How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia

by Shannon Young

  However, in more intimate settings, such as with Rachel’s family, where I had someone to explain for me that I do not eat meat, I was not given any trouble about it. Once her mom found out there was a particular dish I liked from the restaurant, when we went to her home the next day, she made the same dish especially for me. When I exclaimed about it, she beamed at me. Since this experience, I have sat at many more Chinese tables, and have encountered numerous warm smiles. While I don’t eat from every dish, the women serving love to see me eat, and refill my plate and pass things to me more frequently than any other country where I have been a guest.

  After a couple of days in Binhai, I said goodbye to Rachel and got on a 14-hour train northbound to Beijing. I have not seen Rachel since, but I think of her often. We exchanged a couple of emails after I left, and in the last one her words really touched me. She wrote: "I have to visit Vancouver sometime in the future, though it may cost a couple of years, but that’s a deal. We definitely have the same beginning of the story, like a movie happening in a city might have; it took place in the subway. Great, isn’t it?”

  Rachel is a Chinese reflection of many things her people have said of me: smart, kind, brave. I feel my life has reached a new level of fulfillment by traveling to the other side of the world to meet someone I could so well relate to, despite growing up surrounded by such different cultural norms, traditions, expectations, and beliefs. I do truly hope that one day she can see Vancouver and the part of the world I am from.

  I often think of the words she wrote to me and I have to agree: when did my life become like a movie? How did it become that I thrive off of being the only Jew, the only female foreigner, or only foreigner of any kind that people have met, and probably ever will meet in the future? This is such a great opportunity for me, and I grasp it with all the tenacity I can.

  Eva Cohen is a Canadian-American journalist from Edmonton, Canada, who is currently based in New York. Her bylines have appeared in publications including the Financial Times, Forbes, Vancouver Sun, Jerusalem Post, Foreign Policy’s "Passport” blog, Seattle Globalist and a number of community papers. In stories Eva has published from China, she highlighted women’s issues, including sports in China for local women, accessibility of lesbian centers in Beijing, and a special piece on exceptional businesswomen in Beijing for International Women’s Day 2012. She received her B.A. in History at Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, and M.A. in International Journalism from the University of Leeds, England.

  KAMPONG HOUSE

  By Barbara Craven

  The small airplane fell twenty feet and the Malay boy sitting behind me threw up in an airsick bag. He was nine years old and the nephew of my friend, Khalilah, a supervisor in a computer factory on Penang Island. The three of us were flying over the interior of Malaysia in a frail twelve-seat plane that lurched and bucked while casting its shadow on an endless jungle cut by rivers of raging muddy water. I wondered if the wind would slam us into the tarmac when we tried to land over on the coast. It must be worse there, I mused, with gusts coming off the South China Sea.

  I wondered what I was doing there on that plane. Like I would so many times in the days ahead, I wondered what I was doing in Malaysia at all, and why I planned to live in a country that I had to leave every three months to renew my tourist visa.

  I’d succeeded for the last hour in blocking out the memories of what had happened back home. I had nothing left in Seattle now. No house, no job, no son to speak of. It was 1991. I was forty years old. Not only had I lost custody of my teenage son to a father living far away, but I understood deep down he had meant what he said: that he would bury me in every way he could, punishment for having divorced him. He refused to send the boy for required visits, or to put him on the phone. He had a certain charisma, and the judge would not act on my complaints. There hadn’t been any point in staying. I just wanted to get away—far, far away.

  An American man had convinced me of the advantages of living in Malaysia: many citizens spoke enough English to get by, it was economical compared to Singapore, hospitable, interesting. He lived there with his educated Malay wife, Muslim according to law, and could introduce me to the country. They invited me to stay with them for a few weeks. I traveled around Southeast Asia for a couple of months before taking them up on it.

  I’d been in Malaysia for three months when Khalilah invited me to visit her brother and his wife on the East Coast, the traditional part of the country, mostly Malay. I’d leaped at the opportunity.

