The Minorities

by Suffian Hakim

  Tights, however, stayed on, his face worried. “I don’t know cookie have paper inside.” With the two out of earshot, he asked me, “Paper poison or no?”

  I laughed, despite my earlier row with Shanti. “No, it’s not. Don’t you have fortune cookies in China?”

  Tights shook his head. “In China, we never put paper in food, because what if eat paper.”

  “Well, in Singapore,” I said to him, “we know this too, but we love American culture so much, we don’t question it.”

  I pointed towards the car, and Tights took the front seat. Diyanah’s thin figure was already seated next to Cantona in the back. I bent over and picked up the small strip of paper Shanti had discarded.

  “Having love in the time of cholera is better than having no love at all.”

  In the dark of night, the wheels of fortune continued their recondite revolutions.

  Chapter Twelve: High Steaks

  About eight in the morning, I parked my car in a clearing next to the Pontian Kechil River, a kilometre inland from the fishing town of Pontian Kechil. It was also many kilometres south from the route I had initially mapped out.

  In the back seat, Shanti’s soft snores quivered into Cantona’s shoulders. Cantona was leaning back, similarly asleep. Next to me Tights had his face pressed against the window, a line of spittle staining the glass.

  I had stopped there because only a few minutes ago, I had said to Diyanah, “We’re in Pontian” and she had replied with, “I need to feed.”

  She was now stalking the forest around the clearing. She was charming, but something or another would always remind me of her supernatural disposition. “Don’t feed on people!” I had shouted after her.

  “Soylent Green,” Tights muttered absentmindedly in his sleep. “People is Soylent Green.”

  At the river, I sat on the grassy banks. Far ahead on the opposite bank, I could see a highway. Traffic there was sporadic but steadily building, the heavy drones of passing vehicles creating an ephemeral reminder of the world that was passing us by. People out there were still making life happen: they were heading to work, to earn money for the things they loved, such as family, debauchery, groceries or cocaine.

  Cantona joined me shortly and stripped to his underwear. With furtive steps, he entered the river and washed the sleep from his bones. I smiled at him as he splashed water on his face, and he smiled back. I could tell it took him some effort.

  I heard the sound of a car door closing and turned to see Tights sitting cross-legged on the bonnet. He was unwrapping an egg sandwich, and a can of coffee sat next to him.

  For the next ten minutes, this was us: Shanti sleeping across the back seat, Tights sinking his teeth into his egg sandwich, Cantona’s thin frame disappearing and reappearing in the river, and me allowing my mind to lull with the hum of the cars on the highway. I was so terribly sleepy. The grass felt soft, inviting me to lie back and rest my tired soul.

  The sound that broke the peace, of all sounds, was a very pained, “Moo!” Cantona, Tights and I turned immediately and saw Diyanah, in pontianak form, dragging a fully-grown adult cow towards us. Its legs were mangled—well, its remaining ones at least. Its left foreleg had been sliced clean off at the thigh. Upon reaching the clearing, Diyanah tore into the cow, sinking her claws into its belly. The animal mooaned loudly in pain as its body convulsed violently.

  As the cow attempted desperately to kick whatever feet it had left, Diyanah sunk her fangs into its neck. She must have burst a major artery because blood began to spurt from the opening, dousing her face and dress, the grass below, and the cow’s black-and-white hide in a deluge of red. Stray jets even landed on the car. I thought of the stories my parents used to tell about Middle Eastern bedouins striking the desert for spring water, and their elated cries when the sands churned forth those glorious pools. Blood, however, is thicker than water, and I wondered how we were going to remove its stains.

  The cow’s spasms were manic now. Even as its body trembled, its hind legs kicked sideways into the grass, so the cow ended up rotating slightly on the ground. Diyanah sank her other set of claws right through the cow’s eyes, her mouth never leaving her prey’s neck.

  Midway through her feeding, she looked up, her face all red, and caught my eye. In that moment, I did not recognise Diyanah, the girl from Malacca. These were the eyes of a beast, inhuman and carnivorous. She blinked slowly. I blinked back.

