Goodbye Malaysia

Breakfasting on roti canai, kayaking on the lake in Shah Alam, squeezing into train compartments at rush hour, and saying “lah” at the end of every sentence.

These are just a few of the things that come to mind as we reflect on our two months of work and play in Malaysia. Driving to the airport to go back home to Dubai, Nour realized with a start that she had been living in this Southeast Asian country for one-sixth of a year. She was far beyond the status of tourist and had started settling into the comfortable and quirky role of expat – Malaysia was, surprisingly, becoming home. She’d made different groups of friends, fallen in love with the local cuisine, started picking up the language, and even established a family base through Khalisah. But as the cliché goes, all good things come to an end, and it was soon time to leave. It had been two months of unexpected self-discovery, for both Nour the newcomer and Khalisah the returning resident. And they had their time with MERCY Malaysia and the Malaysian social scene to thank for it.

When we started our internship with MERCY Malaysia, we didn’t know what to expect. What greeted us at the office in downtown KL was a group of the friendliest staff members you could find in a 6000 mile radius. We were enthusiastically shown the ropes by the HR department, and gently nudged in the right direction whenever we went astray with the work we were given. We found that MERCY Malaysia is at the crux of the Malaysian humanitarian field. Donations from big companies like Patronas and collaborations with the likes of award-winning film director Yasmin Ahmad not only kept this small but powerful NGO going, but also powered the medical relief missions to places like Palestine and Bandar Aceh. Talking to fellow passengers at train stations or bus stops, they only had positive things to say about what they consider their national NGO. Supported by the donations of thousands of individuals and companies as well as being run by big-hearted professionals, we saw that MERCY Malaysia is truly aid delivered with care.

Work wasn’t all we did in Malaysia, of course. We tried packing in as much fun as we could into the precious few hours we had off each week. We made new friends, connecting with a group of local activists in the Young Muslims Project, and attending the Knowledge and Arts Tour that they put together for the summer. We also met up with Khalisah’s older friends from Sunway University College, and attended local gigs and scenes as well as doing what Malaysians do best—hang out at Mamak stalls. For Khalisah, this time was well spent on catching up with local pop culture. Like most third-culture kids, she suffers from the guilt of knowing all the intimate details of American pop singers and their second husbands and illegitimate children, but draws a blank when it comes to naming any popular Malaysian song.

This neglect of her other cultural identity was something she intended to correct, and this summer’s SHOUT! Awards and the kids from Sunway managed to correct that. Malaysia, she discovered, has a vibrant music scene that isn’t garnering the attention it deserves. From soul jazz singers like Zee Avi to indie-rock bands like Estranged to R&B masters like Joe Flizzow, Khalisah found herself spoilt for choice amongst the range of talent that came from her motherland. Her wallet could barely keep up with the CD’s she purchased in her last weeks.

Blazing through a whirlwind of music, mamak dinners and train rides, our time in Malaysia ended much earlier than we would have liked it to. Just as we were getting comfortable in our roles as Malaysian residents, our internship came to a swift end. Nour was surprised at how quickly this country, so different from what she’s known between America and the Middle East, welcomed her into the fold, while Khalisah was happy to find her weak Malay language skills flourish and grow alongside her appreciation of Malaysian pop culture.

Leaving Malaysia and its mamaks, where we spent our time discovering different ways of viewing and living in the world, is difficult. But we leave knowing that we have a road back there, and Malaysian experiences that we will take with us, wherever else we may go.

Knowledge and Arts Tour 2009

Spray paint, skate parks, baggy jeans and Zoo York caps aren’t usually what comes to mind when most people think of the word “Islam.” But that’s exactly what was on display at the Islam-inspired event Khalisah and Nour found themselves at two Sundays ago. Girls in all colors of headscarves covered every surface around them with paint, skaters skidded to a stop to join in, even a few kids scrawled their names on the boards set out for the participants. At the center of all the commotion, a big bearded man draped in Timberland apparel from head to toe worked steadily on a wall in front of him. Slowly, an image started materializing through the paint: an explosion of cement and light surrounding the calming blue-shaded word “Truth.”

