I wonder what happened In the years between Then- and Now. Did it not tug on your heart- When I stopped telling you about my day? There was a time it silenced my treacherous thoughts it quelled my darkest demons You were my confidant my … Continue reading Language Barrier
Her bare feet weren’t allowed to touch the ground.
Even in Ilyas’s earliest memories, the dark haired baby was always in someone’s arms or atop their shoulders. He saw the way they cradled her in their embrace. Precious. Treasured.
“Why don’t they put her down?” he asked his mother one day, eyes still drawn to the girl, “They can’t carry her around forever.” She was dressed in yellow from head to toe today. A golden yellow that seemed to swallow her whole. Yellow, the colour of Malay kings and queens. His brow furrowed.
His mother hummed in agreement. “That’s why we’re holding the ceremony now, since more than thirteen months have passed after her birth.” Ilyas counted the difference and found that she was only a few years younger than him.
“What ceremony?” He was curious.
“It’s called berjejak,” she said. To tread. “Once they do this, she’ll be able to walk amongst us. Look.”
A wizened man bent over the ground, spreading a large yellow cloth over it. He threw a handful of red flower petals over its expanse; all the while his mouth moving quickly in some sort of chant. Ilyas strained to hear what he said, but he was too far away and the man’s voice was too soft.
Then he saw her. The girl, in her mother’s embrace as they settled on one end of the cloth, her face pinched and eyes glassy. Ilyas felt the urge to comfort her. It baffled him, and he moved forward but his own mother pulled him back firmly to her side.
A tray was brought towards the old man, filled items Ilyas could not give names to other than the short keris. The chanting grew louder. The girl was passed to the man and he gently coaxed her to walk, Ilyas realised. She had to walk across the length of the yellow cloth.
It was simple.
Ilyas couldn’t comprehend why such a big fuss had to be made.
And then, suddenly, she burst into tears. The old man still held her body up, urging her towards the end of the path but she struggled viciously, twisting and pulling in his grasp as she cried and screamed. She refused to step forward, shoulders stiff in terror of something. The world held still. She was frightened, Ilyas knew. He was, too. His hands trembled, eyes wide in fear. But against what?
The instant her foot touched the edge of the cloth, the girl seized her tears. Another step, her first contact with the cold dirt, and the world moved again. A heaviness was lifted off his chest and Ilyas could breathe freely again. He watched her take a few tentative steps, marvelling at how the ground felt beneath her small feet.
It still didn’t make sense to him.
But ten years later, it would.
The girl would be the one to tell him, as they sat together on the raised pavilion near her residence.
He knew her name now. Maya smiled, “A long time ago, a royal family made a contract with their people and the djinn of the land. Their descendants are to be respected and celebrated, to always be above the common man and so, forbidden to tread the same ground as them. In times of old, they would be carried in palanquins or litters borne by their servants.”
“When war ravaged their lands, some of their descendants with royal heritage fled to other countries. They gave up their titles and privileges, but while that caused the contract with their people to be broken, the contract with their guardian djinns still held. Anyone who violated the contract would suffer consequences. Prolonged high fevers. Some became deaf, others, mute. It became their curse-”
“So it was a djinn that made you cry that time?”
She blinked at him. “Was it? I can’t recall something that happened so long ago.”
“Then, what was the ceremony for?”
“I was told it’s to break an age old contract between my family and the djinns. But the world is different now,” Maya said, wringing her hands together. “To be realistic, if I can’t walk on the ground, I wouldn’t be able to go to school, would I? It’s more of a formality, I think.”
Ilyas shrugged his shoulders, feeling the cool evening breeze kiss his skin. That day ten years ago, when everyone else might have just seen it as another traditional ritual to be done, in his eyes-he sneaked a glance at Maya- he saw a child’s first real step into the world.
The berjejak ritual is usually done by people in Perak, Malaysia with Rawa and royal heritage that has its origins in Pagar Ruyung, Indonesia. This story is purely fictional (although the gist and history behind the ritual is as true as oral stories passed down from old to young), and is based on a friend’s personal experience with it. It is also part of my effort to narrate more of old Malay customs and traditions that are rarely known by my generation in a more modern way of story-telling.
Glossary: keris – Malay traditional weapon that resembles a sword with a wavy blade
Discover Challenge – Splinters – The Story Behind a Door
Would you want to… walk through my thoughts with me?
I promise there’s nothing scary in here. Look, sit under the shade right there, that’s it. I know it’s hot; I live in a tropical country, after all. But I’ll show you how to eat these fruits-no, don’t bite through it, silly! It’s a Rambutan. Red ones are ripe and I know the hairs make you feel weird, but you just have to peel it-here you go.
