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| Next | Back | Home | Fiction | Non-Fiction | Poems | Book Excerpts | Love of a Lifetime Novel
By Niza Yahya
Sara AnisAge
23. Have just returned from UK after studying there for 5 years. Is
starting work with a multi-national conglomerate, which sponsored her
studies abroad. Is currently single after a string of failed
relationships. Popular, optimistic, friendly and energetic but is
prone to depression and loneliness. Is struggling with her personal
life amidst entering adulthood as a young bumiputra female from the
generation that is expected to, and have been taught to have it all.
Ben Sara’s
ex-boyfriend. Classic Dawson & Joey case, except that their
relationship was more turbulent and complicated. Probably the person
who knows Sara best inside out. Still in UK to do his Masters degree. Aris Crush.
Imaginary boyfriend. Someone who had all the attributes Sara was
looking for but was sadly not attracted to her. Izlan Jerk
who two-timed Sara and left her for his old girlfriend. Azyana Sara’s
best friend from secondary school who was unable to study in the UK
when the 1997 economic crisis landed. Liz Her
best friend in Worlingham School. Misha Housemate
in London. Chapter
One: Epilogue
August
2001 High
Street Kensington, London
“I’m going home. To KL. After 5 years in this country.
Damn! I don’t believe it.” I
was standing at the balcony of what had been my home for the past
three years, a cramped 2-bedroom flat five doors up from the
MacDonald’s Kensington High Street branch in Kensington, London. The
balcony itself was a four feet long and two feet wide and had only
enough room for one person perching awkwardly in any futile attempts
to catch a glimpse of the heavy midday Saturday crowd doing their
weekly shopping. “You
better believe it, mate,” my housemate for the past three years,
Misha drawled, hardly glancing up from the weekly music chart show on
TV. Misha was my friend from secondary school in Putra Jaya, Malaysia,
where we both hailed from. We hardly talked when we were in school but
she looked me up a month into the first year at our university and
talked me into being housemates. I
slumped onto the couch beside her and folded my arms, sighing out loud
as I did. “I know I’ve got no right to complain. It’s good
enough that we’ve been sent here on a scholarship to study for five
years in a country like the UK. We have a home to go back to, a
multi-national conglomerate to serve, a society to pay back our dues.
But I can’t believe I’m not gonna wake up and be in England
anymore! It seems so surreal.”
Misha
shrugged. “It’s all part of life. We were born as babies, we grew
up and had a childhood, we came and conquered university life, we
graduate and we go home. It’s that simple.” “Sure,”
I said. “But don’t we have options? Lots of scholarship students
work here for a couple of years before returning home. Some move to
Manhattan, Paris or even Beijing, to take advantage of the global
opportunities and to make the most money. Some do community service
and charity work. Maybe be dispatched to Palestine to give some
humanitarian aid and find the meaning of life while trying to save the
world. The freedom to choose – isn’t that what our generation is
all about?” Misha
shot me a look. “Sara! You said so yourself, we should be thankful
for where we are today and the education that we’ve received.
You’re just sad because you’ll never get to come back to London
and walk freely down Oxford Street or catch a free copy of The Sun on
the Tube ever again. Stop being such a self-indulgent prick and cheer
up. KL’s a great place to be. It’s not the end of the world, for
heaven’s sake!” I stared at the screen, losing myself for a moment while watching Kylie Minogue teeter on stage in her pink suit and bobbing along to the words of her latest single. It’s easy for her to say, I sulked to myself. She’s the one with the rich father who can buy her anything she wants and who doesn’t ever need to work if she wishes. What about me? But
as the sulkiness died down and realisation dawned on me, I realised
that she was right;
I was being selfish. What was I complaining about? It was I who had
been complaining for the past five years about the endless grey skies
and miserable London weather. Why was I not jumping for joy at the
prospects of returning to my motherland, with its endless sunshine and
glorious food? Because
it’s unfamiliar, a voice whispered at the back of
my mind. Because you’ve been comfortable here, carving out a life by
yourself without your family and friends from home. Because here, the
Malaysian community is small and no one knows what you’ve been up to
– or rather, no one cares because everybody’s too busy in their
own exams and deadlines to worry about you.
Because
back home, new uncertainties and question marks await you. Your
past, your present and your future will be all the more vulnerable.
