The Minorities

by Suffian Hakim

  Tights, for example, said, “We going to die. If gangster no kill us, police going to catch us. Police going to put us inside jail. Then we toss salad. Then we die.”

  “Nobody’s tossing salad!” I said loudly, clearly more for myself than for my friends.

  “And more importantly, nobody’s going to die,” added Shanti.

  The whisper continued its subtle song in our hearts, but nobody said anything for the next ten minutes, until the sprawling grey complex of the Woodlands Checkpoint loomed above the interweaving highways. I thought of a great unrusted iron nail, pinning a tapestry of asphalt firmly in its place.

  “We’re near,” Cantona said softly. Beads of sweat mottled his temples. His fingers drummed his thigh; the sound they made against denim was muted, but spoke volumes of his apprehension. He glanced at the pontianak hovering above the leather next to him.

  I moved the car towards the left-most lane, preparing to take the exit towards the checkpoint. “Diyanah?”

  “Yes?” she returned sweetly.

  I did not know what to say. We had already been through the plan, and it seemed foolproof, but as we hurtled towards the checkpoint, I felt it crumble in my head. “What do we— Are we going to be okay?”

  “There will be mata-mata there?” she asked.

  “Mata-mata?” Cantona asked, his voice unsteady. “What’s that?”

  “Police,” I said to Cantona. To Diyanah, I replied, “Yes, there will be.”

  “Are they human?” asked Diyanah. From the corner of my eye I saw Diyanah stick her head out from the back seat. The car skidded slightly, and I heard Cantona make a sound halfway between a howl and a whimper. “Or machine?”

  “Human,” I replied, acutely aware of how close the head of the undead was to mine. In my state, I needed to feel a sense of personal space, a sense that the world was not closing in around me. Sure, her teeth weren’t razors now—they appeared to be in human mode—yet I wondered two things: how short my life would be if I were to reach out and slap this pontianak’s face away, and what it would feel like if I were to kiss her lips. I shook my head. Infinitely more pressing matters were at hand.

  “I can do it,” she said confidently. I glanced back at my friends. They were staring at the pontianak with wide-eyed trepidation.

  “All right,” I said, noticing my knuckles growing whiter at the steering wheel. “If we get through this, you get to go home, Diyanah.” I took the exit. “Otherwise, you might end up haunting this boring complex—with the rest of us.”

  Up ahead, the grey monolith of the checkpoint revealed its gaping maw and its metal-and-bulletproof-glass passport-booth teeth.

  Cantona’s voice was burdened and splintered when he said, “I really don’t know about this.”

  I didn’t know what to say. A black BMW moved in behind us. We were stuck in a 12-car queue to the passport booth. There was still space to turn and snake our way out against the flow of traffic, but that would probably attract more attention than we could handle. Three more cars, ending in a black Audi, filed in behind us.

  Suddenly, I heard screams from the back seat.

  “What the fuck is that?” Cantona shouted.

  I turned so quickly I almost twisted my back. Sticking out of the floor of the car was a familiar spectral head.

  “William!” Diyanah cried in shock.

  The head belonging to the ghost of William Farquhar smiled at us. “Good morrow to you all!” He then turned to Diyanah, and spoke urgently. “Durshirah knows you’re on your way out of Singapore. He’s not happy.”

  “What is he going to do?” asked Diyanah. There was a disconcerting amount of fear in her voice.

  “He says if you cross the border, he’s sending Gyava and his goons after you.”

  “This is possibly the worst night of my life,” I said. “Out of the frying pan, into fucking hellfire.”

  “It’s Complicated and I will try to delay them,” said the ghost of William Farquhar. “But there’s more.”

  “More wonderful news?” I said. “Why, William, you shouldn’t have!”

  He ignored my sarcasm. “Durshirah is planning something. They’re all in a frenzy. His human has arranged transportation for hundreds of people—all of them humans with registered metaphysical entities haunting them.”