  She dove back into the carcass.

  We could not help but stare as she fed, and we could not help but continue staring when, after the entire ordeal, she morphed back to human mode, blood still dripping from her now less snarling, less fanged mouth, and walked to the river to wash her mouth clean of cow blood.

  Shanti woke up soon after to the sight of a dead, bloody cow mere metres from the car, and screamed.

  Later we sat together by the bank of the river, Shanti, Cantona and I having egg sandwiches while Tights dipped his feet in the water. Diyanah did what I had done: sit and stare at the vehicles that zoomed by.

  “You know what I wonder?” Cantona said into the silence among us. “How come there aren’t any pontianaks in Bangladesh?”

  “You have nicer men there, maybe,” Diyanah ventured.

  “Speaking of nicer men,” I said, “we need to prepare ourselves for Gyava.”

  “The vampire,” Cantona added gravely.

  “He can’t reach us in the day,” Diyanah said. “His covenant decrees that sunlight would weaken him.”

  “How do we defend ourselves at night then?” Shanti asked.

  “Stab him in his head. Get something sharp and stab him in the head.”

  I did not know what kind of comradeship the members of COME had amongst themselves. “You’re okay with us killing him?”

  As if she could read my mind, Diyanah replied, “Yes. A lot of COME members…”

  “Come and go?” I offered.

  She nodded, grinning. “The nature of our existence is so fleeting. We’re susceptible to banishments, exorcisms, stakes through the head. That’s not even counting beings who can fulfil their covenants quicker than most.”

  “COME has premature ejections?”

  Shanti rolled her eyes. A small giggle escaped Diyanah.

  “As for Gyava,” she continued, “he’s evil, murderous and racist. We could do with one less of him.”

  Cantona gestured to the carcass behind us. “If you can do to him what you did to that cow, we’re good.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said. “I’ve loved beef since I was alive.”

  We paused, not quite sure how to proceed.

  Cantona broke the silence. “How much do you remember from when you were alive?”

  “I have one favourite memory,” she replied. “Near Kampong Air Rindu, there was a hill, where cows grazed. They didn’t belong to anyone. We believe they got displaced during the war. I remember I would go up there, hide among the cows and smoke opium on my own.”

  “How old were you?” Cantona asked.

  “I must have been about seventeen.”

  “I used to do that too when I was seventeen,” Cantona said with a wistful chuckle.

  “Only, I smoked hashish among my uncle’s goats.”

  Diyanah laughed. “It’s a strange hobby we have, isn’t it?”

  I tried to think of a similar anecdote from my life. The closest thing I’d had to their experience was eating M&Ms amidst the throng of Orchard Road.

  “My uncle caught me one day,” Cantona recalled.

  “Did you get into trouble?” Shanti asked.

  “Oh yeah, he gave me hell. He said I was throwing my life away.”

  “What did you say to him?” I asked.

  Cantona was sheepish and, upon seeing him like that, I felt a triumphant coldness spreading across my chest. “I told him that he cannot tell me what to do, because he’s not my father,” he answered.

  “You walking cliché!” Despite what I felt, I had said it in
a joking manner. Shanti, nevertheless, threw me a dirty look.

  “My uncle said he was trying very hard to provide for me—this was the year after my mother passed—and I told him it’s not enough because he won’t replace my father.” His face stretched in a troubled smile. “Even called him a goat fucker.”

  All I could think of then was the fact that despite how horrendous Jamal, Cantona’s goat-fucking uncle, was, he still cared for his nephew. I imagined that if Jamal promised to come back as a ghost, his spectral form would have visited Cantona regularly, waxing lyrical about the amazing goats of the afterlife. “At least you had a father figure who bothered.”

  “Dude, he fucked goats,” Cantona pointed out.

  “But he cared for you!” I found myself yelling. “He loved you like his own and brought you up. He took you and your mother in. He was there.”

  Cantona knew immediately why I was yelling. “What are you talking about? Your father was there. He was with you the whole time until the day he died.” He spoke with clarity, and with rapidly dissipating sympathy.

  “At least your life got better after your father died!”