Even the parts that you never want to remember again. I
closed my eyes and leaned my head to the sofa and breathed softly. And
I remembered. Chapter Two: Sara’s Story Begins
September
1996 Worlingham,
Surrey My first year at
England had been a roller coaster ride. I arrived in Heathrow along
with twenty of my fellow scholars in autumn of 1996, all bright-eyed
and optimistic at the prospect of embarking on our journey of a
lifetime. It is a known fact that university years will be the best of
your life; and weren’t we the luckiest of our generation to be able
to spend it in a place like the United Kingdom? We
were then sent to our respective boarding schools to undergo the GCE A
Levels education program for two years. I was sent to Worlingham
School, a school situated in the lush and sleepy small town of
Worlingham in the heart of Surrey. To our delight the school was
within close proximity to our reference point of civilisation, being a
50-minute train ride away from London. Worlingham
was a beautiful place to study and proved to be just the embarkation
point that I needed to start off my five-year stint in the UK. The
school was small and private, its tuition fees ranged in tens of
thousands of pounds per annum. Its principles were symbolised in its
school uniform – black suits for the boys and girls, but sixth
formers had the option to choose any uniform they desired so long as
it was dark in colour, which explained the odd dark grey or navy blue
suit every once in a while. The school dated from 1880, and its red
brick buildings stood firmly on top of the hills, surrounded by lush
red and brown autumn leaves. It
was there that I met my first love, Ben. He was a Malay like me, but
with half Chinese parentage, which gave him this pan-Asian look that
neither made him more outstanding nor drown him in as a local. He was
tall, willowy and fairly built, with a strong jaw that hardened
whenever he was upset and dropped a mile whenever he laughed. He was
outstanding more in persona rather than looks – his jovial character
blended well with all, young and elderly, foreign and locals, men and
women alike. He was smart, ambitious, and confident, the result of
years of hard work in attempts to please his parents. He was
particularly bent on impressing his difficult father, and he was
intent on doing so by nothing less than enrolling into Cambridge.
I
fell in love with Ben almost immediately after meeting him. We met in
the school registration hall where sixth formers were required to
register and attend a 5-minute interview with the Head of Sixth Form,
Mr. Patterson. The hall was swamped with returning students who all
seemed to knew each other; laughter and hugs spread across the room as
I stood there waiting anxiously for my turn to be interviewed with my
fellow scholar friend Liz. We were the only two Malaysian students
there for that particular session; everybody else looked local and
almost everybody had blond hair and eyebrows. I was amazed to learn
that Caucasians look much better on the TV screen than they did up
front. I
had noticed Ben earlier but had dismissed him as a British Asian
student. From time to time, I caught him looking over at the two of
us, and wondered if it was possible that he was actually Asian since
nobody else was taking any notice of us. And for the umpteenth time I
wondered, How on earth am I going to make friends around here? Suddenly
the door burst open and in glided a young boy of age thirteen or
fourteen who was desperately trying to catch his balance as he roller
bladed his way through the crowd. As he passed Ben, he suddenly fell
over and cried out, “Aduh!” Both Ben and I stared at each
other, and then back at him. “Er, ni orang Melayu, ke?”
asked Ben dubiously. “Memanglah!” The boy cried. “Habis
ingat apa – orang Bunian?”[1]
After
we got over the shock, everybody walked over to the boy and helped him
up. A round of introductions sprang up and everybody shook hands and
smiled easily before bursting into laughter. The boy, Daniel, a
Malaysian who had been studying in Caterham since he was twelve, shook
his head as the rest of us laughed so hard we drew the attention of
the teacher who motioned us to keep it down. And for the first few
months of school, he and I became the best of friends. It was not difficult to like Ben. He was every girl’s dream boyfriend and every mother’s dream son-in-law. He had an uncanny ability to make you laugh even when you are bent on staying moody as well as a compelling smile, which made him appear so boyish you would feel like agreeing to whatever he is saying. At the same time, he was an attentive, courteous and sensitive young lad, the kind that would give up his seat on the bus, just as he did to a pregnant lady during our first trip into the town in our first week of school. I
was surprised to see that there was more to be impressed about Ben. As
it turned out, he was also incredibly smart and confident. In our
first economics class, when all the new foreign students were huddled
together while across the class the local English students slapped
each other on the back and asked about their summer holidays, Ben
walked across to them and introduced himself to the group. He held out
his hand and clasped each student’s hand firmly, mentioning the
person’s name as he did. Everybody in the room was impressed, and
this lasted for the whole two years as he turned out to be the top
student in the whole class. If Ben was the picture
of perfection, I was perhaps his antidote to life. Though I was
nowhere near as smart or talented as he was, I was just the right
partner for him. I was small, sweet (just about) and unsure of
everything in life. For the whole time I was in England, I always
grappled with the idea that somehow I didn’t deserve to be there;
somebody else back home should have deserved the scholarship instead
of me. I was always uncertain; about my studies, my grades, what I was
going to do at university, what I was going to do with my life. Just
as I needed Ben to counsel me and tell me everything’s going to be
OK, he in a way needed me to be the one who would put his feet firmly
back in the ground whenever he was beginning to feel riya’
(arrogant in Arabic). We were perfect together in a way that neither
of us had ever imagined. I never realised how the others admired our
relationship until one day when I asked my Nigerian friend, Ola
“What is your definition of a true love?” And he answered, “What
you and Ben have.” It
took me completely by surprise, because although I knew deep down that
I was falling for Ben, I had never said anything to him because I
wasn’t sure of how he was feeling in return. This haunted me for a
few weeks until the Christmas holiday came and it was time for
everyone to move out of the boarding halls for three weeks. Ben asked
what I was planning to do. I said the first thing that came to mind,
“I think I’d like to go skiing.” ************************* We
went to Scotland, just the two of us. Liz was supposed to come but in
the last minute she pulled out and said she was going back home. I had
doubts about going together because it was frowned upon back in
Malaysia, but in the end I thought, what the heck, everybody does
it here, it’s not like we’re going to do anything anyway. We’re
not even a couple! So we packed our bags, rang the respective
train stations and B&Bs and started our journey. We were due to
spend four days and three nights, joining a team of tourists from
Japan who were there under a packaged deal. As
it turned out, we never left the B&B. Not because we were doing
anything in particular. It was because we decided to talk. Just like
that! Talk. It was actually Ben’s idea; we had arrived at the ski
centre, was told that the snow was too thin to be skied on and that we
had to wait until the next day. Till then, we could either bike around
the hills or go trekking, which all the Japanese tourists opted for.
