Really? Thank you students. I know that.

*****

THE YEAR WAS 1988. I remember it vividly. On that tragic night, I was playing in front of the house with my good friends. We were burning something and playfully giggling when he walked past us with his gangster-like friends.

“What are you playing with? Stop it!” he said rather fiercely. I looked at him with disgust. Out of a sudden, before I wanted to say a word, he slapped me right on my face. I was utterly in shock, tongue-tied, standing like a worn-out statue. Then, he took out his cigarette and wanted to light it using the fire that I had just made on the ground. While he was squatting and reaching the fire, I was thinking of teaching him a lesson. This is the moment, I thought. And with out-of-nowhere force, I concentrated my newly-found power and imagined pushing him into the fire and burn him to death!

Push him! Push him! Push him! Hurry up! Hurry up! The unknown evil voice kept telling me. And to my surprise, I actually did it!

PUSH!!...

For a moment, I was terribly aghast with my unexpectedly outrageous action. The sudden thought of becoming a murderer and being sentenced to death shook all my senses. But of course, he was smarter than I was. He survived. He managed to escape the fire. He stood up furiously, looking at me more monstrously. I saw him firmly swinging his right hand and, with all his might, slapped me even harder on my face.

SLAP!!...

It was two times harder that the first slap. I was helplessly sprawling on the ground. He left nonchalantly without a word. I was left with bruise, physically and emotionally. That is not the end, I was thinking. Something had to be done. Justice had to be delievered. I was adamant for a smarter, killing-me-softly revenge.

That same night, I was strategizing very hard for my next actions. I couldn’t possibly sit and watch this injustice being dumped on me like a person with no free will. I knew I could not use physical means or verbal communication since I would be likely defenseless. So, I decided to opt for subtlety by hurting him indirectly, psychologically, not physically. So, this was what I did.

In the middle of the night, while everyone was sleeping in the house, I sneaked into my brother’s room and opened his drawer. Mischievously, I took all his important documents – student’s matric card, identification card, driving license, wallets, etc. I quickly went out of the house and set them on fire! Yes! I burned them all! All of them! Every single piece was reduced into ashes. It was like my emotional burden had been lifted to unknown pleasure.

I finally did what I had always wanted to do. Revenge. Sweet revenge. The next morning, while my brother and the whole family were worried to death and frantically looking for his missing documents, I was smiling cruelly. Maliciously satisfied. He deserved it. Ha ha ha.


*****


BEFORE GOING BACK TO SABAH, my brother wanted to have a farewell dinner with me as well as my little sister studying in a university in KL. I liked the idea of it, knowing that my little sister would neutralize my cold treatment towards my brother. She is always close to my brother, unlike me. I chose a fine restaurant in Greenwood, Gombak. It was a cozy restaurant, a perfect place for a family gathering. Only this one was not so perfect. Okay, I promised to myself that I would do my best to be a bit nicer towards my brother this time around.

During dinner, my sister brought a lot of sensitive topics I would never ask my brother if we were alone. He started to reminisce the past, talking about his bitter experiences when my late mother was temporarily divorced when he was around three years old. For one rare moment, I looked at him with tender, imagining those hardship and struggle he had shared with my late mother. Then, he talked about those bad things he did to the family members.

“Some people forget when they do bad things for others, but I won’t,” he confessed quite apologetically. I wondered whether he still remembered the night when he slapped me.
He looked at me and asked, “Do you remember when I, er…, slapped you?”
I felt my heart pounding very fast. It sounded like a panting animal. I didn’t believe with what I had just heard. After 18 years! Yes, after 18 years, he brought the part that I always remember. Remember? No, I do not remember it. I “cherish” it for as long as I live.
“Of course I remember,” I finally answered, trying very hard to sound casual and indifferent.
He looked at me right into my eyes and said the words I long wanted to hear: “I am sorry.”