This was the first day of the Knowledge and Arts Tour 2009 (K&A). A local group of grassroots activists called the Young Muslims Project (YMP) had organized the tour, which lasted from July 5th to July 15th, to serve their community. All in their twenties, these young organizers had three objectives behind bringing this tour to life: 1) Inspiring Malaysian Muslim youth to have confidence in their religion and identity, 2) Connecting Malaysian Muslim youth to scholars, role models, and artists who’ve played exemplary roles in their respective communities, and 3) Educating Malaysian Muslim youth so that they have the tools to address the multitude of challenges the future has in store for them.

The YMP planned to accomplish all this by combing traditional, lecture-based talks with film screenings, mural paintings and meetings with local graffiti artists – an approach they hoped would appeal to the youth in their community.

Judging from the enthusiastic turnout on the first day, it looked like the YMP hit on the right formula. The audience was captivated by Suhaib Webb, the dynamic American imam who can speak about the latest Batman film in one sentence and 11th century Muslim scholar al-Ghazali in the next. Later, Mohammed Ali, the English graffiti artist described above, took the floor and gave a short talk about the history of graffiti in cultures around the world – including Islamic cultures. Then the audience moved out to the neighboring skate park to take part in their own graffiti art (on plywood boards provided by the YMP of course, not on the actual neighborhood itself). Nour rolled up her sleeves and got down to some art while Khalisah leaned back and took in the fumes, watching the people milling around with spray cans. Amin, the founder of the YMP, found the slightly dazed Khalisah and sat down with her to discuss art, culture, and how the light-headed feeling from the spray paint is probably the death of several brain cells.

Over the next ten days, the YMP hosted over ten events that focused on the themes of being young, Muslim and modern. The talks took place at venues all over Kuala Lumpur, from university lecture halls to art galleries. And at every event, people of all shapes, sizes and colors came to participate. Although the events were geared specifically towards issues relating to Muslim youth, it seems that they resonated with people far outside that demographic. There were non-Muslims, new converts to Islam, elderly grandparents, toddlers, and foreigners – not to mention all of the varied races and ethnicities that make up Malaysian identity. At these talks, you could see Islam at its best: open, dynamic, caring, and accepting. A nice contrast from the Islam usually shown in the news and mainstream media.

The K&A, ultimately, was a week-long success and the YMP has done what many small faith-based organizations often fall short of doing: They’ve made religion cool. And not “cool” in a way that requires the endorsement of a rap star to nod and say “don’t do drugs yo,” but cool in that Malaysian youth can attend these talks and activities as a part of the lives they lead. They aren’t invited to sit in a mosque and be lectured on how their lifestyles are going against the grain of Islam, but rather they make plans to go do some graffiti and learn an interesting thing or two on Islamic calligraphy. The older youth have a place to meet others their age while tackling the question of being a Muslim in university and how this might set them apart from other students.

In a world where it is increasingly difficult to address values with youth (without coming across as stuffy and old) as well as identify oneself in a multi-religious and multi-cultural society, the YMP has provided a much-needed space for discussion. Psychologists and child-experts point to ADHD pills or juvenile correctional facilities to help urban youth, but what the YMP has shown is that sometimes, all they need is an interesting speaker to listen to, a sympathetic ear to speak to, and a group of friends to mess around with at the local skate park.

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To learn more about the Young Muslims Project and the speakers, check out the following links:
http://young-muslims-project.blogspot.com/
http://www.suhaibwebb.com
http://www.aerosolarabic.com

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

All Roads and Rails Lead to KL

Seven different hands, of different shades and different sizes gripped the grimy silver pole of the morning commuter, and Khalisah’s hand was lost in the middle. Bodies pressed against each other with every jostle of the train, and Nour struggled to pull her own hand out of the awkward position it was in – squashed between a pole and another woman’s stomach. Everyone stood as still as possible, almost holding their breath to maintain their personal space. Sweat beaded people’s foreheads, turned their collars dark and made the poles slippery to hold. We looked at the clocks on our cell phones: only half an hour to go.

