you want to see my bag, let me tell you something about it first. I have been carrying it