I was shocked and confused. Should I tell him that I burnt all his documents that very night? Oh shit, no! I didn’t want to look stupider this time. I shouldn’t be sorry now. He still deserved it. For my broken and miserable childhood, let it remain my top secret, unless he is now reading this public writing, which I do mind at all.

Because, for the first time, I finally felt that I had won over my biological brother.

MY BROTHER HAD A VISIT to KL recently and stayed over at my house. For the record, he is a respected lecturer in a university in Sabah. Being the first in the family, he always tries to set supposedly-excellent examples for his little brothers and sisters. For my parents, he is their all-in-the-world pride and priceless asset. At the age of 37, he is a successful man who seems to lead a perfectly-blended life, personally and professionally. We all should be proud of him, my mother used to say. Look at those nicely framed convocation photos! Isn’t he the most genius of all? Yes mother, I couldn’t agree more. But, look, there is one big problem – I despise him. Indeed. The bitter truth is, I have never been close with him and have never felt comfortable whenever he is around. So, when he unexpectedly decided to stay over at my house last week, I was flabbergasted.

After I picked him up at KLIA, the nightmarish episodes started. I felt terrible because I was a little unwelcoming towards him. During our car ride home, he began talking about stuffs I hardly wanted to listen to – things that always make me look intellectually-challenged (or stupid, if you prefer to label it that way). His subtle, diplomatic way of discourse is like an invisible germ which never shows true faces but in the end contaminates human’s life with great victory. And I hated so much when he did that again that night. It was excruciatingly irritating and annoying.

With my brother, I am always an ignorant person who knows nothing about life, who has a lot of unsettled issues, whose self-esteem is at the lowest rank. With him, I am a poor little boy again. And there lies another problem: I have been forever clueless on how to react or go about dealing with his subtle meanness. I guess it all started during my childhood. For all I know, my bother and I shared an ugly past.


*****


WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, I used to look at him with contempt. His underestimation towards my capabilities in many basic things infuriated me the most. I was mentally bullied when he called me with an unacceptable term. We have never been close since them. We were two different worlds. For example, he was an outdoor boy who loved sports, who hanged out with various gangs in the kampong, and who got along easily with most of the kampong people. Conversely, I was an indoor boy who loved staying at home, who preferred to get stuck in my own world and who chose to ignore kampong people around me. So, he was very popular among those people, while I was considered “abnormal”, a social criminal, since I behaved rather eccentrically and was not at all like him, or them.

What made it worse, my parents used to compare me with my brother (so did all the busy-body relatives and makciks). I had always hated to be compared and contrasted with him. Being immature and childish, I started to detest him as well as all the general society in my kampong. I had never felt brotherly loved by him. Practically speaking, I could say that I never had a brother who protected me with love and care. Apparently, things were pretty horrible back then.

When I was offered to enroll a boarding school in Selangor, he laughed disrespectfully, telling my family members that I had been a naïve, indoor, kampong boy who had never been exposed to a modern city. I was terribly offended and hurt. He treated me as if I had no idea at all how the world worked. Yes, he is always been Mr. Right, Mr. Know-All.


*****


AFTER PICKING HIM UP IN LCCT, we stopped by at a restaurant for a drink. For the record again, that was our first “intimate” meeting after ages. I had no idea why he wanted to stay over at my place. He could have booked a five-star hotel and be luxuriously served. Why should he bother my life now when he never bothered it all before? Okay, maybe he wanted to reconcile. Maybe he had realized that he had done a lot of nasty things to me and thereafter attempted to compensate. Maybe. But it was hard to reset the hard feelings that had long been bred inside me. I was like a boiled egg which was hard inside but always looked fragile externally. It was obvious. When he talked that night, I chose not to listen neither interrupt him. I was silent most of the time, pretending to be attentive, while my head was spinning, thinking of ways to hasten the time and called it a good night.