This is a typical journey for us now, starting any time from 7.15 to 8.30 - depending on how punctual our train decides to be. After a series of trial and error, this claustrophobic commuter was deemed champion of the Malaysian public transport system. For weeks, we had been searching for the “Sweet Spot”— the correct combination of transport to get us to and from work as efficiently as possible. To find the perfect way to work and back home, we had to try every mode of public transport available to the average Malaysian.

The first thing we tried was the KL Rapid, the air-conditioned wonder of the streets of Malaysia. After over a week of different bus trials and combinations, we now know that 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. are the worst times to be on the road, because we’ve sat on those KL Rapids for hours, watching their public service commercials play on loop from the high plastic chairs. We know that to escape morning gridlock, we need to leave the house at least a quarter to 7 a.m., unless we want to spend hours stopped in front of a school watching little Asian kids bounce around in their white sneakers as their parents drop them off.

This means waking up at 6 a.m., getting breakfast to go from the nearby mamak (ice coffee in little plastic bags with a straw to drink out of), being on the correct street corner before the bus arrives, sitting through anywhere from one-and-a-half to two hours of traffic (if we’re lucky enough to not be forced to change buses halfway through our trip), trugging from the KL bus stop to our office building, and still getting to work ten minutes late. It also means leaving the office at 6 p.m. to retrace our morning steps, often getting home at 8 or 9 in the evening.

We quickly realized that this system wasn’t exactly efficient. Next, we tried car pooling with a neighbor, but our schedules were too different to mesh well. After that, we tried to take a bus to the nearest train station, but a trip to the station that should have taken no more than ten minutes took over half an hour as we shuttled from stop to stop before getting to our destination. That’s not worth it, we decided. We’ll give up the irresistible one-ringgit-thirty-cents bus fare for an eight ringgit cab ride to the station - which was worth it. We made a deal with a soft-spoken pak cik (uncle), who would pick us up every morning at 7 a.m. in his battered yellow taxi, entertaining us with everything from Quranic verses to the latest Katy Perry hit on his radio.

Once we started taking the train, we found ourselves right in the middle of the claustrophobic scene we described above. But after a few days on the KTM, we discovered a little trick that offered some comfort: by getting on the last carriage of the train, we could avoid the jam-packed front carriages in favor of a place where we could each have a few precious inches of air to ourselves – something we’d never previously considered as a privilege.

In the end, we don’t consider all those hours on the road and rail a waste of our time, but an investment. We’ve come out of our dizzying first four weeks in Malaysia as experts of KL. We know that there’s a Church of Our Lady Fatima opposite the La Salle school; that Chow Kit looks like a red light district, even in the day; that graffiti is surprisingly popular on just about every available wall in the city; and that the ponds and grasses that cover Malaysia can be beautiful even at the sleepiest hours of the morning.

We know even better the kinds of people you meet (or jostle by or crash land into) on the country’s trains and busses. Usually they’re just people who want to get to work without hassle, but sometimes they’re the guy with the earphones blasting Rihanna, or the tattooed Chinese gangster with the freshly stitched cuts on his face. Other times they’re two rough-looking travelers who, in our minds, can be nothing but Indonesian pirates – or very convincing Jack Sparrow look-alikes. Still other times they’re school kids in uniform, mothers taking their toddlers to see grandma, or a band of traveling musicians.

No matter how lost or delayed we got on our trips, we soon discovered that all roads and rails lead to Kuala Lumpur. With that in mind, we stopped worrying about when we’d get to wherever we were going and learned to enjoy the trip, watching people, places and life pass through our train or outside our window. On the Malaysian public transport system we realized that, sometimes, the journey is just as important as the destination.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

A Day in Shah Alam

No matter how much you love your job, after days of an endless cycle of work, traffic and failed attempts at getting enough sleep, you need your day off on the weekends. A day without working overtime or worrying about cleaning the house or making appointments with important contacts. That’s why this week, we had our day off by leaving the busy neighborhood of Subung Jaya for the sleepy suburb of Shah Alam. There, we alternated between the doting comfort of grandparents and joining the homey bustle of morning markets and Malay weddings. It was a day far removed from our rush of aid work, and we needed it. But it was also a day that opened our eyes to an aspect of Malaysia that we were too busy to pay attention to before: the globalization, or perhaps Westernization, of Malaysian culture – especially outside the cosmopolitan capital of Kuala Lumpur.