  “Maybe they all go holiday,” Tights offered. “Where ghost go holiday?”

  I wracked my brain. “Mali-boo?”

  Shanti muttered something irritably.

  The ghost of William Farquhar, as expected, was focussed on what he needed to communicate. “The bus manifest says they’re going into Malaysia, and it’ll be pushing off tomorrow. I don’t like any of this. Knowing Durshirah, he’s going to do something big and dangerous. If you see anything, run. Safe travels, all of you.”

  When I turned again, the ghost of William Farquhar had disappeared. The only one not staring in shock at the space where his head had been was Diyanah.

  We were now six cars from the passport booth, and while Diyanah was surely considering the threat that Durshirah and Gyava would bring, Shanti was more concerned about the more pressing issue. “Diyanah, we’re almost at the booth.”

  Diyanah did not reply.

  Shanti struck the window with her palm. “Diyanah, goddammit! Can you do this?”

  That seemed to snap her out of it. Diyanah glanced momentarily at me and answered softly, “Yes, I can.”

  “Are you sure?”

  As though to give rise to her point, Diyanah began to float farther off her seat. Her eyes glowed an angry red. Her razor claws unsheathed. As one, we leaned away from the undead passenger.

  And just as soon as she flared up, Diyanah descended back upon her seat, eyes unglowing, her teeth, I noticed through the rear-view mirror, in human mode. “Yes, I can,” she repeated, her voice mellow. “Please believe me.”

  I said gently, “All right, Diyanah. We trust you. We’re just afraid.”

  Her eyes met mine and lingered there. “I want to go home. I won’t let anything happen to any of you.”

  Cantona brought us to focus. “Time to move.”

  The white Toyota in front of us accelerated slightly and stopped by the booth. We were next.

  In the dark of night, salvation whispered into a tense, quiet hush. I felt my hopes and fears intertwine. I felt knots in my stomach. I was sure it was much worse for Tights and Cantona. Diyanah’s eyes glowed a fiery orange as she waved a hand before her seatmates. There was no flourish or sparks or magic fairy dust. She then announced, “It is done.”

  I could still see Cantona and Tights. Shanti could, too, and she hissed almost maniacally, “I can still see them!”

  “You can, but they won’t.”

  There was a flash of movement in front, and the white Toyota sped along into the Causeway.

  I lifted my foot off the brake. My heartbeat quickened to a frenzied pounding against my ribcage. The car moved ahead until my window was in line with the booth. The immigration officer was handsome in his dark blue uniform. Very gruffly, he grunted, “Passports please.” I placed in front of him two red Singaporean passports—mine and Shanti’s. He opened one and peered at my face, then referred to the passport in his hand.

  “Is that really your name?” he asked me.

  I nodded, smiling.

  The smile was not reciprocated. The officer placed my passport into a scanner and waited for a beep. He then did the same with Shanti’s. Instead of handing back our passports, however, he eyed the two of us curiously. He then glanced towards the back seat. Behind me, Cantona and Tights held their breath.

  “Is there anyone else travelling with you?” he asked.

  “No,” Shanti replied, sounding almost bored. “Just the two of us.”

  That did not seem to convince the man, for he craned his neck as he studied the back seats further. “Can you move slightly forward?”

  I eased my foot off the brake for a moment. My heart was beating so fast, I was sure he cou
ld hear it. The back seat moved out of the shadows and into the deluge of light from the passport booth.

  Diyanah was muttering under her breath; I barely noticed it.

  The officer grunted irritably. “I thought I saw something move,” he muttered.

  He gave me the passports, and I accelerated into the Causeway.

  In the dark of night, the four of us exhaled in the most magnificent sighs of relief of our lives.

  Adrenaline coursed through my body like rushing rapids. I drove, and I drove into the Malaysian night, until the Causeway was far behind and the buildings that serviced Singaporean visitors became specks in my rear-view mirror.

  We did it.