  In the airplane, she sat across from the boy, and I had to turn in my seat to ask if Josef was okay.

  "Yes,” she replied. "He gets carsick, too.”

  She had her hair hidden under a bright yellow scarf, the only hint of her Muslim heritage. She looked quintessentially Malay with her black eyebrows and dark brown eyes, not as soulful as some, but certainly as haunting. The rest of her skinny brown body was covered with jeans and a T-shirt. I’d met her in a noisy cafe off the winding alleys of George Town, where she was hosting lunch for a few of her employees from an American computer company, and she invited me over from the next table. At the time, her graciousness surprised me. I would learn later that this is the way of the Malays.

  I peered at the sea of vivid, bobbing scarves in front of me on the airplane—bright reds, purples, and greens—and a woman two rows up caught my attention. She stood out because nothing concealed her long black hair, and therefore, she was more like me than anyone else on that plane. I wore a loose lavender blouse and long, floppy cotton pants, vibrant purple so I wouldn’t look bland next to all the colorful clothing the local women donned every day.

  All the rest of the female passengers wore the traditional Malay dress, the baju karung, a sleek ankle-length skirt and matching blouse, along with a scarf that entirely concealed the hair. My heart pumped a little faster as I scanned the plane. These Malays were so culturally different from myself that I hadn’t a clue how I would bridge the gap. I glanced at Khalilah. She stood between a deep loneliness and myself.

  The plane suddenly dropped again, and I felt like a person stepping over the edge of a cliff. I glanced around in panic. A collective, high-pitched "Oh!” came from the passengers. "I didn’t expect this,” someone said in English, but everyone else spoke in Malay. I did not understand their words, only their frightened tones.

  "That was a bad one,” Khalilah acknowledged, almost laughing.

  She was beginning to get on my nerves with her cheerfulness in the face of imminent disaster. Just then the plane suddenly plummeted another twenty feet, leaving all our bellies in the air. This time I was looking at her when it happened, and I saw the flash of fear in her eyes.

  An hour later we dropped steadily through thick clouds. From nowhere, in a cut in the steamy jungle, the runway appeared below us. And then, we arrived on the east coast of Malaysia, an Islamic country. It was 4:00 pm, on a Friday in February 1991. A world away, US bombs exploded over Baghdad.

  We crawled out of the plane, then trudged through steam rising from the rain-soaked landing strip towards a white building slightly bigger than a gas station. A sign across the top read Terengganu. Just that: the name of the town.

  I followed the other passengers carrying their luggage and plastic sacks of jackfruit and lychee, and made feeble attempts to catch up to Khalilah, who seemed to be racing now that we were so close to her brother’s home.

  I got a whiff of sea air. It seemed to come suddenly and from nowhere, and its beckoning tang made me high. The rain had jacked the humidity up to 100%. I felt dizzy from the heat even though I’d been in Southeast Asia for months already. I ignored the sweat running down my face. We clambered into the car and rode out of the airport.

  Khalilah and the driver talked in lilting tones in the front seat as we drove along, and I sank into a pleasant state close to hypnosis. Nothing broke the stillness of the kampong houses and lush vegetation lining the road.

  "It’s there,” Khalil
ah said, turning around to talk to the boy and me, and then cocking her head down the road. "Abdul’s house.” Her brother’s house.

  Made of raw brown wood, the house nestled with open windows behind a flimsy metal gate along with neighboring houses. It was a kampong house, a house in a compound, the traditional style of neighborhoods left over from the days when the jungle was the enemy. I’d heard Malays consistently extolling these traditional houses, and I’d tried to understand what about them deserved such praise. But eventually, I’d realized that their penchant for these homes rests solely on nostalgia; comfort has nothing to do with it. Our driver eased the car in front of the locked gate, and within moments we piled out. Khalilah called to her sister-in-law inside.