At about nine in the morning, we stepped out of the car and into the parking lot that led to the Pasar Tani, or the Farmer’s Market. This Sunday morning tradition involves people setting up stalls with items as varied as traditional Malaysian clothes and shower curtains. Row after row of stalls led us through worlds of second-hand t-shirts, bright red prayer rugs, fake Guess jeans and traditional batik cloth in every color imaginable. The stalls reminded Khalisah a little bit of Iowan farmer’s markets, except instead of apples there were guavas, and instead of deep-fried ice-cream there were fried noodles. It’s amazing how two different markets – from Iowa to Shah Alam—can be equally unhealthy for the under prepared stomach.

The rest of the food in the stalls, like just about everything else in the market, completely fascinated Nour. There was kuih, a word that encompasses just about any sort of local sweet that involves coconut made gooey; durian, the overwhelmingly strong-scented fruit that should be made the symbol of Malaysia; and all sorts of rotis, the Indian word for bread. One of the most interesting rotis we came across was Roti John, which is the Malaysian version of a chicken sub. According to Khalisah, this particular food specimen was an attempt at copying “Western” cuisine, but with all the sauces and spices that were added to it over the years, it is now a fiery chicken sandwich that few Western palates can handle.

Although Pasar Tani is a typical Malaysian tradition, it was interesting to see how much non-Malaysian culture has seeped into it. We made a similar realization at the Malay wedding we attended later in the day.

We had hustled into the banquet hall just in time to hear the drums beat, a signal that the wedding couple are ready to walk together to the persandingan, a raised dais with two gilded chairs and a cloth canopy. Two little girls dressed in white with small green wreathes propped up on their white hijabs took the fore of the procession, scattering flower petals on the floor. This was a little surprising to Khalisah, whose previous exposure to Malay weddings assured her that these affairs don’t usually include flower girls.

But then the crowd parted and the wedding couple took a step forward in true Malay style. The theme of this Malay wedding was a soft peach beige, and though it sounds decidedly unmanly, the groom looked impressive in his delicately patterned pants and shirt, with an intricately sewn samping wrapped around his middle like a sarong and a kris knife secured on his hip. As each couple is celebrated as king and queen on their wedding day, the groom adorned his head with a Tengkolok, a folded piece of cloth that serves as a crown. The bride wore a crystal tiara over her beige hijab, and lace cloth flecked with gold thread cascaded down the sides of her peach wedding outfit, a baju kebaya.

A voice over the loudspeaker soon distracted us from the bride’s and groom’s outfits. “Salla allahu ala Muhammad,” the speaker said as he began to read a few select pieces from the Quran. Then the couple walked forward towards the dais, with the flower girls tossing their petals all over the floor (much to Khalisah’s annoyance). By the time the couple made it to their “thrones,” the speaker completed his reading and proceeded to recite different prayers to bless the couple and the new life they would share together. Later, the drum procession had settled down at the foot of the dais and began to play traditional Javanese music where lots of gamelans (brass chiming instruments) came into play. Khalisah pointed out that this isn’t a traditional aspect of the wedding, just like the flower girls, and Nour accused her of being a purist.

Being new to the experience, Nour enjoyed the Malay wedding and the slightly fermented rice served as a dessert. For Khalisah, the experience was pock-marked with adages from a western wedding: the flower girls, the alien-sounding gamelan dinner music, and the division of the hall into a groom-side and a bride-side (something she later discovered from her grandparents). It took away the more homey feeling of tradition Malay weddings used to evoke. These weddings were held at either the groom’s or bride’s driveway just outside their house, and tents would protect the buffet and the guests that pattered in off the streets. The drums would beat in tune with Malay wedding songs that were interspersed with Quranic verses and kids would run in between (and sometimes under) the tables throughout the whole ordeal.

