A New Day Dawns

After twenty years of exile, Adeline returns to her Malaysian home city…

The blast of hot air hits Adeline even before she steps out of the new electric train that has brought her from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh, her hometown.

Until that moment her trip has seemed dreamlike and tenuous, something she can wake up from and leave. But when she feels the potency of the tropical heat, how within seconds it wrings beads of sweat out of her pores, she knows that this journey is real. Soon she will have to face ghosts from her past.

The letter had been unexpected. The last time Adeline saw her father, his right fist had been raised: he was about to hit her. Twenty years later, the memory remains raw and vivid.

Tears well up as she reads his missive.

Dear A de line, I hope you are well. I am very sorry to bring bad news. Your grandmother passed away today. It is for the better, as she has been very ill. By the time you receive this letter, she will have been cremated. The funeral takes place tomorrow. Unfortunately, you will miss her funeral, but if you want to come home at anytime, you would be most welcome. YourDad On the train Adeline re-reads the letter for the hundredth time. It is matter-of-fact, like its writer; no soppy sentiment, and certainly no apology. Yet her conclusion is the same: that by reaching out, her father is trying to do the right thing. He is an Asian parent after all; he can’t possibly say he loves her in words.

Adeline drags her suitcase out of the carriage and on to the platform. Travelling feels easier in Malaysia, despite the heat, and Adeline realises it’s because the carriages and platforms are all level. In Europe, she has to lift and lower her suitcase each time she gets on and off a train; here all she has to do is pull her bag and walk in the right direction. One up for Malaysia!

At the barrier into the station, she walks through hordes of waiting relatives. She keeps an eye out for a familiar face, just in case. She has given her father only vague arrival details and knows they cannot be expected to be greeting her, but still an emotional tide overwhelms Adeline.

This is one of the reasons she has avoided returning for so long: the contradictions this land brings up. A country she loves but cannot call home, a place she knows like the back of her hand and yet is alien to the adult her.

And then, there’s the family. Adeline wants to be fussed over, and dreads it at the same time.

By the time she’s outside the station, her heart is thumping. Has she made a mistake in coming back?

She takes a deep breath and looks around for a taxi stand. There’s no sheen on the buildings in front of Adeline; they’re

“You been away HOW LONG, miss? LONG TIME change names ALREADY”

all throwbacks to the days of colonial splendour, when walls were three feet thick and Britain ruled the world. Ipoh was built on tin, the shiny metal which has long since lost its lustre.

With the fall of tin, Ipoh too has declined, or so Adeline gathers from her Malaysian friends. Despite its faded glory, Ipoh remains home to Adeline in a way she can’t comprehend, and the arches on the white colonial building across the road bring up a flood of poignant memories.

She shrugs off her nostalgia as she finally spots a taxi rank. Getting into the first car she asks the driver to take her on a detour. She does not want to reach her house directly. The driver is Chinese, and his dashboard lacks a meter. Adeline should have asked the price first, but it has been so long since she was back, she has forgotten how things are done.

The man gives her an oily grin in his rear view mirror. “You on holiday-ah, Miss?” “I live in Singapore,” Adeline replies, deliberately reverting to Cantonese. “Can you go past Lou Wong Restaurant? I want to see how crowded it is.” “Lou Wong? Where it is?” “I forget the name of the road. They only make chicken and bean sprouts. There’s usually a queue. You must have heard of it. Off Hugh Low Street.”

“Hugh Low Street? You been away how long, Miss? Long time change names already-lah! Now called Jalan Sultan Iskandar.”

The taxi pulls out into what was once the town’s administrative quarter. Once again, the sights evoke a nostalgia punctuated by confusion. This happens every time, this discombobulation, as if she knows who she is until she returns here. Nothing looks the same, yet everything is familiar.

Even the exhaust fumes seeping into the car reminds Adeline of childhood journeys. The taxi is an old Proton and its windows are wound down, like all taxis used to be. The cars come up close, as if their drivers want to hug one another. That, too, is something she remembers.

Has anything changed at all? Adeline wonders what she’ll find once she begins scratching the surface.

Her father’s rage, for instance. What has time made of it? Their argument had ostensibly been about where Adeline’s ex-husband, Omar, had parked their car. Adeline has gone over those events many times; the twenty years of silence were not about a mere car parking spot.

Her father never liked her marrying a Malay man. She’d had to convert to Islam to do so – not because Omar demanded it, but because that is Malaysian law. To marry a Muslim, you must first convert.

Her family objected. Adeline opposed them. By the time her father invited them to his house for the durian feast, she and Omar had been married for two years.