Oh yes, he had a lot of philosophical ideas to boast around. While I loved small talks, he talked about those out-of-the-box things – politics, statistics, science, education, world issues, bla bla bla. Okay, fine. I had no objection for philosophers. But he should learn some manners on how to communicate the ideas more gracefully. Like Socrates, who was the cleverest person in Athens, but claimed that he knew nothing. Socrates was so idealistically stylish and gentlemanly, wasn’t he? Unlike my brother. To my brother, as well as those who claim they practically know everything, listen to this wise statement: Wisest is he who knows that he does not know.

Okay, back to my so-called philosopher brother. Whenever he asked me a question, I naturally would give a minimal answer.
“What do you teach for usrah in the college?” he asked me.
“Social issues,” I answered proudly.
“Everybody can teach usrah, even clerks also can. It is how you handle the people that matters most.”
What does he know about usrah?

Yes, he did it again, attacking my answer sarcastically and boasting about what he could do better. This reminded what he did to Jimi, not so long ago.
“What is your CGPA now?” asked my brother.
“Three something,” Jimi answered rather proudly.
“Only three?”
Poor Jimi.

To add the insult, my brother also somehow offended my housemate when they were having a small talk during one morning.
“Are you leaving for work now?” said my brother.
“Yes, I have to leave very early to avoid traffic jam,” answered my housemate.
“7 o’clock is not that early.”
Poor my housemate.

What’s wrong with my brother? Or should the question be: what’s wrong with me? I always wonder. After having realized his professorially-dominant, sickly-judgmental attitude, I usually shut my mouth up. This I know perfectly, because if I say a word, I am just making a fool out of myself again, and getting mentally hurt by him over and over again. Deep inside, I always scream, wanting to slash him with the sharpest knife or shoot him with the most sophisticated CIA weapon right into his head.

Oh yes, come to think of it, I did take revenge against him once. It happened when I was 12 years old.

(To be continued)

Here is the top-ten list of the little solitary things that never fail to lift me up spiritually:

1. Listening to Il Divo’s or Josh Groban’s dying sonata in the car during sleepy morning-rides to college or sleepless late-night rides to nowhere.

2. Waking up early on Sunday mornings (which is quite unearthly for other normal eight-to-five office slaves who take revenge on Sunday mornings, right?).

3. Reading a page or two of my expiring novel during “erotic” bedtime hours (I digest and enjoy every single page of a novel, so it normally takes a century for me to finish one).

4. Going to Pasar Keramat, having breakfast, eating the best roti bom in town, swallowing the best nasi berlauk in the universe, reading The Star in the middle of deafening noise, walking through the ever busy market, buying nothing.

5. Riding past Titiwangsa Lake Garden every time I am in the middle of a busy KL (just a glimpse of it will definitely stimulate the sense of encouragement I need).

6. Doing stuffs with a lake-garden view – walking, jogging, reading, completing thesis, or lazily daydreaming, for as long as I want, until I have to force myself to say this aloud: For God’ sake, please get bored Cekmi!

7. Watching watched-already musical movies, like inspiring Evita or classical The Phantom of Opera, and this includes musically-enchanting Hindustan movies, like tear-jerking Kal Ho Na Ho or classically-mesmerising Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

8. Driving past the nostalgic places I used to live and cherish, such as Sunway or Section 17 in Petaling Jaya, or Jalan Genting Kelang in downtown KL, even if I have to go through a deadly congested traffic.

9. Sitting down by the glass window on the second floor of Mac Donald’s in Bangsar, reading books or just staring blankly at the happy faces of children laughing merrily with their loved ones (pathetic?).

10. Going to a Chinese night market in Cheras every Friday night, dressing almost like them, looking for legally-questionable audio CDs, eating famous Uncle Bob’s halal fried chicken, and most of the time, roaming aimlessly (my demure sister used to detest my multi-cultural taste).

And there are many other little things that continuously provide the crucial zest I badly need in life. Oh, you have no idea what the heaven these things have done to my confidence (aha, stealing Jennifer Hudson’s line).