  While we waited for the door to open, my thoughts strayed to the difference between the house before me now and the one I currently lived in with a Chinese family on Penang Island. Even from outside the kampong house, I knew that the ants could crawl in through slits between the wood, and that the mosquitoes would just fly right in through the open windows. In the house on Penang, the ants had limited entryways due to its cement construction, and screens on the windows and doors prevented all but the most persistent mosquitoes from gaining access. I knew as I stood there looking at it that the kampong house would test my endurance.

  And what about Khalilah’s relatives? Because of the Gulf War, would they regard me as their enemy? Did they know they would be hosting an American? On Penang, when I’d announced my plans to venture to Terengganu, the young father of the Chinese household, Lee, had raised his eyebrows and replied, "You better not go. I’ve been hearing things in the cafes. Things the Malays have been saying. Stay here with us where you are safe.” He was referring not just to the home we lived in but to the housing development, mostly Chinese, on the north side of Penang Island, not far from Ferringhi Beach where Lee made an excellent living selling knockoff watches to foreigners. "Don’t tell anyone you are American,” Lee had continued. "Tell them you’re… Swiss.”

  This seemed ludicrous. Why would a fanatical Muslim care which Western nationality I belonged to? Actually, I’d entertained the thought of disguising myself if worse came to worst. I could pass for a Malay if I dressed like one, I’d thought. I was darkly tanned, and I am short and have black eyebrows.

  I had stared at Lee with great skepticism. While he was thinking of how to respond to my look, CNN on the TV flashed a photo of an American pilot whom the Iraqis had beaten up.

  "See?” said Lee. "See what they do?”

  I shrugged at Lee about the slim possibility that horrible tortures might await me if I wasn’t careful. After all, if things were as bad here as he was making out, my American friend would let me know. Living on the other side of the island in the Malay section, surely he had a finger on the Muslim pulse.

  "I’m going to the East Coast,” I had said, turning my back on Lee and his wife, and marched up the stairs to my room.

  In Terengganu, we climbed the kampong house’s porch stairs, and swung into the bedroom where Khalilah changed into a sarong. "Are you going to teach me how to tie one of those?” I asked.

  "After I pray,” she said, as though we’d discussed this before, although we hadn’t. "Here, I have an extra.” She tossed me a brown batik sarong, then unrolled a dazzling red prayer rug that had been in her carry-on bag. In one quick movement, she spread it on the floor, knelt facing Mecca, and immersed herself in prayer, completely tuning me out.

  I felt uncomfortable standing there and staring at her, although, plainly, she didn’t mind. I decided to lie down on the bed and read, maybe doze a little. Within a minute, a red ant had bitten me. I found myself trying hard not to swear while Khalilah prayed on.

  In about ten minutes, she got up and stuffed the prayer rug into her bag. "I thought you were going to put on the sarong?” she asked.

  "You have to show me how to tie it.”

  She made it look a lot easier than it was, then she had a good laugh at my bumbling efforts, but ultimately I succeeded, and, strangely, I felt relieved. Somehow, now that I was dressed like women I had seen in the markets and on the streets, it was as though I was a part of Southeast Asia.

  Just then, a man’s voice called in Malay from the other room. Khalilah’s face became animated and she trilled back to him.

  "It’s my brother, home from work!” she announced. He had a job teaching music, including rock and roll, at the small local university. I figured he couldn’t be too conservative. Still, this was the heart of Iraqi-sympathizer territory. Some years later, the newspaper would report that the East Coast of Malaysia had become one of Osama bin Laden’s hangouts. Might Abdul harbor some deep-seated antagonism towards me that even Khalilah was unaware of? I wondered.

  Now, with the sarong tied around my waist, I followed Khalilah into the living room. Abdul was a bit of a shock. He wore a black goatee and mustache, and, with his long, serious face, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a Middle Eastern desert. Khalilah introduced us, and Abdul made small talk in very good English. I decided to find out where he stood right away. No use beating around the bush for the next week.

