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.