  There was a shocked silence. I would reflect upon that moment later and would know in my heart that I had crossed the line. The silence did not last.

  “No, it did not, you self-centred bastard! I lost my father! I will never know who took my father from me,” Cantona cried. He got to his feet. I got to mine. I clenched my fists, and a dark voice inside me told me to swing my fist towards his temples. Rattle that jar, rattle that jar. I fought the impulse, long enough for Diyanah, Shanti and Tights to stand up as well.

  “Okay, that’s enough, you two!” Shanti pushed a palm over my heart. “You need to sleep.”

  For some reason, her saying that angered me even more. “Don’t pretend like you know me!” I pushed her hand off my chest. “You don’t know what I need!” I stormed off, towards the car, acutely aware that nobody was following me, nobody was calling out my name.

  Sliding into the driver’s seat, I gasped. Diyanah was already in the front passenger seat looking at me, her brown eyes gentle and her brows furrowed.

  “Is teleportation part of your covenant now?” I asked. To my surprise, I felt my anger disappearing; she and I were the only occupants of the world inside my car, removed from the one outside.

  “Within a short radius of the person I’m haunting,” she explained. “Your friends are right, you know. You look like crap.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You deserve some rest. You’ve gotten us so far.”

  She placed a cold hand on mine and clasped it. I found myself incapable of looking her in the eye. An icy warmth surged through my being. I felt…something. I could not quite put a word to it. I felt small. No, I felt less than that. I felt undeserving. She broke her clasp. I got out of the car, and climbed back in through the back door. I vaguely remembered shutting the door. And then, without knowing how, I slept.

  “Wake up.”

  I opened my eyes. It was dark. I had slept through the entire day. As slumber left and lucidity returned, I felt trepidation cementing in my heart. Diyanah was next to me, and to her left was Tights. Shanti was driving, Cantona beside her. They were all looking intently at the road.

  The whirr of the car engine grew ponderous as the car began slowing down.

  “Are we here already?”

  “We’re outside Batu Pahat,” Cantona replied.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  They did not have to answer. Across both lanes of tarmac was a line of vehicles, their headlights projecting blinding supernovae into the oblivion of night. The four humans among us raised our hands to shield our eyes.

  “Is it police?” Tights asked.

  “Diyanah, can you hide Cantona and Tights?” Shanti asked, pleading.

  “No.” Diyanah sounded frightened. “There are too many of them.” It was the fear in Diyanah’s voice that truly discomforted us.

  From the other side of the lights, a familiar growl told me it was not the police: “Shanti, you can never hide from me. I’ll always find you. I am, after all, your husband.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Gangbangers & Mash

  The odds were stacked heavily against us. There were five cars and one truck. The number of silhouettes standing menacingly behind them, shrouded behind the headlights, suggested that at least one of those vehicles had to be a clown car.

  A silhouette moved forward and, doused in illumination, formed Devas’ lean, strong frame. This time, he spoke calmly and clearly. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I just want Shanti. I promise I will let the rest of you go—if you would just cooperate.”

  We stood a good ten metres from him. It was enough of a head start if we wanted to turn and run.

  “And what are you going to do to her?” Cantona asked. I knew he was not interested in the answer—he was buying us precious time. We were surrounded on both sides by jungle. It might be possible to lose them among the trees.

  I looked to Diyanah. There was a look of abject concern on her face. “There are too many of them,” she whispered.

  “That doesn’t concern you, Bangla,” Devas replied. “What happens between man and wife stays between man and wife.” Then, softly, gently, almost supplicating, he called, “Shanti, come home with me. We can forget all this ever happened.”

  “That’s convenient, isn’t it?” she screamed, tears cascading from her eyes. “That’s convenient that you can just forget and cast aside every fucked-up thing you’ve ever done to me.”

  “You deserve it,” said another. The same voice, dripping with malice, added, “Cheap fucking slut.”

  Shanti dropped to her knees, crying. Her body was shaking uncontrollably.

  “He deserves better than you!” exclaimed another of Devas’ men.