Maybe the banquet hall wedding was a sign of shifting local culture, where the basics are given a new twist to keep the event from being another day in someone’s driveway, making it a truly unique affair. The same could be said of the “Western” products that were making their way into the Sunday morning market. What was boring and ordinary to Westerners was exciting and exotic to the people who lived here. We decided that as long as the batik cloth in the pasars and the kris and tiara in the weddings stay untouched, we can be comfortable with this changing culture that is emerging to accommodate a new generation of Malaysians. With this bizarre mix of new and old, local and “other,” who knows what will identify Malaysian culture in a few years’ time.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

The Mamak Chronicles: The Outdoors

Another early tangle with Subang-KL traffic brought us to the MERCY Malaysia warehouse around 9 o’clock in the morning. Our mission for the day was to mantle and dismantle inflatable Rofi tents that would be used as temporary clinics in disaster areas. We had to do this so that our coworkers could write instruction manuals that MERCY Malaysia volunteers would use when they went to these disaster areas. This exercise also conveniently doubled as an internship excuse to drag reluctant manpower out on a Saturday morning, as one of our co-workers so cheerfully described it. We figured that it couldn’t be an internship if we weren’t asked to do some unwanted grunt work once in awhile, so out to the warehouse we went.

At the warehouse parking lot a group of volunteers were already there; some new like us, and some that have been on missions before. The mission vets took the lead, giving out instructions and appointing a team leader. The heavy bulky package needed to be unwrapped, rolled out and stretched out to lay the floor of the tent. This required all eight of us (four to a side) to be on our knees rolling the heavy tent flaps open. Then two people would attach a pump to one of the valves found on the side of the tent and begin to inflate. The inflation has to start at one end of the large tent to the other, and as one end goes up another two people have to march inside the semi-inflated dimness with support beams and place them horizontally between inflating arches to later serve mission doctors as a place to hang IV tubes and electrical wires and such. When the tent is fully erected, everybody has to get out and, grasping the handles found along the tent edges, lift and pull for their lives to ensure that the tent stands straight and steady (and isn’t likely to cave in on a bunch of civil-war patients because of one unchecked rumple under a supporting arch).

In the time it took to set up the tent, ominous dark clouds were rolling in over the warehouse and the sharp smell of dirt accompanied the prickly feeling of approaching rain. “It’s going to rain,” said a coworker unhelpfully as she watched the eight of us from the curb she sat on. “Yeah, we know, what else are we going to do? Leave the tent half-open?” replied a co-volunteer. We could feel the low atmospheric pressure on our backs, and working against the clouds and the clock we managed to stretch out the tent for the final time before those dark clouds broke and a sheet of water thundered down on us. We ran into the tent amid the team organizer’s cries of “real action ma!” and once inside, we watched the rain from the tent door.

“Real action ma!” is one way to describe it. Until then, we’d been holed up in the office writing about situations we’d never seen in places we’d never been. Even though we’ve studied about what happens in a war or a tsunami and the consequences that follow, this was the first time that we could actually visualize it. We could see the volunteers struggling to unroll tarp and put up polls in the middle of a disaster zone. We could see the patients crowding the beds with IV tubes plugged into them hanging from the beams of the tent. The work we’d been doing in the office wasn’t being faxed out into some black hole; it was going to real places with real people.