Sweet, isn’t it?
When you’re done, you can toss the seed in that meadow you see over there.
It’s crazy. I never thought this dirt beneath our feet could ever make anything grow. But that Rambutan seed you just threw? It’ll grow into a big, strong Rambutan tree soon. Whether it lives or dies, depends on the both of us. But the fact that you threw it in the first place, I already consider you a friend.
…A few years ago, this place was nothing. It wasn’t even this open field of trees and flowers. I don’t remember much anymore, but I know it was dark. A dark room in an dark mind. It didn’t start out that way, that much I’m sure, but there was a period of transition… That moment when your life went from autopilot to manual, and suddenly you held the reins of your body; made your own decisions and faced its consequences.
I made one life-changing decision. I entered a boarding school.
Oh, and I might as well have walked into a den of wolves. For all their talk of raising outspoken speakers, they silenced me every time I called out their injustices. ‘It’s a tradition,’ they said. ‘Shut up and take it like we had.’ ‘We had it worse.’ ‘You better listen to us because this is a hierarchy, and you’re at the bottom of the ladder.’
Consent was non-existent then. It didn’t matter that I consented to doing anything; what the seniors wanted, they got. Through verbal abuse and social punishments. The whole school turned a blind eye because it was acceptable.
My parents had raised me to say right is right, even if no one is doing it and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it. Even if your friends turn against you because they were afraid.
Even if they denied you again, and again, a chance to spread your infant wings. Denied your opportunity to grow. Drove you into a corner so tight, that you spluttered on unsaid words, choked on blood because you bit your tongue. My self-confidence laid in tatters. The bottom of the abyss felt like desperation and anger and too many tears.
I was desperate for happiness.
The little girl back then, she scrawled ‘happy’ in every piece of paper. She tried to smile in front of a mirror, and for once, liked what she saw. She only wanted to smile. She only wanted to laugh again.
I had turned to writing, because that was my comfort, my reprieve. They took my voice, so all I had were my hands… And I created, in my mind, in this place, a small room. Dark and empty, I spent so many hours in there in times when physically living brought me too much pain. The door was open. It was wide open and yet, I stayed there.
Until the moment when that little girl decided she would tolerate no more. In the middle of the room, in a sunken pit, a fire sparked to life.
My parents held my hand on my way out. As my body gathered my belongings, my mind gathered my memories. They were broken shards of something that had shattered but I no longer remembered what. Those pieces, I placed them in a chest and shoved it into the pit to burn. To melt. To no longer plague me as I turned my back and sealed the door.
Are you still listening? …Thank you.
I found this field when I walked out of that room. And it has grown. I have grown. But if you look behind that hill over there, you’d find a large, heavy oak door. And behind it, a fire still burning.
Sometimes I read the poems and stories that I wrote as a thirteen year old, and my heart clenches in pain at her sorrow. The room, the fire, the chest, they were all my real coping mechanisms. I truly did burn a chest full of painful memories in that room. I chose to keep a few happy ones, but the rest I figuratively burned. I’ve only come to realise, after a few conversations with friends, that I can barely remember those memories now. It comes slowly, after much prodding and not without being prompted.
I’ve decided it’s not a loss.
I made the right decision.
“It’s been awhile, since you’ve last been here.”
The Wordsmith looked away, towards the rolling clouds, at the shadow it cast over the hills. The scenery hadn’t changed at all while she had been away. She still felt it. The invitation in its presence. The call to lose herself in its endless fields, feel its tickle beneath her feet. “I’ve been busy,” she said. Exploring new worlds. Stretching her wings. Flying.
It had felt almost sinful, at first.
But she had learned that it wasn’t. That it only felt that way because she had been trapped for so long. In the cruel depths that lay underneath those beautiful, wonderful, treacherous fields.
She felt it come close, dirt crunching beneath its weight. “When you left, you never turned back,” it said. The wind carried its voice, neither male nor female. It was wind and shadow and imagined and real. “I did not expect you to come now.”
“I had to come.” The Wordsmith turned to fully face it now. She stared into its infinite darkness, she had been so afraid of it once. “I had to tell you that I’m never returning. That there are worlds beyond this, all within my reach. I’ve met people full of love and light and I relearned what I had unlearned.”
It remained still.
“My world has changed. I’ve trudged through its abyss, I clawed my way out. I found my wings and my wind and my sky.”
Its lips lifted into a hideous snarl, teeth bared, enraged, realising. It realised that my wrists wore jewels instead of chains. That I chased the Sun, no longer wisps of shadows.
One last futile lunge as it realised, finally realised-
“I am free.”
I’ve had this blog for awhile now but I think, now’s the time to start something new!
farahazaihan 