But Ben pulled me aside and said, “I don’t feel like doing
anything energetic. Wanna just sit down and talk?” And
talk we did. We lay on the sofa in front of the campfire, sipped
canned soup and chatted away. We talked about our families and friends
back home, our favourite childhood memories, and the first time we
realised we were no longer kids. He told me about his strict father,
his overprotective mother and his need to break free from his parents
but also his urgent need to impress them and prove his worth. I told
him how I missed my family, friends, and cats and how I constantly
felt like I was never good enough for anything. And that’s when he
said, “Now why would you feel that way?” And I said, “I don’t
know, I just don’t think I’m good enough for anyone.” He gave me
a look and said, “I think you would be more than enough for me.”
I
laughed and brushed it off although my heart was beating furiously.
For the rest of the trip, we stayed in the B&B, read books, cooked
more canned food, talked and laughed further. By the end of the trip,
I was hopelessly in love but refused to admit it. And so was he. It
was only during our train ride back that the first step was made, and
that was because we were playing truth or dare. It was my turn and
after having chosen truth, he asked me to describe my perfect soul
mate. I started rattling off kindness, intelligence, and humour etc.
when he stopped me and said, “No. Physical attributes. Be
specific”. And I paused to think before answering slowly, “Well…
he’d have to be tall, with broad shoulders… “ And I went on for
about three minutes before I stopped in shock. I was describing him! He
realised it as well because he looked down at his shoulders, shrugged
and said, “Boleh-lah.”[2] Then he grinned and dodged
as I threw the magazine straight at his face. He caught the magazine,
laughing, and said, “What are you angry at me for?” I was too
embarrassed to say anything, so I just kept hitting him over and over
again, my cheeks burning with humiliation, until he caught both my
wrists, spun me around to face him, and said fiercely, “You’re not
the only one who’s feeling this! I’m feeling it too.” Silence
fell between us until he said, quietly this time, “I think I’m in
love with you.” To this day, I can still remember that exact moment. We
went back to school as a couple, walking hand in hand right up to the
dormitories when he put down my bags and kissed me on the forehead
before retreating to his own boarding house. My watching friends
screamed with delight and jumped and down, everybody congratulating me
while Liz kept saying, “I knew this was going to happen! I knew
it!” ******************** Our
relationship blossomed into a full-fledged romance for the rest of the
year. The whole school knew us as The Couple. We attended almost
identical classes since we took similar subjects, joined in similar
after-school activities and was basically together whenever we were
awake and out of the boarding house. Our penchant for fun even got us
into trouble on one particular occasion when we only managed the last
train back to Worlingham after watching an opera performance in West
End and returned late past lights off hours. For that particular
weekend, we were both fined and I was grounded and barred from seeing
Ben until Monday. We were happy enough to be silly, and it showed to
everyone around us. When
summer holidays rolled around, I was faced with my first dilemma when
it came to Ben. As much as I loved being with him, I missed my family
and friends back home and craved to go back for a visit. Ben knew
this, and although he was reluctant to go back, decided to return home
with me so that we would not be apart. It was a decision that would
prove to be fatal to our relationship later on. We
got off the train fresh and happy at the prospects of being back on
familiar grounds. Both our families were waiting at the airport, and
although he introduced me to them, they were strangely unenthusiastic
about meeting me, his girlfriend for the first time. I noticed too his
awkward posture when introducing me, as if slightly defensive and
awaiting some kind of an attack at any moment. I suppose I should have
seen the whole thing coming then. But I did not. ********************** Niza Yahya Contact: wanyusniza@pnb.com.my
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