  "Thank you for inviting me,” I said. "I was a little surprised.”

  "Why?” he asked, frowning.

  "Well, some Malays aren’t too happy with Americans right now.”

  He reeled backwards as though I’d hit him. When he recovered he said, "You’re welcome here.”

  I was so pleased I couldn’t say anything for a while.

  By then, his wife had spread a cloth on the floor and placed orange wedges in a bowl on top of it. "Come,” Abdul said. "Let’s eat and talk.”

  Clearly, neither his wife nor Khalilah were invited to this event. His interest was in talking to me.

  Khalilah retreated to the kitchen with her sister-in-law. Abdul and I got along famously. Music, and his stay in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, had catapulted him into worldly ways. He wanted to know about California. I told him it was a horrible place. He would like Seattle much better.

  Like most Malaysians, he frowned at that. "Too cold,” he said.

  Half an hour later, Khalilah eased herself onto the floor next to me. By then, Abdul and I had eaten all the oranges. "Take these peels out to the kitchen,” he said to her.

  She gave one of her little laughs, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Why should I? I didn’t eat them.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more shocked look on a man’s face. Clearly, he was accustomed to ordering her around. They stared at each other for a long, long time. Then she jutted out her chin at him. That made his eyes widen even more, and his jaw dropped. He was angry, but more than that, he simply couldn’t believe this was happening.

  I thought we would sit there like that all night. Neither brother nor sister would budge. I was certain that she wouldn’t have staged this rebellion without someone like me at her side. I felt somewhat responsible for the awkward silence.

  "Uh,” I said. "I ate the oranges and I don’t really feel like a guest, not when I’m staying a whole week. I’ll clear.” No one objected to that. They were still caught up in their staring match. The tension eased as the orange peels disappeared, but I don’t think things were ever quite the same between those two again.

  A week later, I stood outside the gate on Penang, peering through the bars at the house. I saw Lee’s wife step from the garden to the driveway, heading my way and calling my name in excited tones. "I have my key,” I shouted, not wanting to trouble her.

  "Never mind,” she replied, "I get gate for you.”

  I sighed, so happy to be back. I watched her amble towards me, and realized I had missed her. We greeted each other with pats and smiles and how-are-yous, and eventually made our way to the door where I kicked off my shoes and stepped inside.

  Their boy and girl, both under ten, squealed, jumped up from their seated positions in front of the TV, and shouted my name over and over. I wasn’t sur
e I liked all the attention, yet it felt good to be greeted so enthusiastically. Lee, at the polished dining room table, lowered his newspaper so he could raise an eyebrow at me.

  I threw my arms to the side. "I’m all in one piece,” I said in reply, and to rub it in, "It was fantastic! I had a great time!” He went back to the newspaper. This would be my home, and they my family for the next two years of my stay in Malaysia.

  Khalilah and I met frequently at restaurants while I lived on Penang. When she mentioned her brother and the East Coast, I knew who and what she was talking about. My stay over there, inside the house and out, had given me some insight into the traditional culture that I could never have had otherwise. Awakened to the timeless ways that permeate the Malaysian soul, I carry that visit with me always.

  Barbara Craven lived for three years in Malaysia on a tourist visa. She has published over one hundred articles and short stories in the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Her publishers include airline magazines, newspapers, lifestyle magazines, and literary journals. "Kampong House” is the true account on which the first chapter of her unpublished novel, One More Border to Cross, is based. She resides in Olympia, WA, United States.

  GIVING IN TO MONGOLIA

  By Michelle Borok

  When you learn to ride a horse, the first things you want to know are how to make your horse go and how to make it stop. The beginner achieves this through force. It’s a pendulum of pushing and pulling, constant kicking, squeezing, maybe the tap of a whip, pulling, leaning back, trying desperately to get an eleven-hundred-pound animal to do what you say. As the rider improves, she learns that force doesn’t always work. Control inevitably belongs to the horse.