Sitting in the tent, listening to the rain thud on the tarp above our heads was the best part of our morning. The cool, dark atmosphere instilled a sense of calm in the rush of the day’s activities. Cut off from the world in those few moments, we all receded into ourselves. And that’s when it dawned on the two of us that this very tent that we were in would soon be a temporary sanctuary for the suffering and the dying. So many people will do their last rites here, while for others this tent will be a place of painful resurrection. We looked at the plastic floor covering , the blank canvas walls, the smooth arches: the tent had become a temple. We silently waited for the rain to stop, then walked back out into our lives, with not a wrecked home or a drop of blood in sight.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

The Mamak Chronicles: Following Dominos Through Malaysia

The clichéd Zimbabwean butterfly sets off a hurricane in Des Moines, Iowa. Queen Victoria’s genetic make-up threatens the health of Russia’s last potential tsar. The ghosts of men America trains to fight communism in Afghanistan resurfaced twenty years later in New York. A series of seemingly isolated incidents setting each other off: the domino effect. This first week in Malaysia witnessed a chain of dominos clicking into each other, one by one, from Nour and Khalisah to as far as Khatemi and Ahmedinejad.

But let’s start from the beginning. Months ago, we were looking up internships in Dubai. Khalisah’s uncle told us about an organization he’d volunteered with, called Mercy Malaysia. We applied, and were accepted a few weeks later. We began looking for housing, and then Khalisah’s cousin, Winnie, called. Her roommate had moved out and she had a place for us to stay. This was the beginning of two different chains of events that led us to two equally different experiences in the same weekend.

The first branch of the domino chain led us to a young office mate at MERCY Malaysia, Ashaari. He in turn led us to a talk, entitled People Like Us: How Arrogance Divides People, that was taking place at a Lutheran church. The speakers would be a Tricia Yeoh, a Chinese Christian woman who started her own think tank and has moved on to working for the Chief Minister of Selangor, Farouk Musa, a Malaysian man who is an expert on philology, and Waleed Aly, the author of the book that the title of the talk was based on.

Hardly knowing what to expect, we drove to the house with a sign on the gate that read “The Father’s House” and a group of people with flashlights waved us in. The small house-turned-church was crowded with Malaysians buzzing with excitement. Reverend Sivin Kit took the stage and through his energy and humor he introduced the speakers, who took turns discussing what separates people, whether it being religion, history or culture.

It was refreshing to see Indians, Chinese and Malays nodding along in agreement to some key points of the talk. The speakers pointed to the fear that keeps people from crossing religious and ethnic borders and the stereotypes that bolster these fears, such as women in hijab being closed minded. They also discussed how people of different cultures can live in such close proximity without learning about each other until well into adulthood, if at all. Tricia, for example, grew up near a mosque, and when she was ten she thought that the imam was calling the adhan to the tune of the Christian song, “Gloria,” – so she would sing along to the call to prayer every time she’d hear it. Only much later in her adult life did she come to understand what that call meant. Finally, the speakers stressed the central tenant that was common to all faiths: the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” they concluded, was the only foundation on which any sort of interfaith harmony could be built.

The people in the church who were our age are the first generation of Malaysians to be unfettered by the uncomfortable history of cultural tensions and clashes that have personified the 1960’s and 1970’s, and were keen on bridging the gaps with each other. It was heartening to see that these would be the people who would cross the sensitive barriers and topics that their parents couldn’t and take Malaysia closer to a more equal and just society.

And all of that was just the first branch of dominoes.

The second branch of the domino chain that we touched off went to Winnie, Khalisah’s cousin. She’d started a new job as a manager of a restaurant just two days ago, so we decided to visit her and grab a late lunch there. We ordered all sorts of funky Thai food and were talking our way through green curry chicken, pineapple rice and tear-inducing chili when Winnie came up to us with a weird request. “The two very nice ladies at that other table there want to take a picture with you. Would you mind?” We looked up and saw two small Malay women hunched in their chairs, smiling at us in typical old auntie style. A few minutes later, we’d taken some pictures with their camera, as they explained to us why they wanted to meet us.

