The Last Time I Was Here
The Twin Towers of Petronas were just coming into view from the highway as she drove along at a sedate pace, and she thought that this must be her last time seeing them. The metropolitan sprawl of skyscrapers had grown since then—it now included buildings like the Twin Towers, but many others, all taller than before, and with more glassy surfaces. Some of those new buildings even looked as if they might have been modelled on the old ones, since a few had the same colonial-era shape. She wondered why people wanted to build such big buildings when she could live comfortably in this tiny one.
She had never liked the way those towers loomed over her, their height and shape making them seem like a pair of giant scissors cutting off the sky's horizon line. They reminded her of some monstrous alien thing out of space, which had come to earth in search of humans to harvest and dissect. It was hard to explain the feeling to anyone else who hadn't seen them, but once you'd seen them, it was hard not to think about them.
The city itself seemed much larger than when she arrived ten years ago, and the traffic was terrible, with cars crawling in every lane. The villages in Kampung Baru, where she used to live, are now dwarfed by the city's highrise apartments, and her old street has been swallowed up by a major road. She didn't understand how people lived so close together in places like this, and yet there were never any sounds or smells of people living next door. Misanthropy came easily to her mind when thinking of the way people seemed to prefer the anonymity of these highrises over the closeness of a real village community. She supposed she was lucky to have known what real community was.
But now that she was driving through the streets again, it all seemed like an alien world. Strange races of people dressed strangely ran around among the towering monoliths, but their strangeness seemed to fade away into normality when compared with the oddities she saw walking down the street. Their writings and signs were incomprehensible—so bizarre did they seem that she felt she ought to speak a different language in order to understand them.
In a sense, she wasn't even in Malaysia anymore; she was in some other place altogether. And it was not a pleasant thought.
She's never been a racist person, but after ten years, she feels more comfortable in her own country—she knows its culture and customs, and feels a kinship with the people around her. It makes things much easier if you are familiar with the environment you find yourself in.
But now, for some reason, she feels as if the entire world has changed, and that she has changed with it. She feels lost, as if no one understands anything anymore. People don't know where they're going, or what they'll do when they get there, or why they're doing it. All the old values have vanished, and everything has turned upside down. There are no clear answers to any questions, and nobody can give a simple explanation for why they think something is right or wrong.
It's a world full of lies and illusions, like some nightmare that doesn't want to let go until you've awakened screaming. No wonder it seems stranger than ever before.
She's always been fond of Malaysia, though—the country is beautiful, and the people are nice—and now she misses it a little bit more.
There is a strange smell in the air these days, a kind of vague, sickly odour—a mix of rotting vegetation and dead animals, mixed with the stench of human effluence. It is everywhere in the city. But she thinks that it must be getting better, for she hasn't noticed it recently; and it must only be getting worse in the countryside.
"I guess this is the price we pay," she tells herself as she drives down Jalan Tun Razak, heading towards her apartment. "If we're going to have this much growth, then we need to put up with the smells too."
Once she arrives at her apartment, she opens the windows wide to air out the room. The curtains are drawn back to the ceiling, so she can look out on the city's skyline—but the sight no longer pleases her. Everything is strange now, and she feels uncomfortable in her own home.
The streets are crawling with strangers, and she wonders whether they are really Malaysians. There are men with white skin and women with brown skin, and many who appear to be mixed-race. Even her own people are different from how they used to be, and though she tries not to notice it, she sees it everywhere. Her neighbours' features have changed, and their clothes are new. Rarely now does one see a Malay woman wearing a kebaya, because it is not considered "Islamic", and there are fewer Malay men walking down the street with long sarongs tied loosely around their waists.
She feels that there has been some fundamental shift in the social consciousness of the Malays, and that it is affecting the fabric of life all across the nation. In fact, she feels certain that it has affected everyone here—Malays and foreigners alike—to varying degrees. They all feel the same way, but no one admits it, and so the change passes unrecognised by most people. Yet she knows that it is real.
The Twin Towers loom over the city, looming higher and higher in defiance of the earth's curvature, their height diminishing only at the tips. This, she supposes, is the only constant that remains from her childhood here in KL.
She drops onto her bed and stares into space. The city is a nightmare now, and she wonders what will happen next. What will become of the nation? How will she cope with all these changes?