  Devas lifted his hands, gesturing at himself. “And yet here I am, so far from Singapore, forgiving you, and asking you nicely to come back to me.”

  Cantona rushed to Shanti’s side and put his arm around her. “She isn’t going anywhere with you,” he said loudly, his large eyes wild with hatred.

  Devas did not acknowledge the one man who had been Shanti’s greatest source of comfort in the past months. “Shanti, this is your last chance,” he growled. “Come home with me and this won’t get ugly.”

  “Fuck off, Devas!” Shanti cried hysterically.

  Tights turned to me. “We fight?” I shook my head at him. He defiantly clenched his fists, his blazing eyes directed angrily at Devas.

  “You must be wondering how we managed to find you. It’s easy. I expected you to be smart, Shanti. See how well I know you? I knew after we found the map, that you will go in a different direction from the one marked. So I split my gang into three groups and scanned the other possible routes to Malacca. How fitting that this is the group that finds you.” His men cheered, happy that their boss has acknowledged their success.

  “This is a third of his entire gang?” Cantona whispered.

  I nodded in agreement. “He has more gangsters under him than Sesame Street has puppets.”

  “So, Shanti, I ask one more time. Come back to me, and your friends can go on with their stupid fucking lives. Or you can watch them die.”

  Devas retreated into one of the vehicles and quickly returned, holding a long, black object. I saw what it was, my heart stopped and I muttered, “Holy fuck.”

  Devas cocked his shotgun. “I gave you a chance.” He took aim. “But you choose to test my patience.”

  I stepped forward, cautiously. “Devas, calm down.”

  “Do you know,” he asked me, “how long it will take before anyone finds your bodies?”

  I did not want to know the answer.

  “Days,” he replied. It was shorter than the answer I had in mind, but that did not make it less dispiriting. He began striding forward, shotgun aimed at us.

  “Get back to the car!” I told my friends.

  They had barely turn
ed when a deafening gunshot rang into the night. Devas had fired into the air. “Shanti, come here now or I’ll kill all your friends. And you, Bangla, get your hands off her.”

  We were frozen—and that meant Cantona’s arm remained around a trembling Shanti. My mind raced. The answer was simple: I needed to draw Devas’ fire to buy time for my friends to escape.

  But Diyanah had other ideas. She walked in front of me, pushing me firmly behind her.

  “Who is this bitch?” Devas said.

  Diyanah shrieked as her form twisted and stretched into that of a ferocious pontianak. Her eyes blazed blood red. She floated off the ground, brandishing her dire claws.

  Devas raised his shotgun, scowling, and fired at Diyanah. She continued her supernatural rise, unperturbed. Devas fired again.

  And again.

  But the night belonged to Diyanah as she continued spinning in the air, terrible as wretched darkness, and remarkable as blinding light. As bullets flew at her, I took my friends back to our car.

  I dared not look back until I was behind the steering wheel. Cantona was next to me, watching proceedings, his jaw clenched. Tights and Shanti occupied the back seat, the former’s arm around the latter.

  Up ahead, Diyanah had dived into Devas’ men. She stabbed her claws into them, lifted them with inhuman strength and then flung them like they were mere dolls. If the bullets were affecting her, she did not show it. She shrieked and snarled, animalistic and wild, as bodies flew and blood spurted and bones broke around her in accordance to her administrations. Yet, with defiant cries, Devas’ men continued to attack her. They circled her: those with guns pelted bullets at her, while those with machetes and crowbars rushed at her whenever an opening was presented. In the heart of that chaos was Devas, unloading his shotgun into Diyanah.

  “Drive, please, drive,” Shanti pleaded.

  I started the engine. Diyanah, come back, I screamed aloud in the silent confines of my mind. She was surrounded now. Her clawing had lost some of their savagery. It was at that moment that I understood Shanti’s fear of Devas. On his own, he was single-minded and almost manic in getting what he wanted. But it was seeing the reckless bravado and relentless loyalty he inspired in his followers that made him truly fearsome. Even when faced with a supernatural being like Diyanah, they fought on with him, for the comparatively trivial purpose of helping Devas get Shanti back.