We looked Iranian, they said. When we told them that we weren’t, they wanted to know where we were really from. After telling them that we were both writers and studying international relations, they nodded and said “Ah, we thought you were Iranian, you see, because we’ve been to Iran so many times that we’ve gotten to know Khatami and Ahmadinijad quite well.” Our smiles slipped a little at those words, and before we could finish saying “excuse me, what?” one old auntie had pulled out a photo of herself with a candid Ahmadinijad from a pink plastic bag that had been stuffed in her purse. Then, before we could react, she had another picture with Khatami. Suddenly our unexpected photo shoot became an interview: how did they meet them? What were they doing in Iran? Who were all those other people in the photos? And who in the world were they?

The women were sisters, and one of them was a writer who had traveled the world meeting all sorts of foreign leaders, writing for various newspapers and publishing a few books. She wasn’t a particularly famous personality, and she wanted things to stay that way. Through her work, she and her sister had met high level people from Indonesian officials to Benazir Bhutto.

Besides telling us about all of their escapades in the Islamic Republic, the sisters also talked to us about the decay of Malaysian society – everything from excessive littering on the streets to illegitimate babies left on the doorsteps of mosques. “We went to discos and danced in our day,” they assured us. “But it was all in the open, respectful. None of this drugs, pregnancies, rudeness. Especially by those kids who look more conservative on the outside then are not on the inside.” It was an interesting version of Malaysia that they gave us. At maghrib time, they excused themselves. They had to go back home for prayer. We exchanged emails and phone numbers, and promised to meet up again.

As we were waiting for the bus later that evening, we couldn’t get over the surprises that we’d encountered over the last few days. All we did to start everything off was come to Malaysia. The rest just sort of happened to us. In this continuously unfolding series of events, we mused as the bus drove up to take us home, who knows where the next dominos will fall?

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

Welcome to the Mamak

“My folks aren’t too cool about me interning in a potential war-zone,” Nour said with a shrug at the dinner table.

“You should go to Malaysia then! We have NGOs there, too!” said Khalisah’s mom eagerly. Khalisah and Nour exchanged a look of interest that conveyed the possibility of working and living together in a vibrant city; a look that glinted with the opportunity of independence, new people, unintelligible languages, spicy food, wacky culture and –

“Argh!” Khalisah flinched. “We haven’t even looked into anything in Malaysia together! The deadline for internships is a few weeks away! It’ll never happen.” Nour continued to smile. “It’ll never happen, Nour.” The smile got wider. Khalisah narrowed her eyes as she said, “I’ll believe it when I see the plane tickets.”

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Hi, we’re Khalisah Stevens and Nour Merza, the authors of the Mamak Chronicles.  At the end of last spring semester (in between paper deadlines, exams and failed fax machines in Syria) we found ourselves hanging in internship limbo. Our university requires all third-year students to get a summer of training with an approved organization – without such an internship, we would not be able to graduate with our classmates the following year. As our deadline was fast approaching, our chances of getting an internship were fast receding. We were about to resign ourselves to a sweltering summer in Dubai when an email came through.

“It is with great pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance into the Mercy Malaysia Internship Program for the summer of 2009.”

We were psyched.

Mercy Malaysia is a non-profit organization that provides immediate relief to crisis situations around the world. With a background in international relations, we were both interested in aid work, and Mercy Malaysia’s credentials put it right up our street. The organization has projects going on across the globe, from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly, our new theme song was “You got me begging you for Mercy, yeah, yeah!” We couldn’t wait to get started.

A few weeks later, we found ourselves in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, battling train, bus and taxi to make our way to and from the office; a process that begins every day at six a.m. and can end as late as nine p.m. Tiring? Yes.

Luckily for us, we find solace in the marvel that is the mamak. Found on every street corner, mamak stalls are greasy havens that provide locals and tourists alike a place to eat, congregate, and watch the latest match between Barcelona and Manchester United. It is in these mamaks where we begin our day with yawns and egg roti chennai, and end our evenings rehashing the events of the last fourteen hours amid the warm bustle of waiters taking orders, cats scavenging for scraps under tables, and motorcycles beeping as they zip by.

These nighttime discussions gave birth to the Mamak Chronicles. So pull up a chair, order a round of cool teh ais, and follow the accounts of our adventures – and misadventures – in Malaysia.