Being Asian in the gulf Middle East

When I was 8 years old I watched my mom get pushed into a kitchen at an Arab wedding and ordered to serve drinks to the guests. The mother of the bride didn’t realize that my mom was a guest. She was, in fact, personally invited by the bride (a former student of my mom’s), who wanted her favorite teacher to be there on her special day. The reason my mom’s sequined scarf and make-up went ignored is because my mom is Malaysian.

Let me take you back. The years my family spent in Kuwait are littered with uncomfortable incidents like the one described above. We moved to Kuwait about a year after the Iraqi invasion was over, and shaken from the war, Kuwait was hugely xenophobic in the early ‘90’s. My parents were working in a village called Batu Buruk (Ugly Stones), Terengganu on the east coast of Malaysia before they were offered better-paying jobs as instructors in the Middle East, and as Muslims with a romanticised idea of the region that gave the world the Prophet (swt) and the Quran, my parents were excited that their kids would grow up in such a privileged environment. They packed up their three girls (ages 1-5) and flew to Kuwait University, Shuwaikh.

My village Malay gave way to a gulf Arabic accent in school, and one of the first teases I got was for being “yabaneezy” (Japanese). When my mom came for PTA meetings the teachers would give surprised looks and tell my mom her English was good. My mom’s first couple of months as an instructor at the Sharia’ College for Girls was rocky with repeated explanations that she was the teacher. No she wasn’t the tea lady, no she wasn’t the cleaner; she was the teacher. “Mudarasa” my mom would say in Arabic and the students would continue to give her wary looks. Luckily my mom was a great teacher, because it would only take a couple of weeks for those same wary students to become enthralled by her classes and her zany humor. “Miss wallah I love you, you must meet my family!” On days when I visited the office with my sisters, a hail of black abaya robes would descend on us and leave lipstick streaks across our cheeks. “Ya Allah Ms. Jenifah you have many children and you are still so small mashallah!” They’d look at my almost-five-feet mother, mousy in her own baggy abaya and wonder how they started out with such different assumptions. It was unfortunate that not all Kuwaitis could be in my mom’s classes.

The same could not be said for my dad. At 6-foot-6-inches, blue eyes and as white bread as Iowa makes them, my dad was regarded as the big American hero who fought the Iraqis (which, as an instructor from Ugly Stones, he hadn’t). Kuwaitis didn’t trust any foreigners or other Arabs, but if you were American you were given rockstar treatment. Shop clerks would smile at you, people on the street would go up to you, and if you were an instructor at the University, the women would swoon.

And swoon they did. My dad would come back after teaching to his office and find that love letters had been stuffed under the door and a few giggly girls in abaya waiting outside. My dad received offers for a second or third wife on a regular basis. At first my parents would laugh at these gestures, but the overwhelming attention bolstered my dad’s ego while the tactless prejudice bogged down my mom’s confidence and self esteem, setting what was once a stable marriage onto a rocky patch of misunderstanding and injured feelings.

Eventually the racial attitudes towards our family and the lack of affordable good schools drove my family to move back to Malaysia. After a couple of years of settling down, my parents received job offers from the Middle East again, but this time in the Emirates. My siblings and I refused to go back, but after being assured that we’d be going to international schools this time, we relented. We were happy to find that racial attitudes in the Emirates are much improved from the ones in Kuwait. For one thing the Emirates is more cosmopolitan, and the university my parents teach at is a hodge-podge mix of local and expatriate students. As American-Malaysians we found our niche among the other halfsies and 3rd culture kids of Emirati-Iranian, Polish-Greek, Egyptian-Philippina, and the Lebanese-Cypriot types. We were finally not weird: we were just like everyone else.

My mom still encounters a few awkward situations in the Emirates, but nowhere near the scale that she had in Kuwait. Recently with Obama’s election we can see that racial attitudes are slowly shifting in the US as they do in my mom’s classroom. Justice Sonia Sotomayor once said that “stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in society today,” and we found that to be true, but it’s also true that this insidious problem can be dealt with—from the students in my mom’s classroom to the attendees of President Obama’s speeches. It’s not enough that anyone can be a good teacher or president in theory: Sometimes a country needs to see the black president at the White House leading, and sometimes people need to see the Malaysian woman in hijab standing at the white board teaching. Perhaps the change isn’t as big or as radical as most of us would prefer it, but if one person can change the way they think of other races, it makes that much of a difference when they respect people like my mom who expect discrimination.

My mom continues to teach in the Middle East, only this time she’s armed with experience, that same zany humor, and hundreds of students and friends that love, respect and admire her.

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.

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.