  When we were far enough from the Causeway, we whooped and gave one another high fives. Shanti reached back and squeezed Cantona’s hand. Tights hugged Diyanah, who awkwardly patted him on his head. I was smiling because I could not help it. It wasn’t a conscious smile, it wasn’t forced. It came as naturally as breathing. I kept my hand on the steering wheel, and I kept my eyes focussed ahead.

  “Thank you, Diyanah,” Shanti said softly.

  “Thank you for taking me home.”

  Behind me, Tights wound down the window, and the bright, unfiltered fluorescent and neon lights of Danga Bay seeped into the car. Outside, hotels promised five-star comforts, malls boasted an assortment of clothing brands named after people with foreign-sounding names and massage parlours claimed to have the cheapest prices for a full-body treatment. There were condominiums, too, their scalable walls sitting pretty in fresh coats of paint despite being shrouded in night.

  Before long, we were out of Danga Bay, its lights blinking out of sight as I drove into the residential terraces and hypermarkets of Bukit Indah. The rush of having escaped immigration scot-free was starting to abate, and I was feeling a growing unease as two considerations crept into my mind: what Devas and his gang would do upon reaching my flat to find it empty, and what William Farquhar’s earlier warning meant.

  Bukit Indah soon gave way to the open spaces of Horizon Hills and its country clubs. There were sprawling expanses of green, but it was a bright unnatural green, suited more for the bounce and trundle of golf balls than to represent some ideal of natural beauty.

  Bukit Indah was more fleeting than Danga Bay and Horizon Hills, and we soon found ourselves in the small town of Gelang Patah. The world outside appeared incapable of catching up with us as we sped along the empty roads.

  Eventually, I had to announce, “I’m going to stop for fuel.” Looming ahead, shining bright green in the night, was a Petronas petrol station.

  “Get food and water, use the bathroom if you need to. We get back on the road in ten minutes.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Tights exclaimed.

  Ours was the only car at the petrol station when we pulled in. We were the only people there, too, other than a sleepy-looking cashier inside. Shanti and Cantona went to the mart, while Tights, I saw happily, headed to the bathroom. Diyanah stood by the car. Peering curiously at the petrol pumps, she marvelled as I took one of them and pushed the nozzle into the fill spout. I pulled at its trigger and a steady stream of unleaded petrol filled the tank of the blue Toyota.

  The glare of the lights was so bright, I could not discern the landscape outside.

  After filling the tank, I indicated to Shanti and Cantona inside to pay the cashier fifty ringgit for the fuel and waited in the car. Diyanah was still walking around the petrol station in the manner of someone in a museum. I wondered what she thought of Malaysia now, so vastly different from the Malaya she knew. I wanted to shout after her, “Don’t go too far!” but I knew she would not, and, least of all, I did not want to give her the idea that I was leashing her.

  A steady ring, accompanied by buzzing vibrations, emanated from my pocket. I fished out my mobile phone and answered. It was Suleiman.

  “Salam, boy,” he said. He sounded troubled. “I’m so sorry for calling you at this time, but something terrible has happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your house has been broken into. I just reached the garden to start work—”

  “Holy shit, you start work at four in the morning?”

  “—and I heard a commotion at your block. There was a whole gang of people just streaming down from the thirteenth floor. They sounded very angry. After they left, I went up and saw the door to your house hacked down.” He paused. “The whole place is trashed.”

  “Was anything missing?”

  “Well, your house does not have much to begin with.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And seeing how I’m not a custodian of your belongings, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He sighed. “Boy, what kind of shit did you get yourself into?”

  “It’s a long story, Suleiman.”

  “Are you safe?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m not in the country.”

  “Okay, good. I’m going to call the police.”

  “Suleiman, no!” If the police found evidence that I had harboured two illegal immigrants… But they wouldn’t find anything, would they? The trappings in my flat only proved that I lived with a woman, and two men who shared a room.

  “Someone is going to, boy. I think we would both rather it be me.”