So ladies and gentlemen, if you feel like your doomed personal life is driving you crazy, that you are going to be helplessly sucked up by the office insanity, that professional life seems endlessly threatening, that love life makes you even more pathetic than a famous Bridget Jones, that dreams seem impossible, just look around you and ask yourself:

What makes me inspired?

So business-oriented, the t-shirt makers went all out, desperately campaigning for human rights, hoping for more profits from newly-liberated customers.

So globally-spirited, the t-shirt sellers were secretly promoting an eye-catching idea, anticipating for more monetary support and more spiritual development.

Or may be these people were just as ignorant as those happy-go-lucky monkeys shouting for no-banana campaign.

Oh, I found that shirt, with a stupid joke, at the very least likely place on earth - a duty-free shop in Rantau Panjang, Kelantan.

The which-state-you-come-from question has always been my nightmare. I used to lie about my state of origin. The correct and honest answer might bring a lot of unpleasant issues, at least for me. People always mistakenly (and blindly) associate a person’s state of origin with some kind of expected attitudes and behaviours, which are very discriminatory. Such generalizations always make me uncomfortable, since I am certainly not like what people always predict from these stupid formulations and deductive reasonings. This is one of them:

Kelantanese love budu.
Kamal is a Kelantanese.
Therefore, Kamal loves budu.

Such an oversimplification makes me sick. That is why I tend to lie when people ask about my origin. I will finally tell them the truth after some time, when I am sure that they know my personality that they will not misjudge me anymore. However, this conflict remains so, though not so badly like it used to be. A breaking-ice session during BTN programme could well illustrate this.

“Where are you from?” asked the trainer. Afraid to be found out later that I had lied, I honestly answered, “Pasir Mas, Kelantan.”
“O… Kelate.” What a stupid remark! I hate this. I am not typical okay!
He looked rather skeptical. I had known already that the following comment would come out.
“You don’t look like one.” Bingo! I struggled to answer smartly so that I might not be misunderstood. My respond was: “Well, I have been living in KL since I was 15.”
“So, that’s why you don’t speak and behave like a Kelantanese”
“Yeah, maybe.” What the heck. That was none of your business.
“Tell me, why do Kelantanese people are so obsessed with PAS?” There you are! …another tricky question to probe my political stand. I was caught again in a dilemma, not politically, but more about my self-perception which differs from many typical Kelantanese.

Well, to tell you the truth, it once almost killed my profession as a lecturer. I was previously asked the same question during an interview for a job confirmation in my workplace. The interviewer provoked me with the same subject matter, and my answer was:

“PAS is culturally good.”

The answer was absolutely honest and innocently academic, and had nothing to do with my personal political stand. Yet, the result of the interview was disastrous - my probation was extended to three more months! It was utterly ridiculous and stupid. I did not, to the very least, expect that I would be ‘punished’ for a political reason (perhaps, social reason might be acceptable). But, the truth is, my probationary extension might make people think that, drawing from a funny conclusion, I was a politically dangerous person! (If only my ‘satanic’ friends knew this!). It was cruelly amusing, knowing that I am not at all that type of person ( Yes, you can simpan malaikat 44!).

Well, I am not interested at all in politics, despite the fact that my first degree was in this area. Matter-of-factly, my answer was simply a situational answer. The interviewee asked me a question, and I answered it so academically and naively, not knowing that I was actually trapped by my own honesty. Fortunately, three months later, after thorough ‘investigation’ done by the top management, I was declared politically ‘clean’ and happily confirmed. Of course, they could not possibly find any records showing that I was politically involved when I was in the university. Stupid fools.