Durians. Adeline is distracted as she tries to recall the last time she’d eaten the fruit with its thorny green hide and

infamous aroma, so distinctive that durians are forbidden inside hotel rooms. When did she last taste its sweet yellow flesh? She can’t remember, but the ambrosial scent of the durians in her father’s house remains in her memory.

Adeline gasps when she glimpses the Ipoh Club. It looks exactly the same, fringed at the front by its royal palm trees. Probably still as dark and gloomy inside, Adeline thinks, and still hiding a hundred mosquitoes. Adeline never liked being there, preferring the playing field behind – Ipoh’s Padang, famous for its cricket matches and as grounds where the Japanese had sent Chinese men to stand in the sun. Adeline looks fondly at the incline leading up to the clubhouse grounds. She and her friends used to slide down the hill before running up again, yelling and screaming.

Once, they were so loud that her father emerged from the clubhouse.

“Will you stop making so much noise? We can hear you very clearly!”

His face was that of a bull about to charge. He had the same look that day, when he’d come out and yelled at Omar to move his car from the drive to the grass verge.

His hostility had rattled Omar.

“Are you expecting a VIP?” he asked as they stepped into the dining room.

Next thing Adeline knew, the older man’s right fist was raised. A scuffle followed which has blurred in Adeline’s mind; she does not remember who yelled at whom, only that everyone spoke at the top of their voices at the same time until Omar pulled her away by the hand. Thus began a breakdown in communication which lasted three times longer than Adeline’s marriage.

It has taken death to bring her back. Adeline is full of regret over this. Her grandmother did not witness the kerfuffle; she did not live in Ipoh. But when the old lady came to bid Adeline farewell, before she left for England, she kept a discreet silence over the argument. Her grandmother had not taken sides.

This had felt like a slap in the face. Now, Adeline knows she was being childish. But her grandmother is dead, and she can no longer say sorry.

As the taxi makes its way on to Hugh Low Bridge into New Town, Adeline knows they are getting closer to her family home. She wonders how she will feel when she sees her father again, but first they head to the neighbourhood where the chicken and bean sprouts restaurants are located.

The shop-houses are beautiful, if a little decayed. They have a crumbly look, with wooden shutters so old, they must be virginal. Lou Wong itself is well-kept, and as busy as Adeline remembers. Tables spill out and whole chickens are strung up, some with roasted brown skins, others pale yellow from steaming. The taxi rumbles past at the speed of an English kerb crawler. Adeline sees the plastic tubs on the tiled floor, full of water and the juicy bean sprouts for which Ipoh is famous.

Adeline looks at her watch, tempted to stop for a bowl, but it’s already five o’clock. She will have to come again.

As the taxi turns out once more to Hugh Low Street, Adeline’s attention drifts to the limestone hills straight ahead. She had spied them from the train window but had been too preoccupied to take in the pinkish needles of rock, sculpted over millennia, and the furry trees which cling to their jagged edges.

Beneath the rock are caves and inside those caves, the Chinese temples in which communities of monks live in shadows.

In no time, they’re at the junction leading into Ipoh Garden South, where Adeline tells the driver to pass by the two rows of shop-houses.

“Two rows? Now got many more already-lah! You want buy what?” “Fruit. Something to eat.” Adeline has brought brandy for her father, toys for her nieces and nephews, books for her brother and sister-in-law. But nothing for the table; she must offer at least oranges. She cannot believe her luck when she spots a woman at the edge of a shop selling nyonya kuih.

Adeline sees the delectable colours of her childhood: red angku, filled with delicious mung bean paste; blue pulut tai-tai which is smeared with burnt orange kaya jam; emerald onde-onde smothered with dessicated coconut.

“Stop here!” Adeline instructs. Her heart is pounding. She grabs half a dozen types of kuih and pays the woman.

Her family home is not far. They turn into the ring road running around the development and soon, they’re in front of the house Adeline once lived in: a corner semi-detached single-storey house.

A dog barks. This cannot be the dog they used to have, a black mongrel named Duncan who ate everything. This one is black too, a ferocious Rottweiler which bares its teeth behind the closed gate. Even at this distance, Adeline can smell the sambal frying and the unmistakable perfume of petai, a pungency which goes up Adeline’s nostrils and makes her eyes watery. They are making her favourite dish.

A man comes out of the house. Adeline stiffens. Her father looks older, though not by much; only his hair bears the telltale sign, a nest of white on top of his tanned face. His back is a little stooped. He whistles to the dog, ties him up then walks slowly to the gate. He smiles at Adeline – a warm smile that lights up his eyes.

His eyes say what his lips cannot. An Asian parent loves his children with all his heart. At last, Adeline knows she is welcome home.

Her grandmother had NOT TAKEN SIDES. Now it is TOO LATE to say sorry