  He had a point, a very good point. “Fine. Delete my number off your phone. Delete this call in the call log. Say you know nothing.”

  “Of course, boy.”

  “Thank you, Suleiman.”

  “Allah be with you, my boy.”

  “And with you.”

  Suleiman hung up.

  I didn’t know how I was going to go back now that my home was a crime scene. Diyanah could hide Tights and Cantona for a single border crossing, yes, but I doubted she could protect them from an entire system of policing that would surely be applied to the investigation of my burgled home.

  I dialled another number and a clearly awake, but extremely worried feminine voice replied.

  “Hey, Ma. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I was reading. Sayang, what’s wrong?”

  “Ma, later in the morning, the police are going to call you.”

  There was deathly silence on the other end.

  “Father’s house got broken into.” Before she could say anything, I added, “I’m all right. My friends are with me.”

  “Where are you? Did they hurt you?”

  “I’m fine. I wasn’t home when it happened. I’m not in Singapore. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  “I don’t want to know, either. Make sure Tights, Shanti and Cantona are safe.”

  “I will, Ma.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Shanti’s former husband and his gang.”

  She drew a sharp intake of breath. “Do you need me to go over to the flat?”

  “No, Ma! They might come back. Just stay where you are, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  In a resigned voice, she agreed. She then added rather mournfully, “You’re so much like your father.”

  “How? How am I anything like him?”

  “What’s that phrase? When you have a fan in the toilet? Number two fan? When you throw a toilet at a fan? Something like that.”

  “When shit hits the fan.”

  “Yes! Shit hit the fan a lot for your father. But he was always there to protect the people he loves.”

  Shanti and Cantona were approaching the car, each carrying large bags from the mart. Tights emerged behind them, probably having joined them after he had let out the bad in the public bathroom. He carried a much smaller bag.

  “Ma, I have to go. I love you.”

  “I love you more,” she replied, her voice seeped with worry.

  I got out of the car and opened its trunk. As Shanti passed me the plastic bags she was carrying, I told them of the call I received from Suleiman.

  “You were right about Devas,” I said, finishing my account.<
br />
  “Where we stay after this?” Tights asked.

  “I don’t know, Tights.”

  “Well, as long as he doesn’t know where we are, we can plan for that. We can stay one step ahead of Devas,” Shanti said.

  Realisation, in the right amount and in the right context, can be good. Enough of it makes you a better person, and the right context pushes you to achieve your goals. But the realisation that came down on me like a boulder rolling off a cliff that I was blissfully sleeping under, for example, was the worst kind. “The map,” I said, the metaphorical boulder just inches from my head now. “THE MAP! FUCK!”

  “What?” Cantona asked. “What map?”

  “The map I used to map our route. I left it on the dining table.”

  The blood drained from Shanti’s face. “No, man, no. You cannot do this to us. How can you be so careless?”

  “We were rushing! It slipped my mind.”

  “Oh my God, how can you be the biggest dumbass I know?” Shanti yelled. “I was married to Devas, but you are infinitely more stupid!”

  “Shanti,” Cantona said gently, taking her by the hand, away from me. It took Cantona doing that for me to realise that I was within strangling distance from her. “We’re still ahead of him. Let’s keep moving.” To me, he added seriously, “Maybe we can try a different route from the one you marked?”

  “Yeah, good idea, Cantona.”

  Into the tension, Tights announced cheerily, “I buy fortune cookie!” He extracted a red packet from his plastic bag, tore it open at the top, put his hand into it and held out four brown fortune cookies.

  We each took one. I bit into mine—it had a nice crunch and was mildly sweet—and pulled out the long strip hidden inside. It read: “Beware those who claim to build bridges but are in truth burning them.”

  Cantona read out his. “The journey of a thousand steps begins with a single question: ‘Where is my car?’”

  Shanti took a look at hers, threw it to the ground, then said, “We have to go before Devas catches up to us.” With that, she got into the car and slammed the door shut. Cantona followed.