That was really an ironic experience. Truthfully, I hardly consider myself as a Kelantanese patriot. I used to detest Kelantanese people. My Kelantanese friends even labeled me as a Kelantan Murtad! Okay. I did not mind at all being humiliated like that. Humiliation? I cannot ascertain this feeling. I might be arrogant and like kacang lupakan kulit. On the contrary, the Kelantanese colleagues of mine have somewhat accepted this reality of my being ‘betrayal’ of my own country (quite ironically, they even speak to me in a normal KL ‘language’).

Or perhaps, the following essay, done when I took a pre-requisite subject Error and Contrastive Analysis in the university, might explain my complex peculiarity towards Kelantanese people.

* * *
Question:

Try to think of some areas of your affective or cognitive self in which you feel some prejudice towards member of another culture or even a subculture (such as people from different parts of your own country). What are the deeply-seated causes of that prejudice? Should you overcome that prejudice? How might a person go about eradicating such negative attitudes?

Answer:

I am a Kelantan-born man.

Being apart from my family and my hometown for twelve years, I have developed this self-inflicted sense of alienation towards my very own culture - Kelantanese culture. This so-called prejudice towards my own people started, most probably, when I enrolled into a highly-appraised boarding school in 1992. That was my most critical moment when I had to leave my beloved family and undergo unexpected experiences in a place where everything was totally new and strange for me.

Culture shock – that was what happened to me then. I was terribly astonished by the new cultures directly exposed to me in both school and hostel life. Many things happened that made me more bewildered, confused and, most of the time, scared. I started to critically analyze my Kelantanese friends’ prejudicial behaviours towards other schoolmates from different states in Malaysia. Asabiyah, or an extreme he-is-not-from-our-state feeling – that is the right word that I can use to describe them. I detested their narrow-mindedness and chauvinism towards other cultures.

When I entered a pre-university matriculation centre in 1994, I had developed a vast social network – most of them were people from various states, and very few of them were Kelantanese. I had developed within myself a strong loathe towards my own culture that everything about myself - my personality, physical appearances, social preferences, etc. – was no longer Kelantanese in nature. So, I brought within myself a strange prejudicial feeling which is, some of my friends considered as, absurd and discriminatory. Should I overcome this prejudice?

The question deeply triggered me that I started to refresh my past and figure out the positive reasons for my ‘Yes’ answer. Such prejudice should and can be overcome simply because it got me nowhere. If I were to retain the feeling, would I prove to my people that I am smarter than they are? Would I defeat my own people and culture? I don’t think so. That is something ridiculous, destructive and negative! So, how do I go about eradicating such negative attitudes?

First and foremost, all these conflicts must be brought into the open. I must confront myself first and make me believe that I love and am proud of my own people and cultures. Such love should be channeled in positive and constructive ways. Then, I must face the reality that my origin is not ideal that imperfections are supposed to be harmonized, not rebelled negatively. Differences should be synchronized and brought into an agreeable pattern that would satisfy and bring together all parties cooperatively. Staying away or escapism is not the solution to put the situation in order. It will only make things worse and more unbearable.

The next thing that I must do is to ‘return’ to my own people and cultures- emotionally and socially. I must start developing social contacts with them and avoid classifying them as ‘racists’. As Malay saying goes tak kenal maka tak cinta, so I should know my people better so that I can judge them in a better and fairer way. All the similarities should be appreciated and the differences, if any, must be accepted in an optimistic tone. Perhaps, an open talk among Malays from different states should be held to clarify many deeply-rooted questions regarding such taboo issues as social prejudice, status quo, etc. Besides, to a higher political level, the government should pass a new law, or amend the existing policy, if any, to ‘abolish’ the geographical borders within Malaysia that separate states and their people into somewhat different entities.

No matter what the solutions are, the situation would remain the same if the society refuses to accept changes imposed upon themselves. Most importantly, the society, particularly my people, must realize that they are, after all, human beings and human beings must socialize together so that the world is a better place to live, not to suffer.

(This post was originally, and outrageously, published by cekmi at dannyhussainy.blogspot.com on January 5, 2005)