ATAN had always known deep down that fatherhood wasn’t for him. He never imagined himself as a parent tied to responsibilities demanding his soul. But when Lilah had gazed at him years ago, her voice trembling with hope as she spoke of having a child, he couldn’t bear to deny
MY mother was not the sort of woman to cry in front of an audience, nor even in the intimacy of a small gathering, nor even before me, her flesh and blood. If she wept at all – and I suspect she did – it was likely in the dead
The Crooked Mirror and the Stubborn Ink SURA stood before the slanted little mirror hanging on the kitchen wall – a mirror so distressed it couldn’t tell the truth if it wanted to – and stared at the tattoo on her arm. There it was, plain as daylight, the name
THE fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’ wasn’t a favourite of mine in primary school back in the 1960s, even though it had all the ingredients of a magical story: enchanted beings, a cursed prince, and a young woman whose kindness and love broke the curse. While some stories seemed
‘In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and philologist. MY village, Kampung Ta-ee in Serian District in the 1950s and 1960s, was typical of rural villages
The Path Through the Fields IN a land where the hills rolled gently as a mother’s lullaby and the streams whispered secrets to the paddy fields, there lived a young fellow named Raham – though most folks just called him Ham. Ham was a stout-hearted lad, the kind who worked
Past the edge of our narrow wetland, with its paddy fields stretching as far as the eye could see, I often caught sight of a curious figure named Dawa. If not for his hair, it would have been easy to mistake him for someone else. The distance made him rather
THE first time I saw and touched a rose flower was in 1960 when I was seven and had just started Primary 1 in our village’s mission school. The solitary bush that introduced me to the beauty of roses was tucked in the corner of a house compound that belonged
Every few months in the second half of the 1960s, a young man named Juwa would journey from his family’s farm to the bus stop at Mile 27 along the winding old Kuching-Serian Road, now replaced by the Pan Borneo Highway.. The bus would take him to Kuching town, about
Dirik was a quiet sort of fellow, the kind you’d likely pass on the road without giving much thought to who he was or where he was bound. He was lean and sunburned, with a face that looked like it had seen too much sun and too little laughter. Folks
